TERMS STARTING WITH
ananda ::: absence of ananda. negative samat samata
ananda-akasa (ananda-akasha; ananda akasha) ::: ether of ananda, ananda-akasa "a supra-ethereal . . . ether of bliss . . . which is the matrix and continent of the universal expression of the Self". ananda atman ananda
ananda akasa (Ananda Akasha) ::: ether of bliss.
ananda ::: ananda (especially physical ananda or any of its forms) awakened by a stimulus (hetu); since "ideal delight in the body . . . is self-existent even when sahaituka", the hetu "only awakens, it does not produce it".
ananda ::: ananda filled with force.
ananda ::: ananda full of the light of sūrya1 on the plane of vijñana. ssurya
ananda ::: ananda manifesting on the various levels of the inner being, as distinct from physical ananda; especially, the five forms of ananda called suddhananda, cidghanananda, ahaituka ananda, premananda and subjective kamananda, or any one of these.
ananda ::: ananda revealing itself in the body "as an ecstasy pouring into it from the heights of the spirit and the peace and bliss of a pure and spiritualised physical existence"; same as sarirananda in its totality or in any of its five forms.
ananda ::: an intensity of kamananda comparable in some way to sexual ecstasy: a kind of physical ananda born of brahmananda "which is far higher, finer and more intense than the sexual, but of which the sexual is a coarse and excited degradation"; another term for kamananda itself as one of the five forms of sarirananda.
anandabhava ::: troubled state of ananda.
anandabhoga (anandabhoga; ananda-bhoga) ::: enjoyment of deanandabhoga light; same as bhoga as a term for the third and highest stage of active / positive samata, also called (sama) ananda. ananda bhumi ananda
ananda ::: bliss, delight, beatitude, spiritual ecstasy; the essential principle of delight; a self-delight which is the very nature of the transcendent and infinite existence.
ananda. ::: bliss &
anandabodha ::: awareness of bliss. anandabodha
anandabrahmadarsana (anandabrahmadarshana) ::: vision of anananandabrahmadarsana daṁ brahma.
ananda brahman ::: same as anandaṁ brahma ananda
ananda brahma ::: same as anandaṁ brahma ananda
anandabuddha ::: (van.i) expressing ananda on the mental plane. anandabuddha
ananda candra (ananda chandra) ::: the moon (candra1) as a symbol ananda of ananda.
ananda (chakshush ananda) ::: visual ananda, delight in all that is seen with the eyes, a kind of indriya-ananda.
ananda (chanda ananda) ::: same as can.d.ananda.. d.a ananda
ananda (chidghana ahaituka ananda) ::: ahaituka ananda combined with cidghanananda. cidghana ananda
ananda (chidghana ananda) ::: same as cidghanananda. cidghan cidghanananda
ananda (chidghanananda) ::: bliss of "dense self-luminous consciousness" (cidghana), ananda possessed not "by reflection in the mental experience" (see ahaituka ananda) but "with a greater fullness and directness in the massed and luminous consciousness . . . which comes by the gnosis"; the form of subjective ananda connected with the plane of vijñana. cidghana suddha
ananda (chidghana-shuddhananda) ::: suddhananda combined with cidghanananda; suddhananda on the plane of vijñana.
ananda cidghana (ananda chidghana) ::: same as suddha cidghana ananda ananda.
ananda-cit-sat (ananda-chit-sat) ::: Bliss-Consciousness-Being; cit-ananda with the terms reversed.
ananda ::: delight, bliss, ecstasy, beatitude; "a profound concentrated ananda intense self-existent bliss extended to all that our being does, envisages, creates, a fixed divine rapture"; same as sama ananda, the universal delight which constitutes active / positive samata, "an equal delight in all the cosmic manifestation of the Divine", whose "foundation is the Atmajnana or Brahmajnana by which we perceive the whole universe as a perception of one Being that manifests itself in multitudinous forms and activities"; the highest of the three stages of active / positive . 12 samata, "the joy of Unity" by which "all is changed into the full and pure ecstasy" of the Spirit; the third and highest state of bhukti, consisting of the delight of existence experienced "throughout the system" in seven principal forms (kamananda, premananda, ahaituka ananda, cidghanananda, suddhananda, cidananda and sadananda) corresponding to the seven kosas or sheaths of the being and the seven lokas or planes of existence; physical ananda or sarirananda in its five forms, also called vividhananda (various delight), the fourth member of the sarira catus.t.aya; (especially in the plural, "anandas") any of these forms of ananda; same as anandaṁ brahma, the last aspect of the fourfold brahman; bliss of infinite conscious existence, "the original, all-encompassing, all-informing, all-upholding delight", the third aspect of saccidananda and the principle manifested in its purity in janaloka or anandaloka, also present in an involved or subordinated form on every other plane.
