Tamil owes not only many of its most common terms but whole families of words to the original Aryan speech

Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Supplement Volume-27 > The Origins Of Aryan Speech Sri Aurobindo The Mother The Ashram Early disciples Artists Music Messages Insights E-Library Related Links SAA Mail Help Brief Introduction Political Life Spiritual Life The Teaching 15th Aug 1947 Works of Sri Aurobindo Search-Works of Sri Aurobindo Brief Introduction The Mother As An Artist Works of The Mother Search-Works of The Mother Frequently Asked Questions Important Dates in The Ashram Organisation Departments Living in the Ashram Relations with others Samadhi The Character of the Ashram Work in the Ashram About Departments Art Gallery Auroboutique Ayurvedic Section Bureau Central Electric and Water Service Embroidery Section Guest Houses Library Physical Education Department Philatelic Department Photo Section SABDA Sanskrit Department School for Perfect Eye Sight Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Theatre, Dance And Music Halls Transport - Sri Aurobindo Autocare Services Nolini Kanta Gupta A B Purani Pavitra Champaklal Sahana Devi Pujalal Satyendra Thakore Ganapatram Chidanandam Dr. Rajangam Kanailal Ganguly Kodandarama Rao Maganbhai Desai Mrityunjoy Romen Palit Shanti Doshi Shivabhai Amin Champaklal Janina Sanjiban The Mother's Music Sunil Mohan Mistry Recitations-Savitri Darshan Messages New Year Messages Beauty, Art and Yoga Art of Living Calligraphy Human Relations Other Subjects Religion And Philanthrophy Simple Life Speech Wastage Work Works of Sri Aurobindo Works of The Mother-English Works of The Mother-French Works of Disciples Bande Mataram_Volume-01 Karmayogin_Volume-02 The Harmony of Virtue_Volume-03 Writings in Bengali_Volume-04 Collected Poems_Volume-05 Collected Plays Part-I_Volume-06 Collected Plays Part-II_Volume-07 Translations_Volume-08 Future Poetry_Volume-09 The Secret of the Veda_Volume-10 Hymns to the Mystic Fire_Volume-11 The Upanishad_Volume-12 Essays on the Gita-Volume-13 Foundation of Indian Culture_Volume-14 Social and Political Thought_Volume-15 Supramental Manifestation_Volume-16 The Hour of God_Volume-17 The Life Divine_Volume-18 The Life Divine_Volume-19 Synthesis of Yoga_Volume-20 Synthesis of Yoga_Volume-21 Letters on Yoga_Volume-22-23-24 The Mother_Volume-25 On Himself_Volume-26 Supplement_Volume-27 Savitri_Volume-28 Savitri_Volume-29 Index and Glossary Volume-30 Prayers and Meditations_Volume-01 Words of Long Ago_Volume-02 Questions and Answers_Volume-03 Questions and Answers_Volume-04 Questions and Answers_Volume-05 Questions and Answers_Volume-06 Questions and Answers_Volume-07 Questions and Answers_Volume-08 Questions and Answers_Volume-09 On Thoughts and Aphorisms_Volume-10 Notes on The Way_Volume-11 On Education_Volume-12 Words of The Mother_Volume-13 Words of The Mother_Volume-14 Words of The Mother_Volume-15 Some Answers from The Mother_Volume-16 More Answers from The Mother_Volume-17 Prayers and Meditations in French_Volume-01 Words of Long Ago in French_Volume-02 Entretiens-1929-31_Volume-03 Entretiens-1950-51_Volume-04 Entretiens 1953_Volume-05 Entretiens-1954_Volume-06 Entretiens -1955_Volume-07 Entretiens-1956_Volume-08 Entretiens-1957_Volume-09 Entretiens-1958_Volume-10 On Thoughts and Aphorisms in French_Volume-11 Notes sur Le Chemin_Volume-12 Education in French_Volume-13 Words of The Mother in French-I_Volume-14 Words of The Mother in French-II_Volume-15 Words of The Mother in French-III_Volume-16 Some Answers from The Mother in French-I_Volume-17 Some Answers from The Mother in French-II_Volume-18 Nolini Kanta Gupta A B Purani Pavitra Amrita Champaklal Nirodbaran Kireet Joshi Copyright © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1990-2023

The Origins of Aryan Speech

IN THAT pregnant period of European knowledge when physical Science, turned suddenly towards its full strength was preparing to open for itself the new views, new paths and new instruments of discovery which have led to the astonishing results of the nineteenth century, an opportunity was offered to the European mind for a similar mastery of sciences other than physical. The Sanscrit language was discovered. It was at first imagined and expected that this discovery would lead to results as important as those which flowed from the discovery of Greek literature by Western Europe after the fall of Constantinople. But these expectations have remained unfulfilled. European knowledge has followed other paths and the seed of the nineteenth century has been Newton's apple and not Sir William Jones' Shakuntala or the first edition of the Vedas. The discovery of Sanscrit has, it is true, had a considerable effect on the socalled sciences of Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology, Science of Religion, ethnology and sociology; but these branches of knowledge are not sciences, they are systematised speculations. Their particular conclusions often change from generation to generation and none of them, not even the most certain, have the same cast of certainty as a scientific generalisation in the domain of physical enquiry. The law of gravitation is a permanent truth of science; the law that all myths start from the sun, the law of Solarisation, if I may so call it, is an ingenious error which survives at all because it pleases the poetic imagination.

So great has been the failure that the possibility, even, of a Science of speech has been too readily scouted. But this is an excessive deduction, the reaction of disappointed expectation has exaggerated the meaning of the failure. To say that there can be no science of speech is to say that the movements of the mind are not governed by intelligible processes, but rather by an in- calculable caprice - a supposition that cannot be admitted.

towards a science of languages. Even the classification of tongues as Aryan, Dravidian, Semitic cannot be called scientific; it is empirical and depends upon identities which my not be fundamental. We must go deeper. European philology has started from word-identities and identities of final word -meaning. I propose to start from root-identities and identities of original and derivative root -meaning and even from sound-identities and identities of fundamental and applicatory sound -meaning. It is, I believe, possible in this way to establish the unity of the Aryan tongues and some at least of the laws governing the birth and development of Aryan speech. My enquiry does not carry me farther. I do not pretend as yet to make out the laws of speech - but only to establish from data, some facts of Aryan speech which may eventually help in solving the wider problem.

