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Progress happened in the subhuman world, it is willed in the human, said that most cultured of world leaders in a little book of incomparable beauty called “Kalki or the future of civilization” (p. 63). Putin and his war will come and go, leaving incomparable suffering behind, but “the most durable civilization known to history” (and its earthy prophets, I should add) will keep its fundamental Truth ever open to us.

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Incidentally, there is this letter written to Sri Aurobindo by a disciple:

"Radhakrishnan [the author of Kalki], in his lecture published in the Hindu,* has stolen not only most of your ideas but has actually lifted several sentences en masse. I wonder how such piracy in philosophical literature passes unchastised. I am thinking either of writing to him deploring the theft or informing the Hindu."

* “World Fellowship through Faith ... Sir S. Radhakrishnan’s Address,” The Hindu, 20 July 1936.

Sri Aurobindo’s reply dated 24 July 1936: “I don’t think it is worth while doing anything. The thefts are obvious, but if he wants to add some peacock plumes to his dun colours!”

In a letter dated 5 August 1936 Sri Aurobindo added: “I do not mind Radhakrishnan’s lifting whole sentences and paragraphs from my writings at the World Conference as his own and getting credit for a new and quite original point of view. But if I were eager to figure before the world as a philosopher, I would resent it. But even if one does not mind, one can see the impropriety of the action or take measures against its repetition, if one thinks it worth while.”

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Mar 3, 2023Liked by Ulrich Mohrhoff

No need to wipe it said Hui-neng, where can the dust alight?

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