ANANDA. ::: Delight; essential principle of delight; bliss; spiritual ecstasy; the bliss of the Spirit which is the secret source· and support of all existence.
Ānanda is the secret delight from which all things are born, by which all is sustained in existence and to which all can rise in the spiritual culmination.
It is the Divine Bliss which comes from above. It is not joy or pleasure, but something self-existent, pure and quite beyond what any joy or pleasure can be.
Something greater than peace or joy, something that, like Truth and Light, is the very nature of the supramental Divine. It can come by frequent inrushes or descents, partially or for a time, but it cannot -remain in the system so long as the system has not been prepared for it.
It can come not only with its fullest intensity but with a more enduring persistence when the mind is at peace and the heart delivered from ordinary joy and sorrow. If the mind and heart are restless, changeful, unquiet, Ānanda of a kind may come, but it is mixed with vital excitement and cannot abide. One must get peace and calm fixed in the consciousness first, then there is a solid basis on which Ānanda can spread itself and in its turn become an enduring part of the consciousness and the nature.
Ānanda (ascension into) ::: It is quite impossible to ascend to the real Ānanda plane (except in a profound trance), until after the supramental consciousness has been entered, realised and possessed; but it is quite possible and normal to feel some form of Ānanda consciousness on any level. This consciousness, wherever it is felt, is a derivation from the Ānanda plane, but it is very much diminished in power and modified to suit the lesser power of receptivity of the inferior levels.
Ānanda (divine) in the physical ::: self-existent in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine.
Ānanda (of the Brahman) ::: there is an absoluteness of immutable ecstasy in it, a concentrated intensity of silent and inalienable rapture.
ananda ::: delight full of laughter; (sama) ananda full of hasya.
anandadharan.asakti (anandadharanashakti) ::: the power to sustain anandadharanasakti ananda of any intensity ananda
ananda (drashta ananda) ::: same as dras.t.r. ananda.. t.a ananda drasta dras t a
ananda (drashtri ananda; drastri ananda) ::: ananda experi. t.r. ananda enced in the revelatory logistis.
ananda ::: "electric"201 ananda; a form of sarirananda or physical ananda which "comes as a blissful electric shock or current on the brain or other part of the nervous system". It is said to be "of two kinds, positive or fiery & negative or cold", corresponding to "two forms of sukshma vidyut [subtle electricity] that are the basis of the phenomena of heat & cold"; a "neutral" vaidyutananda is also mentioned.
ananda ::: equal ananda; the universal delight in all experiences which constitutes active / positive samata; the third stage of active / positive samata, in which "all is changed into the full and pure ecstasy of the spiritual Ananda".
anandaghanaloka ::: [world of compact bliss].
ananda ideality ::: same as ananda-vijñana. ananda isvara ananda
ananda ::: impartial delight. udasina ud
ananda (indriya-ananda; indriya ananda) ::: sense-delight; the ananda of the indriyas in general or of any particular indriya, "a beatitude of the senses perceiving and meeting the One [eka1] everywhere, perceiving as their normal aesthesis of things a universal beauty [sarvasaundarya] and a secret harmony of creation"; the sahaituka form of vis.ayananda.
anandakosa (anandakosha; ananda-kosha) ::: the sheath (kosa) coranandakosa responding to the plane of ananda, the "bliss-sheath" which is the spiritual body of the "bliss soul" and in which, together with the vijñanakosa, "all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be found, a yet unmanifested divine law of the body".
anandakosa ::: [bliss-sheath].
