If we have seen the possibilities and pitfalls in Big Science given to us by the American model, we also notice its results in other places,—for example in Japan. Japan's first experience with high-level business and industrial development forms a good illustration to see how one can get trapped on the economic path when something alien enters into the system. Yoshiro Hoshino writes: “There is nothing worse than war for bringing about the destruction of nature, human beings, factories, housing, and transportation systems, and for causing starvation and sickness, the discharge of untreated factory wastes, and the destruction of farm lands. When environmental destruction is understood in its broadest and most fundamental sense, the original culprit is war.” America, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, invaded Japan in another way. It looks as though the evil found another soil to grow and flourish in a vigorous manner. The present article Japan’s Second Defeat after the Second World War forms a chapter of my yet unpublished book Big Science and its Impact on Society....   more »

We need a functioning world governance structure that is not only participatory but trustworthy and effective at the same time, says Amin Maalouf: “Only through the eyes of the present can we see meanings in the past.” Excerpts of the interview that appears in the Hindu dated 27 March 2008....   more »

Sri Aurobindo’s Beyond the Silence is essentially free quantitative verse with a predominant dactylic movement. It is being presented here along with a painting by Huta Hindocha which illustrates the following lines of the poem:

One with the Eternal, live in his infinity,
Drowned in the Absolute, found in the Godhead,
Swan of the supreme and spaceless ether wandering winged through the universe,
Spirit immortal. ...   more »

Mary Magdalene has finally begun to regain her rightful place in history, after being portrayed in church history for centuries as a penitent prostitute. In 591 AD Pope Gregory pronounced that Mary Magdalene, Mary the sinner, and Mary of Bethany from the gospels were one in the same. But there has never been evidence of that, and in 1969 the Catholic Church restored them to three separate identities, ending 14 centuries of mischaracterization. ...


   more »

This is a beautiful essay which first appeared in Dawn Karachi (10 March 2008), with its extraordinary precision and accuracy. The author rightly recognizes four giants of European literature in Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, but then he also omits Aeschylus and Sophocles, and Virgil and Milton. On being prodded by Amal Kiran, Sri Aurobindo put in three rows eleven of the world’s top poets. They are as follows: Homer-Shakespeare-Valmiki-Vyasa; Dante-Kalidasa-Aeschylus-Sophocles-Virgil-Milton; and in the third row solitary Goethe. When asked about Firdausi for his famous Shah Nameh, Sri Aurobindo declined to opine anything as he was not in a position to read it in the original. About Goethe he wrote: “Goethe goes much deeper than Shakespeare; he had an incomparably greater intellect than the English poet and sounded problems of life and thought Shakespeare had no means of approaching even. But he was certainly not a greater poet… Goethe was a poet by choice.” He was indeed “the last true polymath to walk the earth,” as George Eliot says. Here is the Dawn-essay.   more »

The mystic poetry of the Pondicherry school continues to be neglected, partly because of the media betrayal and chiefly of the lack of seriousness with regard to Sri Aurobindo's theory and practice of poetry. About eight decades ago, the theory of mantric poetry was explained first in the Arya, a little known journal to us. The theory was both revivalist and futuristic. To sum up Sri Aurobindo’s arguments: poetry has been deliberately incantatory in the Vedic age; poetry of incantation was returning through kavis like Whitman, Tagore and Carpenter, poetry will be more deliberately mantric in the future. Now some of us have read that, but we have forgotten to check whether the prophecy is turning true or not. Sri Aurobindo himself took the initiative, writing in that line, making poets in that line, correcting and clarifying the deliberate efforts of his poet-disciples like KD Sethna (Amal Kiran), Nirodbaran, JA Chadwick (Arjava), Dilip Kumar Roy, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, and others. He has repeatedly told us that beautiful poetry is beautiful poetry even if it is in the current style and that a new experience needs a new style of expression. I have chosen four living* poets from this school to place them before you, with my observation, and to ask for your opinion about them. The first two, KD Sethna and Nirodbaran, wrote poetry under the direct guidance of Sri Aurobindo. While RY Deshpande and Themis, the mystic poets of the 80s and 90s, have been continuing the tradition under the eyes of Sethna and Nirodbaran.   more »

About Keats Sri Aurobindo writes in The Future Poetry as follows: “Keats is the first entire artist in word and rhythm in English poetry,—not grandiose, classical and derived like Milton, but direct and original in his artistry, he begins a new era.” ...   more »

I walked on the high-wayed Seat of Solomon
Where Shankaracharya's tiny temple stands
Facing Infinity from Time's edge, alone
On the bare ridge ending earth's vain romance.

This is the opening stanza of the sonnet, illustrated by Huta Hindocha in the following painting.

sabda e-news

   more »

… The semicolon, befittingly, symbolizes a wink. ...

Semicolon at NYT   more »