PART THREE 1. Towards Sādharmya Mukti It is this union and synthesis which is reiterated by Sri Krishna in the twelfth chapter, and while reiterating it, something more is said in order to bring out all the meaning of the great spiritual change. The twelfth chapter leads up to that which is still to be said, and the last six chapters that follow develop that remaining knowledge leading up to a grand final conclusion. What is that new thing that is said in the twelfth chapter? That new thing is what is repeatedly stated in twelfth to eighteenth chapters by phrases such as dharmāmrtam, immortal law,¹¹² paramā bhaktās te tīva me priyāh, my supreme devotees who are excee

Notes and References The age of intuition appears to be too long as compared to the similar age that we find in the history of comparable cultures. This is because the deliverance of intuition that were gained during the Vedic period came to be once again reiterated and retested during the period of the Upanishads, which did not follow immediately after the age of the Vedas; when the Vedic knowledge began to decline, there intervened a period of a good deal of loss of the secret of the Veda, and even during the period of the Brahamanas, those secrets could not be recovered; but the Upanishadic seers developed powers of intuition and they interpreted the Veda, not by intel

Introduction The Age of the Vedas and the principal Upanishads was the Age of Intuition,¹ but this Age was followed by the Age of Reason. Inspired texts of the Veda and the Upanishads made room for metaphysical philosophy, even as afterwards metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental Science. The study of the history of the metaphysical philosophy of India demonstrates the great heights to which the pure reason developed, and the study of the experimental Science that developed in India demonstrates multisided development of the mixed action of the reason in minute subtlety and complexity; this mixed action of the reason explored the domains of experimental and pra

PART ONE 1. Gita as a Yoga-Shastra Against this background of the general trend of the development of Indian philosophy, we may notice that four systems of philosophy, Vedavāda, Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta, were prominent at the time when the war of the Mahabharata was fought and the perplexities arising from the conflict between Sankhya and Yoga bewildered and disabled Arjuna at the crucial moment of the commencement of the war to such an acute point of crisis that Sri Krishna, the charioteer of Arjuna in the war, had to enter into those perplexities and related confusions during the course of the dialogue that ensued between him and Arjuna. It is this dialogue that constit

Part Five Objections against Spiritual Theory of Evolution: Answers Against this spiritual theory of evolution, many objections can be raised. Metaphysical objection against Evolutionary Teleology It may be contended that if there is an ultimate Reality, which is infinite, perfect and absolute, then such a Reality, conceived in the metaphysical theory of the Absolute, cannot have any purpose in manifestation. Even if it is conceded that the Absolute is not only quiescent but also dynamic and therefore capable of manifestation, which could have some kind of purpose, it can have no purpose in manifestation except the delight of manifestation itself. It may

Part Two Philosophical Theories of Evolution Henri Bergson Henri Bergson (1859-1941) developed the theory that there is something more in evolution than merely mechanical urge. He pointed out that the molluscs in the order of evolution proceed by steady steps to develop an eye, which resembles the eye developed by the independent line of vertebrates. How does it happen, he asked, that similar effects appear in two independent lines of evolution, if they were purely accidental? He pointed out that the two developments must have been governed by a common vital impulse to this useful end. He is inclined to attribute a 'rudiment of choice' to the species which, traveling

Preface The theory of evolution is not entirely new. The Nasadiya Sukta, the Purusha Sukta. and the Aghamarshana Sukta of the Rig Veda indicate that the Vedic Rishis were aware of the evolutionary process, which begins with the Inconscience as a starting-point and higher levels of consciousness evolve step by step from the original starting-point of the Inconscience. The Sankhyan theory of Prakriti also refers to a process of evolution. But the facts of the universe as marshalled by Darwin have demonstrated to the contemporary scientific world some clues to the process of evolution. Even then the scientific theory of evolution has not received universal acceptance

Notes and References 1 Rig Veda, 1.129. 2 Aitareya Upanishad, 1.2.1-3. 3 This is the Samkhyan theory of satkāryavāda, according to which, nothing comes out of nothing and the effect is already present in the cause. 4 Vide., Asimov, Isaac, Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 'Garden City, Doubleday, New York, 1982; vide also, Dobzhansky, Theodosius, American Biology Teacher, 1973; Darwin, Charles, Life and Letters, John Murray, London, 1988; Kitcher, P., The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993; Salmon, M.H., et at.. Introduction to the Philosophy o

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 dedicate themselves not to the past or the present but to the futur

Part Three Spiritual Theory of Evolution In contrast to these theories, the spiritual theory of the evolutionary process expounded by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is not speculative in character, but it is based upon the results that they obtained through a rigorous experimentation in the domain of yogic experiences and realizations. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, having made detailed yogic study of consciousness and of the methods of their operations in the material world and in the worlds that lie beyond the material world, arrived at the conclusion (i) that the mysteries and laws of evolution, when thoroughly understood and mastered, indicate that a divine supramental