[A Chapter for a Work on Vedanta]       Chapter XI. The Means of Realisation.       Vedanta is merely an intellectual assent, without Yoga. The verbal revelation of the true relations between the One and the Many, the intellectual acceptance of the revelation and the dogmatic acknowledgement of the relations do not lead us beyond metaphysics, and there is no human pursuit more barren and frivolous than metaphysics practised merely as an intellectual pastime, a play with words and thoughts, when there is no intention of fulfilling thought in life or of moulding our inner state and outer activity by the knowledge which we have intellectually accepte

Documents in the Life of Sri Aurobindo THE HOOGHLY CONFERENCE       1   BENGAL PROVINCIAL NATIONALIST DRAFT CONFERENCE RESOLUTIONS.     Hugly—1909.     Draft Resolutions.       I. That this Conference places on   I. That this Conference places on record its profound feelings of regret record its sorrow at the death of Lord and sorrow at the death of Lord Ripon Ripon who was an earnest and sincere who has justly been called the father sympathiser with Indian aspirations of local s

Notes on the Texts       Talk of Fifteenth August 1909. Reprinted verbatim from Report on Native Newspapers (Bengal), Part II [vernacular], week ending 28 August 1909, page 1200. This report, prepared by the British Government's intelligence service, comprised extracts, translated when necessary, from newspapers owned by "natives". The Bharat Mitra of Calcutta published Sri Aurobindo's speech in Bengali translation in its issue of 21 August 1909. The speech is referred to in the police report quoted in the instalment of Archival Notes published in the last issue of A & R (p. 89). Compare the quotation there to the last six sentences of the present report.       S

Talk of Fifteenth August 1909 A TRANSLATION OF A BENGALI NEWSPAPER REPORT       Birth-day of Mr. Arabindo Ghose       The Bharat Mitra [Calcutta] of the 21st August reports the following speech of Mr. Arabinda Ghosh said to have been delivered by him to the young men who met him in the Sanjivani Office on the 15th August last to congratulate him on his birth-day:—         "In my childhood before the full development of my faculties, I became conscious of a strong impulse in me. I did not realise what it was then, but it grew stronger and stronger as I gained in years till all the weakness of my childhood, fear, selfishness, etc., vanished from

Sri Aurobindo on Himself       [Biographical Notes]       Between 1880 and 1884 Sri Aurobindo attended the grammar school at Manchester.       I never went to the Manchester Grammar school, never even stepped inside it. It was my two brothers who studied there. I was taught privately by the Drewetts. Mr Drewett who was a scholar in Latin (he had been a Senior Classic at Oxford) taught me that language (but not Greek, which I began at Saint Paul's [School,] London) and English History etc.; Mrs Drewett taught me French, Geography and Arithmetic. No Science; it was not in fashion at that time.       Sri Aurobindo owes his views on Indian Nationalis

Notes on Prophetic Vision   1. Some ten days before August 15th 1929, Venkataraman at soup sees himself in a vision falling from branch to branch of a tree. Half an hour afterwards, having returned from the soup to his rooms (Mudaliar's house near treasury) for flowers to bring to the Mother, he climbs a big tree of champak. misses his hold, falls from branch to branch on to the ground and is unable to move for a few days and cannot come to the house for the 15th celebration. Prevision. 2. A lottery is arranged for the distribution among the sadhaks of articles of small value —in order to see how the forces work on different people. Before the distribution of tick