anandaloka (anandaloka; ananda-loka; ananda loka) ::: the world anandaloka (loka) of the supreme bliss (ananda) of saccidananda, the plane of "the joy of absolute identity in innumerable oneness", where all "consciousness is of the bliss of the Infinite, all power is power of the bliss of the Infinite, all forms and activities are forms and activities of the bliss of the Infinite"; there is also "a repetition of the Ananda plane in each lower world of consciousness", but "in the lower planes not only is it reached by a sort of dissolution into it of the pure mind or the life-sense or the physical awareness, but it is, as it were, itself diluted by the dissolved form of mind, life or matter, held in the dilution and turned into a poor thinness wonderful to the lower consciousness but not comparable to its true intensities".
anandaloka ::: [world of bliss.]
ananda-mahat ::: (van.i) expressing ananda on the plane of vijñana. ananda-mahat
ananda manas ::: the principle of ananda reflected in the mental plane ananda
anandamaya ::: 1. [full of ananda], joyous. ::: 2. [ =anandamaya purusa].
anandamaya (anandamaya; anandamay) ::: full of or consisting of anandamaya ananda; joyous, delightful, blissful, beatific; characterized by an equal delight (sama ananda) in all experiences; having the nature of pure ananda of saccidananda, or of the principle of ananda involved in or subordinated to the principle of another plane, such as the physical, mental, etc.; ("the Anandamaya") the All-Blissful, short for anandamaya isvara or anandamaya purus.a; the third degree of . 14 the third intensity of Kr.s.n.adarsana, a kind of vision of the divine Personality corresponding to anandaṁ brahma in the impersonal brahmadarsana.
anandamaya asat (anandamay asat) ::: non-being (asat) conceived as anandamaya "some inexpressible Beatitude [ananda] . . . into which even the notion of self-existence seems to be swallowed up"; "a pure causeless eternal Bliss so intense that we are that alone", experienced when the mind, in approaching saccidananda, dwells exclusively "on the aspect of delight, Ananda, and existence [sat] and consciousness [cit] then seem to disappear into a bliss without basis of self-possessing awareness or constituent being".
anandamaya asura ::: the sadhyadeva (mind raised to the plane of anandamaya ananda) of the asura type, who evolves in the eleventh and twelfth manvantaras of the sixth pratikalpa.
anandamaya avesa ::: [a blissful avesa].
anandamaya brahmamaya ::: consisting of anandaṁ brahma anandamaya anandamaya isvara anandamaya
anandamaya ::: fear turned into delight.
anandamaya isvara (Anandamaya Ishwara) ::: [the Lord whose substance is ananda], the Lord of existence and works and the Spirit of bliss.
anandamaya ::: joyless; the opposite of anandamaya. nir nirananda ananda ssanti
ananda maya kosha. ::: the sheath of bliss; the causal body; dreamless sleep; the borderline of the Self
anandamaya lilamaya ::: (brahman or isvara) full of ananda exanandamaya pressed in the lila of the world; short for anandamaya lilamaya sagun.a or anandamaya lilamaya Kr.s.n.a. anandamaya lil anandamaya lilamaya amaya Kr Krsna
anandamaya namaskara ::: [a blissful salutation].
anandamaya nati ::: ecstatic submission; the highest form of nati anandamaya which comes when one learns "to take delight in all things even as the Lord takes delight in them", becoming "capable of receiving all contacts with a blissful equality, because we feel in them the touch of the imperishable Love and Delight, the happiness absolute that hides . ever in the heart of things".
anandamaya purusa (Anandamaya Purusha) ::: Bliss-Self; the all-blissful being or all-enjoying and all-productive soul; an infinite "I Am" of Bliss.
ananda mayi. :::filled with bliss; consisting of bliss
anandam brahma (Ananda Brahman) ::: the brahman as the self-existent bliss and its universal delight of being; the bliss-existence.
anandaṁ (brahma) ::: brahman as Knowledge and Bliss, the last two elements of the brahma catus.t.aya. j ñanamaya
anandam brahmano vidvan na bibheti kutascana ::: He who possesses the delight of the brahman has no fear from anything in the world. [Tait. 2.4]
anandaṁ brahma ::: sarvaṁ brahma combined with anandaṁ brahma.
