Preface Ce "message à la jeunesse" fut primitivement écrit en français pour la télévision italienne. L'auteur de L'Aventure de la Conscience (Buchet- Chastel, Paris, 1964) s'adresse aux étudiants, à ceux qui veulent faire la révolution de l'avenir par les moyens de l'avenir. Car en vérité, si nous voulons construire un monde nouveau, ce n'est pas par les moyens du passé que nous y par- viendrons — ni par la violence ni par la non violence. Mais par autre chose. Page-1 LE GRAND SENS C'est le temps du Grand Sens. Nous regardons à droite ou à gauche, nous construisons des théories, réformons nos Églises, inventons des super-machines, et nous descendons dans la rue po

Note de l'Éditeur Ce texte a été écrit pour AU India Radio émission du 5 février 1972, à l'occasion du Centenaire de Sri Aurobindo. SRI AUROBINDO ET L'AVENIR DE LA TERRE Parfois, une grande Pensée errante voit les âges encore inaccomplis, saisit la Force dans sa coulée éternelle et précipite sur la terre la vision puissante qui est comme un pouvoir de rendre réel ce qu'elle voit — le monde est une vision qui devient- vraie, son passé et son présent ne sont pas vraiment le résultat d'une obscure poussée qui remonte du fond des temps, d'une lente accumulation de sédiments qui peu à peu nous façonnent — et nous étouffent et nous enfermen

10 Harmony We might be tempted to say that these are fantasies, unbelievable miracles. But in fact it is all very simple. There are no miracles. There is a vast Harmony which governs the world with a precision and delicacy as faultless in the meeting of atoms and the cycle of flowering and the return of migrating birds as in the meeting of men and the unfolding of events at a particular juncture. There is a vast, unique movement we thought we were separated from because we had built our little mental turrets on the frontier of our comprehension and black dotted lines on the softness of a great earthly hill, as others had built their hunting grounds, and the sea gulls, t

References & Notes Most quotations from Sri Aurobindo refer to the complete edition of his works in 30 volumes (the Centenary Edition) and are indicated by the volume number followed by the page. Reference is made in particular to the following volumes: 5- Collected Poems 15- The Ideal of Human Unity 17- The Hour of God 20- The Synthesis of Yoga 26- On Himself 28- Savitri 29- Savitri 1.Savitri, 28:256. 2.Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 28:370. 3.Sri Aurobindo, The Hour of God, 17:1. 4.The Synthesis of Yoga, 20:82. 5.Sri Aurobindo, "Musa Spiritus," 5:589. 6.Sri Aurobindo, "Journey's End," 5:570. 7.This as

1 The Mental Fortress Our difficulties always stem from the belief that we alone remedy them. As long as our intellectual power (or inadequacy) does not play a role and our greater or lesser capacities are not actively involved, we feel that our endeavor is doomed to failure. Such is the deep-seated belief of mental man. We know its results all too well. But even if they were flawless within their own scope, they would still conceal a supreme flaw, which is to bring in only what is contained in our own intelligence or muscles-except when life or happenstance frustrates our plans. In other words, our mental existence is a closed system. Nothing gets into it but w

7 The Fire of the New World But what is this new consciousness that suddenly appeared in the year of grace 1969 of our evolution? (There may have been many other years of grace before, now buried under the rubble of the earth, and other human cycles that reached the point we have now reached and were destroyed perhaps for the very same reasons that threaten us today. Are we the topmost crest of the great evolutionary wave or simply the nth repetition of an attempt that has taken place many times before, here or in other universes?) This new consciousness may not be so new after all, but it became new for us and entered the field of practical realizations the ve

14 The Victory Over Death The seeker has followed step by step the process of demechanization. Degree after degree, he has unraveled and cleared the various levels of entanglement that prevented the free flow of Harmony. He is no longer caught up in the mental machinery or the vital machinery; to a certain extent, he is no longer caught up in the subconscious machinery. The gray elf is still there, but like a shadow on a movie screen, a lingering memory of pain, a sort of old but still sensitive wound. It really no longer has any hold, except through that shadow,, which taints joy and leaves a dull feeling of uneasiness in the depths, an unfathomable something st

4 The Fork in the Road From this point on, the road forks, and taking one path rather than the other entails far-reaching consequences that can extend over an entire lifetime. Not that one path is true and the other false, for we tend to believe that everything is ultimately true, since it exists, but this is a truth that grows, and falsehood is merely dawdling or persisting in a truth that has outlived its time and usefulness. From the moment we have broken loose from the machine, the outer as well as the inner one (the former is really a reflection or expression of the latter, and once we change inside, we will necessarily change outside; if we cease to "mental

15 The Transformed Being The seeker of the integral truth is therefore like a battler of death, but that was in fact what he had been doing all along, ever since he stopped a minute on that boulevard to pierce that dark rush of the machine with his cry. He has struggled against the falsehood of unconsciousness in his mind, in his heart, in his life and every gesture, and in his subconscious; and now falsehood shows its real face: It was death that paraded about the boulevards of the mind, in the recesses of the heart and the caves of the gray elf, death that secretly invited the corrosive thoughts, the dark slippages of desire, the grip of the ego. Behind that unr