The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art I WONDER why Philosophy has never been considered as a variety of Art. Philosophy is admired for the depth and height of its substance, for its endeavour to discover the ultimate Truth, for its one-pointed adherence to the supremely Real; but precisely because it does so it is set in opposition to Art which is reputed as the domain of the ideal, the imaginative or the fictitious. Indeed it is the antagonism between the two that has always been emphasised and upheld as an axiomatic truth and an indisputable fact. Of course, old Milton (he was young, however, when he wrote these lines) says that philosophy is divine and

“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell� William Blake: “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell� THE ideal was Blake's. It will not sound so revolting if we understand what the poet meant by Hell. Hell, he explains, is simply the body, the Energy of Life – hell, because body and life on earth were so considered by the orthodox Christianity. The Christian ideal demands an absolute denial and rejection of life. Fulfilment is elsewhere, in heaven alone. That is, as we know, the ideal of the ascetic. The life of the spirit (in. heaven) is a thing away from and stands against the life of the flesh (on earth). In the face of this discipline, countering it, Blake posited a union, a marriage of the two, cons

Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo "TAGORE has been a wayfarer towards the same goal as ours in his own way." Sri Aurobindo wrote these words in the thirties and their full significance can be grasped only when it is understood that the two master-souls were at one in the central purpose of their lives. Also there is a further bond of natural affinity between them centring round the fact that both were poets, in a deeper sense, seer poets-Rabindranath the Poet of the Dawn, Sri Aurobindo the Poet and Prophet of the Eternal Day, a new Dawn and Day for the human race. And both had the vision of a greater Tomorrow for their Motherland and that was why both regarded her f

? From the Known to the Unknown? FROM the known to the unknown: that is a well-known principle of procedure in the matter of knowledge, of action and of life generally. It is a golden rule that one should never take a step forward unless and until the previous step has been held firm and secure. But after all is this counsel the supreme counsel of perfection or even in point of fact does this represent an actuality? We have our misgivings. For may not the contrary motto - " from the unknown to the known" - be equally valid, both as a matter of fact and as a matter of principle? Do we not, sometimes at least, take for granted and start with the unknown number x to

Walter Hilton: “The Scale of Perfection Walter Hilton: “The Scale of Perfection" FROM the twentieth century back to the fourteenth is a far cry: a far cry indeed from the modern scientific illumination to mediaeval superstition, from logical positivists and mathematical rationalists to visionary mystics, from Russell and Huxley to Ruysbroeck and Hilton. The mystic lore, the Holy Writ, the mediaeval sage says, echoing almost the very words of the Eastern Masters, "may not be got by study nor through man's travail only, but principally by the grace of the Holy Ghost." As for the men living and moving in the worldly way, there are "so mickle din and crying in their heart and vain thoughts and fle

George Seftris SEFERIS is a poet of sighs. I do not know the cadence, the breath of the original Greek rhythm. But if something of that tone and temper has been carried over into English, what can be more like a heave of sigh than – Stoop down, if you can, to the dark sea, forgetting The sound of a flute played to naked feet That tread your sleep in the other life, the submerged one.¹ It is the Virgilian "tears of things" – lacrimae rerum – the same that moved the muse of the ancient Roman poet, moves the modern Greek poet. Seferis' poetry sobs – explicit or muffled – muttering or murmuring like a refrain – a mantra: Oh the pity

The Democracy of Tomorrow THE great gift of Democracy is that of personal value, the sanctity of the individual. And its great failure is also exactly the failure to discover the true individual, the real person. The earlier stages of human society were chiefly concerned with the development of mankind in die mass. It is a collective growth, a general uplifting that is attempted: the individual has no special independent value of his own. The clan, the tribe, the kula, the order, the caste, or the State, when it came to be formed, were the various collective frames of reference for ascertaining the function and the value of the individual. It is in fulfilling the

Of Some Supreme Mysteries THE Supreme is infinite, therefore He is also finite. To be finite is one of the infinite aspects of the Infinite. Creation is the de-finition of the Infinite. *** All creation is fundamentally an act of self-division. The multiplicity of the divided selves of the Supreme forms the created universe. In and through the unnumbered divided selves, the one undivided Self still stands intact and inviolate. *** With each successive self-division, the Supreme descends into a more concrete form of creation. The Supreme has pulverised himself into the atoms of Matter. Matter is Spirit divided ad infinitum and inf

Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, A Great Man TAGORE is a great poet: he will be remembered as one of the I greatest world-poets. But humanity owes him another – perhaps a greater – debt of gratitude: his name has a higher value, a more significant potency for the future. In an age when Reason was considered as the highest light given to man, Tagore pointed to the Vision of the mystics as always the still greater light; when man was elated with undreamt-of worldly success, puffed up with incomparable material possessions and powers, Tagore's voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am n

The Mission of Buddhism BUDDHISM came as a blaze of lightning across the sky of India's tradition; it was almost a fiery writing on the wall, bearing the doom of a world. Buddhism opposed and denied some of the very fundamental principles upon which the old world rested. It was perhaps the greatest iconoclastic movement ever thrown up by the human consciousness. First of all, it denied the tradition itself; it did not recognise the authority and sanctity of the purve pitarah, the ancient fathers, nor their revealed knowledge, the Veda. Buddhism enjoined the priority and supremacy of the individual's own consciousness, own effort and own realisation. Be thou thy own light.