SECTION THREE DIFFICULTIES OF THE PATH-FINDERS   DIFFICULTIES OF THE PATH-FINDERS THE DIFFICULT PATH Nobody has found this Yoga a Grand Trunk Road, neither X nor Y nor even myself or the Mother. All such ideas are a romantic illusion. August, 1935 THE BURDEN OF HUMANITY We have had sufferings and struggles to which yours is a mere child's play; I have not made our cases equal to yours. I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness — if nobody can follow the Way, then either our conception of the thing, which is also that of Christ and Krishna and Buddha also, is all wrong or the whole

SECTION TWO IDENTITY OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS IDENTITY OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS IDENTITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND PATH The opposition between the Mother's consciousness and my consciousness was an invention of the old days (due mainly to X, Y and others of that time) and emerged in a time when the Mother was not fully recognised or accepted by some of those who were here at the beginning. Even after they had recognised her they persisted in this meaningless opposition and did great harm to them and others. The Mother's consciousness and mine are the same, the one Divine Consciousness in two, because that is necessary for the play. Nothing can be done without h

SECTION THREE HIS PATH AND OTHER PATHS   HIS PATH AND OTHER PATHS SRI AUROBINDO'S TEACHING AND METHOD OF SADHANA The teaching of Sri Aurobindo starts from that of the ancient sages of India that behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal. All beings are united in that One Self and Spirit but divided by a certain separativity of consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and Reality in the mind, life and body. It is possible by a certain psychological discipline to remove this veil of separative consciousness and become aware of the true Self, the Divinity within us and a

CHAPTER XIX   THE DRIVE TOWARDS CENTRALISATION AND UNIFORMITY. ADMINISTRATION AND CONTROL OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS   SUPPOSING the free grouping of the nations according to their natural affinities, sentiments, sense of economical and other convenience to be the final basis of a stable world-union, the next question that arises is what precisely would be the status of these nation-units in the larger and more complex unity of mankind. Would they possess only a nominal separateness and become parts of a machine or retain a real and living individuality and an effective freedom and organic life? Practically, this comes to the question

CHAPTER XXXI   THE CONDITIONS OF A FREE WORLD-UNION   A FREE world-union must in its very nature be a complex unity based on a diversity and that diversity must be based on free self-determination. A mechanical unitarian system would regard in its idea the geographical groupings of men as so many conveniences for provincial division, for the convenience of administration, much in the same spirit as the French Revolution reconstituted France with an entire disregard of old natural and historic divisions. It would regard mankind as one single nation and it would try to efface the old separative national spirit altogether; it would arran

INDEX   A   Absolutism, 121, 201, 202 Abyssinia, Italian imperialist venture in, 89, 267 self-determination after the first war, 271 Acara, habits determined by the inner nature of group man, 187 Africa, Central and Southern, 177 European domination in, 170, 270 expulsion of Germany from, 132 its regional life killed by Rome, 109 North, European conquest of, 267 in the causal chain of the first war, 132 likely grouping with Muslim West Asia, 175 the impact of French culture, 60 South, race difficulty in, 72 the pr

CHAPTER XXV   WAR AND THE NEED OF ECONOMIC UNITY    THE military necessity, the pressure of war between nations and the need for prevention of war by the assumption of force and authority in the hands of an international body, World-State or Federation or League of Peace, is that which will most directly drive humanity in the end towards some sort of international union. But there is behind it another necessity which is much more powerful in its action on the modem mind, the commercial and industrial, the necessity born of economic interdependence. Commercialism is a modern sociological phenomenon; one might almost say that is the whole p

CHAPTER XXXIV   THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY    A RELIGION of humanity may be either an intellecutal and sentimental ideal, a living dogma with intellectual, psychological and practical effects, or else a spiritual aspiration and rule of living and partly the sign, partly the cause of a change of soul in humanity. The intellectual religion of humanity already to a certain extent exists, partly as a conscious trend in the minds of a few, partly as a potent shadow in the consciousness of the race. It is the shadow of a spirit that is yet unborn, but is preparing for its birth. This material world of ours, besides its fully embodied things of the pres

CHAPTER XXX   THE PRINCIPLE OF FREE CONFEDERATION   THE issues of the original Russian idea of a confederation of free self-determining nationalities were greatly complicated by the transitory phenomena of a revolution which has sought, like the French Revolution before it, to transform immediately and without easy intermediate stages the whole basis not only of government, but of society, and has, moreover, been carried out under pressure of a disastrous war. This double situation led inevitably to an unexampled anarchy and, incidentally, to the forceful domination of an extreme party which represented the ideas of the Revolution in t

CHAPTER XXVIII   DIVERSITY IN ONENESS   IT is essential to keep constantly in view the fundamental powers and realities of life if we are not to be betrayed by the arbitrary rule of the logical reason and its attachment to the rigorous and limiting idea into experiments which, however convenient in practice and however captivating to a unitarian and symmetrical thought, may well destroy the vigour and impoverish the roots of life. For that which is perfect and satisfying to the system of the logical reason may yet ignore the truth of life and the living needs of the race. Unity is an idea which is not at all arbitrary or unreal; for unity is the very