 |
 |
flowers
Their Spiritual significance
Photo Collection
Inventions
Inventions have no use except when they are controlled by the Divine.
|
|
Cytisus scoparius (L.) Link (Fabaceae [= Leguminosae])
Scotch broom
Yellow to golden yellow
Cytisus scoparius (L.) Link (Fabaceae [= Leguminosae])
Scotch broom
Small yellow papilionaceous flower with dark crimson wings, borne singly or in pairs in the leaf axils. A large profusely flowering shrub.
"Andreanus"
Inventions
Europe boasts of her science and its marvels. But an Indian cannot content himself with asking like Voltaire, as the supreme question, "What have you invented?" His glance is at the soul; it is that into which he is accustomed to enquire. To the braggart intellect of Europe he is bound to reply, "I am not interested in what you know, I am interested in what you are. With all your discoveries and inventions, what have you become? Your enlightenment is great, - but what are these strange creatures that move about in the electric light you have installed and imagine that they are human?" Is it a great gain for the human intellect to have grown more acute and discerning, if the human soul dwindles?
But Science does not admit the existence of soul. The soul, it says, is only an organised republic of animalcules, and it is in the mould of that idea Europe has recast herself; - that is what the European nations are becoming, organised republics of animalcules, - very intelligent, very methodical, very wonderful talking and reasoning animalcules but still animalcules. Not what the race set out to be, creatures made in the image of the Almighty, gods that having fallen from heaven remember and strive to recover their heritage. Man in Europe is descending steadily from the human level and approximating to the ant and the hornet. The process is not complete but it is progressing apace, and if nothing stops the debacle, we may hope to see its culmination in this twentieth century. After all our superstitions were better than this enlightenment, our social abuses less murderous to the hopes of the race than this social perfection.
It is a very pleasant inferno they have created in Europe, a hell not of torments but of pleasures, of lights and carriages, of balls and dances and suppers, of theatres and cafes and music-halls, of libraries and clubs and Academies, of National Galleries and Exhibitions, of factories, shops, banks and Stock Exchanges. But it is hell all the same, not the heaven of which the saints and the poets dreamed, the new Jerusalem, the golden city. London and New York are the holy cities of the new religion, Paris its golden Paradise of Pleasure.
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library in 30 Volumes. - Volume 3. - The Harmony of virtue. Early Cultural Writings
When I speak of the inner life, I am far from opposing any modern inventions, far from it, but how much these inventions have made us artificial and stupid! How much we have lost the sense of true beauty, how much we burden ourselves with useless needs!
The Mother
The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 3. - Questions and Answers (1929)