Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, c. 1915    A page of the Arya as revised by Sri Aurobindo Essays on the Gita   First Series I   Our Demand and Need from the Gita     THE WORLD abounds with scriptures sacred and profane, with revelations and half-revelations, with religions and philosophies, sects and schools and system

III   The Supreme Divine 1   ALREADY what has been said in the seventh chapter provides us with the starting-point of our new and fuller position and fixes it with sufficient precision. Substantially it comes to this that we are to move inwardly towards a greater consciousness and a supreme existence, not by a total exclusion of our cosmic nature, but by a higher, a spiritual fulfilment of all that we now essentially are. Only there is to be a change from our mortal imperfection to a divine perfection of being. The first idea on which this possibility is founded, is the conception of the individual s

X   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 spiritua

VI   Works, Devotion and Knowledge   THIS THEN is the integral truth, the highest and widest knowledge. The Divine is supracosmic, the eternal Parabrahman who supports with his timeless and spaceless existence all this cosmic manifestation of his own being and nature in Space and Time. He is the supreme spirit who ensouls the forms and movements of the universe, Paramatman. He is the supernal Person of whom all self and nature, all being and becoming in this or any universe are the self-conception and the self-energising, Purushottama. He is the ineffable Lord of all existence who by his spiritual control of his own manifested Power in Nature unrolls the

V   The Divine Truth and Way   THE GITA then proceeds to unveil the supreme and integral secret, the one thought and truth in which the seeker of perfection and liberation must learn to live and the one law of perfection of his spiritual members and of all their movements. This supreme secret is the mystery of the transcendent Godhead who is all and everywhere, yet so much greater and other than the universe and all its forms that nothing here contains him, nothing expresses him really, and no language which is borrowed from the appearances of things in space and time and their relations can suggest the truth of his unimaginable being. The c

'Isha Upanishads' by Sri Aurobindo - Page 1 of 7 Note on the Texts     Note on the Texts   ISHA UPANISHAD comprises Sri Aurobindo's translations of and commentaries on the Isha Upanishad His translations of and commentaries on other Upanishads, as well as his translations of later Vedantic texts and writings on the Upanishads and Vedanta in general, are published in Kena and Other Upanishads, volume 18 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO. Sri Aurobindo had a special interest in the Isha Upanishad, whose principle of "uncompromising reconciliation of uncompromising extremes" (p 83) underlies his own philosophy as well He first translated the Isha around 1900, and over t

The Secret of the Isha   It is now several thousands of years since men ceased to study Veda and Upanishad for the sake of Veda or Upanishad Ever since the human mind in India, more & more intellectualised, always increasingly addicted to the secondary process of knowledge by logic & intellectual ratiocination, increasingly drawn away from the true & primary processes of knowledge by experience and direct perception, began to dislocate & dismember the manysided harmony of ancient Vedic truth & parcel it out into schools of thought & systems of metaphysics, its preoccupation has been rather with the later opinions of Sutras & Bhashyas than with the early truth of

Ish and Jagat   The Isha Upanishad in its very inception goes straight to the root of the problem the Seer has set out to resolve; he starts at once with the two supreme terms of which our existence seems to be composed and in a monumental phrase, cast into the bronze of eight brief but sufficient words, he confronts them and sets them in their right & eternal relation Isha vasyam idam sarvam yat kincha jagatyam jagat Ish and Jagat, God and Nature, Spirit and World, are the two poles of being between which our consciousness revolves This double or biune reality is existence, is life, is man The Eternal seated sole in all His creations occupies the ever-shifting Universe

Part Two   Incomplete Commentaries from Manuscripts     Isha Upanishad   All that is world in the Universe   The Sanscrit word जगत् is in origin a reduplicated & therefore frequentative participle from the root गम् to go It signifies "that which is in perpetual motion", and implies in its neuter form the world, universe, and in its feminine form the earth World therefore is that which eternally vibrates, and the Hindu idea of the cosmos reduces itself to a harmony of eternal vibrations; form as we see it is simply the varying combination of different vibrations as they affect us through our perceptions & establish themselves t

VOLUME 17 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 2003 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA Isha Upanishad Publisher’s Note   This volume contains Sri Aurobindo’s translations of and commentaries on the Isha Upanishad His translations of and commentaries on other Upanishads and Vedantic texts, and his wr