The Paradox of Enlightenment and Time All spiritual teachings contain paradoxes because any mental formulation of a truth can convey only one perspective of the truth, the opposite perspective being also valid, thus leading to an apparent contradiction. As the Mother says: There are innumerable facets. There are innumerable points of view. One can say the most contradictory things without being inconsistent or contradicting oneself. Everything depends on the way you look at it. And even once we have seen everything, from all the points of view accessible to us, around the central Truth, we will still have had only a very small glimpse—the Truth

-004_Publisher^s Note.htm Publisher's Note We are greatly privileged to publish this book, which blends scholarship with true humility that is characteristic of a genuinely spiritual person, under the Editions India imprint of Stone Hill Foundation Publishing. Since we started working with the author, Dr. A. S. Dalal, on the manuscript of this book five years ago (then in a different form and with a different focus), we have been very impressed by his sincerity, scholarship, and equanimity. The first draft of this book had to be reframed after nearly three years of work partly as the author sought input on it from Eckhart, and mainly becau

No Problems in the Now A revelatory teaching Eckhart often reiterates is that there are never any problems in the Now. This teaching, which is apt to be puzzling to many people, may be understood in the light of two different meanings of the Now. The one obvious meaning of the Now is the present moment. The egoic consciousness, which finds it extremely difficult to live in the present moment and anticipates, most of the time, the next moment or the future, rends to flee from the present moment all the more when something "goes wrong" and life presents a "problem." The mind instinctively projects what is perceived as a problem into the future and imagines

Mind and the Spiritual Life There are similarities as well as differences in the perspectives of Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo regarding the role of mind in the spiritual life. To Eckhart, mind, from the spiritual viewpoint, is the absence of consciousness. To be identified with mind is to be unconscious; it is to be not present. The one aim of the spiritual life is to liberate oneself from the unconscious state of identification with mind. Eckhart does concede that mind is a form of intelligence or consciousness; it is only a tiny aspect of the vast Intelligence that operates in the universe. Mind, Eckhart says, is a wonderful tool for practical purposes, but in sp

Note on Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. At the age of seven he was taken to England for his education. There, he studied at St. Paul's School, London, and at King's College, Cambridge. Returning to India in 1893, he worked for the next thirteen years in the Princely State of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in the state's college. In 1906, Sri Aurobindo quit his post in Baroda and went to Calcutta where he became one of the leaders of the Indian nationalist movement. As editor of the newspaper Bande Mataram, he boldly put forward the idea of complete independence from Britain. Arrested three times fo

-009_Looking to the Next Moment—Waiting.htm Looking to the Next Moment—Waiting A corollary of the state of constant wanting and needing is the tendency to live always in the future. One does not find joy or satisfaction in the present moment, and looks continually to the next moment or the future when one hopes to have the fulfillment of one's desires. The present moment is regarded as only a means or a passage to the future. Because the future never arrives, one unconsciously lives in a continual state of waiting. Perhaps sensing the state of waiting in the audience before starting to speak, Eckhart has on several occasions opened his talk by commenting on the pervasive attitude of waiting, about w