The Significance of the English Language in India* India's decision to remain a member of the Commonwealth in spite of being an independent sovereign Republic has given a new lease of life amongst us to the English language. Until recently English was apt to be regarded as the remnant of a foreign imposition, an inappropriate growth in the way of an authentic indigenous literature. Today it seems an appropriate and desirable link between us and the group of English-speaking nations with whom we have formed a voluntary association: it has become the medium of a larger existence in which we have elected to share. This i

Sri Aurobindo and Human Evolution "I have no intention of giving any sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco."¹ These ringing challenging words come from the greatest spiritual figure of modern India: Sri Aurobindo. They were meant to refuse acceptance of what he called "a partial and transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change in the law of the external nature."² Although originally applied to a particular crisis in a disciple's career, the surmounting of the habitual outer personality with its petty and egoistic ways of thought, feeling, character and action, they can be taken in general to suggest Sri Aurobin

Sri Aurobindo from A to Z A BOOK-REVIEW Dictionary of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. Compiled from the Writings of Sri Aurobindo by M.P.Pandit. Sponsored by C.C. Mulgund. Dipti Publications, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1966. Rs.10.¹ This is a most welcome addition to the various experiments in compiling passages from Sri Aurobindo to serve particular practical ends. What Sri Aurobindo has written on Culture, on Science, on Education, on Yoga - we have had fine anthologies of such matter, the largest and of the greatest interest being on the last-named theme. But these, in spite of helpful headings, cannot immediately

Mind of Light A POEM ON A CRUCIAL EXPERIENCE (When the Mother read this poem she said: "The first two lines are sheer revelation. They catch exactly what took place. The rest is an imaginative reconstruction of the event.”) The core of a deathless sun is now the brain And each grey cell bursts to omniscient gold. Thought leaps - and an inmost light speaks out from things; Will, a new miracled Matter's dense white flame, Swerves with one touch the sweep of the brute world. Eyes focus now the Perfect everywhere. In a body changing to chiselled translucency, Through nerve on fire-cleansed ner

Misunderstandings of Mysticism A LETTER OF 1947 Professor K has fallen foul of the advice I gave a friend of mine to make an attempt at Yoga under the guidance of Sri Aurobindo before trying to solve the problem of life's misery by taking to social service and philanthropy as the arch-panacea. In a nutshell my plea was that to do real good to the world we must become by a yogic self-transformation conscious channels of God's will and purpose, for otherwise we with even the best intention can never be sure of our work being truly beneficial. We are not sufficiently illumined to do always the right thing in the right way - there is no

"A Pathway towards Immortality" November 24, 1926, was the day on which Sri Aurobindo went into seclusion for concentrated Yogic work towards the creation of a new humanity. In the forefront he put, as guru and guide to his disciples, one whom he regarded as the spiritual Mother of the greater world that was to be. On this day, when the Mother's genius of spiritual organisation took up the group of souls dedicated to the Aurobindonian ideal, the Ashram was conceived and set growing to be the nucleus-light of the divine Consciousness into which mankind was intended to be reborn. In the years that followed, this day was one of those few on which

Waste in Nature A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD PROBLEM One of the most burning issues in the controversies about God is Waste in Nature. Philosophies that do not admit a Divine Being as the source and support and goal of the world, or only admit a rudimentary consciousness fundamental to Matter and attaining higher intensities according to the growing complexities of physical structure, or at most admit a non-perfect élan vital progressing through repeated trial and error - such philosophies can have no quarrel with Nature's huge amount of waste. But the plethora of blind and useless expenditure of energy we notice all around seems to give the lie direct to th

Old....New OLD POETRY Lovely fictions of the luminous, delightful fantasies of the perfect - these alone I let loose in a winging adventure of harmonious speech. PAINTING All that the eye can seize of transient line and colour, all that the eye can trace of finite form, my brush sets playing and glowing in a dream that can never come true. SCULPTURE I shape out a body of beauty that life can hope to reach in an utmost of poise or passion which yet is no more than human. MUSIC Mine is the work of soothing or stirring man's heart with rhythms that weave for him a paradise of sounds - but sounds echoed only from this

"Freewill" in Sri Aurobindo's Vision Sri Aurobindo's views on the crucial choice that must be made of the way of living, if we are really to be fulfilled and the calls of existence truly to be answered, are clear to most of us: we sum them up as "the Integral Yoga." But we are not equally familiar with his outlook on the power to choose. Wherever there is the activity of the will, there is the phenomenon of choosing - and yet there is no warrant in this for believing that the choice is freely made and not occasioned by subtle or unknown factors other than our will itself. How exactly does Sri Aurobindo stand with regard to the problem whe

All or Nothing The Integral Yoga is a matter of all or nothing. Not that the Guru rejects partial offerings: whatever movement is towards the Divine is welcome and can be made the starting-point for a larger gesture. The Grace answers to even the smallest sincere gift. But its call is towards more and more, a new starting-point each moment. And if to this insatiable call a deaf ear is turned, then in terms of the Integral Yoga it is as if nothing was done. The call is insatiable not only because the Grace wants the whole human to be surrendered to the Divine but also because it wants the whole Divine to be lavished on the human. Surely, since the ve