Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
Vedic Unity: Taadatmya तादात्म्य
तादात्म्य is made of two words तत् and आत्म्य
It means having that or tat as one’s self or atma. The lover becomes one with the beloved, the bhakta with the Ishvara, the dhyani with the universe
We may say that it is not specifically mentioned in the Rig Veda. But we see instances of it throughout the Veda, in the Devi Suktam, the Purusha Suktam and in the famous realization Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vedanti (RV 1.164.46)
But, it is obvious that this identity or oneness or essential unity एकत्व or तादात्म्य is the foundation of the Rig Veda and may be experienced right from the first rik of the Veda
If we realize this then tadatmya तादात्म्य is not felt only at the end but right from the beginning through and through to the end
It is the central motif of the Veda and that is the true adhyatmik dimension of the Veda
https://x.com/AmazingVedas/status/2095364270502416827
Veda as Vedanta Living and Singing
Let me try a Vedantic example to show how the adhyatmik emerges out of the beautiful poetry of the Veda
This is a thought experiment
Imagine you are the water in the body of the ocean. How do you see a wave? Or shall we say, you yourself as a wave?
Language collapses, doesn’t it? Now only poetry or music can describe the experience of the water that is you. It is you but you have taken a particular form and movement, आकार-गति
Are you with me so far? There is no difference between the water and the wave except that the water has taken a unique appearance within the body of the water
Thus, the adhyatmik insight no longer separates the seer and the seen, the knower and known. The seer is the seen. The knower is the known. Agni and Mitra are all the unfolding of a Reality that is One. Does this make sense?
https://x.com/AmazingVedas/status/2095020697399501115
Bhubaneswar, Odisha: On how Indian philosophy should be incorporated into education today, Gitanjali Angmo, wife of Activist Sonam Wangchuk, says, "I teach the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Gita in the light of Sri Aurobindo, so I don't say this lightly. If we go into the depth of these texts—like Nyaya and Vaisheshika—they talk about reality and logic. Where do children learn about our nine systems of philosophy? They should learn them, shouldn't they? If we study logic, why don't we study Nyaya? If we study quantum physics, why not Vaisheshika? If we study philosophy, why not Advaita Vedanta? Why do we only read Western philosophers? These are some of the issues that I think are essential in education system reform. Only then can we defeat this polarization and mindset—if every child, from kindergarten onwards, understands and assimilates all philosophies, and then chooses which philosophy to follow..."
https://x.com/ians_india/status/2095362057428418757
The Unslayable Cow: Symbol of Wealth, Rays of Light & Infinite Consciousness. With Richard Hartz explore Sri Aurobindo’s hidden meaning in the Vedas. Watch youtu.be/HYlQnQcE5Ak?si… @MakrandParanspe @PariksithSingh @AmazingVedas
https://x.com/sriaurobindochr/status/2095255946478157844
What did Sri Aurobindo discover in Vamadeva’s hymns? Explore his mystical interpretation of the Rig Veda’s Fourth Mandala & its profound symbolism, hidden meanings, & vision of consciousness with Richard Hartz youtu.be/MLzVIYJF3mA?si… @MakrandParanspe @PariksithSingh @AmazingVedas
https://x.com/sriaurobindochr/status/2095210899674116440
What if the Vedas hide a deeper truth? In discussion with @MakrandParanspe, Richard Hartz explores Sri Aurobindo’s The Secret of the Veda—and how symbolism unlocks meanings beyond the literal. youtu.be/C5uOoXuvz9A?si… @PariksithSingh @AmazingVedas
https://x.com/sriaurobindochr/status/2095134899011522681
Poetic Influences on the Development of Aurobindo's Spiritual and Nationalistic Convictions
Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary ontology of consciousness
Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary ontology of consciousness
Matthijs Cornelissen
Consciousness, Indian psychology and yoga, 11-52, 2004
Sri Aurobindo sees evolution primarily as an ongoing evolution of consciousness. He holds that the human mind is much too imperfect a type of consciousness to be the final resting point of nature, and that just as life developed out of matter, and mind out of life, a still higher form of consciousness is bound to develop out of the mind. For his evolutionary ontology of consciousness, Sri Aurobindo bases himself on the Vedântic view of consciousness, which says that consciousness is pervasive throughout reality and that it manifests as a range of ever higher gradations of consciousness and being. In matter, consciousness is fully engrossed in its own existence and shows itself only as matter’s habit of form and its tendency to obey fixed laws. In plant and animal life, consciousness begins to emancipate a little, there are the first signs of exchange, of giving and taking, of feelings, drives and emotions. In the human mind we see a further emancipation of consciousness in the first appearance of an ability to “play with ideas in one’s mind” and to rise above the immediate situation. The mind is characteristically the plane of objective, generalized statements, ideas, thoughts, intelligence, etc. But the mind is also an inveterate divider, making distinctions between subject and object, I and thou, things and other things.
