27 Savitri In Sanskrit, a Poet is a Seer. The Greek root of the word 'poet' means 'creator' or one who 'does.' Both Seer and Creator are words that go admirably with Sri Aurobindo. He was always very much aware of the power of the Word. "The Word has power," wrote Sri Aurobindo in an undated letter. "What kind of power or power for what depends on the nature of the inspiration and the theme and the part of the being it touches. If it is the Word itself, — as in certain utterances of the great Scriptures, Veda, Upanishads, Gita, it may well have a power to awaken a spiritual and uplifting impulse, even certain kinds of realisation.... "The Vedic poets regarded the

29 The Indian Majlis There was, apart from poetry, another subject in which Sri Aurobindo's interest was far from 'sporadic' It was in 1891 that Charles Stewart Parnell (born 1846) died. He had led a movement in favour of home rule in Ireland. From A. A. Ghose's pen flowed the following lines: "O pale and guiding light, now star unsphered, Deliverer lately hailed, since by our lords Most feared, most hated, hated because feared, Who smot'st them with an edge surpassing swords! Thou too wert then a child of tragic earth, Since vainly filled thy luminous doom of birth." Appearances to the contrary, the youth

-05_A Schoolgirl^s Travel Notes.htm 3 A Schoolgirl's Travel Notes Mirra saw new countries and peoples, observed everything, and wrote in her Meditations: "Those who live for Thee and in Thee ... no longer do they marvel at the novelty, unexpectedness, picturesque ness of things and countries." But so few of us are like Mirra I The greater part of humanity loves to marvel. I confess that not only does the picturesque ness of things and countries attract me, but there is also in me a curiosity to know about peoples and their customs. In this jet age or supersonic age of the late twentieth century, very few of us can have any real idea of how people lived or travelled in the begin

1 The Consecrated House Mirra was seated at her desk writing in her diary which we know as Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. It was 3 March 1914. She was going to set out to meet Sri Aurobindo. She wrote, "As the day of departure draws near, I enter into a sort of calm collectedness; I turn with an affectionate gravity towards all those thousand little trifles which surround us and which have silently played during so many years the part of faithful friends; I thank them with gratitude for all the charm they have been able to impart from the outside to our life; I wish, if they are destined to pass for a long or a brief period into other ha

9 Raja Rammohan Roy As for the British and the French, our historian, Sisir Kumar Mitra, says, "The last days of the Muslim rule were marked by political and social evils of the worst type undermining the integrity and morale of the administration, laying the country open to any aggression from outside. As a matter of fact, the British found it easy, without having to strike a blow, to establish themselves in India by sheer underhand means. Whatever challenge they had to meet was not of India but of their rival within her borders, the French." All the same, the conquest of India by the British is an unparalleled achievement in the history of the world.

31 The Return In one of his letters Sri Aurobindo wrote to his wife: "At fourteen the seed sprouted and at eighteen it established itself firmly." Commenting on it, many years later, Sri Aurobindo said, "At eighteen, I think we started in London the secret Lotus and Dagger Society. ... It lasted only for a day." Correcting a wrong piece of information given by a biographer, Sri Aurobindo developed the point. "The Indian students in London did once meet to form a secret society called romantically the 'Lotus and Dagger'," wrote Sri Aurobindo, "in which each member vowed to work for the liberation of India generally and to take some special work in furtherance o

Appendix The Invasion That Never Was Every Indian child who goes to school soon meets with that special moment when he is told about his early ancestors, their origin, their story, their achievements. A window suddenly opens, his small horizon strains to encompass those faraway and mysterious times. Being Indian seems to acquire a greater meaning —though one that will long remain as misty as what he is being taught. And what is he taught? If anything at all, it will be that some 1500 years before the Christian era, hordes of semi-barbarian, Sanskrit-speaking nomads called 'Aryans' poured from Central Asia or thereabouts into north-west India, where they came upon the h