Part Four Sri Aurobindo's criticism of Materialism: Evolution and Consciousness Materialism It is true that, as Sri Aurobindo points out, the materialist has an easier field; it is possible for him to deny consciousness to arrive at a more readily convincing simplicity of statement of the monism of Matter. The premise of materialism is that the physical senses are our sole means of Knowledge and that Reason, therefore, cannot escape beyond the domain of physical existence even in its most extended and vigorous flights. Indeed, this premise is both arbitrary and it assumes its own conclusion as its underlying basis. Sri Aurobindo points out that the world of Matter

Introduction The process of evolution seems to have been detected in ancient times. In the Rig Veda, the Nāsadīya sūkta¹ refers to the "darkness wrapped in darkness" and points out that from the breath that stirred in that original darkness, there stirred the life-force as desire, and that that desire was the seed of the mind. In the Aitareya Upanishad, there is a fable which tells us that the gods rejected the animal forms successively offered to them by the Divine Self and only when man was produced, cried out, "This indeed is perfectly made," and consented to enter in the human body. ² In the Sankhya philosophy, the infinite existence of Force was figured as a sea, initia

Part One The Modern Scientific Theory of Evolution The modern theory of evolution began to develop in the 18th century through the work of Linnaeus (1707-78), Buffon (1707-88), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Lamarck (1744-1829), and in the 19th century in the works of Charles Darwin (1809-82) and his followers. 'On the Origin of Species’ written by Charles Darwin (1859) gave details and demonstrations of his scientific theory of evolution, according to which, life on the earth evolved by a gradual and yet continuous process from the earliest forms of living organisms to the latest product, man. Natural selection, variation and heredity are said to be the factors through the op

A Synoptic Note Quest of Yoga Yoga is the expression of the flame of aspiration that rises upwards in order to bum and bum steadily, constantly and ever-increasingly, to grow in leaps of fire in order to bum away all that tends towards extinction, to build our inner being and all members of the being, — body, life, and mind and all our faculties, actual and latent, — so that all of them make an ascent in all consuming zeal to unite with all that is or felt or conceived to be the highest, the best, the widest and intensest, the infinite, the limitless, all and beyond, — so that they can attain consummation and ever-living sustenance of heat and light. This flame has, in it

2 Yoga: Its Distinguishing Features Yoga as distinguished from religion is primarily a shastra and not system of beliefs, ceremonies, rituals and moral and spiritual disciplines related to the system of beliefs and prescriptions. As a shastra, it is a growing body of knowledge of truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the discipline of the body, life and mind and other higher faculties in search and realisation of psychic, spiritual and supramental reality or realities that lie beyond the body, life and mind, as also the consequences of that search and realisation for the individual and collective existence in the cosmos. Sri Aurobind

Preface If the Spirit is One, why do the reports of the experience of the Spirit differ so widely? The fact is that there is a variety of spiritual experience, and this phenomenon has to be understood and explained. Spiritual experiences can be sporadic, or they can be attained by pursuing a methodised effort leading to the union of the individual with the universal and the transcendental spiritual reality. When the experience is attained by methodised effort, it can be called yogic experience. When we study the records of the experiences of those who have practised yoga, we find that they give different and even conflicting accounts of their experiences of the Spirit. T

Varieties of Yogic Experience and integral Realisation 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

6 Yogic Experience (a) Experiences in Hatha Yoga Yoga has often come to be exclusively identified with physical exercises of Hatha Yoga. Actually, the entire system of Hatha Yoga is only one of the systems of yoga. It aims at a complete mastery of the body and the life and a free and effective use of them established upon purification of their workings. The methods of this yoga are those of Āsana (more than eighty in number) and Prāṇāyāma, — the methods of stabilising the bodily condition by stabilisation of various postures of the body and those of breathing and breath- control by which the movements pervading all the nervous system are controlled. The gross

TOWARDS A NEW CURRICULUM   TENTATIVE IDEAS     I There is a need to formulate a new curriculum for our school education.   The assumption under which the concept of 10+2+3 was evolved had some justification at the time when the scheme of 10+2+3 was introduced. Since then the situation has changed and the following new demands have come into the forefront.   a) With the increasing explosion of knowledge and rapid transmission of knowledge through electronic media, we are obliged to have a curriculum which blends properly to equip our students with a wide spectrum of general knowledge covering many subjects and to offer them the possibility of specialisation at

  1. Growing Demands on the Contemporary Teacher All eyes seem to be turning on education. The contemporary civilization is science-based, and during the recent times, there has been an increasing growth of democracy. There is also today an unprecedented explosion of information and unprecedented speed of communication. As a result, increasing masses of the human race are getting seized by the need to grow in awareness and knowledge and to determine their future by conscious and deliberate participation in the process of development. The goal of education for all has gained universal acceptance. In every discipline educational activ