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<p class="MsoHeading8" style="text-indent:27pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">
&nbsp;</p>
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<span lang=EN-GB
style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB; font-weight:700'><font size="4">Sri Aurobindo and his 'School'</font><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><i><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
layout-grid-mode:line'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.25in;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>A </span><span lang=EN-GB
style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>CONSIDERABLE</span><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:
line'> amount of vague misunderstanding and misapprehension seems to exist in
the minds of a certain section of our people as to what Sri Aurobindo is doing
in his retirement at </span><st1:City><st1:place><span lang=EN-GB
  style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>Pondicherry</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:
line'>. On the other hand, a very precise exposition, an exact formula of what
he is not doing has been curiously furnished by a well-known patriot in his
indictment of what he chooses to call the &quot;</span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:
  line'>Pondicherry</span></st1:PlaceName><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
 12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span
  lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:
  line'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>&quot;
of contemplation. But he has arrived at this formula by &quot;openly and
fearlessly&quot; affirming what does not exist; for the things that Sri
Aurobindo is accused of doing are just the things that he is not doing. In the
first place, Sri Aurobindo is not doing &quot;peaceful contemplation&quot;; in
the second place, he is not doing active propaganda either; in the third place,
he is not doing <i>pranayama </i>or even <i>dhyana </i>in the ordinary sense of
the word; and, lastly, he is not proclaiming or following the maxim that
&quot;although action may be tolerated as good, his particular brand of Yoga is
something higher and better.&quot;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:10.3pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>Evidently the eminent politician
and his school of activism are labouring under a Himalayan confusion: when they
speak of Sri Aurobindo, they really have in their mind some of the old schools
of spiritual discipline. But one of the marked aspects of Sri Aurobindo's
teaching and practice has been precisely his insistence on putting aside the
inert and life­-shunning quietism, illusionism, asceticism and monasticism of a
latter-day and decadent India. These ideals are perhaps as much obstacles in
his way as in the way of the activistic school. Only Sri Aurobindo has not had
the temerity to say that &quot;it is a weakness to seek refuge in
contemplation&quot; or to suggest that a Buddha was a weakling or a Shankara a
poltroon.</span><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:
EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;mso-line-height-alt:
8.15pt;mso-pagination:none;border:medium none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt;
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<span lang=EN-GB
style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>Page - 17</span><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;color:blue;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
layout-grid-mode:line'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

</div>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.45pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>This much as regards what Sri Aurobindo
is not doing; let us now turn and try to understand what he is doing. The
distinguished man of action speaks of conquering Nature and fighting her.
Adopting this war-like imagery, we can affirm that Sri Aurobindo's work is just
such a battle and conquest. But the question is, what is &quot;nature&quot; and
what is the kind of conquest that is sought, how are we to fight and what are
the required arms and implements? A good general should foresee all this, frame
his plan of campaign accordingly and then only take the field. The
above-mentioned leader proposes &quot;ceaseless and unselfish action&quot; as
the way to fight and conquer Nature. He who speaks thus does not know and
cannot mean what he says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:5.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;</span>European science is conquering Nature in a
way. It has attained to a certain kind and measure, in some fields a great
measure, of control and conquest; but however great or striking it may be in
its own province, it does not touch man in his more intimate reality and does
not bring about any true change in his destiny or his being. For the most vital
part of nature is the region of the life-forces, the powers of disease and age
and death, of strife and greed and lust – all the instincts of the brute in
man, all the dark aboriginal forces, the forces of ignorance that form the very
groundwork of man's nature and his society. And then, as we rise next to the
world of the mind, we find a twilight region where falsehood masquerades as
truth, where prejudices move as realities, where notions rule as ideals.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.25pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>This is the present nature of
man, with its threefold nexus of mind and life and body, that stands there to
be fought and conquered. This is the inferior nature, of which the ancients
spoke, that holds man down inexorably to a lower <i>dharma, </i>imperfect mode
of life – the life that is and has been the human order till today. No amount
of ceaseless action, however selflessly done, can move this wheel of Nature
even by a hair's breadth away from the path that it has carved out from of old.
Human nature and human society have been built up and are run by the forces of
this inferior nature, and whatever shuffling and reshuffling we may make in its
apparent factors and elements, the general scheme and fundamental form of life
will never change. To displace earth (and to conquer<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<span lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
layout-grid-mode:line'>Page – 18</span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:
EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>nature means nothing less than that) and give it
another orbit, one must find a fulcrum outside earth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>Sri Aurobindo does not preach
flight from life and a retreat into the silent and passive Infinite; the goal of
life is not, in his view, the extinction of life. Neither is he satisfied on
that account to hold that life is best lived in the ordinary round of its
unregenerate dharma. If the first is a blind alley, the second is a vicious
circle, – both lead nowhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoBodyTextIndent3 style='text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB
style='layout-grid-mode:line'>Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts from the
perception of a Power that is beyond the ordinary nature yet is its inevitable
master, a fulcrum, as we have said, outside the earth. For what is required
first is the discovery and manifestation of a new soul-consciousness in man
which will bring about by the very pressure and working out of its self-rule an
absolute reversal of man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway
over humanity, for man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the
Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their sovereign might have to be
forged in the human being and brought into play. It<b> </b>is a stupendous
task, some would say impossible; but it is very far removed from quietism or
passivism. Sri Aurobindo is in retirement, but it is a retire­ment only from
the outward field of present physical activities and their apparent
actualities, not from the true forces and action of life. It is the retreat
necessary to one who has to go back into himself to conquer a new plane of
creative power, – ­an entrance right into the world of basic forces, of
fundamental realities, into the flaming heart of things where all actualities
are born and take their first shape. It is the discovery of a power-house of
tremendous energism and of the means of putting it at the service of earthly
life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>And, properly speaking, it is
not at all a school, least of all a mere &quot;school of thought&quot;, that is
growing round Sri Aurobindo. It is rather the nucleus of a new life that is to
come. Quite naturally it has almost insignificant proportions at present to the
outward eye, for the work is still of the nature of experiment and trial in
very restricted limits, something in the nature of what is done in a laboratory
when a new power has been discovered, but has still to be perfectly formulated
in its process. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that there is a vigorous
propaganda carried on in its behalf or that there is<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span lang=EN-GB
style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>Page - 19</span><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;color:blue;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
layout-grid-mode:line'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
layout-grid-mode:line'>a large demand for recruits. Only the few, who possess
the call within and are impelled by the spirit of the future, have a chance of
serving this high attempt and great realisation and standing among its first
instruments and pioneer workers.</span><span lang=EN-GB style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;
layout-grid-mode:line'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span lang=EN-GB
style='mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;layout-grid-mode:line'>Page – 20<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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