Page-1 A Poetic Fragment       Translation       Who says our Mother is a beggar-woman,             the whole universe is her foothold, Her sons are the armies of Sikhs, Jats and Rajputs. The song of Vande Mataram infuses strength into Bengal. Even till today the glory of Shivaji is awake in Maharashtra. Each mountain-rib of hers embodies millions of her invincible sons, The band of the Bhils, Gonds and Kharwar and free Nepal, Malias and Khesias and Garos—how to enumerate, all — The Mughals, Pathans and Nagas — the sands of the beach. There is no end to the treasure that is Mother's children,

Maya         The world exists as symbol of Brahman; but the mind creates or accepts false values of things and takes symbol for essential reality. This is ignorance or cosmic illusion, the mistake of the mind and senses, from which the Magician Himself, Master of the Illusion, is calling on us to escape. This false valuation of the world is the Maya of the Gita and can be surmounted without abandoning either action or world-existence. But in addition, the whole of universal existence is in this sense an illusion of Maya that it is not an unchanging transcendent and final reality of things but only a symbolical reality; it is a valuation of the reality of Brahman in the terms of cosmic con

The Evolutionary Aim in Yoga         In the [Katha] Upanishad there occurs one of those powerful and pregnant phrases, containing a world of meaning in a point of verbal space, with which the Upanishads are thickly sown. Yogah hi prabhavapayayau. "For Yoga is the beginning and ending of things." In the Puranas the meaning of the phrase is underlined and developed. By Yoga God made the world, by Yoga He will draw it into Himself in the end. But not only the original creation and final dissolution of the universe, all great changes of things, creations, evolutions, destructions, are effected by the essential process of Yoga, tapasya. In this ancient view Yoga present

Archival Notes       A NEW PHOTOGRAPH OF SRI AUROBINDO   The photograph reproduced as Plate 1 has long remained in obscurity. It was first published in the Modem Review in November 1909. six months after Sri Auro-bindo's release from the Alipur Jail. The photographer, Sukumar Mitra, was the son of Sri Aurobindo's uncle Krishna Kumar Mitra, in whose house Sri Aurobindo was staying at the time.   CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRINALINI DEVI       Sri Aurobindo was married to Mrinalini Bose in April 1901.1 In the years that followed the two often lived apart. From this separation issued the correspondence that, since being used as evidence in the Alipur Bomb Trial, has

-02_Record Of Yoga [26 Nov_31 Dec 1912] Record of Yoga [26 November - 31 December 1912]         The regular record of the sadhana begins today, because now the perceptions are clear enough to render it of some real value and not merely a record of mistakes and overstatements. What has been effected with some finality & thoroughness, is the submission or dasyam. Certain lower strata of the personality surrounding the body in the atmosphere of the karmadeha, still vibrate with the old desires and attempt to act. But in the rest there is karmasannyasa. Prakriti drives the body, mind, heart & will without any interference from the Jiva, which only identifies itself now with the asraddha; for the ident

Record of the Yoga. 1913. January.       January 1st.       The first movements were unsatisfactory, tamas-besieged and arrested by a dull depression. In the evening, only, progress began.       1. Ananda of heat & cold have been confirmed, but the discomfort not yet entirely removed.       2. Kamananda occurs more frequently than before, but is not yet in possession of the body. The sahaituka physical anandas are reasserting their possession of the system. Ahaituka ananda, long clouded, has once more triumphed over its obstacles and is in possession even of the obstacle and the adverse event.       3. The health, still much afflicted, tends s

Archival Notes VISITORS IN PONDICHERRY       Limitations of space make it impossible for this instalment of Archival Notes to be more than a simple commentary on the documents published in this issue. It will be recalled that Sri Aurobindo was placed under police surveillance a few days after his arrival in Pondicherry in April 1910. The surveillance continued for more, than twenty-five years. During this period agents of the Madras office of the Criminal Investigation Department (C.I.D.) gathered as much information as they could on any person who came to visit Sri Aurobindo. If the visitor was a native of British India, or of a state that recognised the suzerainty o

Notes on the Texts       Record of Yoga [26 November-31 December 1912].  The Record for this period, not separately titled, was kept in an eighty-page exercise book used previously for notes on the Veda. The daily entries are preceded by an undated general note, written probably on 26 November.       Record of the Yoga, 1913. January.   This heading was written (in three lines) inside the front cover of the exercise book used to keep the Record of 1-31 January 1913. Seventy-nine of the eighty pages of the exercise book were given to this purpose, making it the first notebook devoted exclusively to the Record. Page-105