Rebirth, Evolution, Heredity   TWO TRUTHS, discoveries with an enormous periphery of luminous result and of a considerable essential magnitude, evolution and heredity, figure today in the front of thought, and I suppose we have to take them as a well-established unquenchable light upon our being, lamps of a constant lustre, though not yet very perfectly trimmed, final so far as anything is final in man's constantly changing cinematographic process of the development of intellectual knowledge They may be said to make up almost the whole fundamental idea of life in the way of seeing peculiar to a mind dominated, fashioned, pressed into its powerful moulds

Nammalwar   The Supreme Vaishnava Saint and Poet   MARAN, renowned as Nammalwar ("Our Saint") among the Vaishnavas and the greatest of their saints and poets, was born in a small town called Kuruhur, in the southernmost region of the Tamil country —Tiru-nelveli (Tinnevelly) His father, Kari, was a petty prince who paid tribute to the Pandyan King of Madura We have no means of ascertaining the date of the Alwar's birth, as the traditional account is untrustworthy and full of inconsistencies We are told that the infant was mute for several years after his birth Nammalwar renounced the world early in life and spent his time si

VOLUME 13 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1998 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA Essays in Philosophy and Yoga   Shorter Works   1910 – 1950 Publisher’s Note   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga  consi

  South Indian Vaishnava Poetry     Andal   The Vaishnava Poetess   PREOCCUPIED from the earliest times with divine knowledge and religious aspiration the Indian mind has turned all forms of human life and emotion and all the phenomena of the universe into symbols and means by which the embodied soul may strive after and grasp the Supreme Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences —

"Arya" —Its Significance   What is the significance of the name, "Arya"?   The question has been put from more than one point of view To most European readers the name figuring on our cover1 is likely to be a hieroglyph which attracts or repels according to the temperament Indians know the word, but it has lost for them the significance which it bore to their forefathers Western Philology has converted it into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values Now, even among the philologists, some are beginning to recognise that the word in its original use expressed not a difference of ra

The Stress of the Hidden Spirit   THE WORLD is a great game of hide and seek in which the real hides behind the apparent, spirit behind matter The apparent masquerades as real, the real is seen dimly as if it were an unsubstantial shadow The grandeur of the visible universe and its laws enslaves men's imaginations "This is a mighty machine," we cry, "but it moves of its own force and needs neither guide nor maker; for its motion is eternal" Blinded by a half truth we fail to see that, instead of a machine without a maker, there is really only an existence and no machine The Hindus have many images by which they seek to convey their k

The Greatness of the Individual   IN ALL movements, in every great mass of human action it is the Spirit of the Time, that which Europe calls the Zeitgeist and India Kala, who expresses himself. The very names are deeply significant. Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity manifesting herself in the perpetual surge of men, institutions and movements, Mahakala the Spirit within whose energy goes abroad in her and moulds the progress of the world and the destiny of the nations. His is the impetus which fulfils itself in Time, and once there is movement, impetus from the Spiri

'Essays in Philosophy and Yoga' by Sri Aurobindo - Page1 of 50 Rebirth and Soul Evolution   THE IDEAS that men currently form about life and things are for the most part pragmatic constructions They are forms of a reason which is concerned with giving only such a serviceable account to itself of its surroundings as shall make a sufficient clue to our immediate business of the growth, action, satisfaction of the personality, something feasible, livable, effective for our journeying in Time, something viable in the twofold French sense of the word Whether it corresponds to or is directly in touch with any real reality of things seems to be very much a matter of accide

The Significance of Rebirth   THE ONE question which through all its complexities is the sum of philosophy and to which all human enquiry comes round in the end, is the problem of ourselves, —why we are here and what we are, and what is behind and before and around us, and what we are to do with ourselves, our inner significances and our outer environment In the idea of evolutionary rebirth, if we can once find it to be a truth and recognise its antecedents and consequences, we have a very sufficient clue for an answer to all these connected sides of the one perpetual question A spiritual evolution

The Delight of Works   IN THY works there are always these three, the Master, the Worker and the Instrument To define them in oneself rightly and rightly to possess them is the secret of works and of the delight of works. Learn thou first to be the instrument of God and to accept thy Master The instrument is this outward thing thou callest thyself; it is a mould of mind, a driving-force of power, a machinery of form, a thing full of springs and cogs and clamps and devices Call not this the Worker or the Master; it can never be the Worker or the Master Accept thyself humbly, yet proudly, devotedly, submissively and joyfully as a divine in