anandaṁ brahma ::: the formula expressing the realisation of the fourfold brahman, when one sees "all the universe as the manifestation of the One" (sarvaṁ brahma), "all quality and action as the play of his universal and infinite energy" (anantaṁ brahma), "all knowledge and conscious experience as the outflowing of that consciousness" (jñanaṁ brahma), and "all in the terms of that one Ananda" (anandaṁ brahma). sarvam anantaṁ jñanam anandaṁ brahma, iti brahmacatus.t.ayam (sarvam anantam jnanam anandam brahma, iti brahmachatushtayam)
anandaṁ brahma ::: the universal and equal delight of brahman.
anandam (sacchidanandam) ::: saccidananda in its impersonal aspect as brahman, "That which Is, which, being, comprehends Its own existence, which, comprehending, has in its silence of being or in its play of comprehension a self-existent delight".
anandam ::: same as anandaṁ brahma. anandam
ananda ::: "objectless bliss"; a kind of subjective ananda,"self-existent and independent of objects and particular experiences", which manifests on the plane of mind (manas) as "an even and tranquil neutral joy"; any form of physical ananda not associated with an external stimulus. ahaituk ahaitukananda
ananda ::: same as kamananda.
ananda ::: same as maithunananda. maithun maithunananda
ananda ::: same as physical ananda.
ananda ::: same as positive samata. positive asraddh asraddha
ananda ::: same as premananda.
ananda ::: same as raudrananda. raudra raudr a K Kali
ananda ::: same as tivrananda.
ananda ::: same as vaidyutananda. elementary utth utthapana
ananda ::: same as vaidyutananda.
ananda (shama ananda) ::: ananda filled with peace; calm delight. sama ananda
ananda (sharira ananda) ::: same as sarirananda. sarira catustaya sarira
ananda (sharirika ananda) ::: same as sarirananda. sarupa sar ūpa dhyana
ananda (shuddha ananda; suddha ananda) ::: pure ananda, the "unalloyed delight" of eternal existence; same as suddhananda. suddha ananta ananda suddha
ananda (shuddha ananta ananda) ::: pure infinite delight. suddha cidghana ananda suddha
ananda (shuddha chidghana ananda; shuddhachidghana-ananda) ::: cidghanananda full of suddha ananda. suddha kama suddha
anandasiddhi (anandasiddhi; ananda siddhi) ::: the perfection of anandasiddhi ananda, especially in the sense of sama ananda or any form of physical ananda.
anandatattva (anandatattwa; ananda tattwa) ::: the principle of bliss, anandatattva usually referring not to the supreme ananda of saccidananda, but to its diluted manifestation on a lower plane.
ananda ::: the bliss of absolute existence (kaivalya, the condition of that which is kevala, sole or absolute), a term used for the union of sadananda, cidananda and suddhananda, the three highest forms of ananda, which are based on the "Joy of the spirit in the Ekam" (One) in its threefold aspect as saccidananda or infinite Existence-Consciousness-Bliss; also applied to sadananda by itself.
ananda ::: the form of ananda corresponding to the mental plane (same as ahaituka ananda).
ananda ::: the infinite delight (ananda) of saccidananda; (in brahmadarsana) "the sense of the infinite Ananda in each thing".
ananda ::: the opposite of ananda; pain, distress, discomfort. positive samat samata
ananda ::: the opposite of indriya-ananda; sensational discomfort.
ananda ::: the sanmaya level of the plane of ananda.
ananda ::: the tapomaya level of the ananda plane.
anandavan.i (anandavani; ananda vani) ::: beatific voice: van.i originating on the ananda plane or expressing the delight of the anandamaya isvara. ananda-vij ananda-vij ñana
ananda ::: vehement delight.
ananda (vijnana ananda; vijnana-ananda) ::: same as vijñanananda. vij ñana ana bhava
ananda (vishaya ananda) ::: same as vis.ayananda.. aya ananda
ananda yatnam. ::: empire of bliss
Ananda Abhava: Absence of spiritual bliss.
