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<font size="4">POETS 
AND MYSTICS&nbsp;</font></b></p>
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<font size="4">Sri
Aurobindo : The Age of Sri Aurobindo</font></b></I></p>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>SOMEONE
has written to this effect: &quot;This is not the age of Sri
Aurobindo. His ideal of a divine life upon earth mayor may not be
true; at any rate it is not of today or even of tomorrow. Humanity
will take some time before it reaches that stage or its possibility.
What we are concerned with here and now is something perhaps less
great, less spiritual, but more urgent and more practical. The
problem is not to run away with one's soul, but to maintain its
earthly tenement, to keep body and soul together: one has to live
first, .live materially before one can hope to live spiritually.&quot;</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Well, the view expressed in these words is not a new
revelation. It has been the cry of suffering humanity through the
ages. Man has borne his cross since the beginning of his creation
through want and privation, through disease and bereavement, through
all manner of turmoil and tribulation, and <I>yet – mirabile dictu
– at </I>the same time, in the very midst of those conditions, he
has been aspiring and yearning for something else, ignoring the
present, looking into the beyond. It is not the prosperous and the
more happily placed in life who find it more easy to turn to the
higher life, it is not the wealthiest who has the greatest
opportunity to pursue a spiritual idea. On the contrary, spiritual
leaders have thought and experienced otherwise.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in
distress does the normal man think of God and non-worldly things, the
real matter, however, is that the inner life is a thing apart and
follows its own line of movement, does not depend upon, is not
subservient to, the kind of outer life that one may happen</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 49</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>to
live under. The Bible says indeed, &quot;Blessed are the poor,
blessed are they that mourn&quot;... But the Upanishad declares, on
the other hand, that even as one lies happily on a royal couch,
bathes and anoints himself with all the perfumes of the world, has
attendants all around and always to serve him, even so, one can be
full of the divine consciousness from the crown of the head to the
tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a poor or a prosperous life is in no
direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries
and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or
delay one from following the path of the ideal; nor can all your
riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm it, if it chooses to
walk on-it can not only walk, but soar and fly with all that knapsack
on its back.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>If one were to be busy about reforming the world and
when that was done then alone to turn to other-worldly things, in
that case, one would never take the turn, for the world will never be
reformed totally or even considerably in that way. It is not that
reformers have for the first time appeared on the earth in the
present age. Men have attempted social, political, economic and moral
reforms from times immemorial. But that has not barred the spiritual
attempt or minimised its importance. To say that because an ideal is
apparently too high or too great for the present age, it must be kept
in cold storage is to set a premium on the present nature of humanity
arid eternise it: that would bind the world to its old moorings and
never give it the opportunity to be free and go out into the high
seas of larger and greater realisations.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The ideal or perhaps one should say the policy of
Real-politik is the thing needed in this world. To achieve something
actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something,
is worth much more than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and
indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to
be achieved in the material world? It is always an ideal. Even
procuring food for each and every person, clothing and housing all is
not less an ideal for all its concern about actuality. Only there are
ideals and ideals; some are nearer to the earth, some seem to be in
the background. But the mystery is that it is not always the ideal
nearest to the earth which is the. easiest to achieve or the first
thing to be done first. Do we not see before our very eyes</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 50</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>how
some very simple innocent social and economic changes are difficult
to carry out – they bring in their train quite disproportionately
gestures and movements of violence and revolution? That is because we
seek to cure the symptoms and not touch the root of the disease. For
even the most innocent-looking social, economic or political abuse
has at its base far-reaching attitudes and life-urges – even a
spiritual outlook – that have to be sought out and tackled first,
if the attempt at reform is to be permanently and wholly successful.
Even in mundane matters we do not dig deep enough, or rise high
enough.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the working
of the forces that act and achieve – and not the external facts and
events and arrangements alone – one finds that things that are
achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and
made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and
manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out
of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita
points to that truth of Nature when it says: &quot;These beings have
already been killed by Me.&quot; It is not that a long or strenuous
physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure
brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the
farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots
and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees
and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds,
inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of Brahman.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The highest ideal, the very highest which God and Nature
and Man have in view, is not and cannot be kept in cold storage: it
is being worked out even here and now, and it has to be worked out
here and now. The ideal of the Life Divine embodies a central truth
of existence, and however difficult or chimerical it may appear to be
to the normal mind, it is the preoccupation of the inner being of man
– all other ways or attempts of curing human ills are faint echoes,
masks, diversions of this secret urge at the source and heart of
things. That ideal is a norm and a force that is ever dynamic and has
become doubly so since it has entered the earth atmosphere and the
waking human consciousness and is labouring there. It is always safer
and wiser to recognise that fact, to help in the realisation of that
truth and be profited by it.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 51</FONT></P>
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  <a href="-00_Ccontent"><img src="/Nolini/Volume-2/_Gif_Image/home03a.gif" width="37" height="47" border="0"></a></P>
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