The Poetry in the Making Is the artist – the supreme artist, when he is a genius, that is to say – conscious in his creation or is he unconscious? Two quite opposite views have been taken of the problem by the best of intelligences. On the one hand, it is said that genius is genius precisely because it acts unconsciously, and on the other it is asserted with equal emphasis that genius is the capacity of taking infinite pains, which means it is absolutely a self. conscious activity. We take a third view of the matter and say that genius is neither unconscious or conscious but superconscious. And when one is superconscious, one can be in appearance either conscious o

The Birth of Maya THE Divine is All-Light, All-Bliss, All-Power - in himself, in his essence and true being, always and for ever. But, somewhere, in a part of universal being the Divine chose to forget the Divine, a veil was allowed to interpose in front of the All-Light, the All-Bliss, the All-Power: A mixture became possible, the dualities were born. Ignorance entered into Knowledge, Pain invaded Delight, Weakness stole into Strength. For a new and extraordinary manifestation this movement was permitted, for the fullness of experience, for an immense contradiction turning to a luminous reconciliation and harmony. The Eternal negated his eternity, the Divine

TOWARDS THE LIGHT Of Love and Aspiration THERE is a Light before which all other light is darkness. There is a Strength before which all other strength is weakness. There is a Joy before which all other joy is suffering. *** Forward to the Farthest! Upward to the Highest! Downward into the Deepest! At the farthest awaits a humanity fulfilled and realised, At the highest broods the Divinity that propels and forges, At the deepest dwells the Instrument -the Individuality - that obeys and executes. Be aware of these triple elements, house their triple movements; Find your one and total self in the dynamic union o

POETS AND MYSTICS Sri Aurobindo : The Age of Sri Aurobindo SOMEONE has written to this effect: "This is not the age of Sri Aurobindo. His ideal of a divine life upon earth mayor may not be true; at any rate it is not of today or even of tomorrow. Humanity will take some time before it reaches that stage or its possibility. What we are concerned with here and now is something perhaps less great, less spiritual, but more urgent and more practical. The problem is not to run away with one's soul, but to maintain its earthly tenement, to keep body and soul together: one has to live first, .live materially before one can hope to live spiritually." Well, the view expres

Sri Aurobindo: “Ahana and Other Poems” WHAT is the world that Sri Aurobindo sees and creates? Poetry is after all passion. By passion I do not mean the fury of emotion nor the fume of sentimentalism, but what lies behind at their source, what lends them the force they have­ – the sense of the "grandly real," the vivid and pulsating truth. What then is the thing that Sri Aurobindo has visualised, has endowed with a throbbing life and made a poignant reality? Victor Hugo said: Attachez Dieu au gibet, vous avez la croix – Tie God to the gibbet, you have the cross. Even so, infuse passion into a thing most prosaic, you create sublime poetry out of it. What is

Thought and Imagination WHEN you think of a person or a thing you are immediately I there and come into contact with the object of your thought. But this happens in the thought world only; you know nothing of the vital or physical context of the object. Thought is conscious of thought only in the mental world; by your thought you can be conscious of the mental atmosphere of the distant object, of the thought of the person to whom you go, but nothing else, absolutely nothing of his vital or physical. If you want to know of the vital you must go to the object vitally; it means an exteriorisation that leaves the body at least three-fourths in trance. And if you

The Double Trinity The human being is composed of three beings, his person is made of three persons – it is a trinity, a triptych as it were. The first is the external person whom we recognise by his name and form. It is indeed the physical body in and through which nature and character express themselves or try to express themselves as best they can. For the body, the material body is both an expression and a limitation, the body is not capable of expressing all that is behind it against which it acts as a dam with a few sluices to let something of the inner content flow out. This inner content means the vital world with its desires and impulses and various dynamisms

The Sunlit Path THE modern, particularly the western mind captured by the rational or scientific spirit cannot but pursue the same line even in the domain of other and higher realities. The father and the great representative of the movement was Descartes, the very famous French thinker. To find the pure and unalloyed truth, he taught, one must keep away all possibility of error: so to dispel all doubt one must begin by doubting everything, to avoid being the dupe of imagination, delusion or hallucina­tion it is always safe to doubt everything. A second reflection, however, raises the question, but who doubts: it is I who doubt, the one who doubts is I; the doubter cannot be

Dealing with a Wrong Movement THERE is a great difference between pushing a thing away simply because you do not want it and changing the state of the consciousness so that the thing you do not want becomes completely foreign to your nature. Usually when you have a movement in you which you do not like, you drive it back and repel it, but you do not take the trouble of finding in yourself that which served and serves still as a support to the movement, the particular tendency, the turn of consciousness which enables the thing to enter into the consciousness. If, however, instead of a gesture of mere condemnation and suppression, you enter deep into your vi

PARTS EIGHT AND NINE Choosing To Do Yoga To DO Sri Aurobindo's Yoga means to seek to transform oneself integrally, to have this single aim in one's life: that alone exists, nothing else. You feel it in yourself whether you want it or not. If you do not, you can live a life of goodwill, service, understanding; you can work in many other ways. But between that and doing Yoga there is a great difference. To do Yoga you must want it consciously, you must know first of all what it is, – know what it is and then take the resolution. And once the resolution is taken you must waver no more. When you go to it, you must take it up fully conscious of what you are