SECTION SIX THE POET AND THE CRITIC THE POET AND THE CRITIC READING AND POETIC CREATION AND YOGA   A literary man is one who loves literature and literary activities for their own separate sake. A Yogi who writes is not a literary man for he writes only what the inner Will and Word wants him to express. He is a channel and instrument of something greater than his own literary personality. Of course, the literary man and the intellectual love reading — books are their mind's food. But writing is another matter. There are plenty of people who never write a word in the literary way but are enormous readers. One reads for ideas, for knowledge, for the stim

SECTION SEVEN  REMINISCENCES AND OBSERVATIONS REMINISCENCES AND OBSERVATIONS LAST WORD IN HUMAN NATURE Lies? Well, a Punjabi student at Cambridge once took our breath away by the frankness and comprehensive profundity of his affirmation: "Liars! But we are all liars!" It appeared that he had intended to say "lawyers", but his pronunciation gave his remark a deep force of philosophic observation and generalisation which he had not intended! But it seems to me the last word in human nature. Only the lying is sometimes intentional, sometimes vaguely half-intentional, sometimes quite unintentional, momentary and unconscious. So there you are !... Of cours

  SECTION FOUR  SADHANA FOR THE EARTH-CONSCIOUSNESS SADHANA FOR THE EARTH-CONSCIOUSNESS SRI AUROBINDO AND SUPERMAN I don't know that I have called myself a Superman. But certainly I have risen above the ordinary human mind, otherwise I would not think of trying to bring down the Supermind into the physical. 15-9-1935 OBJECT OF SEEKING THE SUPERMIND These egoistic terms are not those in which my vital moves. It is a higher Truth I seek, whether it makes men greater or not is not the question, but whether it will give them truth and peace and light to live in and make life something better than a struggle with ignorance and falsehood and

SECTION THREE DIFFICULTIES OF THE PATH-FINDERS   DIFFICULTIES OF THE PATH-FINDERS THE DIFFICULT PATH Nobody has found this Yoga a Grand Trunk Road, neither X nor Y nor even myself or the Mother. All such ideas are a romantic illusion. August, 1935 THE BURDEN OF HUMANITY We have had sufferings and struggles to which yours is a mere child's play; I have not made our cases equal to yours. I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness — if nobody can follow the Way, then either our conception of the thing, which is also that of Christ and Krishna and Buddha also, is all wrong or the whole

SECTION TWO IDENTITY OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS IDENTITY OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS IDENTITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND PATH The opposition between the Mother's consciousness and my consciousness was an invention of the old days (due mainly to X, Y and others of that time) and emerged in a time when the Mother was not fully recognised or accepted by some of those who were here at the beginning. Even after they had recognised her they persisted in this meaningless opposition and did great harm to them and others. The Mother's consciousness and mine are the same, the one Divine Consciousness in two, because that is necessary for the play. Nothing can be done without h

SECTION THREE HIS PATH AND OTHER PATHS   HIS PATH AND OTHER PATHS SRI AUROBINDO'S TEACHING AND METHOD OF SADHANA The teaching of Sri Aurobindo starts from that of the ancient sages of India that behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal. All beings are united in that One Self and Spirit but divided by a certain separativity of consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and Reality in the mind, life and body. It is possible by a certain psychological discipline to remove this veil of separative consciousness and become aware of the true Self, the Divinity within us and a

CHAPTER XIX   THE DRIVE TOWARDS CENTRALISATION AND UNIFORMITY. ADMINISTRATION AND CONTROL OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS   SUPPOSING the free grouping of the nations according to their natural affinities, sentiments, sense of economical and other convenience to be the final basis of a stable world-union, the next question that arises is what precisely would be the status of these nation-units in the larger and more complex unity of mankind. Would they possess only a nominal separateness and become parts of a machine or retain a real and living individuality and an effective freedom and organic life? Practically, this comes to the question

CHAPTER XXXI   THE CONDITIONS OF A FREE WORLD-UNION   A FREE world-union must in its very nature be a complex unity based on a diversity and that diversity must be based on free self-determination. A mechanical unitarian system would regard in its idea the geographical groupings of men as so many conveniences for provincial division, for the convenience of administration, much in the same spirit as the French Revolution reconstituted France with an entire disregard of old natural and historic divisions. It would regard mankind as one single nation and it would try to efface the old separative national spirit altogether; it would arran

INDEX   A   Absolutism, 121, 201, 202 Abyssinia, Italian imperialist venture in, 89, 267 self-determination after the first war, 271 Acara, habits determined by the inner nature of group man, 187 Africa, Central and Southern, 177 European domination in, 170, 270 expulsion of Germany from, 132 its regional life killed by Rome, 109 North, European conquest of, 267 in the causal chain of the first war, 132 likely grouping with Muslim West Asia, 175 the impact of French culture, 60 South, race difficulty in, 72 the pr

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 modem mind, the commercial and industrial, the necessity born of economic interdependence. Commercialism is a modern sociological phenomenon; one might almost say that is the whole p