Digital Rare Book:
Essays - Ideal and Progress
By Aurobindo Ghose
Published by Arya Publishing House, Calcutta - 1922

Book Excerpt:

Therefore wherever and whenever the mere practical man abounds and excludes or discourages by his domination the idealist, there is the least work and the least valuable work done in that age or country for humanity ; at most some preliminary spade-work, some labour of conservation and hardly perceptible motion, some repression of creative energies preparing for a great future outburst. On the other hand, when the idealist is liberated, when the visionary abounds, the executive worker also is uplifted, finds at once an orientation and tenfold energy and accomplishes things which he would have otherwise rejected as a dream and chimera, which to his ordinary capacity would be impossible and which often leave the world wondering how work so great could have been done by men who were in themselves so little. The union of the great idealist with the great executive personality who receives and obeys the idea is always the sign of a coming realisation which will be more or less deep and extensive in proportion as they are united or as the executive man seizes more or less profoundly and completely the idea he serves and is able to make permanent in force what the other has impressed upon the consciousness of his age.

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Image:
Painted by Barindra Kumar Ghose

Sri Aurobindo’s youngest brother Barindra Kumar Ghose (5 January 1880 — 18 April 1959) was a noted revolutionary of the Swadeshi movement. Convicted in the Alipore Bomb Trial, he was sentenced to transportation for life in the Andaman Cellular Jail. Soon after his release in January 1920 courtesy an amnesty granted by the Government of India he went to meet Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. From August 1923 to December 1929 he remained at Pondicherry under the spiritual aegis of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Though Barindra Kumar is also known for his books in Bengali and English, the fact that he was also a painter is not known to many.

Source: Overman Foundation