Sri Aurobindo

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Shorter Works. 1910 – 1950

Part Three. Writings from the Arya (1914 – 1921
Notes on the Arya

The “Arya’s” Second Year

The “Arya”, born by a coincidence which might well have been entirely disastrous to its existence in the very month when there broke out the greatest catastrophe that has overtaken the modern world, has yet, though carried on under serious difficulties, completed its first year. We have been obliged unfortunately to discontinue the French edition from February last as our director M. Paul Richard was then recalled to join his class of the Reserve Army in France. We have to thank the indulgence of our French subscribers who have consented to receive the English edition in its stead.

We have been obliged in our first year for reasons we shall indicate in the preface to our August number[[The “preface” in question appeared under the title “Our Ideal”. The bulk of that piece is printed on pages 140 – 47. Passages referring to the Arya were omitted from it after its first publication; these are reproduced on pages 103 – 4. – Ed.]] to devote the Review almost entirely to high philosophy and severe and difficult thinking. But the object we had in view is now fulfilled and we recognise that we have no right to continue to subject our readers to the severe strain of almost 64 pages of such strenuous intellectual labour. We shall therefore in the next year devote a greater part of our space to articles on less profound subjects written in a more popular style. Needless to say, our matter will always fall within the definition of a philosophical Review and centre around the fundamental thought which the “Arya” represents.

We shall continue the Life Divine, the Synthesis of Yoga and the Secret of the Veda; but we intend to replace the Selected Hymns by a translation of the Hymns of the Atris (the fifth Mandala of the Rig Veda) so conceived as to make the sense of the Vedic chants at once and easily intelligible without the aid of a commentary to the general reader. The same circumstance which obliged us to discontinue the French edition, will also prevent us from continuing the Wherefore of the Worlds. Happily, we have been able to bring it to a point where the writer’s central idea appears, the new creation of our world by redeeming Love,– a fitting point for the faith and reason of man to pause upon at the moment of the terrible ordeal which that world is now undergoing.

Without the divine Will which knows best what to use and what to throw aside, no human work can come to the completion hoped for by our limited vision. To that Will we entrust the continuance and the result of our labours and we conclude the first year of the “Arya” with the aspiration that the second may see the speedy and fortunate issue of the great world-convulsion which still pursues us and that by the Power which brings always the greatest possible good out of apparent evil there may emerge from this disastrous but long-foreseen collapse of the old order a new and better marked by the triumph of higher principles of love, wisdom and unity and a sensible advance of the race towards our ultimate goal,– the conscious oneness of the Soul in humanity and the divinity of man.