In another respect also the philologists seem to me to have misunderstood the conditions of their enquiry. They have been not rigid enough and yet too rigid. They have been too rigid in not allowing for the flexibility of mind movements. They have sought for the same invariable sequence which we observe in the physical world and admitted a law only where such sequence seemed to occur. The laws of physical formation follow a fixed line and their variations even are...a fixed fashion. But with the growth of life in matter there comes a growing element of freedom, of a more elusive principle and a more elastic variation; for this reason science has found life more difficult to fathom and analyse than matter and her triumphs here have been far less notable than in the pure physical domain. Mind brings with it a still freer play, a still more elusive principle and flexible application. A general law always obtains, but the application, the particular processes…. .more subtly and are more numerous. Science, not taking into account this law of increasing freedom, has in the domain of mind accomplished little or nothing. When we deal with the laws of speech, we must remember this flexibility of all mind processes. We must ourselves keep a flexible mind to follow it and an open eye for all variations. It is for regularity in irregularity that one must always be on the watch, not for a fixed or a continuous regularity. On the other hand the few laws which Philology has admitted have been, by a sort of false compensation for their original narrowness, used with too free and even lax a play of fancy. Often indeed instead of working as a law, the philological principle presents itself as an ingenious means for inventing word-identities.

I have disregarded as any other error of imperfect enquiry the rigid philological divorce of the Dravidian and Aryan languages. Whether there be a separate Dravidian stock or no, it is to me a certainty that Tamil owes not only many of its most common terms but whole families of words to the original Aryan speech. Its evidences cannot be neglected in such an enquiry as I have undertaken, for they are of the greatest importance. Indeed the theory worked out by us took its rise originally not from any analysis of the Sanscrit word-system, but from an observation of the relations of Tamil in its non-concretised element to the Greek, Latin and North Indian languages. At the same time it is on an analysis of the Sanscrit word-system that I have chiefly relied. I have omitted from that system most of its Vedic elements. The meanings of Vedic words are often extremely disputable and it would be unsafe to rely whether on the significances fixed by the European scholars or on those fixed centuries ago by Sayana or even by Yaska. It is better, and quite sufficient for the immediate purpose, to rely upon the classical tongue with its undoubted and well-ascertained meanings.

These are the lines upon which I have conducted my enquiry. The full proof of the results arrived at depends upon a larger labour of minute classification both of root-families and word- families in all the greater Aryan tongues, - a labour which is already in process, but is not yet complete. What I have written in this book, will, I hope, be judged sufficient for a secure foundation. If it does no more, it may possibly lead to a deeper and freer approach to the problem of the origin of speech, which, once undertaken in the right spirit and with an eye for the more subtle clues, cannot fail to lead to a discovery of the first importance to human thought and knowledge. Page-165 Home

The utility of the Asuras for Brahman’s purpose

My Asuric Tendencies from The Stumbling Mystic by ned ...the newly published book Integral Psychology: Yoga, Growth, and Opening the Heart, by Brant Cortright, who is also a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

This is a book written in a wonderfully clear and mentally accessible way, and is based on the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Cortright explains that Sri Aurobindo makes a crucial distinction between the aspiration of the psychic being, and the ego-desire of the vital being. Aspiration is what opens us up to the Infinite, whereas desire is what resists or blocks the expansion or opening of the heart. Yet, desire also has its purpose in evolution. It is often desire that, in seeking its own satisfaction and failing to find it, that opens us up to the Divine. The rajasic passions can cut through the tamas (inertia) in the physical consciousness and open up a window into the Godhead. Hence Sri Aurobindo’s statement: “Desire is the helper, desire is the bar.”

At the relative level, neither perfect satisfaction nor perfect renunciation of desire is possible. So this is the miserable state in which humanity finds itself — neither being able to give up desire totally, nor being able to satisfy it totally at this level. The solution is to transcend desire and enter a state of consciousness in which desire is subsumed by the self-giving of the psychic being. At this level we are immersed in the Infinite where all abundance resides and nothing is scarce. Our capacity for love is no longer perverted by our animal need for survival. Thus desire quite literally vanishes. Sri Aurobindo sums it up thus:

Only by perfect renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the utter embrace of God be experienced; for in both ways the essential precondition is effected, — desire perishes.

Paradoxically the way to deal with and transmute desire is to put it in the context of the Divine. To be totally vulnerable with the Divine, without shame, to say, in the words of the Mother, “My Lord, my Lord, it is like this, it is like this.” I view my desires as tributaries that ultimately flow into the same Ocean of vastness. With this approach I am able to offer up my desires as a sacrifice. It is not I who can change myself or transmute my desires personally. The Divine himself will work out the sadhana in us and transform us. However, this is only going to happen with our willing consent. Those are the rules of the game; it’s all about a truly terrifying freedom, trust, and intimacy in the end.

Meaningless legacy of a patriarchal Bodiless God

Robert E. Wilkinson - robtw@sprynet.com said...3:18 AM, November 13, 2007

In every system of higher knowledge there is one ubiquitous principle found at its core. It may be called “the Law of Three” for it expresses an irreducible truth that at the heart of the creation lies a tripartite harmony of energy or “seed” from which the entire cosmos evolves. The three principle gods of India, the “Trimurti” of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are representative of this essential truth and reflect its supreme importance. The ancient tradition of Ayurveda honors this essential harmony of Three as the “Tridoshas” (the three energies), the primary factors of the human body that govern our health. In the Bhagavad Gita this occult knowledge is described as the “Three Gunas” and is extolled by Krishna as the basis of an Ultimate Wisdom. In Christianity this eternal formula is simply known as the “Trinity of God.”