Within the Vedic tradition, the ordinary human mentality is considered to be only the most primitive form of mental consciousness, most ego-bound, most dependent on the physical senses. Above it there is the unitary Higher Mind of self-revealed wisdom, the Illumined Mind where truths are seen rather than thought, the plane of the Intuitive Mind where truth is inevitable and perfect, and finally the cosmic Overmind, the mind of the Gods, comprehensive, allencompassing. But in all these mental planes, however far beyond our ordinary mentality, there is still a trace of division, the possibility of discord and disharmony. One has to rise beyond all of them to find a truly Gnostic consciousness, intrinsically harmonious, perfect, one with the divine consciousness that upholds the universe. Many spiritual traditions have claimed that it is possible to connect or even merge with an absolute consciousness beyond mind, but, according to Sri Aurobindo, it is at this moment...
Sri Aurobindo as a Critic
Indeed, Aurobindo is mostly known as a philosopher and a poet, but his stature as critic remains somewhat unassessed—and deeply undervalued—and perhaps overshadowed by the unsurpassed brilliance and originality of his work in other areas.2 Whatever the merits of the three long essays in Significance of Indian Art, this volatile document shows Aurobindo’s successful attempt to offer his interpretation of Indian art based on his theory of the expansion of consciousness and the Indian idea of rasa-bhava-ananda, derived from Bharata’s Natya Shastra.3 Aurobindo has used these ideas in The Future Poetry (1917–20) on a larger scale, but this time the subject is the English language and literature, especially poetry. One must say unhesitatingly that The Future Poetry is an important and unique document in literary history and critical theory. In the introductory essay, Aurobindo straightforwardly and candidly refers to his reading of James Cousins’s New Ways in English Literature, that possibly provided the imrnediate context to a series of essays in the Arya.4 Aurobindo admits that since his “departure from England quarter of a century ago” all connections with contemporary English literature had come to “a dead stop” and that he had kept abreast only with contemporary continental literature. His last discovery of a poet in English literature, states Aurobindo, was Meredith.5
Aurobindonian Rhetoric and the Problem of Evaluation
During the post-independence era, Indian poets writing in English showed serious issues with Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual poetry; particularly its language. They felt that the language he used in his poetry did not qualify as poetic. However, their dismissal of Sri Aurobindo as a poet took the form of scathing, virulent criticisms; by means of which they attempted to mould the aesthetic taste of the budding generation of poets in India. In this paper, I attempt to discuss the problems as well as possibilities involved in interpreting poetry in general and in appreciating Aurobindonian poetry in particular. The paper does not intend to blindly justify Aurobindonian rhetoric. However, it does provide an insight into the ideational models which led Sri Aurobindo to create his unique body of poetry. In so doing, the paper tries to explore the possibilities of aesthetic tolerance which might enable Sri Aurobindo’s poetry to reach out and speak for its own; instead of being written off and pushed into oblivion by the systemic politics practised by the first generation of modern Indian English poets.
Sri Aurobindo As a Dramatist: A Critical Exploration
Ethical skepticism in the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo
Ethical skepticism in the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo
Stephen Phillips
Indian Ethics: Classical Traditions and Contemporary Challenges: Volume I 1, 48, 2017
Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950), a yogin and spiritual teacher as well as a nationalist politician of prominence, wrote widely. With a career that began as a speechwriter and journalist, Aurobindo became a philosopher and poet after varied efforts as newspaper editor and polemicist urging the end of British rule. In his forties, he dropped out of politics to give, by his own account, his entire attention to yoga. As a philosopher, Aurobindo advocates a mystical summum bonum along the lines of the classical schools of Yoga and Vedānta. But he adds a rather original cosmology, claiming sensitivity to science. He puts forth a metaphysics best classified as a modern Vedāntic theism or neo-Vedānta.
