The one who belongs to Narakoti approaches confidently the one who is of the Ishwarkoti, the soul of Man in its quest of delight the soul of the Divine. We have the Vedic picture of Kutsa and Indra riding the same chariot towards heaven of the gods. The Two Birds unmistakably demonstrates that the path chosen by Amal Kiran is aesthetic-spiritual rather than that of an austere Tapasvin of the bygone days, and that it has taken him to the courtyard of the Beautiful who is also the Truthful and the Joyous. That is a great success indeed in the direction of future poetry as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo.

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The Word was broken up into four quartrers,
And the articulate voice flowed in the streams,
And the seeing sound pierced the hill of substance,
And Agni took Speech for his glowing bride;
Therefore the tongues of fire eat the honey-food.

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I have understood that if the Supreme Consciousness had for one single minute the kind of consciousness that men have, the world would be dissolved; there would be no world any more! Deception and attempts at deception are taken almost everywhere as goodwill. These are not discoveries, but things that I saw, seen occasionally. That is to say, we see nothing as it is. There is only one safety: to cling to the Divine, an aspiration, as sincere an aspiration as possible, and to cling to that. It is that now the body, the consciousness of the body, knows in advance. But it does not know the spirit in which it is done. It is very strange. I am there, without moving, trying to belong to the Divine alone, and then things happen. Nothing surprises this body, it seems to know. Strange. A kind of universalisation.

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The Bengal tiger is one of the better protected varieties—but even that is in trouble. The cost of keeping tigers alive in the wild is about $80m (£50m) per year, say conservationists—but only about $50m (£30m) per year is being pledged. The figures come from a new assessment that suggests targeting efforts in 42 selected breeding sites. Building tiger populations in these sites would enable other areas to be re-populated later. About 3,500 tigers remain in the wild, and only about 1,000 breeding females.

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Srimad Bhagavatam is a comprehensive blend Of Bhakti, Jnana, and Vairagya and is considered as one of greatest books of Bhakti in our tradition. Immensely popular all over India, it has inspired poets, saints and artists, as it provides a great range of material for their art.

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Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust does not approve and has nothing to do with the book entitled The Lives of Sri Aurobindo written by Peter Heehs and Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust is not in any way responsible for the contents or the interpretations of the material contained therein…

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Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

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It is often assumed that Sufism stands opposed to Wahhabism. Wrong. Sufism and Wahhabism, in fact, share a fatal characteristic—they are religions of the status quo. In Pakistan, Sufism legitimises barbarities of inequality and starvation—‘do nothing, it’s god’s will’—while at the same time justifying structures of oppressive power, Pirism and landlordism, rather like Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. Contemporary Sufism, rather than being a solution to Pakistan’s problems, is the cause.

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In this thick book, the author has attempted to trace the life history of Sri Aurobindo. He has divided Sri Aurobindo’s life chronologically into various compartments like birth, childhood, youth, adulthood, retirement and death. He has also divided his life as life in Bengal, life in England, life in Baroda, life in Calcutta, and life in Pondicherry. He again divides his life into school life, revolutionary life, conjugal or sexual life, and spiritual life. That is why the author seems to have chosen the title of this book as The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. The author uses several archival sources, interviews and secondary sources in order to describe the various or varied lives of Sri Aurobindo as he understands it.

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In the silence of the pregnant Unknown
He rests, a faint glimmering ridge of Thought
Where eternity steps into mortal time.

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There is a rush of adverse forces. A mad rush. But the Response has started coming—it is just a small beginning. It is a terrible onrush of Falsehood. It was a mad fury of disagreeable things, truly wicked and bad and destructive. Then this feeling came in the whole body, in all the cells, everywhere, all the while, until everything got the understanding: I exist only through the Divine. No, it is not true, that the destiny is bad. This is part of the Falsehood. There is no bad destiny. One must rise above. Truth, it is the only remedy: To exist only for the Divine. There you are. It is That in spite of everything: the Divine, the Divine alone. The body has learnt that it is what it is, because it is that by the divine Will. The body has understood: it is the divine Will. And it will be what it should be only the day it feels that there is no difference between itself and the Divine. All the rest is falsehood. There is only one reality, there is only one life, there is only one consciousness: the Divine.

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Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan, but this is no alien creation. The designs have been cleverly planted. Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different color rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields. As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.

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Uddhava raises an interesting question. He says that when death and rebirth are talked about, neither the soul (Self, Atman) nor the body is capable of rebirth because the soul is deathless and the body gets disintegrated upon death and stands no chance of revival. Yet birth and death are real. Then which entity, he asks Krishna, undergoes the process of death and rebirth—if neither the body nor the soul is reborn?

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"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied—
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

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A $2 billion machine that will jump-start the search for antimatter and other phenomena was loaded onto a massive US Air Force plane Wednesday for the final leg of its journey on Earth before it catches the last scheduled shuttle flight into space.

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An international team of scientists led by groups from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, and from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has used ultrashort flashes of laser light to directly observe the movement of an atom’s outer electrons for the first time.

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His the bliss breaking the leaden walls of night,
His the knowledge breathing in the golden womb;
A honey-cup of blaze one with holocaust supreme,
A single-pointed seer-flame that drinks by the brow
The mystic waters of the truth-conscious Sun!

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If the Lord wants success for us, it can be something tremendous. There is the possibility of it, here. But has the moment come? I leave it to the Lord. There is the Will that is coming down and then there are all these formations. I would like my atmosphere to be a limpid transmitter. The very first thing is to make the instruments limpid. And there is an aspiration for the true Victory. There is the possibility of the Victory. It is the intervention of the Supreme Wisdom. There is no room for pessimism which is the demon’s weapon. But if what I see as possible is realised, it will be truly a decisive victory over the adverse forces.

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As a Journalist, from Washington Post I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing many famous people from Paris Hilton to Oprah Winfrey; but this experience of my interviewing Kalaivani near the Mylapore Karpagambal Temple in South India, is unique indeed. Come with me to share my few minutes with this wonderful girl. There was this girl Kalaivani, standing next to the cashier, sincerely watching all our movements, a black girl, should be from a nearby village, might be 17 or 18, should not have crossed 8th Std. Might be out of poverty she is here. All my journalist's brain unnecessarily calculated about this Gullible Girl, and though she was repeatedly watching me, I ignored her and started searching for Tatva Bodha.

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Krishna teaches Uddhava the process of meditating upon him. A Yogi practising meditation regularly with intense devotion rises above all limitations of knowledge and action by realizing the one all pervading reality. Krishna says that while practising such yoga, many occult or mystic powers accrue to the devotee, but makes it clear that they are all obstacles to the union with him.

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