In more modern times this sublime principle was appropriated by the philosopher Hegel to describe his dialectical process of Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. It was re-discovered by the 20th century mathematician/scientist, Peter Plichta who wrote:

'My thoughts then turned once more to theoretical physics. In this science coincidence has been accorded the status of a demi-god, From the - so apparent - coincidence of all processes in the electron cloud it was rashly inferred that all processes in the universe were caused by coincidence. A comfortable substitute had thus been found for God. From the natural constants to the human mind - everything is a coincidence.' (p-86)

'...[But]the origin of life cannot be explained by linear random chains...and that is precisely what the proponents of quantum mechanics have failed to understand from the very outset."

'...It was becoming increasingly clear to me that the same natural law [the law of 3], must be at the foundation of all three natural sciences. And the plan must have been based on number theory because I was constantly encountering the same numbers... This means that no such thing as coincidence in the real sense can exist at all.' (p.92) Peter Plichta, God's Secret Formula - Deciphering the Riddle of the Universe and the Prime Number Code

The ‘Law of Three’ permeates myth, legend and religious forms because it is an irreducible archetype. For this reason, among many others, I have found it stunningly naive that for over 36 years many of the followers of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have glibly dismissed Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea) and her prodigious body of Supramental knowledge as irrelevant to their epochal yoga. Was it not Sri Aurobindo himself who wrote?

“While the Divine is One, it is also manifold... It is at once Transcendental, Cosmic and Individual. By knowing the eternal unity of these three powers of the eternal manifestation, God, the Cosmos and the Individual self, and their intimate necessity to each other, we come to understand existence itself.…” Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga

Until this error is corrected, we will continue to limit our inquiry to the Transcendent Divine which Sri Aurobindo embodied and look to the likes of Whitehead, Wilbur and others to explain the more subtle implications of his yoga. Without the knowledge of the Cosmic and Individual Divine that the Mother and Thea have unveiled, we will continue to suffer the meaningless legacy of a patriarchal Bodiless God, the worship of which has entombed the higher truth in a remote static peace and aborted its descent through the feminine into Matter. This is the true reason why this greatest spiritual work of the age has languished in the half light of a mental consciousness for nearly forty years. For more information on Supramental Time see: www.aeongroup.com/bks-art.htm

It is not until you understand and embrace the Feminine that you are qualified for the higher initiation

Robert Wilkinson - robtw@sprynet.com said...Dear Ned,

WIE is typical of an old patriarchal consciousness that evolved from the pressures of mind trying to exceed itself some 2500 years ago. The limitations inherent in the Mental consciousness when Buddha and others of that period made their discoveries could not admit of anything higher than a dissolution of the nexus of consciousness which held them in the world. Buddha called his experience of dissolution “Nirvana” - a state of pure Being, equanimity and peace. The Nirvanic realization, we are told, has the quality of an infinite Zero, or Emptiness without form that grants liberation from this so-called ‘illusory world of becoming’.

It is certainly no coincidence that Lao Tze, the Chinese sage who lived around the same time as Buddha expressed his ‘spiritual’ realization in much the same vein calling it, “The Nothing that is All.” We find this same language later on in the teachings of Shankara, founder of the Advaita Vedanta school, who described his realization as ‘Moksha’ or liberation, where one does not feel oneself any longer to be an individual with a name or form, but an infinite, eternal, space-less consciousness.

This drive toward Transcendence completely negated the Feminine Principle, the Earth and the Becoming. And for the last 2000 years we have suffered the consequences of that negation. Many who revere Sri Aurobindo, like Ken Wilber, make no distinction between his yoga and the old path of Transcendence. To them the Mother holds no special place of significance in the Supramental Descent. The Supramental Yoga is in fact very much like the Elusinian Mysteries. It is not until you understand and embrace the Feminine that you are qualified for the higher initiation. 11:58 PM, November 11, 2007

Nietzsche affirms Becoming only and excludes Being from his view of things

Heraclitus Sri Aurobindo

Nietzsche, whom Mr. Ranade rightly affiliates to Heraclitus, Nietzsche, the most vivid, concrete and suggestive of modem thinkers, as is Heraclitus among the early Greeks, founded his whole philosophical thought on this conception of existence as a vast Will-to-become and of the world as a play of Force; divine Power was to him the creative Word, the beginning of all things and that to which life aspires. But he affirms Becoming only and excludes Being from his view of things; hence his philosophy is in the end unsatisfactory, insufficient, lopsided; it stimulates, but solves nothing.

Heraclitus does not exclude Being from the data of the problem of existence, although he will not make any opposition or gulf between that and Becoming. By his conception of existence as at once one and many, he is bound to accept these two aspects of his ever-living Fire as simultaneously true, true in each other; Being is an eternal becoming and yet the Becoming resolves itself into eternal being. All is in flux, for all is change of becoming; we cannot step into the same waters twice, for it is other and yet other waters that are flowing on. And yet, with his keen eye on the truth of things, preoccupied though he was with this aspect of existence, he could not help seeing another truth behind it.

The waters into which we step, are and are not the same; our own existence is an eternity and an inconstant transience; we are and we are not. Heraclitus does not solve the contradiction; he states it and in his own way tries to give some account of its process. Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Supramental Manifestation Volume-16 > Heraclitus

Therefore we gave the first place to the "Life Divine"

The "Arya's" Fourth Year Sri Aurobindo
WE CLOSE this month the fourth year of the "Arya", and bring to a conclusion at the same time the "Psychology of Social Development", the "Ideal of Human Unity" and the first series of the "Essays on the Gita." A few more chapters will complete the "Life Divine." We are therefore well in view of the completion of the first part of the work which we had proposed to ourselves in starting this philosophical monthly, and we take the opportunity to say a few words upon the principle which has governed our writing and which the difficulty of a serial exposition on several lines at a time, scattering and breaking up the total impression, may have prevented some of our readers from grasping in its entirety.

