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Leonardo Da Vinci - Appendix

Appendix

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Leonardo da Vinci

But very obviously, in the use of the intuition the poet and artist cannot proceed precisely in the same way as the scientist or philosopher. Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable intuitions in science and his creative intuitions in art started from the same power, but the surrounding or subordinate mental operations were of a different character and colour.

Sri Aurobindo —The Foundations of Indian Culture,
SABCL, Vol 14, p. 200

***

Augustus Caesar organised the life of the Roman Empire and it was this that made the framework of the first transmission of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europe — he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life-aspects but in

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its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci, who took up again the work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern Europe.

Sri Aurobindo — Future Poetry,
SABCL, Vol 9, p. 546

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What Leonardo da Vinci held in himself was all the new age of Europe on its many sides. But there was no question of Avatarhood or consciousness of a descent or pressure of spiritual forces. Mysticism was no part of what he had to manifest.

Sri Aurobindo — Letters on Yoga,
SABCL, Vol 22, p. 408

* * *

For, eventually, the evolution of Europe was determined less by the Reformation than by the Renascence; it flowered by the vigorous return of the ancient Graeco-Roman mentality of the one rather than by the Hebraic and religio-ethical temperament of the other. The Renaissance gave back to Europe on one hand the free curiosity of the Greek mind, its eager search for first principles and rational laws, its delighted intellectual scrutiny of the facts of life by the force of direct observation and individual reasoning, on the other the Roman's large practicality and his sense for the ordering of life in harmony with a robust utility and the just principles of things. But both these tendencies were pursued with a passion, seriousness, a moral and almost religious ardour which, lacking in the ancient Graeco-Roman mentality, Europe owed to her long centuries of Judaeo-Christian discipline.

Sri Aurobindo —
SABCL, Vol 15, "Social and Political Thought", p. 15

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In matters of art the western mind was long bound up as in a prison in the Greek and Renaissance tradition modified by a later mentality with only two side rooms of escape, the romantic and the realistic motives, but these were only wings of the same building; for the base was the same and a common essential canon united their variations. The conventional superstition of the imitation of Nature as the first law or the limiting rule of art governed even the freest work and gave its tone to the artistic and critical intelligence. The canons of western artistic creation were held to be the sole valid criteria and everything else was regarded as primitive and half-developed or else strange and fantastic and interesting only by its curiosity.

Sri Aurobindo — The Foundations of Indian Culture
SABCL, Vol 14

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The. Renascence was an awakening of the life spirit to wonder and curiosity and reflection and the stirred discovery of the things of the life and the mind...

The soul of the Renascence was a lover of life and an amateur of knowledge...

Sri Aurobindo — The Future Poetry
SABCL, Vol 9, p. 95

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The Renaissance brings in the sense of a liberation from the burden and the obligation; it looks at life and loves it in excess; it is carried away by the beauty of the body and the senses and the intellect, the beauty of sensation and action and speech and thought, — of thought hardly at all for its own sake, but thought as a power of life.

Sri Aurobindo — The Future Poetry
SABCL, Vol 9, p. 63

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Appendix

A man like Leonardo da Vinci was a Yogi and nothing else. And he was, if not the greatest, at least one of the greatest painters, — although his art did not stop at painting alone.

The Mother — Questions and Answers 28.07.1929

***

30 June, 1962

As a child, when I was around ten or twelve years old, I had some rather interesting experiences which I didn't understand at all. I had some history books – you know, the textbooks they give you to learn history. Well, I'd read and suddenly the book would seem to become transparent, or the printed words would become transparent, and I'd see other words or even pictures. I hadn't the faintest idea what was happening to me! And it appeared so natural to me that I thought it was the same for everybody. ...And several times the corrections I got on one person or another turned out to be quite exact and detailed. And (I see it now — I understood it later on) they were certainly memories.

... I found out many, many things about Joan of Arc – many things. And with stunning precision, which made it extremely interesting. I won't repeat them because I don't remember with exactness, and these things have no value unless they are exact. And then, for the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; and for the French Renaissance: Francois I, Marguerite de Valois, and so forth.

Twice I knew that it wasn't just images but something that had happened to ME, but it took another form.

* * *

I wanted to clarify something.... I don't know if Mona Lisa and Marguerite de Valois were your incarnations, but weren't they contemporaries! ?...

Yes, but I told you — four at once!

Four at once. And, in general, they were the different states of being of the Mother — the four aspects. Generally one aspect in each embodiment (when there were four). Or else this

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or that aspect might have been less present in one embodiment and more present in another. Sometimes there was a fairly central presence and then at the same time less central, less important emanations. But that has happened several times – several times. On two occasions it was particularly clear. But I have often sensed that there wasn't merely ONE embodiment, that the course of history may have crystallized around this or that person, but there were other embodiments less (how to put it?) ... less conspicuous, somewhere else.

They are the different aspects of the Mother.
—The Mother, Mother's Agenda, Vol. 3

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MONA LISA
6.2.1940

Mother was arranging flowers. It was an understanding that in order to save time I could show to her paintings etc., at that hour when she arranged flowers.

C: Can I show the Plate now?

Mother smiled and said: Yes. Yes.

After seeing the painting Mother said: That is the best. C: Is that so?

Mother: I think so. We shall see. Sri Aurobindo was the artist.

C: Leonardo da Vinci?

Mother smiled sweetly and said: Yes.

Then I pointed to the picture and said: Mother, it seems this is yours?

Mother: Yes, do you not see the resemblance?

Mother put her finger on the lips (as in the picture) and showed also the lower portion of the face.

— Champaklal Speaks, Editor M. P Pandit, pp 45-46

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A student had written to the Mother asking if Sri Aurobindo was Leonardo da Vinci in one of his past births.

The Mother wrote to the student an illuminating answer the exact words of which are not remembered, but what She had written was somewhat to the following effect: It cannot be said like that, but the Supreme Lord, while coming down as an avatar borrowed the soul that was in one of its births Leonardo da Vinci.

—K. J.

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