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This second volume of the revised and enlarged edition of the Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta comprises six books that deal primarily with mysticism and poetry. The first four are collections of essays. Their titles, along with their first year of publication, are: The Approach to Mysticism (1946), Poets and Mystics (1951), Seer Poets (1970), and Man, Human and Divine (c. 1958). The fifth book, Towards the Light (1938), is a collection of aphorisms and the sixth, To the Heights (1944), a collection of forty-seven poems. Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore, Pascal, Blake, Goethe, T.S. Eliot, Rishi Dirghatama, Shakespeare, and Dante are among the poets, mystics, and seer poets featured in these essays. In Man, Human and Divine, essays on the democracy of tomorrow, human destiny, the language problem and India, and the philosopher as an artist represent a wide range of subjects.

As a keen student of the Veda for more than thirty years while also deeply engaged with Sri Aurobindo’s writings, the author has attempted in this book to understand what the Veda is and how Sri Aurobindo brought it back to us in a modern, lucid language. Chapter titles indicate the scope and intent of the study: a brief history and context of the Veda, a skeleton key to the Veda, the unique non-dualism of the Veda, and Yajna and the Fourfold Godhead of the Veda. Five appendices enhance the reader’s study of this interpretation of the complex philosophy and symbolism of the Rig Veda.

Continuing the author’s series of books transcribed from his talks on The Synthesis of Yoga, Dr Reddy commences his commentary with the first five chapters of Part Two: The Yoga of Integral Knowledge.  In these chapters the author examines Sri Aurobindo’s definitions of the object of knowledge, both spiritual and temporal, and the status of knowledge, first the ordinary function of knowledge and secondly the true knowledge that comes with an inner realisation, with the experience of identity with the Divine. Further chapters emphasise the purification of all parts of the being as a requisite for attaining an accurate and clear mental knowledge, as is the power of concentration and a right understanding of the inner renunciation of all attachment, desire, and self-will that divides the human being from a life unified with the divine consciousness.

Volume Nine of this series commences with Part Three of The Synthesis of Yoga: “The Yoga of Divine Love”. Love as “the crown of works and the flowering of knowledge” forms the basis of the first chapter. Discourses then follow on love as the essential motive and the fulfilment of the Integral Yoga and on the need to turn Godward all parts of the human being to establish contact, enter into a relation, and unite with the Divine. “The Way of Devotion” is to consecrate the entire being, to bring an intensity to one’s yoga that culminates in the complete and utter surrender to the Beloved. The power and intimacy of the divine personality set against an intellectual principle of a divine consciousness is the seeker’s dilemma addressed in Chapter Five. The last three chapters discuss the experience of Ananda on the path of Yoga and explore the very nature of love and its profound place at the centre of our relation with the Divine.

A series of reflective notes on Sanatan Dharma from the vedantic perspective, this book highlights some of the foundational concepts of Sanatan Dharma. The author admits that the scope of the book is limited to the mystical and the yogic elements in Sanatan Dharma and touches only briefly on some of its cultural and historical aspects. Emphasising the importance of its philosophical underpinning, its world view, and how that continuously shapes the civilisation that it engenders and upholds, he argues that Sri Aurobindo embodied the high truth of the Sanatan Dharma and established it as the true framework for a pan-Indian nationalism based on a spiritual consciousness.