We had not in view at any time a review or magazine in the ordinary sense of the word, that is to say, a popular presentation or criticism of current information and current thought on philosophical questions. Nor was it, as in some philosophical and religious magazines in India, the restatement of an existing school or position of philosophical thought cut out in its lines and needing only to be popularised and supported. Our idea was the thinking out of a synthetic philosophy which might be a contribution to the thought of the new age that is coming upon us.

We start from the idea that humanity is moving to a great change of its life which will even lead to a new life of the race, - in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and that hope, - and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truth which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour. The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such an attempt could be based, were already present to us, otherwise we should have had no right to make the endeavour at all; but the complete intellectual statement of them and their results and issues had to be found. This meant a continuous thinking, a high and subtle and difficult thinking on several lines, and this strain, which we had to impose on ourselves, we were opliged to impose also on our readers. This too is the reason why we have adopted the serial form which in a subject like philosophy has its very obvious disadvantages, but was the only one possible.

Our original intention was to approach the synthesis from the starting-point of the two lines of culture which divide human thought and are now meeting at its apex, the knowledge of the West and the knowledge of the East; but owing to the exigencies of the war this could not be fulfilled. The "Arya" except for one unfinished series has been an approach to the highest reconciling truth from the point of view of the Indian mentality and Indian spiritual experience, and Western knowledge has been viewed from that standpoint. Here the main idea which has governed our writing, was imposed on us by the very conditions of the problem.

All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience. The deepest experience shows that the fundamental truth is truth of the Spirit; the other is the truth of life, truth of form and shaping force and living idea and action. Here the West and East have followed divergent lines. The West has laid most emphasis on truth of life and for a time come to stake its whole existence upon truth of life alone, to deny the existence of Spirit or to relegate it to the domain of the unknown and unknowable; from that exaggeration it is now beginning to return. The East has laid most emphasis on truth of the Spirit and for a time came, at least in India, to stake its whole existence upon that truth alone, to neglect the possibilities of life or to. Limit it to a narrow development or a fixed status; the East too is beginning to return from this exaggeration. The West is reawaking to the truth of the Spirit and the spiritual possibilities of life, the East is reawaking to the truth of Life and tends towards a new application to it of its spiritual knowledge.

Our view is that the antinomy created between them is an unreal one. Spirit being the fundamental truth of existence, life can be only its manifestation; Spirit must be not only the origin of life but its basis, its pervading reality and its highest and total result. But the forms of life as they appear to us are at once its disguises and its instruments of self-manifestation . Man has to grow in knowledge till they cease to be disguises and grow in spiritual power and quality till they become in him its perfect instruments. To grow into the fullness of the divine is the true law of human life and to shape his earthly existence into its image manifestation is the meaning of his evolution. This is the fundamental tenet of the philosophy of the Arya.

This truth had to be worked out first of all from the metaphysical point of view; for in philosophy metaphysical truth is the nucleus of the rest, it is the statement of the last and most general truths on which all the others depend or in which they are gathered up.

Therefore we gave the first place to the "Life Divine". Here we start from the Vedantic position, its ideas of the Self and mind and life, of Sachchidananda and the world, of Knowledge and Ignorance, of rebirth and the Spirit. But Vedanta is popularly supposed to be a denial of life, and this is no doubt a dominant trend it has taken. Though starting from the original truth that all is the Brahman, the Self, it has insisted in the end that the world is simply not-Brahman, not-Self; it has ended in a paradox. We have attempted on the contrary to establish from its data a comprehensive Adwaita. We have shown that mind and life and matter are derivations from the Self through a spiritual mind or supermind which is the real support of cosmic existence and by developing mind into that man can arrive at the real truth of the spirit in the world and the real truth and highest law of life.

The Self is Sachchidananda and there is no incurable antinomy between that and the world; only we see the world through the eyes of the Ignorance and we have to see it through the eyes of the Knowledge. Our Ignorance itself is only knowledge developing out of its involution in the apparent nescience of Matter and on its way to a return to its conscious integrality. To accomplish that return and manifest the spiritual life in the human existence is the opportunity given by the successions of rebirth. We accept the truth of evolution, not so much in the physical form given to it by the West as in its philosophical truth, the involution of life and mind and spirit here in matter and their progressive manifestation. At the summit of this evolution is the spiritual life, the life divine.

It was necessary to show that these truths were not inconsistent with the old Vedantic truth, therefore We included explanations from this point of view of the Veda, two of the Upanishads and the Gita. But the Veda has been obscured by the ritualists and the scholiasts. Therefore we showed in a series of articles, initially only as yet, the way of writing of the Vedic mystics, their system of symbols and the truths they figure. Among the Upanishads we took the Isha and the Kena; to be full we should have added the Taittiriya, but it is a long one and for it we had no space. The Gita we are treating as a powerful application of truth of spirit to the largest and most difficult part of the truth of life, to action, and a way by which action can lead us to birth into the Spirit and can be harmonised with the spiritual life.

Truth of philosophy is of a merely theoretical value unless it can be lived, and we have therefore tried in the "Synthesis of Yoga" to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods of the various lines of spiritual self-discipline and the way in which they can lead to an integral divine life in the human existence. But this is an individual self-development, and therefore it was necessary to show too how our ideal can work out in the social life of mankind. In the "Psychology of Social Development" we have indicated how these truths affect the evolution of human society. In the "Ideal of Human Unity" we have taken the present trend of mankind towards a closer unification and tried to appreciate its tendencies and show what is wanting to them in order that real human unity may be achieved.

Our plan has compelled us to deal mainly with first principles and work them out in their fullness. In future we do not propose to start any other long series of this kind, but to have more short articles with a broader, more direct and, as far as possible, more popular treatment. We shall also permit ourselves a freer range and diversity, so far as that is permissible in a philosophical review. Page - 402 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Hour Of God Volume-17 > The Arya's Fourth Year

Griffith translates gaurī as buffalo, which is entirely wrong and misleading

As a matter of fact, Gaurī of this mantra is neither a buffalo nor do streams of water in any physical sense flow from her. She is positively the cow in the symbolic sense representing the ultimate Creatrix of the world.

