IV. Man Must Needs Have a Cosmology.. Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not what; for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian. I will tell you everything, right as it fell out. A Midsummer Night's Dream Man is his own greatest mystery. He does not understand the vast veiled Universe into which he has been cast for the reason that he does not understand himself. He comprehends but little of his organic processes and even less of his unique capacity to perceive the world about him, to reason and to dream. Least of all does he understand his noblest and most mysterious faculty: the ability to transcend himself and perceive himself in th

MOVEMENT ONE OMNIPRESENT REALITY XVII. Impressions of the Infinite If one knows Him as Brahman the Non-Being he be- comes merely the non-existent. If one knows that Brahman Is, then is he known as the real in existence. Taittiriya Upanishad It is there in beings indivisible and as if divided. Gita2 Brahman is Truth, Brahman is Knowledge, Brahman is the Infinite. Taittiriya Upanishad3 High beyond the Intelligence is the Great Self, beyond the Great Self is the Unmanifest, beyond the Unmanifest is the Conscious Being. There is nothing beyond the Being, — that is the extreme ul

INTRODUCTION Many post-graduate dissertations have been attempted in India and abroad on various aspects of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. It is a happy sign that Sri Aurobindo is slowly but increasingly coming to occupy his place among contemporary thinkers and creators. The central ideas contained in his versatile contribution are new and stimulating. As the late Dr. S. K. Maitra rightly observes; "System-building is not what we value in a philosopher. It is the power to kindle thought, to give a new orientation, a new outlook." Sri Aurobindo's ideas on various aspects of human culture act as enkindlers of the growing intellect. It is not surprising that Dr. V. Madhusudan Reddy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons for their kind assistance in the preparation of this book: i)V. Lakshman Reddy, V. Manmohan Reddy, Dhananjaya Reddy and Damodhar Reddy for carefully going through the typescript and through the galley proof of the text. ii)A. S. R. Anjaneyulu, Deputy Registrar, Osmania University, S. M. Nizamuddin, Director, Osmania University Press, his colleague P.D. Krishnaswami and their assistants A. David, D.E. Sarangapani, M. Krishnamurthy, K. Suryanarayana Rao, Syed Khwaja, Mukundamswami, Mohd. Jafer, Gaffur, and other staff members for their personal interest in the printing of this book

XXX. The New Humanity "Who is the superman? He who can rise above this matter-regarding broken mental human unit and pos- sess himself universalised and deified in a divine force, a divine love and joy and a divine knowledge."" Sri Aurobindo The one choice that is now before Nature in her upward march of evolution seems to be: to remain human or to be divine. To remain human means to continue the fundamental nature of man. The inorganic, the vegetable, the animal and finally man — these are the four great steps of Nature's evolutionary course. The differentia, in each case, lies in the degree and nature of consciousness, since it is consci

II. Avatarhood: The Parable of Evolution "Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar [Matsya], then the amphibious animal between land and water [Kurma], then the land animal [Vamana], then the Man-Lion Avatar [Narasimha], bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf [Vamana], small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars [Parasurama, Rama, Buddha respectively], leading the human development from the vital raja

XVIII. The Cosmic Illusion The Master of Maya creates this world by his Maya and within it is confined another; one should know his Maya as Nature and the Master of Maya as the great Lord of all. Swetaswatara Upanishad' The Eternal is true; the world is a lie. Viveka Chudamani2 It became both truth and falsehood. It became the Truth, even all this that is. Taittiriya Upanishad3 All human thought, all mental man's experience moves between a constant affirmation and negation. At the outset man lives in his physical mind which perceives the actual, the physical, the objective and accepts it as act and this a

XI. Annam Brahmeti Vyajanāt He arrived at the knowledge that Matter is Brahman. Taittiriya Upanishad1 "Matter is Sachchidananda represented to His own mental experience as a formal basis of objective know- ledge, action and delight of existence." The Life Divine2 There is a self that is of the essence of Matter — there is another inner self of Life that fills the other — there is another inner self of Mind — there is inner self of Truth-Knowledge — there is another inner self of Bliss. Taittiriya Upanishad3 The two extremes which philosophy must avoid are materialism ignoring Spirit and spiritu

XXII. Modes of Manifestation As Matter3 is only substance-form of Force, so we shall discover that material Force is only energy-form of Mind. Material force is in fact a subconscious operation of Will. It is a subconscious Mind or Intelligence which, manifesting Force as its driving power, its executive Nature, its Prakriti, has created this material world. But Mind is no independent and original entity but only a final operation of the Truth-Consciousness or Supermind. Therefore Supermind is the real creative agency of the universal Existence. The triple world that we live in, the world of Mind-Life-Body, is triple only in its actual accomplished evolution.

VII. A Critical Retrospect It is a hard thought, but man is an insignificant creature when seen against the background of cosmic immensity, when viewed in relation to the gamut of organic change and upheaval, the profusion of life's struggles and harmonies. He inhabits the earth in company with something like a million other species of animals, to say nothing of a great variety of plants. With these he attempts with varying degrees of success, to live in some sort of concord. There is nothing, the scientist believes, to indicate that nature has a special regard for the human species; mankind is not absolved from the necessity of expending energy in adjusting itself to t