Ananda) and if the lower movements are active, it forms an obstacle to the establishment of the higher consciousness. But the higher can descend, if there is at all an opening, even before
Ananda ::: Ananda is the secret delight from which all things are born, by which all is sustained in existence and to which all can rise in the spiritual culmination.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 506
Ananda: Bliss; happiness; joy.
Ananda Brahman ::: see anandam brahma
Ananda cannot descend or are mixed and split from the effer- vescing crude emotional vesseL No amount of ordinary reason- ing can get rid of the necessity of surmounting the lower in order that the higher may be there.
Ananda Ghana: Mass of bliss.
Ananda in the consciousness, their workings there, the realisation of the divine or spiritual love, the perception of on€’s own psy- chic being, the discovery of one’s own true mental being, true wtal being, true physical being, the realisation of the overmind or the Supramental consciousness, the clear perception of the relation of all these things to our present inferior nature and their action on it to change that lower nature. These things also are often called experiences when they only come in flashes, snatches or rare visitations ; they are spoken of as full realisa- tions only when they become very positive or frequent or con- tinuous or normal.
Ananda is Beatitude, the bliss of pure conscious existence and energy, as opposed to the life of the sensations and emotions which are at the mercy of the outward touches of Life and Matter and their positive and negative reactions, joy and grief, pleasure and pain. Ananda is the divine counterpart of the lower emotional and sensational being.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 29
Ananda is Beatitude, the bliss of pure conscious existence and energy, as opposed to the life of the sensations and emotions which are at the mercy of the outward touches of Life and Matter and their positive and negative reactions, joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 29
Ananda is the essential nature of bliss of the cosmic consciousness and, in activity, its delight of self-creation and self-experience.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 25, Page: 101
Ananda is the very essence of the Brahman, it is the supreme nature of the omnipresent Reality.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 1025
Ananda-lahari (Sanskrit) Ānanda-lahari [from ānanda joy, bliss + lahari a large wave] A poem attributed to Sankaracharya, written in the guise of a hymn of praise to Parvati, consort of Siva, and containing highly mystical teaching (TG 21).
Anandamaya: Full of bliss.
Anandamaya Kosa: Blissful sheath or Karana Sarira, the seed body which contains Mula Ajnana or the potentialities.
Anandamayakosa (Sanskrit) Ānandamayakośa [from ānanda bliss, joy + maya built of, formed of from the verbal root mā to measure, form + kośa sheath] Bliss-built sheath; in the Vedantic classification, the first of the panchakosa (five sheaths) of the human constitution which enclose the divine monad (atman); it corresponds to the spiritual soul (buddhi). Anandamayakosa is sometimes mystically referred to as the sheath of the sun. See also KOSA
Anandamayakosha ::: In respect to some Hindu traditions' view of the soul, this is the Causal Body and the sheath of self corresponding with the Non-Dual and Eternal.
Ananda Metteyya. (1872-1923). Ordination name of the British Buddhist monk, born Charles Henry Allen Bennett. He was the son of an electrical engineer and studied science in his youth. In 1894, he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a society devoted to esotericism, whence he gained a reputation as a magician and miracle worker, becoming the friend and teacher of Aleister Crowley. He became interested in Buddhism from reading EDWIN ARNOLD's The Light of Asia. In 1900, he traveled to Asia, both because of his interest in Buddhism and his hope of relieving his asthma. Bennett was ordained as a Buddhist novice (sRAMAnERA) in Akyab, Burma, in 1901 and received the higher ordination (UPASAMPADA) as a monk (BHIKsU) in 1902. He was among the first Englishmen to be ordained as a bhikkhu, after Gordon Douglas (Bhikkhu Asoka), who was ordained in 1899 and the Irish monk U Dhammaloka, who was ordained some time prior to 1899. In 1903, he founded the International Buddhist Society (Buddhasasana Samagama) in Rangoon. Ananda Metteya led the first Buddhist mission to Britain with his patroness Hla Oung in 1908. In the previous year, in preparation for their visit, the Buddhist Society of Great Britain and Ireland was established, with THOMAS W. RHYS DAVIDS as president. He returned to Rangoon after six months. Plagued throughout his life with asthma, he disrobed in 1914 due to ill health and returned to England, where he continued his work to propagate Buddhism. Partly due to increasing drug dependency prompted by continuing medical treatments, he passed his final years in poverty. His published works include An Outline of Buddhism and The Wisdom of the Aryas.
