The Sixth Hymn to Mitra-Varuna   THE TWIN UPHOLDERS AND PROTECTORS   [Mitra and Varuna perfect the vastness of the superconscient being which is the object of sacrifice; they possess the full abundance of its force. When they reach that luminous origin and home, they give men, labourers in the sacrificial work, its peace and bliss; on the way to it they protect the mortal from his spiritual enemies who would stand in the way of his immortality; for they keep firm to their higher workings and to the seats of the higher consciousness to which those workings belong and to which man rises in his ascent; universal and all-knowing they de

The First Hymn to the Dawn   [The Rishi prays for the full epiphany of the Dawn of the light of Truth in all its lavish splendour, with all the bountiful companies of its gods and seers, the shining herds of its thought, the rushing steeds of its force, the luminous impulsions with which it comes —companioned, as they are, by the burning rays of the Sun of gnosis. Let the Dawn arrive and the work will no longer be long and tardy.]     1. O Dawn, come with all thy splendours of heaven, awaken us today to the great felicity, even as once thou awakenedst us, —in the sonhood of the birth of knowledge, in the inspired hearing o

The Tenth Hymn to Agni   A HYMN OF THE SPLENDID SOULS WHO ATTAIN   [The Rishi prays to the divine Flame to work in him by the triple force of Power, Knowledge and Delight. He speaks of the splendid souls of knowledge in our humanity who attain to the Truth and Vastness; they are the burning and overpowering flame-rays of this transcendent Conscious-Force of the Divine that is at work in us to climb to divine mastery. Some have become such souls, others are still hampered but growing. He desires the increasing affirmation of Agni so that all may advance to a rich and all-comprehending universality.]     1. O Flame,

The Doctrine of the Mystics   THE VEDA possesses the high spiritual substance of the Upanishads, but lacks their phraseology; it is an inspired knowledge as yet insufficiently equipped with intellectual and philosophical terms. We find a language of poets and illuminates to whom all experience is real, vivid, sensible, even concrete, not yet of thinkers and systematisers to whom the realities of the mind and soul have become abstractions. Yet a system, a doctrine there is; but its structure is supple, its terms are concrete, the cast of its thought is practical and experimental, but in the accomplished type of an old and sure experience, not o

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