THE CORE OF THE TEACHING The Gita with its rich and many-sided thought, its synthetically grasp of different aspects of the spiritual life and the fluent winding motion of its argument lends itself, even more than other Scriptures, to one-sided misrepresentations born of a partisan intellectuality.... The Gita lends itself easily to this kind of error, because it is easy, by throwing particular emphasis on one of its aspects or even on some salient and emphatic text and putting all the rest of the eighteen chapters into the background or making them a subordinate and auxiliary teaching, to turn it into a partisan of our own doctrine or dogma. A wrong Interpretation

THE HUMAN DISCIPLE Arjuna, as we have seen, is the representative man of a great world-struggle and divinely-guided movement of men and nations; in the Gita he typifies the human soul of action brought face to face through that action in its highest and most violent crisis with the problem of human life and its apparent incompatibility with the spiritual state or even with a purely ethical ideal of perfection. ... Arjuna is the man of action and not of knowledge, the fighter, never the seer or the thinker. From the beginning of the Gita this characteristic temperament of the disciple is clearly indicated and it is maintained throughout. It becomes first evident in t

  THE GITA FOR THE YOUTH   A Compilation from the Writings of Sri Aurobindo       SRI AUROBINDO SOCIETY PONDICHERRY         First edition 1989 Second impression 1995   ISBN 81-7060-039-1   © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1989 Compiled by Guru Pershad Published by Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA HOME

KURUKSHETRA Before we can proceed, following in the large steps of the Teacher of the Gita, to watch his tracing of the triune path of man, — the path which is that of his will, heart, thought raising themselves to the Highest and into the being of that which is the supreme object of all action, love and knowledge, we must consider once more the situation from which the Gita arises, but now in its largest bearings as a type of human life and even of all world-existence. For although Arjuna is himself concerned only with his own situation, his inner struggle and the law of action he must follow, yet, as we have seen, the particular question he raises, in the manner in which he raises

THE VISION OF THE WORLD-SPIRIT Time the Destroyer The vision of the universal Purusha is one of the best known and most powerfully poetic passages in the Gita, but its place in the thought is not altogether on the surface. It is evidently intended for a poetic and revelatory symbol and we must see how it is brought in and for what purpose and discover to what it points in its significant aspects before we can capture its meaning. It is invited by Arjuna in his desire to see the living image, the visible greatness of the unseen Divine, the very embodiment of the Spirit and Power that governs the universe. He has heard the highest spiritual secret of existence,

I 1893-1910 (After thirteen years in England where he received a thoroughly Western education, Sri Aurobindo returned to India on February 6, 1893, at the age of twenty. Bankim Chatterji's Anandamath, which contained "Bande Mataram," the hymn to the Motherland, had been published eleven years earlier. Swami Vivekananda had just come to the end of his first pilgrimage round India, and was preparing to sail for America. But it was going to take another dozen years for their call to their countrymen to find expression in the political field. For the present, the eight-year-old Indian National Congress, whose

-05_1923-1926 Talks (1 st Series).htm III 1923-1926 (In these years, Sri Aurobindo used to have daily talks with a few disciples on a wide variety of subjects, from his yoga to the prevailing national or international situation. The following excerpts from these talks, noted down from memory by some of the disciples present, provide glimpses of Sri Aurobindo's views on India's political, social, cultural systems and her spiritual possibilities.) April 9, 1923 The ancients [in India] based their society on the structure of religion—I do not mean narrow religion but the highest law of our being. The whole social fabric was built up to fulfil that purpose. There was no talk i

References We give below, section by section, either detailed references or, when these would be too cumbersome to list in full, guides to the sources. The bold numerals refer to the volumes of the Centenary Edition of Sri Aurobindo's works (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1972); they are followed by the page number. "A. & R." refers to the Archives and Research half-yearly series published from Pondicherry. The reader wishing to know more about Sri Aurobindo's immense contribution to India is invited to study the following titles: Bande Mataram, The Karmayogin, The Secret of the Veda, Essays on the Gila, The Foundations of Indian Culture, On Himself, as well as Sri Aur

INDIA'S REBIRTH "I write, not for the orthodox, nor for those who have discovered a new orthodoxy, Samaj or Panth, nor for the unbeliever. I write for those who acknowledge reason but do not identify reason with Western Materialism; who are sceptics but not unbelievers; who, admitting the claims of modern thought, still believe in India, her mission, her gospel, her immortal life and her eternal rebirth." Sri Aurobindo (c. 1911) Out of the ruins of the West... INDIA'S REBIRTH A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writings, talks and speeches

Index A Adya Shakti , 21 Afghanistan, 170,229 Agni, 116,117 agriculture, 39 see also peasantry, village Ahimsa , 55 , 123, ISI , 168,218,219,246 see also non-violence Ajatashatru's, 96 Alipore Bomb Ca se , 46 (fn), ISO, 159 Alipore jail, 47 , 48 , 214 Allies (in World War II ), 226, 236, 238-239 altruism, 80 , 102, 112 Ambedkar, B. R., 204,205 America , 59 , 81 , 174,237 Americans, 77 , 239 Andhra University, 247 Anushilan Samiti, 13 Arabians, 190 archaeology , 98(fn), l001(fn) Arjuna, 51 , 125,206,240 art, 65-68, 103, 127, 182,220 Indian a r t, 59 .60, 67, 68 , 168 Arya (English monthly), 83, III Arya Samaj , 170 Aryan, 49 , 106 character and life,