Rebirth and Karma   THE ANCIENT idea of Karma was inseparably connected with a belief in the soul's continual rebirth in new bodies And this close association was not a mere accident, but a perfectly intelligible and indeed inevitable union of two related truths which are needed for each other's completeness and can with difficulty exist in separation These two things are the soul side and the nature side of one and the same cosmic sequence Rebirth is meaningless without karma, and karma has no fount of inevitable origin and no rational and no moral justification if it is not an instrumentality for the sequences of the soul's continuous experience If w

Supermind and the Life Divine   A DIVINE life upon earth, the ideal we have placed before us, can only come about by a spiritual change of our being and a radical and fundamental change, an evolution or revolution of our nature The embodied being upon earth would have to rise out of the domination over it of its veils of mind, life and body into the full consciousness and possession of its spiritual reality, and its nature also would have to be lifted out of the consciousness and power of consciousness proper to a mental, vital and physical being into the greater consciousness and greater power of being and the larger and freer life of the

Karma and Justice   WHAT ARE the lines of Karma? What is the intrinsic character and active law of this energy of the soul and its will and development of consequence? To ask that question is to ask what is the form taken here by the dynamic meaning of our existence and what the curves of guidance of its evolving self-creation and action And such a question ought not to be answered in a narrow spirit or under the obsession of some single idea which does not take into account the manysidedness and rich complexity of this subtle world of Nature The law of Karma can be no rigid and mechanical canon or rough practical rule of thumb, but rather its guiding

Yoga and Skill in Works Yoga is skill in works Gita   YOGA, says the Gita, is skill in works, and by this phrase the ancient Scripture meant that the transformation of mind and being to which it gave the name of Yoga brought with it a perfect inner state and faculty out of which the right principle of action and the right spiritual and divine result of works emerged naturally like a tree out of its seed Certainly, it did not mean that the clever general or politician or lawyer or shoemaker deserves the name of a Yogin; it did not mean that any kind of skill in works was Yoga, but by Yoga it signified a sp

Karma   ONE FINDS an unanswerable truth in the theory of Karma, —not necessarily in the form the ancients gave to it, but in the idea at its centre, —which at once strikes the mind and commands the assent of the understanding Nor does the austerer reason, distrustful of first impressions and critical of plausible solutions, find after the severest scrutiny that the more superficial understanding, the porter at the gateways of our mentality, has been deceived into admitting a tinsel guest, a false claimant into our mansion of knowledge There is a solidity at once of philosophic and of practical truth supporting the idea, a bedr

APPENDIX   Explanations of Some Words and Phrases   "Matter itself, you will one day realise, is not material, it is not substance but form of consciousness, guna, the result of  quality of being perceived by sense-knowledge" (p 77)   There is no need to put "the" before "quality" —in English that would alter the sense Matter is not regarded in this passage as a quality of being perceived by sense; I don't think that would have any meaning It is regarded as a result of a certain power and action of consciousness which presents forms of itself to sense perception and it is this quality of sense-perceivedness, so to sp

Meditation   What exactly is meant by meditation in Yoga? And what should be its objects?   The difficulty our correspondent finds is in an apparent conflict of authorities, as sometimes meditation is recommended in the form of a concentrated succession of thoughts on a single subject, sometimes in the exclusive concentration of the mind on a single image, word or idea, a fixed contemplation rather than meditation The choice between these two methods and others, for there are others, depends on the object we have in view in Yoga. The thinking mind is the one instrument we possess at present by which we can arrive at a conscious self-orga

Different Methods of Writing   What is the origin of the different methods of writing, —from right to left, from left to right or, like the Chinese, vertically?   The question is one of great interest but impossible to solve definitely for lack of substantial data All one can do is to speculate on the most probable and satisfying explanation. In the first place, it is evident that these differences are no mere accident nor the result of some trivial and local cause; for they coincide with great cultural divisions of humanity belonging to prehistoric times It is the races called Aryan from their comm

Fate and Free-Will   A QUESTION which has hitherto divided human thought and received no final solution, is the freedom of the human being in his relation to the Power intelligent or unintelligent that rules the world We strive for freedom in our human relations, to freedom we move as our goal, and every fresh step in our human progress is a further approximation to our ideal But are we free in ourselves? We seem to be free, to do that which we choose and not that which is chosen for us; but it is possible that the freedom may be illusory and our apparent freedom may be a real and iron bondage We may be bound by predestination, the will of a Supr

Other Writings from the Arya     The Question of the Month     The Needed Synthesis   What is the Synthesis needed at the present time?   Undoubtedly, that of man himself The harmony of his faculties is the condition of his peace, their mutual understanding and helpfulness the means of his perfection At war, they distract the kingdom of his being; the victory of one at the expense of another maims his self-fulfilment. The peculiar character of our age is the divorce that has been pronounced between reason and faith, the logical mind and the intuitive heart At first, the declaration of