ESSAYS DIVINE AND HUMAN

 

 

 

CONTENTS  

 

Pre-content

 

 

 

Part One

Essays Divine and Human

 

Section One (circa 1911)

 

Certitudes

Moksha

Man

Philosophy

The Siddhis

The Psychology of Yoga

 

 

 

Section Two (1910 ­ 1913)

 

Na Kinchidapi Chintayet

The Sources of Poetry

The Interpretation of Scripture

On Original Thinking

The Balance of Justice

Social Reform

Hinduism and the Mission of India

 

The Psychology of Yoga

 

The Claims of Theosophy

Science and Religion in Theosophy

Sat

Sachchidananda

The Silence behind Life

 

 

 

Section Three (circa 1913)

 

The Psychology of Yoga

Initial Definitions and Descriptions

The Object of Our Yoga

 

Purna Yoga

I. The Entire Purpose of Yoga

II. Parabrahman, Mukti and Human Thought-Systems

III. Parabrahman and Parapurusha

 

Natural and Supernatural Man

The Evolutionary Aim in Yoga

The Fullness of Yoga—In Condition

Nature

Maya

 

 

 

Section Four (1914 ­ 1919)

 

The Beginning and the End

The Hour of God

Beyond Good and Evil

The Divine Superman

 

 

Section Five (1927 and after)

 

The Law of the Way

Man and the Supermind

The Involved and Evolving Godhead

The Evolution of Consciousness

The Path

 

 

 

 

Part Two

From Man to Superman: Notes and Fragments on Philosophy, Psychology and Yoga

 

Section One. Philosophy: God, Nature and Man

 

God: The One Reality

Nature: The World-Manifestation

Man and Superman

 

 

Section Two. Psychology: The Science of Consciousness

 

The Problem of Consciousness

Consciousness and the Inconscient

The Science of Consciousness

 

 

Section Three. Yoga: Change of Consciousness and Transformation of Nature

 

The Way of Yoga

Partial Systems of Yoga

Integral Yoga

 

 

 

Part Three

Notes and Fragments on Various Subjects

 

 

Section One. The Human Being in Time

 

The Marbles of Time

A Theory of the Human Being

A Cyclical Theory of Evolution

 

 

Section Two. The East and the West

 

A Misunderstanding of Continents

Towards Unification

China, Japan and India

 

 

Section Three. India

 

Renascent India

Where We Stand in Literature

 

 

 

Section Four. Genius, Poetry, Beauty

 

The Origin of Genius

Poetic Genius

The Voices of the Poets

Pensées

A Dream

The Beauty of a Crow's Wings

 

 

Section Five. Science, Religion, Reason, Justice

 

Science

Religion

Reason and Society

Justice

 

 

 

Part Four

Thoughts and Aphorisms

 

Jnana

Karma

Bhakti

Additional Aphorisms

 

 

 

NOTE ON THE TEXTS

 

 


VOLUME 12

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO

© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1997

Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department

Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry

PRINTED IN INDIA  


Essays Divine and Human

 

Writings from Manuscripts

 

1910 ­ 1950    


Publisher's Note

 

Essays Divine and Human consists of short prose pieces written by Sri Aurobindo after his arrival in Pondicherry in 1910 but not published before his passing in 1950. Short prose works written during the same period and published during his lifetime appear in Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, volume 13 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO.

There are indications in Sri Aurobindo's Pondicherry note books that he intended to bring out a collection of essays on yoga and other subjects. The headings written above two pieces, "Essays Divine and Human" and "Essays—Human and Divine", seem to have been intended as possible titles for this proposed book. The editors have chosen the first of these to be the title of the present volume.

 

The material has been arranged in four parts:

I. Essays Divine and Human—complete essays on yoga and related subjects, arranged in five chronological sections.

II. From Man to Superman: Notes and Fragments on Philosophy, Psychology and Yoga, arranged in three thematic sections.

III. Notes and Fragments on Various Subjects, arranged in five thematic sections.

IV. Thoughts and Aphorisms, as arranged by the author in three sections, with a section of additional aphorisms.

 

All the writings in this book have been reproduced from Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts. He did not prepare any of them for publication and left many in an unfinished state. Simple editorial problems arising from illegibility, incomplete revision, etc. are indicated by means of the system explained in the Guide to Editorial Notation on the next page. More complex problems are discussed in the reference volume.  

 


Guide to Editorial Notation

 

The contents of this volume were never prepared by Sri Aurobindo for publication. They have been transcribed from manuscripts that present a variety of textual difficulties. As far as possible the editors have indicated these problems by means of the notation shown below.

 

Notation

Textual Problem

[?word]

Doubtful reading

[...]

Illegible word(s), one group of three spaced dots for each presumed word

[.......]

Word(s) lost by mutilation of the manuscript (at the beginning of a piece, indicates that a page or pages of the manuscript have been lost)

[word]

Word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to the manuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors

[? ]

Word(s) omitted by the author that could not be supplied by the editors

[ ]

Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill

[note]

Situations requiring textual explication; all such information is printed in italics

 

Some textual situations requiring editorial intervention could not be handled by the above system. Such cases are discussed or tabulated in the reference volume (volume 35).