Ananda Metteyya
Ananda pada: Blissful seat.
Ananda sagara: Ocean of Bliss.
Ananda (Sanskrit) Ānanda [from ā-nand to rejoice, be delighted] Bliss, joy, happiness; the favorite disciple of Gautama Buddha, who served his teacher with utmost devotion for twenty years and is credited with having recited, shortly after the Buddha’s parinibbana (great passing away), the entire buddhavachana (word of Buddha).
Ananda: Sanskrit for joy, happiness, bliss.
Ananda: (Skr.) Joy, happiness, bliss, beatitude, associated in the thinking of many Indian philosophers with moksa (q.v.); a concomitant of perfection and divine consciousness (cf. sat-citananda). -- K.F.L.
Ananda. ,
Ananda.
Ananda svarupa: Of the essential nature of bliss.
Ananda Temple. A monumental THERAVADA Buddhist monastery located outside the Tharba Gate in the medieval Burmese capital of Pagan. The Ananda was built around 1105 by King Kyanzittha (r. 1084-1111), third monarch of the Pagan empire, and is dedicated to the four buddhas who have appeared during the present auspicious age: Krakucchanda (P. Kakusandha), Kanakamuni (P. KonAgamana), KAsYAPA, and GAUTAMA. In architectural style, the Ananda represents a fusion of Bengali, Burmese, and Pyu (precursors of the ethnic Burmans) elements. Legend states that eight ARHATs from Mount Gandhamadana in India visited King Kyanzittha, and he was so impressed that he constructed a monastery for them, and next to it founded the Ananda. Like all temples and pagodas of the city of Pagan, the Ananda is built of fired brick and faced with stucco. It is cruciform in plan following a Pyu prototype and crowned with a North Indian style tower, or sikhara. Its interior consists of two circumambulatory halls pierced by windows that allow a limited amount of light into the interior. The hallways are decorated with terracotta plaques depicting episodes from the PAli JATAKAs, the MahAnipAta, and NIDANAKATHA. The inner hall contains niches housing numerous seated images of the Buddha that are rendered in a distinctive Pala style. The temple is entered from four entrances facing the four cardinal directions, which lead directly to four large inner chambers, each containing a colossal standing statue of a buddha. Two of the statues are original; a third was rebuilt in the eighteenth century; and the fourth has been repaired. Three of the statues are flanked by smaller images of their chief disciples. The exception is the statue of Gautama Buddha, located in the western chamber, which is flanked by what is believed to be portrait statues of King Kyanzitha and SHIN ARAHAN, the Mon monk said to have converted Pagan to TheravAda Buddhism, who was also Kyanzittha's preceptor.
Ananda Temple
Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the
Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines! Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe. But human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth move- ment and the supramental action become possible.
Ananda. (T. Kun dga' bo; C. Anan[tuo]; J. Anan[da]; K. Anan[da] 阿難[陀]). In Sanskrit and PAli, literally "Bliss," the name of the Buddha's cousin, longtime attendant, and one of his chief disciples. According to tradition, in his previous life, he was a god in the TUsITA heaven, who was born on the same day and into the same sAKYA clan as the BODHISATTVA and future buddha who was born as prince SIDDHARTHA. Ananda was born as the son of Amṛtodana, the brother of king sUDDHODANA. He was thus the Buddha's cousin and the brother of DEVADATTA. When the Buddha returned to his home town of KAPILAVASTU in the second year after his enlightenment, many of the sAkyan men, such as Ananda and Devadatta, wished to renounce the householder life and become the Buddha's disciples as monks. Not long after his ordination, Ananda became a SROTAAPANNA upon hearing a sermon by PuRnA. The Buddha did not have a personal attendant for the first twenty years after his enlightenment, with various monks occasionally offering various services to him. But after two decades of these ad hoc arrangements, the Buddha finally asked for someone to volunteer to be his personal attendant; all the monks volunteered except Ananda, who said that he did not do so because the Buddha would choose the correct person regardless of who volunteered. The Buddha selected Ananda, who accepted on the following conditions: the Buddha was never to give him any special food or robes that he had received as gifts; the Buddha was not to provide him with a special monk's cell; and the Buddha was not to include him in dining invitations he received from the laity. Ananda made these conditions in order to prevent anyone from claiming that he received special treatment because of serving as the Buddha's attendant. In addition, he asked to be allowed to accept invitations on behalf of the