The Upanishads are the supreme work of the Indian mind, and that it should be so, that the highest self-expression of its genius, its sublimest poetry, its greatest creation of the thought and word should be not a literary or poetical masterpiece of the ordinary kind, but a large flood of spiritual revelation of this direct and profound character, is a significant fact, evidence of a unique mentality and unusual turn of spirit.
Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in
India and other essays on Indian culture: 329 *
Indian Literature : Epics
and Puranas
This idea, the sense of this necessity, a constant urge
towards its realisation is evident throughout the whole course of Indian
history from earlier Vedic times through the heroic period represented by the
traditions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the effort of the imperial
Mauryas and Guptas up to the Mogul unification and the last ambition of the
Peshwas, until there came the final failure and the levelling of all the
conflicting forces under a foreign yoke, a uniform subjection in place of the
free unity of a free people.
Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in
India and other essays on Indian culture: 427 *
Indian art
Indian art demands of the artist the power of communion with
the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking precedence of the sense of
material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper vision within.
Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in
India and other essays on Indian culture :467 *
All art reposes on some unity and all its details, whether
few or sparing, lavish or crowded and full must go back to that unity and help
its significance.
Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India and other essays on
Indian culture: 274
*
The first and lowest use of Art is the purely aesthetic, the
second is the intellectual or educative, the third and highest the spiritual.
By speaking of the aesthetic use as the lowest, we do not wish to imply that it
is not of immense value to humanity, but simply to assign to it its comparative
value in relation to the higher uses. The aesthetic is of immense importance
and until it has done its work, mankind is not really fitted to make full use
of Art on the higher planes of human development.
Sri Aurobindo, EARLY CULTURAL WRITINGS
Part Four. On Art, The National Value of Art [2] : 440
*
It is necessary that those who create, whether in great
things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art and genius or in
the small common things of use that surnd a man's daily life, should be
habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in
preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine in
preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy. A nation
surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes that which
it is habituated to contemplate and realizes the fullness of the expanding
Spirit in itself.
Sri Aurobindo, EARLY CULTURAL WRITINGS
Part Four. On Art, The National Value of Art [2] : 454
***
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