Contemporary Crisis our nature is complex and we have to find a key to some perfect unity and fullness of its complexity.  Its first evolutionary basis is the material life: Nature began with that and man also has to begin with it; he has first to affirm his material and vital existence.  But if he stops there, there can be for him no evolution; his next and greater preoccupation must be to find himself as a mental being in a material life, — both individual and social, — as perfected as possible.  This was the direction which the Hellenic idea gave to European civilisation, and the Roman reinforced, — or weakened, — it with the ideal of organised power: the cult of r

Cosmic Consciousness Transcendence and Omnipresent Reality The Possibility of a cosmic consciousness in humanity is coming slowly to be admitted in modern Psychology, like the possibility of more elastic instruments of knowledge, although still classified, even when its value and power are admitted, as a hallucination. In the psychology of the East it has always been recognised as a reality and the aim of our subjective progress. The essence of the passage over to this goal is the exceeding of the limits imposed on us by the ego-sense and at least a partaking, at most an identification with the self-k

Supermind and Humanity What then would be the consequence for humanity of the descent of Supermind into our earthly existence, its consequence for this race born into a world of ignorance and inconscience but capable of an upward evolution of its consciousness and an ascent into the light and power and bliss of a spiritual being and spiritual nature? The descent into the earth-life of so supreme a creative power as the Supermind and its truth-consciousness could not be merely a new feature or factor added to that life or put in its front but without any other importance or only a restricted importance carrying with it no results profoundly

Index to Philosophy of Supermind Book Title:                             Philosophy of Supermind And Contemporary Crisis Authored/Edited:                  Kireet Joshi Associate Editor:                  Ashoke Sen Gupta Delivered at:                              Round-Table on The Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo                                 (15TH August 2003) organised by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research at the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy at Istanbul (Turkey), August 10-17, 2003 Classification:                       Philosophy Sub-classification:                Language:    

The Human Aspiration The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation, — for it survives  the longest periods of scepticism and returns after every banishment, — is also the highest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its pri

V Mind, Overmind, and Supermind It is only when we follow the yogic process of quieting the mind itself that a profounder result of our self-observation becomes possible. For first we discover that mind is a subtle substance, a general determinate — or generic indeterminate — which mental energy when it operates throws into forms or particular determinations of itself, thoughts, concepts, percepts, mental sentiments, activities of will and reactions of feeling, but which, when the energy is quiescent, can live either in an inert torpor or in an immobile silence and peace of self-existence. Next we see that the determinations of o

The Peril of the World-State The State principle leads necessarily to uniformity, regulations, mechanisation; its inevitable end is socialism. There is nothing fortuitous, no room for chance in political and social development, and the emergence of socialism was no accident or a thing that might or might not have been, but the inevitable result contained in the very seed of the State idea. It was inevitable from the moment that idea began to be hammered out in practice. The work of the Alfreds and Charlemagnes and other premature national or imperial unifiers contained this as a sure result, for men work almost always without knowing

A Message to America I have been asked to send on this occasion of the fifteenth August a message to the West, but what I have to say might be delivered equally as a message to the East. It has been customary to dwell on the division and difference between these two sections of the human family and even oppose them to each other; but, for myself I would rather be disposed to dwell on oneness and unity than on division and difference. East and West have the same human nature, a common human destiny, the same aspiration after a greater perfection, the same seeking after something higher than itself, something towards which inwardly and even o

Suggested Solutions and Their Inadequacy A rational and scientific formula of the vitalistic and materialistic human being and his life, a search for a perfected economic society and the democratic cultus of the average man are all that the modern mind presents us in this crisis as a light for its solution.  Whatever the truth supporting these ideas, this is clearly not enough to meet the need of a humanity which is missioned to evolve beyond itself or, at any rate, if it is to live, must evolve far beyond anything that it at present is.  A life-instinct in the race and in the average man himself has felt the inadequacy and has been driving toward

The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age A society that lives not by its men but by its institutions is not a collective soul, but a machine; its life becomes a mechanical product and ceases to be a living growth.  Therefore the coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves, to lead others to it and to make it the recognised goal of the race.  In proportion as they succeed and to the deg