This gets confirmed by one of Visvāmitra’s mantras in which while elaborating on the mighty vision of absolute oneness of the ultimate reality it has been observed at the outset of the hymn that when the most primeval dawns came to shine, the great Akşara came to evolve itself in the original abode of the cow and that it is only as a consequence of this event that began the role of the gods in the cosmic creation and that all this bears out the ultimate oneness of the divinity of gods (Rigveda, III. 55.1).

It is from the Akşara of this order that the oceans and the directions are said in Dirghatamas’ mantra to be born. Interestingly enough this momentous trans-cosmic event is associated according to both the seers, Viśvāmitra and Dirghatamas, with the abode or being of the cow. As such, the cow in question, therefore, has to be taken as symbolic of the ultimate Creatrix, which is responsible for making the Supreme Imperishable Being undergo the antithetical process of perishability.

Association of akşara with cow, as is vindicated by Viśvāmitra’s mantra quoted above also, cannot be explained without taking this cow as symbolical of Vāk by virtue of her prolonged lowing of the monosyllabic Om.

Needless to point out that akşara is the irreducible most fundamental constituent of language. Just as atoms are the ultimate building blocks of the universe according to the Vaiśeşikas, even so akşara is the ultimate building block of language, which is the co-ordinate of the reality.

As per the philosophy of the Vedic seers, what is realised as ultimate on the microcosmic scale must prove ultimate on the macrocosmic scale as well. In fact, the entire approach of these seers to knowledge is based on this understanding. This is why akşara of the syllabic variety has been considered as identical to Akşara denoting the supra-cosmic reality. Indeed, it is this vision of the Vedic seer, which subsequently develops into the philosophy of Śabda -Brahman.

Thus Gaurī of Dīrghatamas is, indeed, the Śabda-Brahman itself given the feminine form of cow so as to bring out its role of creativity both on the side of Vāk as well as the reality.If on the side of the reality she gives rise to oceans and directions out of herself and thus creates the basis of universal existence, she on the side of Vāk assumes the fourfold form of linguistic expression dilated upon by Dīrghatamas himself almost in the same continuation through the account of four steps of Vāk known only to those who understand things in their ultimate essence, three of which lying hidden in mystery while the fourth one being used by humans (Rigveda, I.164.45).

It is significant to note that dealing with the same situation of the imperishable reality giving rise to the perishable world, while Viśvāmitra refers to the footstep of cow, Dīrghatamas makes use of the expression of footsteps of Vāk. It automatically proves the essential equivalence of the meaning denoted by these so dissimilar expressions and therefore the symbolic nature of cow as also the particular idea symbolised by her. 16. Vedic Symbolism - Cow - IV from Vedic Vision of Consciousness & Yoga by MukeshVeda

Cow in the Veda is pre-eminently symbolical of speech

That cow in the Veda is pre-eminently symbolical of speech is evident from a mantra seen by seer Nema Bhārgava. He starts his vision of Vāk with the query as to where has gone the highest form of it while out of the Vāk used by inconscient beings one has settled down as the power of gods and four ones are milking energy in the form of milk (Rigveda, VIII.100.10).

In the immediately following mantra, it is stated that the goddess Vāk has been generated by gods and is being used as such by all kinds of living beings and that she as cow with all the profundity of her voice should yield for us the required energy and come to us whenever earnestly prayed to (Rigveda, VIII.100.11).

It is evident from these mantras that it had become quite usual for the Vedic seer to talk of speech through the symbolism of cow. In this symbolic usage, several qualities of the cow were instrumental. At least two of them are quite evident from these mantras themselves. One of them is the melodious and profundity of the cow’s voice. It is quite close to the dilated pronunciation of the sacred Om. Due to this closeness, perhaps, just as the word Om came to be regarded as the source of all words whatever, even so the cow’s voice was taken to include within itself all possible varieties of voices capable of being produced by living beings.

By virtue of this quality of her voice, she came to be used frequently as a significant symbol of Vāk. Secondly, cow’s voice is closely associated with her milk yielded particularly for her calf. In fact, the cow produces her voice most frequently in the evening when after day’s grazing in the pasture she becomes eager to feed her calf with the milk. Due to this association of her voice with the milk intended to be delivered to the calf, cow became symbolical particularly of that Vāk, which is supposed to be most fruitful.

No doubt Vāk is Vedic in origin. This point is brought out beautifully in one of the mantras of the hymn to jñāna. In this mantra it has been stated that one who serves the cow of the Vedic Vāk well understanding it precisely and profoundly in the same sense as was intended to be communicated by the seer, he is comparable to the wrestler who does not get defeated anywhere, as against one who does not understand the meaning, is comparable to him who although keeping a cow for all practical purposes is really shorn of her since on account of not yielding any milk she is a cow just in name and appearance. (Rigveda, X.71.5) Symbolism of Cow - III from Vedic Vision of Consciousness & Yoga by MukeshVeda

D.P. Chattopadhyaya emphasises the professed unifying role of religion

The Hindu Book Review Religion through the ages RAJAN GURUKKAL Tuesday, Nov 06, 2007 Collection of articles on the role of religion in Indian history RELIGION IN INDIAN HISTORY: Irfan Habib — Editor; Aligarh Historians Society, Aligarh, Tulika Books, 35A/1, III Floor, Shahpur Jat, New Delhi-110049. Rs. 550.

This book is an anthology of 15 scholarly articles relating to “religion in Indian history” and based on different topics covering periods of disparate nature, with no claim to have exhausted the central theme. Irfan Habib’s brilliant introduction probes into the archaeology and history of religion building up from irrational fundamental premises to ethics and theology or philosophy. He discusses in great depth historical and theoretical problems involved in looking for the roots of religion in India.

