Thursday, February 06, 2014

Sri Aurobindo integrates the Veda with Vedanta

Sri Aurobindo happens to be a prominent member of the “philosophy written in English in colonial India” club. The diverse dimensions of his work defies precise labelling and safe genealogical mapping. But how he reconciles the demands of reason with the primarily intuitive utterances of the Upanishads is a treasure for the present generation. Integrating the Veda with Vedanta by bringing them to identical wavelength is his unique contribution and hence any treatment of disparate texts sans the connotations he unveils should seem as inchoate and arbitrary. The just released updated volume of his “Hymns to the Mystic Fire”
(freely available online at
stands as testimony to his profound hold on the original intention of these ancient pronouncements. So, to neglect the hermeneutical tools Sri Aurobindo brings to the table would mean to geld Sanskrit of its native splendour and Indian Philosophy its vital wonder. [TNM55]

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