The Immortal Person THE whole purpose of man's life upon earth, it may be said, is to make an individuality of himself and to grow in that individuality and organise it perfectly. An ordinary man is a most disorganised entity and possesses no individual character. His mind is a conglomeration of thoughts and ideas which do not particularly belong to him, but to everybody, being elements of the world-mind in general. His vital being too is a medley of desires, impulses, energies that are not personal in any sense, but pass through him or take a long or short-term asylum in him from the universal vital force. The body, being a definitely delimited object, is perhaps the only thing t

India One and Indivisible INDIA is one and indivisible, culturally and spiritually; politically too she must be one and indivisible and is, as a matter of fact, already on the way towards that consummation, in spite of appearances to the contrary. It has got to be so, if India is to be strong and powerful, if her voice is to be heard in the comity of nations, if she is to fulfil her mission in the world.   It is no use laying stress on distinctions and differences: we must, on the contrary, put all emphasis upon the funda­mental unity, upon the demand and necessity for a dynamic unity. Naturally there are diverse and even contradictory elements in the make-up of a modern n

Modernist Poetry A Modernist poet sings – O bright Apollo “Tin’ andra, tin' heroa, tina theon," What god, man or hero Shall I place a tin wreath upon! and a modernist critic acclaims it as a marvellous, aye, a stupendous piece of poetic art; it figures, according to him, the very body of the modern consciousness and resthesis. The modern consciousness, it is said, is marked with two characteristics: first, it is polyphonic, that is to say, it is not a simple and unilateral thing, but a composite consisting of many planes and strands, both horizontal and vertical. A modern con­sciousness is a section of world-consciousness extending in space as well as

On Social Reconstruction I IT is one of the great errors of the human mind to take equality as identical with uniformity. When Rousseau started the revolutionary slogan "Men are born equal", men were carried away in the vehemence of the new spirit and thought that there was absolutely no difference between man and man, all difference must be due to injustice, tyranny and corruption in the social system. Rousseau's was a necessary protest and corrective against the rank inequality that was the order of the day. All men are, however, equal not in the sense that all material particles – sea-sands or molecules or atoms, for example – may be equal, that is to say, same

Federated Humanity THE last great war, out of its bloody welter, threw up a mantra for the human consciousness to contemplate and seize and realise: it was self-determination. The present world-war has likewise cast up a mantra that is complementary. The problem of the unification of the whole human race has engaged the attention of seers and sages, idealists and men of action, since time immemorial; but only recently its demand has become categorically imperative for a solution in the field of practical politics. Viewed from another angle, one can say that it is also a problem Nature has set before herself, has been dealing with through the ages, elaborating and leading to a final issue.

In Quest of Reality THIS is, they say, the age of Positivism – no mystic obfuscation, but clear light in the open sun. Let us enquire a little into the nature of this modern illumination. Positivists are those who swear by facts. Facts to them mean naturally facts attested in the end by sense-experience. To a positivist the only question that matters and that needs to be answered and can be answered is whether a thing is or is not physically: other questions are otiose, irrelevant, misleading. So problems of the Good, of the Beautiful, of God are meaningless. When one says this is good, that is bad, well, it is a proposition that cannot be related to any fact, it is a subjective p

Knowledge by Identity SRI AUROBINDO says, knowledge – true knowledge – comes always by identity, i.e., when you are identified with the object, when the knower and the known are one. He further adds that even ordinary knowledge, sense-perception, comes in fact by that way, although it may look otherwise, viz., as a process of logical induction or deduction or both. When I am angry, he illustrates, I know I am angry because I become anger or when I know I am existent, it is because I am one with my existence. Prof. Das¹ seeks to controvert the position. He says, when there is complete identity there is no knowledge. If I am wholly one with the object, I get merged and lost in it. W

Darshana and Philosophy THERE is a mental approach to spiritual truths and there is a direct and immediate approach or rather contact. The mind sees as though through a mist, a darkling glass, a more or less opaque veil, and the thing envisaged presents a blurred and not unoften a deformed appearance. The mind has its own pre-dispositions – its own categories and terms, its own forms and figures-which it has to use when it seeks to express that which is beyond it. Naturally the object, the truth as it is, it cannot apprehend or represent; it gives as it were the reverse side of an embroidery work. It goes round about the thing, has to take recourse to all kinds of contortions and gy

Ushasti Chakrayana (Chhandogya Upanishad) THIS is the story of Ushasti Chakrayana, Ushasti the son of Chakra. But could it be that the name means one who drives a wheel, like Shakatayana,the driver of sakata, the bullock­cart? Or is it something similar to Kamalayana, one who tends or enjoys a kamala, the lotus, lotus-eater? The Chakra or wheel here might be the potter's wheel, or it might as well be the spinner's wheel or Charkha. Does the name then mean something like one who owns or plies a Charkha, just as we term Kamliwalla an ascetic with a Kambal or blanket? However that may be, here is the story. The Kuru country where Ushasti had his abode was

APPENDIX - II Original Texts of Translations Vedic Hymns Page – 213 Page – 214 Page – 215 Page – 216 Page – 217 Page – 218 Page – 219 Page – 220 Page – 221 Page – 222 Page – 223 Page – 224 Page – 225 Page – 226 Page – 227 Page – 228 Page – 229 Page – 230 Page – 231 Page – 232 Page – 233 Page – 234