V   The Training of the Senses   THERE are six senses which minister to knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, mind, and all of these except the last look outward and gather the material of thought from outside through the physical nerves and their end-organs, eye, ear, nose, skin, palate. The perfection of the senses as ministers to thought must be one of the first cares of the teacher. The two things that are needed of the senses are accuracy and sensitiveness. We must first understand what are the obstacles to the accuracy and sensitiveness of the senses, in order th

Part Eight   Reviews   Sri Aurobindo wrote the first of these book-reviews in 1909 for publication in the Karmayogin. He wrote the others between 1915 and 1920 for publication in the Arya, a philosophical journal of which he was the editor and principal writer. "Suprabhat"   THE PAPER Suprabhat, a Bengali monthly edited by Kumari Kumudini Mitra, daughter of Sj. Krishna Kumar Mitra, enters this month on its third year. The first issue of the new year is before us. We notice a great advance in the interest and variety of the articles, the calibre of the writers and the

The Men that Pass   ROMESH Chandra Dutt is dead. After a long life of the most manifold and untiring energy, famous, honoured, advanced in years, with a name known in England as well as in India, the man always successful, always favoured of Fortune, always striving to deserve her by skill and diligence, type of a race that passes, of a generation that to younger minds is fast losing the appearance of reality and possibility, has passed away at the height and summit of his career before his great capacities could justify themselves to the full in his new station, but also before the defects of his type could be thoroughly subjected to the severe ord

About Astrology 1   THE SUBJECT of this book is one which stands nowadays put away under a sort of intellectual ban, placed on it some centuries ago by the scientific and rationalistic European mind and not yet lifted. Mr. N. P. Subramania Iyer has undertaken an astrological series which will deal with the various parts of astrology, and the present volume contains the text and translation of the Kalaprakasika, a treatise on the selection of the right times by astrological rule for undertaking any and every action of human life. The book is well printed and got up, the translat

A Preface on National Education   These two chapters appeared in the last two issues of the Arya in 1920 and 1921.   1   THE NECESSITY and unmixed good of universal education has become a fixed dogma to the modern intelligence, a thing held to be beyond dispute by any liberal mind or awakened national conscience, and whether the tenet be or not altogether beyond cavil, it may at any rate be presumed that it answers to a present and imperative need of the intellectual and vital effort of the race. But there is not quite so universal an agreement or common attain

Rajayoga   Man fulfilling himself in the body is given Hathayoga as his means. When he rises above the body, he abandons Hathayoga as a troublesome and inferior process and rises to the Rajayoga, the discipline peculiar to the aeon which man now evolves. The first condition of success in Rajayoga is to rise superior to the dehatmak bodh, the state of perception in which the body is identified with the self. A time comes to the Rajayogin when his body seems not to belong to him or he to have any concern with it. He is not troubled by its troubles or gladdened by its pleasures; it has them to itself and very soon, because he does not give his

Part Four   On Art   Sri Aurobindo wrote these essays in 1909­10. He published all of them except the last in the Karmayogin, a weekly newspaper of which he was the editor and principal writer.     The National Value of Art   I   THERE is a tendency in modern times to depreciate the value of the beautiful and overstress the value of the useful, a tendency curbed in Europe by the imperious insistence of an age-long tradition of culture and generous training of the aesthetic perceptions; but in India, wher

Things Seen in Symbols [2]   What is dhyana? Ordinarily, when a man is absorbed in thought and dead to all that is going on around him, he is supposed to be in dhyana. Or concentration of the whole thought on a single object to the exclusion of every other, is called dhyana. But neither of these ideas corresponds exactly with the whole truth; they represent only particular stages of the process of meditation. Dhyana is a wide term covering a number of processes which rise from ordinary attention to pa samadhi. __________   The distinguishing feature of dhyana is that it puts out

APPENDIX   ALTERNATIVE AND UNUSED PASSAGES AND FRAGMENTS   1   [An early fragment]   Kalidasa does best in more complicated & grandiose metres where his majesty of sound and subtle power of harmony have most opportunity; his treatment of the Anustubh is massive & noble, but compares unfavourably with the inexhaustible flexibility of Valmekie and the nervous ease of Vyasa.   2   [Alternative opening to "The Historical Method"]   Kalidasa   Of Kalidasa the

The Seasons   I   ITS AUTHENTICITY   THE "SEASONS" of Kalidasa is one of those early works of a great poet which are even more interesting to a student of his evolution than his later masterpieces. We see his characteristic gift even in the immature workmanship and uncertain touch and can distinguish the persistent personality in spite of the defective self-expression. Where external record is scanty, this interest is often disturbed by the question of authenticity, and where there is any excuse for the doubt, it has first to be removed. The impulse which leads us to deny authenticity to early and immature work, is natural and almost inevitable.