THE WORLD-LEADER OF TOMORROW Sri Aurobindo through a Biographer's Eyes "ETERNITY !·how learnt I that strange word?" asks Laurence Binyon in a poem. The question might more appropriately have been put by a young Bengali to himself during his student days in England with his two elder brothers, one of whom was an intimate friend of Laurence Binyon. For this young Bengali was caught in puzzling psychological cross-currents. Educated in England from early boyhood, he was as completely Westernised as any Indian could be-Westernised not only in the sense that the whole world of European culture, ancient, me diaevaland modern, became part of him; b

THE INSPIRATION OF SAROJINI NAIDU A Defence against Colour-blind and Tone-deaf "Debunkers" "Debunking" is the favourite sport of our time —often a healthy necessary sport; but futile and thankless is the attempt to "debunk" skylarks and nightingales and Sarojini Naidu! Critics have begun to find her work void of true emotion; they see no real creative drive in it. Mere colour, vague imagery, tinsel sentiment—these sum her up in their view. The sole compliment they pay her is that she has an attractive command over language and a consummate skill in poetic form. That is, her technique is impressive but the inspiration is no more than fa

EVOLVING INDIA ESSAYS ON CULTURAL ISSUES K. D. SETHNA HIND KITABS LIMITED PUBLISHERS ; BOMBAY First Published in November 1947 copyright Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry. Published by V. Kulkarni, Hind Kitabs Limited, 261-3Hornby Road, Bombay

The Cosmic and the Christly       The core of Teilhard's spiritual life is laid bare in its primary colour by the reminiscence he has left to us of his earliest religious experience. He1 writes:   "I was certainly no more than six or seven when I began to feel myself drawn by Matter - or more strictly by something that 'shone' at the heart of Matter. At this age when I suppose other children feel their first 'sentiment' for a person or for art or religion, I was affectionate, well-behaved, even pious. That is, catching it from my mother, I loved 'the little lord Jesus' dearly. But in reality my genuine self was elsewhere. To find out about this you wo

Towards a Vedantic Christianity: the Individual, the Universal, the Transcendental       About the "pantheistic experience...that the Divine is everywhere and is all", a letter by Sri Aurobindo1 pronounces: "it is a very common thing to have this feeling or realisation in the Vedantic sadhana2 - in fact without it there would be no Vedantic sadhana. I have had it myself on various levels of consciousness and in numerous forms and I have met scores of people who have had it very genuinely - not as an intellectual theory or perception, but as a spiritual reality which was too concrete for them to deny

-012_The Fundamentals of Teilhard's Faith The True Nature of his Christianity.htm         Part Two THE BASIC TEILHARD DE CHARDIN AND THE MODERN RELIGIOUS INTUITION         I The Fundamentals of Teilhard's Faith: T. he True Nature of his Christianity       (1)       It is our thesis that among contemporary Europe's religious thinkers Teilhard de Chardin is a case sui generis calling us beyond easy and exclusive labels to a truth at once of the present-day West and of the ancient East.   He is not only complex but also puzzling - and he is a puzzle to his own being no less than to o

Faith in the World and Faith in God       No doubt, "the human, the Christly" answered to an authentic need of Teilhard's soul. Yet the concentration of the "cosmic sense" in it does not ever seem to have been a complete success. For, we cannot overlook the now-notorious passage commencing Part One of How I Believe (Comment je crois) which was written in 1934 and which became the target of a grave criticism in the Vatican's mouthpiece, Osservatore Romano, in June 1962 but which has subsequentlv been interpreted by most Roman Catholics as not necessarily a slip from orthodoxy. Teilhard1 writes:   "If, as a result of some interior revolution, I

III Teilhardism and the Modern Religious Intuition       (1)       We have tried to show Teilhard's "apologetics" in its proper bearings. We have distinguished it from the classical form with which it is equated by admirers who wish to assimilate him into traditional Christianity. True, Teilhard has a missionary aim inasmuch as he wants to bring the modern world to Christ. But we must never forget that the Christ he preaches is one who is in accord with the demand of that world and differs from the traditional version of the God-Man of Judea. And his missionary aim backfires on the Church to which he belongs, for he want

    TEILHARD DE CHARDIN AND OUR TIME             Teilhard de Chardin and our Time         AMAL KIRAN (K. D. SETHNA)                 Clear Ray Trust Pondicherry INDIA First Published 2000 (Typeset in 10.5/13 Palatine)                 © Clear Ray Trust 2000 Published by Clear Ray Trust, Pondicherry Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry (J51/4.5.98/10O0)

FOREWORD       Part One "The Real Religion of Teilhard de Chardin - His Version of Christianity and Sri Aurobindo's Expose of the Ancient Vedanta" appears for the first time in print.   Part Two "The Basic Teilhard de Chardin and the Modern Religious Intuition" brings together the articles published in Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, an organ of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, from July 1973 to May 1974.   The two parts have as their starting-points either interpretative studies of Teilhard de Chardin or his own multi-aspected writings or else both at the same time. Their aim is to consider Teilhardism from all possible sides and converge upon a