Buddha; he asked to be allowed to bring to the Buddha those who came from great distances to see him; he asked to be able to bring any questions he had to the Buddha; and he asked that the Buddha repeat to him any doctrine that had been taught in his absence. Ananda saw these latter conditions as the true advantages of serving the Buddha. For the next twenty-five years, Ananda served the Buddha with great devotion, bringing him water, sweeping his cell, washing his feet, rubbing his body, sewing his robes, and accompanying him wherever he went. He guarded the Buddha's cell at night, carrying a staff and a torch, in order to make sure that his sleep was not disturbed and to be ready should the Buddha need him. As the Buddha grew older and more infirm, Ananda provided devoted care, despite the fact that the two were exactly the same age. Because Ananda was constantly in the Buddha's presence, he played a key role in many famous events of the early dispensation. For example, it was Ananda who, on behalf of MAHAPRAJAPATI, requested that women be allowed to enter the SAMGHA as nuns, persisting in his request despite the Buddha's initial refusal. He is therefore remembered especially fondly by the order of BHIKsUnĪs, and it is said that he often preached to nuns. In a famous tale reproduced in various sources, the daughter of a woman named MAtangī attempted to seduce Ananda with the help of her mother's magical powers, only to come to realize her wrongdoing with the intervention of the Buddha. Toward the end of his life, the Buddha mentioned to Ananda that a buddha could live for a KALPA or until the end of the kalpa if he were asked to do so. (See CAPALACAITYA.) Ananda, distracted by MARA, failed to request the Buddha to do so, despite the Buddha mentioning this three times. Ananda was chastised for this blunder at the first council (see infra). Ananda figures prominently in the account of the Buddha's last days in the MAHAPARINIBBANASUTTA, weeping at the knowledge that the Buddha was about to die and being consoled by him. Ananda was known for his extraordinary powers of memory; he is said to have heard all 84,000 sermon topics (82,000 taught by the Buddha and 2,000 taught by other disciples) and was able to memorize 15,000 stanzas without omitting a syllable. He therefore played a key role in the recitation of the Buddha's teachings at the first council (SAMGĪTI; see COUNCIL, FIRST) held at RAJAGṚHA shortly after the Buddha's death. However, MAHAKAsYAPA, who convened the council, specified that all five hundred monks in attendance must be ARHATs, and Ananda was not. On the night before the opening of the council, Ananda achieved the enlightenment of an arhat as he was lying down to sleep, as his head fell to the pillow and his feet rose from the ground. He is therefore famous for achieving enlightenment in none of the four traditional postures (ĪRYAPATHA): walking, standing, sitting, or lying down. As an arhat, Ananda was welcomed to the council, where he recounted all the words of the Buddha (except those concerning the VINAYA, or monastic rules, which were recited by UPALI). For this reason, most SuTRAs open with the words, "Thus have I heard" (EVAM MAYA sRUTAM); the "I" is usually Ananda. (For this reason, Ananda is also known in China as Duowen Diyi, "First in Vast Hearing" or "He Who Heard the Most.") After the Buddha's death, the order of monks brought five charges against Ananda: (1) the Buddha had said that after his passing, the monks could disregard the minor precepts, but Ananda failed to ask him which those were; thus, all the precepts had to be followed; (2) Ananda had once stepped on the Buddha's robe when sewing it; (3) Ananda had allowed women to honor the Buddha's naked body after his death and their tears had fallen on his feet; (4) Ananda failed to ask the Buddha to live on for the rest of the kalpa; and (5) Ananda urged the Buddha to admit women to the order. Ananda replied that he saw no fault in any of these deeds but agreed to confess them. According to FAXIAN, when Ananda was 120 years old, he set out from MAGADHA to VAIsALĪ in order to die. Seeking his relics (sARĪRA), AJATAsATRU followed him to the Rohīni River, while a group from VaisAlī awaited him on the other bank. Not wishing to disappoint either group, Ananda levitated to the middle of the river in the meditative posture, preached the dharma, and then meditated on the TEJOKASInA, which prompted his body to burst into flames, with the relics dividing into two parts, one landing on each bank of the river. Ananda has long been one of the most beloved figures in the history of Buddhism, in part because he was not the wisest of the Buddha's disciples but showed unstinting devotion to the Buddha, always seeking to understand him correctly and to bring his teachings to as many people as possible.