In the first article D.P. Chattopadhyaya explores most carefully the ways religions develop. Examining the comparative philological point of view of Chinese, Helenic and Islamic theologians, the anthropology and sociology of religion, the relationships between mythology and history, and the interface of the scientific and Marxist views, he emphasises the professed unifying role of religion and its historically evident divisive workings in practice.

Warren Hastings's "bright young men" paved the way for The Asiatic Society and the College at Fort William

The Asiatic Society ( Founded in 1784 )
1, PARK STREET, KOLKATA : 700 016 INDIA HOME HISTORY LIBRARY MUSEUM PUBLICATIONS PRESIDENT & SECRETARIES SEMINAR RESEARCH ACTIVITIES OTHER ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES EXECUTIVE COUNCIL TENDER CONTACT US HISTORY 1 2 3 4 5

WHEN THE ASIATIC SOCIETY was established on 15 January 1784, its founder Sir William Jones (1746-1794) began his work with a dream, that visualised a centre for Asian studies including almost everything concerning man and nature within the geographical limits of the continent. Most of the mysteries of this vast land, like its old inscriptions in Brahmi, were still undeciphered, and Comparative Philology as a discipline or science was not yet born.

In the early days of the Asiatic Society, William Jones for all his efforts could not procure even a slice of land wherein to house his dream. The Society which in no time was to be regarded as the first and best of its kind in the whole world had no permanent address, no fixed place for holding its meetings and, which was most disconcerting, no funds.

Sir William Jones, an outstanding scholar from Oxford, arrived in Calcutta on 25 September 1783 as a Puisne Judge of the Old Supreme Court. While still on board of the frigate Crococlile carrying him from England to India, he prepared a memorandum detailing his plan of study. This included

“the laws of the Hindus and Mahomedans; the history of the ancient world; proofs and illustrations of scripture; traditions concerning the deluge; modern politics and geography of Hindusthan; Arithmatic and Geometry and mixed sciences of Asiaticks; Medicine, Chemistry, Surgery and Anatomy of the Indians; natural products of India; poetry, rhetoric and morality of Asia; music of the Eastern nations; the best accounts of Tibet and Kashmir; trade, manufactures, agriculture and commerce of India: Mughal constitution, Marhatta constitution etc."

This memorandum could easily be regarded as an early draft of the memorandum of the Asiatic Society itself. The Society which was still in the imagination of Jones was actually founded within four months of his arrival in India.

William Jones was, however, not the earliest among the Orientalists of the East India Company to arrive in India. About a decade earlier came Charles Wilkins (1770), Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1772) and Jonathan Duncan (1772): Warren Hastings's "bright young men", who had paved the way for the two future institutions- The Asiatic Society and the College at Fort William. All the Orientalists who became famous in history clustered around either the Society or the College or both. The Society, of course, was the pioneer and first in the field.

While others were thinking in terms of individual study and research, Sir William Jones was the first man to think in terms of a permanent organisation for Oriental studies and researches on a grand scale in this country. He took the initiative and in January 1784 sent out a circular letter to selected persons of the elite with a view to establishing a Society for this purpose. In response to his letter, thirty European gentlemen of Calcutta including Mr. Justice John Hyde, John Carnac, Henry Vansittart, John Shore, Charles Wilkins, Francis Gladwin, Jonathan Duncan and others gathered on 15 January 1784 in the Grand Jury Room of the old Supreme Court of Calcutta. The Chief Justice Sir Robert Chambers presided at the first meeting and Jones delivered his first discourse in which he put forward his plans for the Society.

Asia, he said, was the "nurse of sciences" and the "inventress of delightful and useful arts." He proposed to found a Society under the name of The Asiatic Society. All the thirty European gentlemen who had assembled accepted the membership of this Society. The name went through a number of changes like The Asiatic Society (1784-1825), The Asiatic Society (1825-1832), The Asiatic Society of Bengal (1832-1935), The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (1936-1951) and The Asiatic Society again since July 1951.

In the first meeting, the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, a scholar and patron of learning, was elected its fist President and Sir William Jones the Vice-President. Warren Hastings greatly sympathized with the aims and objects of the Society. But he declined to continue in this post. On his request and advice Sir William Jones was elected President of the Society on 5 February 1784 and held this post till his death in 1794. The Memorandum of Articles of Society read as follows:

"The bounds of its investigations will be the geographical limits of Asia, and within these limits its enquiries will be extended to whatever is performed by MAN or produced by NATURE."

Later, in his famous Third Annual Discourse, Jones emphasised the superiority of Sanskrit as a language:

"The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either."

The pioneering activity of the Society was praised abroad and even compared with that of the Italian Humanists of the quattrocento. But the first two decades of the Society's existence remained precarious. The original plan of holding meetings every week had to be discarded, and even monthly meetings were not possible. When William Jones died in 1794, till then the Society did not own any premise nor it had any assured funds to defray normal running expenses, not to speak of having in its proud possession, as it has today, an invaluable Asokan rock edict or precious old coins.

Leftist academia, a truly dangerous pathogen

Cosmopathology and the Descent of the Left
from One Cosmos by Gagdad Bob

Continuing with our discussion of Michael Polanyi, one puzzling thing he noticed -- discussed a few days ago in this post -- was that intellectuals were not only responsible (obviously) for the most destructive ideas and ruthless political movements of the 20th century, but that they embraced them despite the fact that these ideas, if implemented, would spell the end of the intellectual class. That is, they undermine the very liberal ideal of freedom of inquiry guided by the pursuit of truth.

Prosch writes that "It was the intellectuals of [the last] century themselves who played the largest part in destroying those very things that they needed and that were already theirs. Such operative perversity as this must lead one to suspect the operator's mental health, a mind blind to that which it wants and needs." Indeed, a mind which "proceeds on a path toward its own destruction, may surely be suspected of suffering from obsessions that are pushing it to such nonadaptive behavior."

