On Materialism - Download PDF
"Know thyself". This has been one of great messages of the East and the West since ancient times. But it appears that the crisis through which humanity is passing today can be resolved if, as a first and essential step, this message is understood it greater fullness than ever before. For it is becoming increasingly clearer that without a radical change in human consciousness, we shall not be able to take the right road that needs to be taken. We need therefore to understand human consciousness in its full Complexity and its multiple dimensions with central focus on self-knowledge.
The writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother offer an incomparable treasure of a systematic body of experiences. realisations and verifiable knowledge which can readily come to our aid. We are beginning with the extracts from Sri Aurobindo’s "The Life Divine" that pertain to the subject of materialism, since the appeal of materialism has still a great influence which has the potency to keep the doors of the deeper aspects of self-knowledge closed or sealed. While the truths underlying materialism have to be admitted and while we have to understand the real since that materialism has rendered to the cause of the advancement of knowledge, we need to realise that materialism is logically untenable and that advancing researches in the psychological operations of the mind and the supermind show clearly the insufficiency of the materialistic formula. Once this is accomplished it will be easier to enter into the profundities of self-knowledge.