17 Isha Upanishad VOLUME17 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO ©SriAurobindoAshramTrust2003 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTEDININDIA Isha Upanishad ii Publisher’s Note This volume contains Sri Aurobindo’s translations of and commentaries on the Isha Upanishad. His translations of and commentaries on other Upanishads and Vedantic texts, and his writings ontheUpanishads andVedantaphilosophy ingeneral, are published in Kena and Other Upanishads, volume 18 of THE COMPLETE WORKSOF SRI AUROBINDO. Thepresentvolumeisdividedintotwoparts.Thefirstcon- sistsofSriAurobindo’sfinaltranslationandanalysisoftheIsha Upanishad. This is the only work in this volume that was pub- lishedduringhislifetime.Itcontainshisdefinitiveinterpretation of the Isha Upanishad. Before publishing this final translation and analysis, Sri AurobindowrotetenincompletecommentariesontheIshaUpa- nishad. These appear in approximate chronological order in Part Two. Ranging in length from a few pages to more than a hundred,theyshowthedevelopmentofhisinterpretationofthis Upanishad from around 1900 to the middle of 1914, when he began work on his final translation and analysis. The texts in both parts have been checked against the rele- vant manuscript and printed versions. Guide to Editorial Notation ThecontentsofPartTwoofthisvolumewereneverpreparedby SriAurobindoforpublication.Theyhavebeentranscribedfrom manuscripts that sometimes present textual difficulties. In this editiontheseproblemshavebeenindicatedasfaraspossibleby means of the notation shown below. Notation Textual Problem [.......] Word(s)lostthroughdamagetothemanuscript(at the beginning of a piece, sometimes indicates that a page or pages of the manuscript have been lost) [word] Word(s)omittedbytheauthororlostthroughdam- agetothemanuscriptthatarerequiredbygrammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors [note] Situations requiring textual explication; all such information is printed in italics CONTENTS Part One Translation and Commentary Published by SriAurobindo Isha Upanishad 3 Part Two Incomplete Commentaries fromManuscripts Isha Upanishad: All that is world in the Universe 95 The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English 101 The Karmayogin: A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad 169 Ish and Jagat 303 The Secretof the Isha 307 Chapters for a Work on the Isha Upanishad 311 The Upanishad inAphorism 351 The Life Divine [Draft A] 361 The Life Divine [Draft B] 429 The Life Divine [Draft C] 551 ii Sri Aurobindo in 1908