I am developing the necessary powers for bringing down the spiritual on the material plane… What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely and entirely every possible source of error and ineffectiveness…   more »

The remains of an ancient gate have pinpointed the location of the biblical city Sha'arayim, say archaeologists working in Israel. In the Bible young David, a future king, is described as battling Goliath in the Elah Valley near Sha'arayim...   more »

…In July 1938 the Yogi-Poet had an assignation with the primordial Night, the Night of Creation. He went to meet her, carrying “God’s deathless light” in his breast. He was aware that this was going to be a very bold and dangerous rendezvous; it was going to be an exceptional and most decisive affair, fraught with possibilities. His fate and hence the fate of the world remained locked in them, in the possibility leading towards earthly deathlessness. So, he the pilgrim-soul made an assignation with the Night. But what was the outcome of that bold and dangerous rendezvous? What had actually transpired in the course of the meeting? But apart from dropping some broad hints, no communiqué was issued. If at all, it seemed that the way was lost and that there was no end to the “weary journeying”. Yet there was hope, there was conviction and certitude that the outcome was going to be a path leading towards immortality. There was the inalienable freedom, and the Yogi-Poet lived in the Spirit’s calm, and was in possession of the vast immobile bliss of the Being. Soon his rooms, all his rooms and the cellars, would get lit up with an endless Light, and rapture would be coursing through his nerves, and through every cell of his body. In a mute blaze of ecstasy, calm and conquering, and steadfastly preserving the “living sense of the Imperishable”, even in the bodily existence, he would proceed towards his goal. That was great indeed, marvellous. If the bodily existence was set ablaze in this way, it meant that there was the wonderful realisation or the siddhi of the Mind of Light in him, that the physical had started receiving the supramental. Sri Aurobindo had definitely moved towards it, a remarkable event, a landmark event in the evolutionary sequence. It is said that Pythagoras had a thigh of gold, and that Vamadeva, after crossing the hundredth year, lived in a golden body for sixteen full years. Something golden had happened in that far past, but now in the collective the Mind of Light has made the body its permanent base, permanent home…   more »

Nobel Prize-winning Indian scientist Rajendra Pachauri and musician Sir Paul McCartney have teamed up to urge people to become vegetarian to save the planet from the greenhouse gases created by rearing livestock...   more »

The Gita reveals that the purpose of the divine Incarnation or coming as an Avatar is to do the divine work, divyam karma. This is not only to destroy evil and establish the righteous Law, but is actually to take the progressive evolutionary march to the next higher stage. Sri Aurobindo came to do that, to bring the Spermind in the terrestrial play and make the divine manifestation here upon earth a possibility. We have to see from whatever has been revealed to us if this is present in his life and in his work. Representation of that work should be the genuine concern for any study of his, including biographical. If this is missed, then that study is a waste of effort and one need not really attach any importance to it. Unfortunately that is precisely what is happening in the case of the latest biography of Sri Aurobindo. However, in this article we shall briefly try to look into some of the aspects of the yogic work carried out by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the work having progressed in formulating a link between Man the Mental Being and the Supramental Race, the Intermediate Race. We shall take as reference point the visit of the heavenly sage Narad to Aswapati as we have in the Book of Fate of Savitri, where certain aspects of it could be contextually discerned. The Book is rich in matters of avataric biographical details and provides the necessary framework to appreciate the issues that are deeply involved in the process...   more »

A less than two degree Celsius rise in global temperatures might be sufficient to spark a meltdown of the Greenland Ice Sheet and Arctic sea ice, the WWF warned in a new study released Thursday...   more »

The phrase “portals of the birth that is a death” is a beautiful description of this sorrowful world, this world of ours, description of our mortal lot, our mortal state, of the conditions in which we make progress through them both together, through birth aided by death. In just a few words, we have here an incomparable picture of this mortal world, mŗtyuloka. Its poetic enchantment is such that the obscurity and the cheerlessness and the falsehood in which we live turn into their happy benign opposites. What we have in this mortal world is the sorry “birth that is a death”. Yet the two together are there to build the House of Life wherein the higher powers of the Spirit could come and dwell. If one knows that, as the Isha Upanishad says, that by which both the Knowledge and the Ignorance are known, then, by the Ignorance one crosses beyond death and by the Knowledge enjoys immortality. Truly enough, Life in the present stage of evolution cannot make progress without Death; Death gives the helping hand, is the supporter of growing Life. As a matter of fact, without Death Life would simply get swallowed up by the large hungry mouth of the Inconscience, the Light quenched by the darkness of the Night. A very astounding process this, and we should really wonder at the wisdom that framed it.   more »