Sri Aurobindo

Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

Shorter Works. 1910 – 1950

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

Appendix. Passages Omitted from “Our Ideal”[[These paragraphs formed part of the article “Our Ideal” when it was published in the Arya in August 1915 (one month after “The ‘Arya’s’ Second Year”). The passages occurred at the beginning of the essay and before its last paragraph. They were omitted from “Our Ideal” when it was included in the book Ideal and Progress in 1920.]]

The “Arya” having completed its first year and survived the first perils of infancy, now offers itself a second time to the decisions of Time and the mind of the hour. We think it necessary to open our new year with a succinct statement of the idea this Review is intended to serve and the aim which it holds before it. For our Review has been conceived neither as a mirror of the fleeting interests and surface thoughts of the period we live in, nor as the mouthpiece of a sect, school or already organised way of thinking. Its object is to feel out for the thought of the future, to help in shaping its foundations and to link it to the best and most vital thought of the past.

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Our first preoccupation in the “Arya” has therefore been with the deepest thought that we could command on the philosophical foundations of the problem; and we have been so profoundly convinced that without this basis nothing we could say would have any real, solid and permanent value that we have perhaps given too great a space to difficult and abstruse thought whether in the shaping of our own ideas or in the study and restatement of the ancient Eastern knowledge. Our excuse is that we come forward as ourselves learners and students and must begin at the roots to proceed forward safely.

Our second preoccupation has been with the psychological disciplines of Yoga; but here also we have been obliged to concern ourselves with a deep study of the principles underlying the methods rather than with a popular statement of methods and disciplines. But without this previous study of principles the statement of methods would have been unsound and not really helpful. There are no short cuts to an integral perfection.

Other and more popular sides of our work we have been obliged hitherto to neglect; but now that we have advanced a little in the more difficult part of it, we hope to turn increasingly to these more obvious and general subjects of interest. And if our readers are still willing to follow us, their recompense will be a more clear, sound and solid thought on these subjects than we could otherwise have given them.