The Cosmic Divine         I UNDERSTAND now what is your difficulty about the Cosmic Divine. It was not present to my mind because I look at these things from the point of view of facts as they are both to our spiritual and our outward experience — whereas the point of view on which you lay stress is that they are not what they ought to be or what the mind, ethical feeling and the vital in man feel that they ought to be. That this world is full of queer, ugly and inharmonious things is the very plain and self-evident fact which we have to start with, — wherever we may want or hope to arrive. But the whole question is there, whether there is something behind, something that warr

No. 5 THE LIFE DIVINE CHAPTER V THE DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL        By the Ignorance they cross beyond Death and by the Knowledge enjoy Immortality... By the Non-Birth they cross bend Death and by the Birth enjoy Immortality. Isha Upanishad.       An omnipresent Reality is the truth of all life and existence whether absolute or relative, whether corporeal or incorporeal, whether animate or inanimate, whether intelligent or unintelligent; and in all its infinitely varying and even constantly opposed self-expressions, from the contradictions nearest to our ordinary experience to those remotest antinomies which lose themselves on th

No. 1 1  THE LIFE DIVINE CHAPTER XI DELIGHT OF EXISTENCE: THE PROBLEM         For who could live or breathe if there were not this delight of exist-e nee as the ether in which we dwell. Taittiriya Upanishad.     From Delight all these becomings are born, by Delight they exist and grow, to Delight they return. Ibid.     But even if we accept this pure existence, this Brahman, this Sat as the absolute beginning, end and continent of things and in Brahman an inherent self-consciousness inseparable from its being, throwing itself out as a force of movement of consciousness which is creative of forces, forms and worlds, we have yet no answer to the

  CANTO TWELVE   THE HEAVENS OF THE IDEAL   ALWAYS the Ideal beckoned from afar. Awakened by the touch of the Unseen, Deserting the boundary of things achieved, Aspired the strong discoverer, tireless Thought, Revealing at each step a luminous world. It left known summits for the unknown peaks: Impassioned, it sought the lone unrealised Truth, It longed for the Light that knows not death and birth. Each stage of the soul's remote ascent was built Into a constant heaven felt always here. At each pace of the journey marvellous A new degree of wonder and of bliss, A new rung formed in

  PART THREE Books IX-XII BOOK NINE The Book of Eternal Night CANTO ONE   TOWARDS THE BLACK VOID   SO was she left alone in the huge wood, Surrounded by a dim unthinking world, Her husband's corpse on her forsaken breast. She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts, Nor rent with tears the marble seals of pain: She rose not yet to face the dreadful god. Over the body she loved her soul leaned out In a great stillness without stir or voice, As if her mind had died with Satyavan. But still the human heart in her beat on. Aware still of his being near to hers, Closel

  CANTO NINE   THE PARADISE OF THE LIFE-GODS   A ROUND him shone a great felicitous Day. A lustre of some rapturous Infinite, It held in the splendour of its golden laugh Regions of the heart's happiness set free, Intoxicated with the wine of God, Immersed in light, perpetually divine. A favourite and intimate of the Gods Obeying the divine command to joy, It was the sovereign of its own delight And master of the kingdoms of its force. Assured of the bliss for which all forms were made, Unmoved by fear and grief and the shocks of Fate And unalarmed by the breath of fleeting Time

  PART ONE Books I - III BOOK ONE The Book of Beginnings CANTO ONE   THE SYMBOL DAWN   IT was the hour before the Gods awake, Across the path of the divine Event The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone In her unlit temple of eternity, Lay stretched immobile upon Silence' marge. Almost one felt, opaque, impenetrable, In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse The abysm of the unbodied Infinite, A fathomless zero occupied the world. A power of fallen boundless self awake Between the first and the last Noth

         Page-1 Page-2 Page-3 Page-4 Page-5 Page-6 Page-7 Page-8 Page-9 Page-10 A Letter of Sri Aurobindo to His Brother Pondicherry Date unfixable [April 1920] Dear Barin,       I have received your three letters (and another one today), but up till now I have not managed to write a reply. That now I sit to write is itself a miracle, because I write letters once in a blue moon, especially letters in Bengali. This is something I have not done even once in the last five or six years. If I c

went to Mr. Tilak on the night of 27th and the morning of 28th to ascertain the views of his party, and to each of them Mr. Tilak gave the following assurance in writing :-         Surat, 28th December. 1907         "Dear Sir, — With reference to our conversation, and principally in the best interests of the Congress, I and my party are prepared to waive our opposition to the election of Dr. Rash Behari Ghosh as President of 23rd Indian National Congress, and are prepared to act in the spirit of forget and forgive, provided, firstly, the last year's resolutions on Swaraj, Swadeshi, Boycott and National Education are adhered to and each expressly reaffirmed; and secondly, such passa