As we shall see, Polanyi's analysis explains why the cognitive and spiritual pathology of political correctness emanates from the left, and could only emanate from the left, despite the fact that it makes a farce of their vaunted ideal of "academic freedom." And it is the very definition of pathology, since it causes great damage to the mind and soul of the person afflicted with it. And once the pathology has taken over whole institutions -- i.e., leftist academia, the MSM -- it becomes a truly dangerous pathogen that systematically infects those who pass through its environment (again, unless they have a very robust spiritual immune system rooted in the Real).

We see the same thing occurring with Islamic fascism, which is not -- as leftists cluelessly, but necessarily, believe -- a result of poverty, but of affluence. It is rooted in the ideas of intellectuals, who then -- just as leftists do in the west -- try to demagogically propagate these ideas to the ignorant masses to explain their misery. The only thing that has kept America (its better half, anyway) immune from this process is its strong foundation in an alternative metaphysic, which we call the Judeo-Christian tradition. Likewise, the reason why continental Europe fell to the viral song of leftism is that it had already gravely weakened its own natural defense mechanism to it. The book I'm reading on Polanyi has an interesting explanation for this, and it makes a great deal of sense to me.

Aqalibrium

'If You Meet Wilber on the Road, Kill Him'

On the Importance ofIndependent Integral Research Frank Visser "Integral World" Reading Room

Evolutionary theory
In 1996 Wilber published his A Brief History of Everything, a popular treatment of his magnum opus Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, which had appeared just a year before. This massive tome was sub-titled "The Spirit of Evolution", suggesting that Wilber had discovered something that was at the core of the evolutionary process...

Wilber is content to give a sketchy caricature of the problem, use emotive language to persuade the reader that there's nothing of value to be expected here from science, and move on to his more spiritualized musings. Favorite among these is Wilber's declaration that "there's an Eros to the Kosmos", a force that drives us towards higher and higher states of being and complexity...

Postmodernism
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality was specifically written by Wilber to counter the prevailing postmodernist atmosphere in the academic world, which — in Wilber's version — declares everything of relative and equal value, except personal agendas and power plays. (More on that later)....

Meditation Research
Meditation is central to Wilber's view of spirituality, and on many occasions he claims that meditation can speed up your own development...

One should realize that Wilber is not a researcher himself, he deals with theories, not facts. When it comes to reporting about research, he rarely goes into the intricacies of empirical research...

We can divinize each activity, each act and circumstance of our daily lives

An ANALYSIS OF SRI AUROBINDO'S "THE LIFE DIVINE" by Roy Posner

Requirements for the Reader
Fortunately, we can get through The Life Divine if we make a serious and determined effort to do so. Also, if we follow the guidance of this web-based helper book, we think that journey can be made considerably easier, at least for those who are of a thinking bent. [Perhaps later if we add practical examples of life to elucidate the principles, then we can also attract more of the general reader who is moved more by life than ideas.] In one sense that’s why we are writing this summation; to make it possible for those who have never experienced knowledge through the spiritual mind of silence, light, and intuition to understand certain fundamental concepts through the clear logic of mind. It is our goal then to translate his perfection of wisdom and revelation into a first "imperfection" of our own logical understanding. The halfway measure between our knowledge and his Knowledge -- logic -- will become the bridge between him and ourselves. A fitting irony indeed!

Reading The Life Divine is really doable if one has the curiosity to discover the deepest truths of life, a patient stamina and determination to find the Truth Nuggets behind the immense logic and long paragraphs, and a certain quietude of mind (rather than the ferocious impatience of our normal thought processing and gathering) that enables these spiritual bits of wisdom to seep into one's consciousness. So the challenge is this: If you are willing to make the extra effort to embrace the principles that rise to the pinnacles of spiritual wisdom, you will be rewarded with the revelation of the way of a whole new way of living and of life.

The Language of Tomorrow Experienced in His Today
Then there is the language itself. Those of you who think you are going to read a stuffy old treatise on philosophy, or a traditional Indian religouso-moral view of existence filled with unrecognizable, untranslated Sanskrit terminology, or a tone of writing foreign to the Western mind, you may be in for a small shock. Rather The Life Divine is filled with terminology that seems straight out of some future human existence, transcending even the most modern vocabulary, including the forward-looking coinage of technology, science, and the latest developments of modern life. Expressions like "atomic existence," "conscious force," "the Real Idea," "reversal of consciousness," "supramental transformation," "involution," and many others sound like the coinage of the future.

But then how could he have developed such language, when it didn't exist in his time? Perhaps we can say that when one is writing about the future evolutionary destiny of life on earth from one's own real experience, not from a hypothetical knowledge, that he must in part live in that future in some way; that he in a way lived simultaneously in that future consciousness in his own present existence. And yet his Terms are not terms from out of a some science fiction of the imagination, whose terminology moves in and out of fashion, whose veracity later falls short at the finishing flag of True truth [remember "truth is stranger than fiction!"], but is rather the language of a true future human existence which is coming to pass now, and will come to pass in the future, because it is the logical outcome of the movement of the past, including its spiritual roots and the historical spiritual progressions of the past.

Perhaps we can call the True truths of the future the Real Divine Future. Sri Aurobindo was tapping this Future Unfolding and Truth.

Sri Aurobindo came to tell the story of Everything, and was, in one sense, God's scribe telling the story of God, even as he experienced God's essence and reality. Perhaps that would make him truly God incarnate, the avatar who brings the Needed New truth of the current age. Or, if you don’t like the term "God" with its questionable overtones due to human folly, we can substitute expressions such as the "Divine," or "the Absolute," or "the Omnipresent Reality," or "Brahman," or simply the "Spirit." Anyway you put it, he experienced, or rather perceived and embodied all the past-present-future realities he wrote about. He even became to a degree an embodiment, the first embodiment of supramentalized evolutionary human being that he wrote would be the outcome of our human evolution.

