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Appendixes Appendix 1
Sri Aurobindo’s Notes on Certain English Terms Occurring in his Works
dynamis—"Dynamis" is a Greek word, not current, so far as I know, in English; but the verb dunamai, I can, am able, from which it derives, has given a number of verbs to the English language including dynamise, dynamics, dynamic, dyne (a unit of force), so that the word can be at once understood by all English readers. It means power, especially energetic power for energetic action. It is equivalent to the Sanskrit word, Shakti. Philosophically it can stand as the opposite word to status, Divine Status, Divine Dynamis.
ineffugable — "Ineffugible" is the correct formation, but it has no force or power of suggestive sound in it. The "a" in "ineffugable" has been brought in by illegitimate analogy from words like "fugacious", Latin fugare, because it sounds better and is forcible.¹
sublate — "Sublate" means originally to remove; it means denial and removal (throwing off) of something posited. What appeared to be true, can be sublated by a greater truth contradicting it. The experience of the world can be sublated by a greater truth contradicting it. The experience of the world can be sublated by the experience of Self, it is denied and removed; so the experience of Self can be sublated by the experience of Shunya; it is denied and removed. Hegel could not have used the word "sublate" as he wrote in German. I do not know what word² he used which is here translated by "sublate", but certainly it does not mean both destroy and preserve, nor in fact does it mean either. Being passes over into Non-being, so it sublates itself, changes and eliminates itself as it were from the view, becomes Non-being instead of being; but so also does Non-being, what was Non-Being passes over into Being; where there was nothing, there is being; nothing has eliminated itself from the view. This, says Hegel, is not a mutual destruction by the contraries each of which was outside the other. Being inside itself becomes nothing or Non-Being; Non-Being or Nothing equally inside itself passes into being. They do not really sublate or drive out each other, but each sublates itself into the other. In other words, it is the same Reality that presents itself now as one and now as the other.
¹Sri Aurobindo made this comment when the following note apropos of "ineffugable" was submitted to him: It is a new word, like "dynamis", introduced into the English language by Sri Aurobindo. It means inescapable, inevitable, not to be avoided. A similar word was used by Blount in 1856 with slight change of form — "ineffugible". Etymologically it is an adaptation of the Latin ineffugibilis, from effugere, to flee from, avoid. (Vide Oxford English Dictionary) ² Aufheben, if that is the German word, must mean "to send" as the Latin word subtollere (past participle: sublatus) "to heave up and off, to throw", from which "sublate" is taken.
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