Fit and Unfit (A Letter) You have written that you are only an ordinary man, not out of the ordinary like me. You do not dare to be above the average, for you believe that you are wanting in capacity and power that make a man extraordinary. And therefore you have to go through life as others. However, I ask you one thing, who has told you that you are a mere nobody? How are you so positive about the limits of your power without exercising it in the field of work? Have you understood yourself entirely? No, you will say, and you will add that your shortcomings and aberrations are the proof. How can one be great with such imperfections? In order to be great, one has to aspire

Soviet Gymnasts (I) As you know, sometime back – quite a few years now – we had a group of Soviet Gymnasts in our midst. And what a pleasant, perfect performance they gave! Their hammer-and-sickle floating against the wind, the first time they stepped in unison on our sports ground, marching to the tune of the Russian national anthem, surely you must be still remembering that beautiful spectacle. Some of their tricks and techniques we have bodily taken over. A good many of you received training at the hands of these experts. They have been heavily filmed and photographed in action and these pictures you must have seen more than once. I draw your attention to the date

ON NATIONAL HERITAGE The Heart of Bengal BENGAL is a land of many rivers. The land of Bengal has been formed by the alluvial soil of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and their branches. The poet Bankimchandra addressed the Mother Bengal thus: Mother, I bow to thee! Rich with thy hurrying streams, Bright with thy orchard gleams, Cool with thy winds of delight, Dark fields waving, Mother of might, Mother free. (translated by Sri Aurobindo) These words are not merely a hyperbole or an emotional outburst of blind faith. The truth embodied in these words will not only be felt in the core but will be felt at every step by all those who have

Intuition and Inspiration in Art As intuition plays the major role in one kind of art, even so inspiration in another. Two kinds of beauty have sprung into existence from these two faculties. Why speak of the artist alone – all powerful creators, in fact all human beings, differ in their individual nature, but they may be broadly classified under these two heads. Knowledge is quite evidently the principle in one, life-energy in the other. Steadiness is the mark of the one, speed of the other. One has wideness, the other depth. One is comprehensive, the other penetrative. One gives forth light, the other heat. One is illumined, the other dynamic. Intuitio

The Greatness of Poetry IN ancient times, during the Roman ascendency, there was a great rhetorician, Longinus by name. According to him the greatness of any writing lies in how far it echoes the inner Self. The more developed is the soul of a poet the higher will be the poetic genius. An immature soul can hardly soar very high. A modern English critic,¹ who appreciated this view, remarked that the present-day artistic creations are mostly insignificant and futile, for the modern world is wanting in highly developed souls. . Not to speak of a really great soul, we have almost forgotten in these days the meaning of creation by the inner soul. The source of inspira

Poetry and Mantra POETRY and mantra are not one and the same thing. I shall try to point out the difference between the two. Poetry can turn into mantra; not only that, poetry must needs be so. The highest form and the most perfect perfection of poetry lie in the mantra. Likewise a mantra can manifest itself in the shape and form of poetry. But that is a thing we hardly meet with. Let us now focus our attention on something else. When we study the Gita or the Upanishads or the Vedas, the idea never flashes across our mind that we are reading poetry; our consciousness enjoys a delight which surpasses that of poetry. Here is a clear proof. When we speak of genuine poetry,

The Language of Rabindranath IF Bengali has become a world language transcending its form of a provincial sub-tongue, then at the root of it there is Rabindranath. To-day its richness has become so common and natural that we cannot conceive immediately that it was not so before Tagore's mighty and ceaseless 'creation worked at it for half a century. I am not speaking of the literature, I am speaking only of the richness of the vocabulary, the diversity of the speech form, its modes and rhythms. The capacity of a language lies in its power of expression, that is to say, how many subjects can it express itself on and how appropriately? In the gradual progression of

ON SPIRITUALITY Where is God? GOD you do not find? No God – not at all? But why should He be found? And to own Him, what right have you? How much of yourself have you offered to Him? Every moment, every limb of yours, how far have you consecrated? Your call is merely lip-deep. You have called on Him in a slight difficulty or out of sheer curiosity, and forthwith is He to appear before you in person? Perhaps He does come down. But where is your eye to see? Seated in an abysmal, pitch-dark cave, tightly closing your eyes in addition, you cry out in a fit of restive passion and with a stupendous laugh of disdain "Where is the Sun, where is the lamp of Phoebus

The Novel Alchemy ACCORDING to the Bible, God said, "Let there be Creation", and the Creation came. God was pleased, not only because the Creation came but also because the Creation was all-perfect, with nothing to change: it was like an edifice firm and solid and flawless, it would endure eternally firm and unchanging, fixed in every detail and exactly as it was on the first day. The Rishis of the Upanishads give us a slightly different version. God was not at all pleased with the first sketch and with the forms of animalkind created. He tried a second time, and again it failed to please. After several essays of this nature, He was at last pleased with His work when man c

Lines of Tantra (Charyapada) AT least the names, "Natha-yogis" and "Siddhacharyas" must have been familiar to you, perhaps you may have heard about their writings too, the body of poetry known as caryapadavali. Today I would like to say something on this subject. This introduces us to a particular epoch in our history and its peculiar training and culture, where the human consciousness has found a particular expression for which one cannot find a parallel. It was what is known as the age of Tantric Buddhism. During this period, a special kind of spiritual discipline and culture had been growing as a result of the Buddhist influence. It extended mainly over north-eastern