Animal Souls, Subtle Bodies Are any of the following queries touched in Sanatana Dharma books of philosophy? The nature and formation of animal soul. The shape, size, formations, nature and colour of subtle bodies. The difference between the subtle bodies of saints and ordinary people and the process of developing one into the other. The rationale of the reincarnation theory. The nature, constituents and situation of invisible worlds. THE first three questions are of a curious interest, the last two cover a very wide field. All except the fourth belong more or less to a kind of knowle

The Reincarnating Soul Human thought in the generality of men is no more than a rough and crude acceptance of unexamined ideas; it is sleepy sentry and allows anything to pass the gates which seems to it decently garbed or wears a plausible appearance or can mumble anything that resembles some familiar password. Especially is this so in subtle matters, those remote from the concrete facts of our physical life and environment. Even men who will reason carefully and acutely in ordinary matters and there consider vigilance against error an intellectual or a practical duty, are yet content with the most careless stumbling when they get upon higher and more difficult g

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE I. The eight essays of THE SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION, the last of Sri Aurobindo's prose writings, first appeared in the quarterly Bulletin of Physical Education in 1949-50. They were reprinted in book form by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press in 1952 under the title The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth. Sri Aurobindo Library, New York, published them in 1953 under the caption The Mind of Light. II. The essays constituting THE PROBLEM OF REBIRTH first appeared serially in the Arya between 1915 and 1920. The first section, "Rebirth and Karma", consists of a number of independent articles which nevertheless make up a developing seri

Thoughts and Glimpses SOME think it presumption to believe in a special Providence or to look upon oneself as an instrument in the hands of God, but I find that every man has a special Providence and I see that God uses the mattock of the labourer and babbles in the mouth of a little child. Providence is not only that which saves me from the ship- wreck in which everybody else has foundered. Providence is also that which, while all others are saved, snatches away my last plank of safety and drowns me in the solitary ocean. The delight of victory is sometimes less than the attraction of struggle and suffering; nevertheless the laurel and not the cross sh

APPENDIX Explanations given by Sri Aurobindo apropos of some passages in this book: Page 417, line 2. There is no need to put "the" before "quality" - in English that would alter the sense. Matter is not regarded in this passage as a quality of being perceived by sense; I don't think that would have any meaning. It is regarded as a result of a certain power and action of consciousness which presents forms of itself to sense perception and it is this quality of sense perceivedness, so to speak, that gives them the appearance of Matter, i.e. of a certain kind of substantiality inherent in themselves - but in fact they are not self-existent substantial objects but forms of consc

Karma, Will and Consequence WILL, Karma and consequence are the three steps of the Energy which moves the universe. But Karma and consequence are only the outcome of will or even its forms; will gives them their value and without it they would be nothing, nothing at least to man the thinking and growing soul and nothing, it may be hazarded, to the Spirit of which he is a flame and power as well as a creature. The thing we first see or imagine we see, when we look at the outward mechanism of the universe, is energy and its works, action and consequence. But by itself and without the light of an inhabiting will this working is only a huge soulless mechanism, a l

Mind of Light A NEW humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality w

The Ascending Unity THE human mind loves a clear simplicity of view; the more trenchant a statement, the more violently it is caught by it and inclined to acceptance. This is not only natural to our first crudity of thinking, and the more attractive because it makes things delightfully easy to handle and saves an immense amount of worry of enquiry and labour of reflection, but, modified, it accompanies us to the higher levels of a more watchful mentality. Alexander’s method with the fateful knot is our natural and favourite dealing with the tangled web of things, the easy cut, the royal way, the facile philosophy of this and not this, that and not that, a strong yes an

The Divine Body A DIVINE life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage. But what will be the divine body? What will be the nature of this body, its structure, the principle of its activity, the perfection that distinguishes it from the limited and imperfect physicality within which we are now bound? What will be the conditions and operations of its life still physical in its base upon the earth by which it can be known as divine? If it is to be the product of an evolution, and it is so that we must envisage it, an evolution out of our human imperfection and ignorance into a greater truth of spirit and nature, by what process or stages can it gro

The Needed Synthesis What is the Synthesis needed at the present time? UNDOUBTEDLY, that of man himself. The harmony of his faculties is the condition of his peace, their mutual understanding and helpfulness the means of his perfection. At war, they distract the kingdom of his being; the victory of one at the expense of another maims his self-fulfilment. The peculiar character of our age is the divorce that has been pronounced between reason and faith, the logical mind and the intuitive heart. At first, the declaration of war between them was attended by painful struggles, a faith disturbed or a scepticism dissatisfied. But now their divorce has create