{"id":1971,"date":"2013-07-13T01:38:37","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1971"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:38:37","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:37","slug":"11-philosophy-and-writings-vol-36-autobiographical-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/36-autobiographical-notes\/11-philosophy-and-writings-vol-36-autobiographical-notes","title":{"rendered":"-11_Philosophy and Writings.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n

\n\t\t\tPhilosophy and Writings <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSources of His Philosophy <\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSri Aurobindo’s intellect was influenced by Greek philosophy. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVery little. I read more than once Plato’s Republic and Symposium, but only extracts from his other writings. It is true that under his impress I rashly started writing at the age of 18 an
\nexplanation of the cosmos on the foundation of the principle of Beauty and Harmony, but I never got beyond the first three or
\nfour chapters. I read Epictetus and was interested in the ideas of the Stoics and the Epicureans; but I made no study of Greek
\nphilosophy or of any of the [? ]. I made in fact no study of
\nmetaphysics in my school and College days. What little I knew about philosophy I picked up desultorily in my general reading. I
\nonce read, not Hegel, but a small book on Hegel, but it left no impression on me. Later, in India, I read a book on Bergson, but that
\ntoo ran off “like water from a duck’s back”. I remembered very little of what I had read and absorbed nothing. German metaphysics and most European philosophy since the Greeks seemed to me a mass of abstractions with nothing concrete or real that
\ncould be firmly grasped and written in a metaphysical jargon to which I had not the key. I tried once a translation of Kant but
\ndropped it after the first two pages and never tried again. In India at Baroda I read a “Tractate” of Schopenhauer on the six centres
\nand that seemed to me more interesting. In sum, my interest in metaphysics was almost null, and in general philosophy sporadic. I did not read Berkeley and only [? ] into Hume; Locke
\nleft me very cold. Some general ideas only remained with me.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs to Indian Philosophy, it was a little better, but not much.
\nI made no study of it, but knew the general ideas of the Vedanta philosophies, I knew practically nothing of the others except
\nwhat I had read in Max Muller and in other general accounts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>112<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n

The basic idea of the Self caught me when I was in England. I
\ntried to realise what the Self might be. The first Indian writings that took hold of me were the Upanishads and these raised in me
\na strong enthusiasm and I tried later to translate some of them. The other strong intellectual influence [that] came in India in
\nearly life were the sayings of Ramakrishna and the writings and speeches of Vivekananda, but this was a first introduction to
\nIndian spiritual experience and not as philosophy. They did not, however, carry me to the practice of Yoga: their influence was
\npurely mental.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMy philosophy was formed first by the study of the Upanishads and the Gita; the Veda came later. They were the basis of my first practice of Yoga; I tried to realise what I read in my
\nspiritual experience and succeeded; in fact I was never satisfied till experience came and it was on this experience that later on
\nI founded my philosophy, not on ideas by themselves. I owed nothing in my philosophy to intellectual abstractions, ratiocination or dialectics; when I have used these means it was simply to explain my philosophy and justify it to the intellect of others. The
\nother source of my philosophy was the knowledge that flowed from above when I sat in meditation, especially from the plane of
\nthe Higher Mind when I reached that level; they [the ideas from<\/i> the Higher Mind<\/i>] came down in a mighty flood which swelled
\ninto a sea of direct Knowledge always translating itself into experience, or they were intuitions starting from experience and
\nleading to other intuitions and a corresponding experience. This source was exceedingly catholic and many-sided and all sorts of
\nideas came in which might have belonged to conflicting philosophies but they were here reconciled in a large synthetic whole. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPerseus the Deliverer<\/i>
\n\t\t\t<\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

Polydaon realises his failure \u2014 Poseidon’s failure; . . . he now
\nsupplicates to the new “brilliant god”, and falls back dead. It is left to Perseus, the new god, to sum up the career and
\ndestiny of Polydaon…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>113<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

[Sri Aurobindo struck through “the new god” and wrote:<\/i>] The new brilliant god is the new Poseidon, Olympian and Greek,
\nwho in Polydaon’s vision replaces the terrible old-Mediterranean god of the seas. Perseus is and remains divine-human throughout. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Essays on the Gita<\/i> <\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

[Dharma = devoir <\/i>(duty)] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Devoir is hardly the meaning of the [word]1<\/font><\/sup> Dharma. Performing disinterested[ly] one’s duty is a European misreading of the teaching of the Gita. Dharma in the Gita means the law of
\none’s own essential nature or is described sometimes as action governed by that nature,
\nswabhava<\/i>. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

[The asuric and divine natures complement each other.] <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is not in the teaching of the Gita according to which the two natures are opposed to each other and the Asuric nature
\nhas to be rejected or to fall away by the power and process of the yoga. Sri Aurobindo’s yoga also insists on the rejection of
\nthe darker and lower elements of the nature. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Future Poetry<\/i> <\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The…articles that Sri Aurobindo contributed to Arya <\/i>under the general caption,
\nThe Future Poetry<\/i>, [were] initially
\ninspired by a book of Dr. Cousins’s: in the fullness of time, however, the review became a treatise of over three hundred
\npages of Arya<\/i>. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Altered to:<\/i>] . . . started initially with a review of a book of Dr.
\nCousins’s; but that was only a starting point for a treatise . . . <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was not the intention to make a long review of Cousins’ book,
\nthat was only a starting point; the rest was drawn from Sri Aurobindo’s own ideas and his already conceived view of art and life. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1 MS (dictated) <\/i>phrase  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>114<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n The Mother<\/i> <\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\tMany of the letters that deal mainly with Yoga have now been
\nedited and published in book form. The Riddle of This World<\/i>, Lights on Yoga<\/i>,
\nBases of Yoga<\/i>, and The Mother <\/i>. . . are all the
\nfruits of the Ashram period. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n The Mother <\/i>had not the same origin as the other books mentioned. The main part of this book describing the four Shaktis etc. was written independently and not as a letter, so also the
\nfirst part. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Some Philosophical Topics <\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

These discernable slow gradations \u2014 steps in the spiral of ascent \u2014 are, respectively, Higher Mind, Intuition (or Intuitive
\nMind) and Overmind. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No, what is called intuitive Mind is usually a mixture of true
\nIntuition with ordinary mentality \u2014 it can always admit a mingling of truth and error. Sri Aurobindo therefore avoids the use
\nof this phrase. He distinguishes between Intuition proper and an intuitive human mentality. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t*<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

When war at last becomes a mere nightmare of the past, peace
\nwill indeed reign in our midst, and even our dream of the Life Divine will then become an actuality in the fullness of time. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is not Sri Aurobindo’s view that the evolution of the Life Divine depends on the passing away of war. His view is rather
\nthe opposite.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

He has caught indeed a vision, a vision of the Eternal, a vision of triune glory, a vision in the furthest beyond of transformed
\nSupernature; but the vision is not a reality yet [1944<\/i>]. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Better write “not, on its highest peaks, a concrete embodied
\nreality as yet: something has come down of the power or the influence but not the thing itself, far less its whole.”
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>115<\/font><\/p>\n

\t\t<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philosophy and Writings   Sources of His Philosophy   Sri Aurobindo’s intellect was influenced by Greek philosophy.   Very little. I read more than once…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-36-autobiographical-notes","wpcat-42-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}