Conservation and Progress   MANKIND thinks naturally in extremes or else reconciles by a patchwork and compromise Whether he makes a fetish of moderation or surrenders himself to the enthusiasm of the single idea, the human being misses always truth of vision and the right pitch of action because instead of seeing, feeling and becoming in obedience to his nature like other animate existences he tries always to measure things by a standard he has set up in his intelligence But it is the character of his intelligence that it finds it an easy task to distinguish and separate but is clumsy in combining When it combines, it tends to artificialise an

On Ideals and Progress     On Ideals   IDEALS are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not impr

' ' by Sri Aurobindo - Page1 of 50 APPENDIX II   A Clarification   In 1935, Sri Aurobindo was asked: "In `Rebirth and Karma', second chapter,1 I find that it is the `mental being' which is put forth from life to life —that it is the reincarnating soul But would not the mental being be a part of the personality —the mental, nervous and physical composite —which in the popular conception is the thing that is carried over or which takes a new body in the next life? And the `Self' here is quite different from the `mental being'    Is the `mental being' then the same thing as the `psychic being' which is carried over to the next

The Terrestrial Law   A CONSIDERATION of the lines of Karma ought certainly to begin with a study of the action of the world as it is, as a whole, however contrary it may be to the rule or to the desire of our moral or our intellectual reason, and to see if we cannot find in its own facts its own explanation If the actual truth of the world breaks out from the too rigid cadres our moral sense or our intelligence would like to see imposed on the freely or the inevitably self-determining movement of the Infinite, on the immeasurable largeness of his being or the mighty complexities of his will, it is very likely that that is because our moral sen

Thoughts and Glimpses     Aphorisms   THE GOAL   When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar   When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar   When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar   When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar   When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the

Our Ideal   WE BELIEVE in the constant progression of humanity and we hold that that progression is the working out of a Thought in Life which sometimes manifests itself on the surface and sometimes sinks below and works behind the mask of external forces and interests When there is this lapse below the surface, humanity has its periods of apparent retrogression or tardy evolution, its long hours of darkness or twilight during which the secret Thought behind works out one of its phases by the pressure mainly of economic, political and personal interests ignorant of any deeper aim within When the Thought returns to the surface, humanity has its periods of

'Essays in Philosophy and Yoga' by Sri Aurobindo - Page1 of 50 Materialism   MANY hard things have been said about materialism by those who have preferred to look at life from above rather than below or who claim to live in the more luminous atmosphere of the idealistic mind or ether of the spiritual existence Materialism has been credited with the creation of great evils, viewed even as the arch-image of a detestable transformation or the misleader guiding mankind to an appalling catastrophe Those whose temperament and imagination dally lovingly with an idealised past, accuse it for the cultural, social, political changes which they abhor, regarding them as a disturbanc

Part Three   Writings from the Arya   1914 ­ 1921         Notes on the Arya   The "Arya's" Second Year   THE "ARYA", born by a coincidence which might well have been entirely disastrous to its existence in the very month when there broke out the greatest catastrophe that has overtaken the modern world, has yet, though carried on under serious difficulties, completed its first year We have been obliged unfortunately to discontinue the French edition from February last as our director M Paul Richard was then r

The Divine Body   A DIVINE life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage But what will be the divine body? What will be the nature of this body, its structure, the principle of its activity, the perfection that distinguishes it from the limited and imperfect physicality within which we are now bound? What will be the conditions and operations of its life, still physical in its base upon the earth, by which it can be known as divine? If it is to be the product of an evolution, and it is so that we must envisage it, an evolution out of our human imperfection and ignorance into a greater truth of spirit and nature, by what p

Part Four   From the Standard Bearer   1920     Ourselves   THE "STANDARD BEARER" comes into the field today entrusted with a special mission and as the bearer of an ideal and a message The standard it carries is not that of an outward battle, but the ensign of a spiritual ideal and of a life that must be its expression and the growing body of its reality Our endeavour shall be to prepare the paths and to accomplish the beginning of a great and high change which we believe to be and aim at making the future of the race and the future of India Our ideal is a new birth of humanity into the s