Utility of The Life Divine for the Reader
And yet even though he has given us the deepest insights into the reasons for and the purposes of the cosmos, he has brought these ultimate truths of existence so that we can use them in the most practical ways in our daily lives. He calls his book "The Life Divine" because we can learn to take our current daily functioning and change it into a divine functioning, and that divine functioning will be in life; not apart from human daily activities in some monastic retreat or some inner journey into a remote bliss or nirvana. He says that we can divinize each activity, each act and circumstance of our daily lives into something greater, because that something greater is inevitable in the big scheme of things. It is the progress that the spirit is moving towards; or rather is leading life towards. And he has made the effort to present us with the cosmology of the infinite so we learn how to apply it in the very details of our lives.

Prajna and taijasa continue to sit day and night

3. Yaska’s Cognisance of Symbolic Usages in the Veda - II

from Vedic Vision of Consciousness & Yoga by MukeshVeda

Significantly enough, the state of sleep by no means remain completely bereft of guards. According to Yaska, it is attended by two set of guards which he calls prajna and taijasa. Prajna is the source of wisdom, while taijasa is the power of illumination operating constantly as the medium of manifestation of that wisdom. It is the intermediary operating between the Atman and what are characterised as guards of the waking state. It is by virtue of their functioning one has in the state of dream knowledge sometimes of objects and events placed at considerable distance in space and in future even. Thus, it shows their defiance of the constraints of time and space. This is why they are considered as immortal in contrast to the group of seven guards characterised as seers who obviously are mortal. Seers come and go but the gods remain constantly the same. They operate in the waking state also but their operation in this state gets mediated by that of the senses, the mind and the learning.

This point is brought out still prominently through the figure of two types of sacrifices -- daily and yearly. While the seven seers are conceived as taking their seats beside the sacrificial fire only for the day and retiring at the advent of the night, prajna and taijasa are taken to continue to sit day and night throughout the whole year symbolising the whole of life. From this perspective, life is considered as a sacrifice in which the object is being constantly offered as oblation to the fire of the subject by the senses, the manas and the learning on daily basis while by the prajna and taijasa permanently (Nirukta, XII.37.) ...

This façade of actuality dashes down to the ground, the moment we take into consideration Yaska’s rendering of the seven seers into the seven indriyas. Unlike the case of the previously quoted mantra, here he renders saptarsayah by seven indriyas alone excluding manas and vidya. This he does by taking eyes, ears and noses in twos as they each form two holes in the head. Mouth as the seat of taste makes the total number of the holes in the head seven. As all of them are seats of operation of the sense organs, they are taken as indriyas. In this enumeration, vak is added as the eighth seer. It is said to be in alliance with Brahman. The alliance of vak with Brahman is a highly significant idea. It recurs elsewhere in the Rgveda in the form of collateral existence of vak and Brahman (RV.X.114.8.).

The recurrence bears out its axiomatic position in the Vedic thought reflecting intimate relationship between the word and the Reality in the vision of the seer. It is in view of this singular relationship as well as the amazing perceptual, conceptual and inferential power of the sense organs and the mind, all located in the human head, that the latter has been stated in the mantra as the repository of the entire glory of the world. This glory obviously lies in the human head supposed to have embedded in it in microcosmic form whatever lies there in the totality of the reality including the universal and the transcendent. In spite of embodying material drawn pre-eminently from the objective world and showing the plausibility of its explanation in terms of the sun and its rays, Yaska opens the door to the depth of meaning put in this mantra (Nir.XII.38).

Substitution of manas, taijasa and atman of the previous mantra suggests to the equivalence of language with knowledge as well as the reality behind it in the understanding of Yaska. It is this cognisance of equivalence of the word with the knowledge and the reality both which forms the basis of the regard for the Veda, as the repository of all knowledge representing the totality of the reality. It also suggests very well to its origin from the human head as the latter is supposed to have compressed in it all knowledge whatever. Herein lies the justification for referring to the openings of the head as the seven seers. The idea of the alliance of vak with Brahman also reminds us of the spectacular experiences of Vagambhrni recounted in Rgveda X.125 where she feels herself as moving in the company of all the gods including the Rudras, Vasus and Adityas, doing everything for them as well as for seers and as having given birth even to the heaven and not to speak of lesser things including the earth.

About The Author -- Professor S.P. Singh Professor Satya Prakash Singh is renowned Vedic scholar.

He is a Ph.D. of the Banaras Hindu University and D.Litt. of the Aligarh Muslim University.

Sri Aurobindo’s Cosmology

Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead from The Stumbling Mystic by ned

Increasingly I feel that the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead is complementary to the spiritual philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo was observing the world from an occult perspective, which we can call “top-down”, whereas Whitehead worked his way “bottom-up” from mathematics and modern science. But both arrived at a panentheistic cosmology that allowed for a process-oriented, dynamic, evolving universe. Whitehead is really the missing link as far as bridging the worlds of science and the occult go. For me in particular, because I came to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother through a heart-level awakening, and without any kind of intellectual groundwork or mental reasoning involved, there are a lot of mental gaps that I need to fill up, and I find that Whitehead is the key here.

So imagine my happiness when I discovered that Dr. Eric Weiss of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) has put up his entire PhD thesis online, a thesis that explicitly tries to work out a synthesis of Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead. (Another person who I’ve mentioned before as having compared Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead was Professor Satya Prakash Singh, but he did not attempt a synthesis as Dr. Weiss has done.) The title of this thesis is “The Doctrine of the Subtle Worlds: Sri Aurobindo’s Cosmology, Modern Science, and the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead”...

So I am now eagerly working my way through this document. What we need now is more work like this — more documents that are able to put scientific discoveries into the meaningful context of such a system of interlocking subtle worlds. There are no empirical or rational proofs for the existence of the subtle worlds (only existential and experiential ones), but works like those of Dr. Weiss do an admirable job of showing that nothing within empirical science actually contradicts the existence of supraphysical worlds and realities.