SRI AUROBINDO, the Indian teacher who died two years ago,
gathered around him in the traditional way a number of followers, Indian and European, whom he taught by word of mouth and by example. His stand- point was the pure Hindu metaphysic of the Vedanta and the Upanishads, which he believed to stand half-way between Western scientific materialism and the ascetic spirit- uality of the East. In this exposition the first twelve chapters of his master's large work, The Life Divine, Mr. Pearson's principal difficulty is a lack of precise vocabulary. There is no knowing exactly what significance Aurobindo attached to the term Cosmic Consciousness, nor can we tell in what way he used the words Force, Life, Mind and Matter, or know how he explained the World as a process of Cosmic Becoming. Between Aurobindo and the members of his Ashram there was no doubt an agreed vocabulary. Between Mr. Pearson and his reader there can be none ; and his book seems to the stranger no more than so much cloudy theosophising. Perhaps such teach- ing as Aurobindo's is bound to die with the teacher ; certainly it does not survive this sort of translation into print. J. M. C.
Previous page
