The Secret of the Isha   It is now several thousands of years since men ceased to study Veda and Upanishad for the sake of Veda or Upanishad Ever since the human mind in India, more & more intellectualised, always increasingly addicted to the secondary process of knowledge by logic & intellectual ratiocination, increasingly drawn away from the true & primary processes of knowledge by experience and direct perception, began to dislocate & dismember the manysided harmony of ancient Vedic truth & parcel it out into schools of thought & systems of metaphysics, its preoccupation has been rather with the later opinions of Sutras & Bhashyas than with the early truth of

Ish and Jagat   The Isha Upanishad in its very inception goes straight to the root of the problem the Seer has set out to resolve; he starts at once with the two supreme terms of which our existence seems to be composed and in a monumental phrase, cast into the bronze of eight brief but sufficient words, he confronts them and sets them in their right & eternal relation Isha vasyam idam sarvam yat kincha jagatyam jagat Ish and Jagat, God and Nature, Spirit and World, are the two poles of being between which our consciousness revolves This double or biune reality is existence, is life, is man The Eternal seated sole in all His creations occupies the ever-shifting Universe

Part Two   Incomplete Commentaries from Manuscripts     Isha Upanishad   All that is world in the Universe   The Sanscrit word जगत् is in origin a reduplicated & therefore frequentative participle from the root गम् to go It signifies "that which is in perpetual motion", and implies in its neuter form the world, universe, and in its feminine form the earth World therefore is that which eternally vibrates, and the Hindu idea of the cosmos reduces itself to a harmony of eternal vibrations; form as we see it is simply the varying combination of different vibrations as they affect us through our perceptions & establish themselves t

VOLUME 17 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 2003 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA Isha Upanishad Publisher’s Note   This volume contains Sri Aurobindo’s translations of and commentaries on the Isha Upanishad His translations of and commentaries on other Upanishads and Vedantic texts, and his wr

'Isha Upanishads' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50 The Karmayogin   A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad       NOTE   Sri Aurobindo modified the structure of The Karmayogin: A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad while he was working on it He began with a two-tier division: "Chapters" and sections Later he introduced a superior division, the "Part", and began calling the lowest-level divisions "Chapters" The intermediate divisions, earlier called "Chapters", became known as "Books" The numbering of these divisions is neither consistent nor complete The table on the opposite page shows the structure as marked by Sri Aurobindo in the manuscript and prin

'Isha Upanishads' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50 The Life Divine   A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad   [Draft A]   Foreword   Veda & Vedanta are the inexhaustible fountains of Indian spirituality With knowledge or without knowledge, every creed in India, sect, school of philosophy, outburst of religious life, great or petty, brilliant or obscure, draws its springs of life from these ancient and ever flowing waters Conscious or unwitting each Indian religionist stirs to a vibration that reaches him from those far off ages Darshana and Tantra and Purana, Shaivism & Vaishnavism, orthodoxy & heresy are merely so many imperfect understandings of Ved

'Isha Upanishads' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 50 Chapters for a Work on the Isha Upanishad   [1] The Isha Upanishad   The Puranic account supposes us to have left behind the last Satya period, the age of harmony, and to be now in a period of enormous breakdown, disintegration and increasing confusion in which man is labouring forward towards a new harmony which will appear when the spirit of God descends again upon mankind in the form of the Avatara called Kalki, destroys all that is lawless, dark and confused and establishes the reign of the saints, the Sadhus, those, that is to say,—if we take the literal meaning of the word Sadhu, who are strivers after

Book Nine (A FRAGMENT) "NOR could the Trojan fighters break through the walls of their foemen, Nor could the mighty Pelides slay in his war-rage the Trojans. Ever he fought surrounded or drew back compelled to his legions; For to each spear of his strength full twenty hissed round his helmet, Cried1 on his shield, attempted his cuirass or leaped at his coursers Or at Automedon ran like living things in their blood-thirst. Galled the deathless steeds high-neighing pawed in their anger; Wrathful Achilles wheeled and threatened seeking a victim. So might a fire on the high-piled altar of sacrifice blazing Seek for its tong

  AN ANSWER TO A CRITICISM* Milford accepts the rule that two consonants after a short vowel make the short vowel long, even if they are outside the word and come in another word following it. To my mind that is an absurdity. I shall go on pronouncing the y of frosty as short whether it has two consonants after it or only one or none; it remains frosty whether it is a frosty scalp or forsly top or a frosty anything. In no case have I pronounced it or could I consent to pronounce it as frostee. My hexameters are intended to be read naturally as one would read any English sentence. But if you admit a short syllable to be long whenever there are two consonants after it,

Book Seven THE BOOK OF THE WOMAN SO to the voice of their best they were bowed and obeyed un debating; Men whose hearts were burning yet with implacable passion Felt Odysseus' strength and rose up clay to his counsels. King Agamemnon rose at his word, the wide-ruling monarch, Rose at his word the Cretan and Locrian, Thebes and Epirus, Nestor rose, the time-tired hoary chief of the Pylians. Round Agamemnon the Atreid Europe surged in her chieftains Forth from their tent on the shores of the Troad, splendid in armour, Into the golden blaze of the sun and the race of the sea-winds. Fierce and clear like a fl