Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

13 Essays in Philosophy and Yoga VOLUME 13 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1998 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA Essays in Philosophy and Yoga Shorter Works 1910 – 1950 Publisher's Note Essays in Philosophy and Yoga consists of short works in prose written by Sri Aurobindo between 1909 and 1950 and published during his lifetime. All but a few of them are concerned with aspects of spiritual philosophy, yoga, and related subjects. Short writings on the Veda, the Upanishads, Indian culture, political theory, education, and poetics have been placed in other volumes. The title of the volume has been provided by the editors. It is adapted from the title of a proposed collection, ªEssays in Yogaº, found in two of Sri Aurobindo's notebooks. Since 1971 most of the contents of the volume have appeared under the editorial title The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings. The contents are arranged in ®ve chronological parts. Part One consists of essays published in the Karmayogin in 1909 and 1910, Part Two of a long essay written around 1912 and published in 1921, Part Three of essays and other pieces published in the monthly review Arya between 1914 and 1921, Part Four of an essay published in the Standard Bearer in 1920, and Part Five of a series of essays published in the Bulletin of Physical Education in 1949 and 1950. Many of the essays in Part Three were revised slightly by the author and published in small books between 1920 and 1941. The editors have retained the titles and arrangement of most of those books. The texts of the pieces have been checked against the texts published in journals and books during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime. CONTENTS Part One Essays from the Karmayogin (1909 ± 1910) The Ideal of the Karmayogin 3 Karmayoga 9 Man Ð Slave or Free? 13 Yoga and Human Evolution 18 Yoga and Hypnotism 23 The Greatness of the Individual 29 The Process of Evolution 33 Stead and the Spirits 38 Stead and Maskelyne 43 Fate and Free-Will 47 The Three Purushas 51 The Strength of Stillness 57 The Principle of Evil 60 The Stress of the Hidden Spirit 64 Part Two The Yoga and Its Objects (circa 1912) The Yoga and Its Objects 71 Appendix: Explanations of Some Words and Phrases 92 Part Three Writings from the Arya (1914 ± 1921) Notes on the Arya The ªArya'sº Second Year 101 Appendix: Passages Omitted from ªOur Idealº 103 CONTENTS The ªArya'sº Fourth Year 105 On Ideals and Progress On Ideals 111 Yoga and Skill in Works 119 Conservation and Progress 127 The Conservative Mind and Eastern Progress 133 Our Ideal 140 The Superman The Superman 151 All-Will and Free-Will 158 The Delight of Works 163 Evolution Evolution 169 The Inconscient 176 Materialism 184 Thoughts and Glimpses Aphorisms 199 Thoughts and Glimpses 208 Heraclitus Heraclitus 215 The Problem of Rebirth Section I: Rebirth and Karma Rebirth 259 The Reincarnating Soul 270 Rebirth, Evolution, Heredity 277 Rebirth and Soul Evolution 285 The Signi®cance of Rebirth 295 The Ascending Unity 307 Involution and Evolution 317 Karma 330 Karma and Freedom 338 CONTENTS Karma, Will and Consequence 351 Rebirth and Karma 358 Karma and Justice 367 Section II: The Lines of Karma The Foundation 379 The Terrestrial Law 386 Mind Nature and Law of Karma 398 The Higher Lines of Karma 413 Appendix I: The Tangle of Karma 427 Appendix II: A Clari®cation 433 Other Writings from the Arya The Question of the Month The Needed Synthesis 439 ªAryaº Ð Its Signi®cance 441 Meditation 445 Different Methods of Writing 448 Occult Knowledge and the Hindu Scriptures 451 The Universal Consciousness 453 The News of the Month The News of the Month 459 South Indian Vaishnava Poetry Andal: The Vaishnava Poetess 465 Nammalwar: The Supreme Vaishnava Saint and Poet 467 Arguments to The Life Divine Arguments to The Life Divine 471 Part Four From the Standard Bearer (1920) Ourselves 509 CONTENTS Part Five From the Bulletin of Physical Education (1949 ± 1950) The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth Message 517 Perfection of the Body 521 The Divine Body 536 Supermind and the Life Divine 558 Supermind and Humanity 568 Supermind in the Evolution 578 Mind of Light 585 Supermind and Mind of Light 588 Part One Essays from the Karmayogin 1909 ± 1910 Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry The Ideal of the Karmayogin NATION is building in India today before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the Aprocess and those who have sympathy and intuition dis- tinguish the forces at work, the materials in use, the lines of the divine architecture. This nation is not a new race raw from the workshop of Nature or created by modern circumstances. One of the oldest races and greatest civilisations on this earth, the most indomitable in vitality, the most fecund in greatness, the deepest in life, the most wonderful in potentiality, after taking into itself numerous sources of strength from foreign strains of blood and other types of human civilisation, is now seeking to lift itself for good into an organised national unity. Formerly a congeries of kindred nations with a single life and a single culture, always by the law of this essential oneness tending to unity, always by its excess of fecundity engender- ing fresh diversities and divisions, it has never yet been able to overcome permanently the almost insuperable obstacles to the organisation of a continent. The time has now come when those obstacles can be overcome. The attempt which our race has been making throughout its long history, it will now make under entirely new circumstances. A keen observer would pre- dict its success because the only important obstacles have been or are in the process of being removed. But we go farther and believe that it is sure to succeed because the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world. This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts its hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing to be discouraged by dif®culties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall con- quer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our 4 Essays from the Karmayogin religion that will purify our heart and inspire our action in the struggle. The task we set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all-important, the dharma, the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exem- plar and missionary. This is the sanatanaÅ dharma, the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has largely lost hold not of the structure of that dharma, but of its living reality. For the religion of India is nothing if it is not lived. It has to be applied not only to life, but to the whole of life; its spirit has to enter into and mould our society, our politics, our literature, our science, our individual character, affections and aspirations. To understand the heart of this dharma, to experience it as a truth, to feel the high emotions to which it rises and to express and execute it in life is what we understand by Karmayoga. We believe that it is to make the yoga the ideal of human life that India rises today; by the yoga she will get the strength to realise her freedom, unity and greatness, by the yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only its shadow and re¯ex. The European sets great store by machinery. He seeks to renovate humanity by schemes of society and systems of government; he hopes to bring about the millennium by an act of Parliament. Machinery is of great importance, but only as a working means for the spirit within, the force behind. The nineteenth century in India aspired to political emancipation, social renovation, religious vision and rebirth, but it failed because it adopted Western motives and methods, ignored the spirit, history and destiny of our race and thought that by taking over The Ideal of the Karmayogin 5 European education, European machinery, European organisation and equipment we should reproduce in ourselves European prosperity, energy and progress. We of the twentieth century reject the aims, ideals and methods of the Anglicised nineteenth precisely because we accept its experience. We refuse to make an idol of the present; we look before and after, backward to the mighty history of our race, forward to the grandiose destiny for which that history has prepared it. We do not believe that our political salvation can be attained by enlargement of Councils, introduction of the elective principle, colonial self-government or any other formula of European politics.

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