PART ONE Two tendencies of development of Yoga . The history of yoga as developed in India brings out two tendencies in the development of yoga through the ages: (i) Complex effort of yoga, after arriving at a synthesis, seems to break up in the development of specialised systems of yoga; (ii) These specialised systems tend towards the development of a new synthesis. The Vedic Samhitas Historical documents suggest that the earliest synthesis of yoga can be found in the Vedic Samhitas. The very first hymn in the Rig Veda speaks of the old and the new, pūrvebhih nūtanaih, and this suggest that there was an earlier tradition to

Notes and References 1. Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 10, p.16 2. Ibid., pp.30-31 3.Ibid., Vide., p64 4., p.439-440. 5. Ibid., The Life Divine, Vol. 18, p.68. 6 Ibid., Hymns to the Mystic Fire, Vol.11. p.23. 7 Ibid., The Secret of the Veda, Vol.190. pp.191-2. 8 Ibid., The foundations of Indian Culture, Vol.14,pp. 280-81. 9 Ibid., The Synthesis of Yoga, Vol.20, pp.3-4. 10 Ibid., The Life Divine, Vol.19, pp.889-90. 11 Ibid., Vol. 18, p.10. 12 Ibid.,pp.3-4. 13 Ibid., Vol. 19, pp.1067-68. 14 Ibid., p.823. Page - 57 Kireet Joshi (b. 1931) studied philosophy and law at the Bombay Universit

Illumination, Heroism and Harmony Preface The task of preparing teaching-learning material for value-oriented education is enormous. There is, first, the idea that value-oriented education should be exploratory rather than prescriptive, and that the teaching learning material should provide to the learners a growing experience of exploration. Secondly, it is rightly contended that the proper inspiration to turn to value-orientation is provided by biographies, autobiographical accounts, personal anecdotes, epistles, short poems, stories of humour, stories of human interest, brief passages filled with pregnant meanings, reflective short essays written in well-chiselle

Homer and the Iliad Sri Aurobindo and Ilion Acknowledgements This monograph is part of a series on Value-oriented Education centered on three values: Illumination, Heroism and Harmony. The research, preparation and publication of the monographs that form part of this series are the result of the cooperation of the following members of the research team of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Autryville: Abha, Alain, Anne, Ashatit, Auralee, Bhavana, Christine, Claude, Deepti, Don, Frederick, Ganga, Jay Singh, Jean-Yves, Jossi, Jyoti Madhok, Kireet Joshi, Krishna, Lala, Lola, Mala, Martin, Mirajyoti, Namrita, Olivier, Pala, Pi

Homer and the Iliad A Brief Note I Homer is the name attached by the Greeks of ancient times themselves to the two great epic poems, Iliad and Odyssey. Unfortunately, not much is known of him, but there is no doubt that there was indeed an epic poet called Homer and that he played the primary part in shaping those two great poems. The text of these two poems exists, and their literary merit is so great that Homer is considered one of the very greatest of the world's literary artists. According to a popular idea which was prevalent through out antiquity, Homer must have lived not much later than the Trojan War (1194-1184 BC) about which he sang. Ther

Sri Aurobindo and Ilion I Sri Aurobindo was born on the 15th August 1872 at Calcutta. At an early age of seven, he was taken along with his elder brothers to England for education, since his father wanted him to have no Indian influence in the shaping of his outlook and personality. And yet, even though Sri Aurobindo assimilated in himself richly the best of the European culture, he returned to India in 1893 with a burning aspiration to work for the liberation of India from foreign rule. While in England, Sri Aurobindo passed the I.C.S. Examination, and yet he felt no call for it; so he got himself disqualified by remaining absent from the riding test. The Gae

Instructive Insights into some Principal Characters, Gods and Goddesses related to the Trojan War Extracts from Sri Aurobindo's Ilion On Achilles One in his singleness greater than kings and multitudes sends me. (Sri Aurobindo, Ilion, in Collected Poems, Centenary Edition, Vol.5, p.397) On Paris Happy of light like a lustrous star when it welcomes the morning, Brilliant, beautiful, glamoured with gold and a fillet of gem-fire, Paris, plucked from the song and the lyre by the Grecian challenge, Came with the joy in his face and his eyes that Fate could not alter. Ever a child of t

PART TWO 1. Four Major Experiences and Realisations of the Gita's Yoga The Gita expounds the working of the synthetic method of its yoga and provides us authentic descriptions of the relevant experiences and realizations in great detail. The peaks of these experiences include: (i) the knowledge of divine birth, (divyam janma) and divine work, (divyam karma);69 (ii) the attainment of Brahma-nirvana,70 the total nirvana in the state of immobile Brahman in the freedom of which divine work can take place; (iii) the great perception of the birth and development of divine qualities in the cosmic movement and, the vision of the vibhutis in the cosmos;71 and (iv) the great vision o

Preface In his immortal book 'Essays on the Gita’, Sri Aurobindo has explained the fundamental value of the yoga of the Gita and the contribution it can make to the new age of development in the following words: "We of the coming day stand at the head of a new age of development which must lead to such a new and larger synthesis. We are not called upon to be orthodox Vedantins of any of the three schools or Tantrics or to adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of th

Front-Page ] THE GITA AND ITS SYNTHESIS OF YOGA This book is addressed to all young people who, I urge, will study and respond to the following message of Sri Aurobindo: "It is the young who must be the builders of the new world, — not those who accept the competitive individualism, the capitalism or the materialistic communism of the West as India's future ideal, nor those who are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and transformation of life by the spirit, but all those who are free in mind and heart to accept a completer truth and labour for a greater ideal. They must be men who will