Aurobindo's ethical teaching is not, however, what one might expect from a modern guru in the neo-Vedāntic mold. He does not subscribe to a divine command theory. He recognizes no scripture or'śāstra'as valid. Moreover, Aurobindo is no deontologist, no upholder of general duties, except in a slim sense that I shall try to explain. Nor does he endorse a teleological ethics, although it would be legitimate to say that, according to him, actions and practices do, for certain people at certain times, derive their worth in relation to a supreme good. This would be mystical experience of the one, Brahman, and spiritual transformation by Brahman's 'Shakti,' bringing about a spiritual life. And while it is possible to read Aurobindo as a hedonist-pleasure as a form of ānanda, Brahman's nature as 'bliss,' motivating in various forms all action his hedonism is strictly a psychological thesis, not an ethical theory. Aurobindo expressly denies an ethics of general utility, despite his psychological hedonism. He argues that pleasure, to include the bliss of mystical experience, typically trumps morality in life and action, moral injunctions being social and practical expediencies.
The Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: Its Epistemological and Conceptive Significance
The Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: Its Epistemological and Conceptive Significance
Ramchandra Trivedi
East and West 21 (1/2), 137-154, 1971
Sri Aurobindo, a recent Indian mystico-philosopher has propounded, for the first time in the history of Vedantism, a full-fledged philosophy of the world (1). Combining the modern evolutionary thought with the supramental experience of All is Brahman, which forms the basis or the standpoint of his philosophy, he conceives the whole scheme of the world, or, to speak in his language, the Divine Plan of the World. In this scheme or the Divine Plan of the world he seeks to answer the agelong philosophical questions about the nature of the world, viz., how has the world been created, why has it been created and where lies its destination. If we make a philosophical analysis of the conceptions constituting the answers to these questions, we find that these conceptions possess metaphysical significances on account of their epistemological or supramental significances, and that their metaphysical significances have conceptive significances and not objective significances. Accor i1)
It may be noted that the old vedantic philosophers, whether of the Upanisads or those who followed the upanisadic line of thinking, were not so much interested in speaking about the how, why and wherefore of the evolution of the universe as they were interested in showing the ultimate reality of it and the ways and means to realize that reality. Gaudapada and Samkara, the two great acaryas of the advaitic line of vedantic philosophy, even went to the extent of saying that the only purpose of the sruti passages dealing with the creation of the universe is not to explain the how, why and wherefore of the universe but to direct our attention beyond the fact of creation of the world to the knowledge of Brahman, because it is this knowledge which alone will carry us beyond the samsara (see Gaudapada-Karika, 3, 15 and Samkara's Commentary on Brahma-Sutras, 2, 1.27). Even, among all the upanisadic theories of creation, the commonly accepted theory of creation only says, as we know, that the universe originates from Brahman and dissolves into Brahman, and that the processes of origination and dissolution of the universe constitute, respectively, the process of successive origination of the physical principles of ether, air, fire, water and earth from Brahman and the process of successive dissolution of them in the reverse order of it into Brahman. It, thus, speaks neither about the evolution of the principles of Life and Mind in the universe, nor about the destination of the universe.
In the context of the present evolutionary thinking, the theory, therefore, remains incomplete and unsatisfactory. Dominated by the practical aim of realization of the spiritual Reality of Existence, no systematic thinking was, therefore, done by the vedantic philosophers to propound a full-fledged philosophy of the universe. It is to the credit of Sri Aurobindo that he, being a product of the modern age of evolutionary thinking, realized this lacuna in the vedantic philosophy and fullfilled it by propounding a full-fledged philosophy of the universe. Combining the practical and philosophical interests, he looks at philosophy not as a means of realizing the Reality of the Existence alone but also as a means of realizing the spiritual and supramental transformation of the human-existence itself upon the earth, ie, to realize The Life Divine or The Divine Life upon Earth. Philosophy, in its true sense, is not only a discovery of the reality of Existence and the discovery of the ways and means to realize that Reality, but is also a discovery of the how, why and wherefore of the evolution of the universe. And, therefore, it is in the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo that the vedantic philosophy, especially the philosophy of …
From the self to the Self: An exposition on personality based on the works of Sri Aurobindo
Having undergone many twists and turns in my life, many ups and downs, I have often wondered whether crucial events in my life which have been turning points, occurred merely by chance or accident or there was and continues to be a deeper meaning, some sort of a design which existed from the time of my birth, and which the course of my life has been following. For many years, I held the view that significant life events occurred due to chance factors–what I perceived as a crisis, I attempted to account for on the basis of external considerations. But for some time now I have been getting more and more convinced that these turning points in my life were so because of the workings of an inner being within the core of my existence, self or personality. It is this entity located deep within myself which has always been guiding me, and making me react and experience in ways which eventually lead to my growth.
MYSTICISM AND THE FUTURE: THE RELEVANCE OF SRI AUROBINDO'S VISION IN A GLOBAL YOGIC AGE
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