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" "Man is an abnormal who has not found his own normality, - he may imagine he has, he may appear to be normal in his own kind, but that normality is only a sort of provisional order; therefore, though man is infinitely greater than the plant or the animal, he is not perfect in his own nature like the plant and the animal. This imperfection is not a thing to be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a promise, for it opens out to us an immense vista of self-development and self-exceeding.
Sri Aurobindo [born Aravinda Akroyd Ghose] (15 August 1872 – 5 December 1950) was an Indian nationalist, scholar, poet, mystic, philosopher, yogi and guru, who developed concepts of human progress and spiritual evolution. With the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa, he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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A memory steals in from lost heavens of Truth, A wide release comes near, a Glory calls, A might looks out, an estranged felicity. In glamorous passages of half-veiled light Wandering, a brilliant shadow of itself, This quick uncertain leader of blind gods, This tender of small lamps, this minister serf Hired by a mind and body for earth-use Forgets its work mid crude realities; It recovers its renounced imperial right, It wears once more a purple robe of thought And knows itself the Ideal's seer and king, Communicant and prophet of the Unborn, Heir to delight and immortality. All things are real that here are only dreams, In our unknown depths sleeps their reserve of truth, On our unreached heights they reign and come to us In thought and muse trailing their robes of light.
In the stupendous rush of change which is coming on the human world as a result of the present tornado of upheaval, ancient India's culture, attacked by European modernism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the indifference of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul of the nation that holds it in its keeping.... Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception, and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence.... To follow a law or principle involuntarily or ignorantly or contrary to the truth of one's consciousness is a falsehood and a self-destruction. To allow oneself to be killed, like the lamb attacked by the wolf, brings no growth, farthers no development, assures no spiritual merit. Concert or unity may come in good time, but it must be an underlying unity with a free differentiation, not a swallowing up of one by another or an incongruous and inharmonious mixture. Nor can it come before the world is ready for these greater things. To lay down one's arms in a state of war is to invite destruction and it can serve no compensating spiritual purpose.... India is indeed awaking and defending herself, but not sufficiently and not with the whole-heartedness, the clear sight and the firm resolution which can alone save her from the peril. Today it is close; let her choose,... for the choice is imperatively before her, to live or to perish.
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