Ananda valli: A portion of the Taittiriya Upanishad.
TERMS ANYWHERE
. a (anandamaya purusha) ::: "the Bliss-Self of the spirit"; the supreme and universal Soul, "the one and yet innumerable Personality, the infinite Godhead, the self-aware and self-unfolding Purusha", whose essential nature is ananda, a "transcendent Bliss, unimaginable and inexpressible by the mind and speech"; also called ananda purus.a. anandamaya sagun anandamaya saguna
. a (ananda purusha; ananda-purusha) ::: the "supreme bliss Soul", the aspect of the divine Personality (purus.a) corresponding to the impersonal anandaṁ brahma; same as anandamaya purus.a.
a ::: defect or failing of negative samata. negative nir nirananda
Aditi ::: the indivisible conscious-force and ananda of the Supreme; the Mother; the infinite Mother of the gods; supreme Nature or infinite Consciousness.
Aditi ::: the Vedic goddess of infinite being, the mother of the gods, manifested here as the earth-goddess (Pr.thivi2); the adya-sakti, the indivisible consciousness (cit), force (tapas) and bliss (ananda) of the Supreme.
. a (eka anandamaya purusha) ::: the one allblissful Spirit.
a ::: equality in one"s response to the contacts of the world, consisting of (sama) rasa, (sama) bhoga and (sama) ananda, also called active samata: "a positive equality which accepts the phenomena of existence, but only as the manifestation of the one divine being and with an equal response to them which comes from the divine . nature in us and transforms them into its hidden values".
a ::: equality in one"s response to the contacts of the world, consisting of (sama) rasa, (sama) bhoga and (sama) ananda, also called positive samata: an "active equality which will enable us not only to draw back from or confront the world in a detached and separated calm, but to return upon it and possess it in the power of the calm and equal Spirit".
aesthesis ::: “By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a vital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something yet deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, to some form of the spirit’s delight of existence, Ananda.” Letters on Savitri
"Aesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry, as it is of all art. But it is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of poetry and art; it extends to everything in the world: there is nothing we can sense, think or in any way experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction of our conscious being. Ordinarily, we suppose that aesthesis is concerned with beauty, and that indeed is its most prominent concern: but it is concerned with many other things also. It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the universal Ananda takes three major and original forms, beauty, love and delight, the delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things.” Letters on Savitri
“Aesthesis therefore is of the very essence of poetry, as it is of all art. But it is not the sole element and aesthesis too is not confined to a reception of poetry and art; it extends to everything in the world: there is nothing we can sense, think or in any way experience to which there cannot be an aesthetic reaction of our conscious being. Ordinarily, we suppose that aesthesis is concerned with beauty, and that indeed is its most prominent concern: but it is concerned with many other things also. It is the universal Ananda that is the parent of aesthesis and the universal Ananda takes three major and original forms, beauty, love and delight, the delight of all existence, the delight in things, in all things.” Letters on Savitri
ahaituka ::: causeless; objectless; lacking a hetu; (with reference to any form of physical ananda or certain types of subjective ananda) manifesting without relation to an outer stimulus or object; short for ahaituka ananda. ahaituka ananda
ajayananda ::: joy of (temporary) defeat (as a step towards victory), a form of sama ananda...
Alacananda ::: “One of the four head streams of the river Ganga in the Himalayas. According to the Vaishnavas it is the terrestrial Ganga which Shiva received upon his head as it fell from heaven. The famous shrine of Badrinath is situated on the banks of this stream. (Dow). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
Alacananda ::: “One of the four head streams of the river Ganga in the Himalayas. According to the Vaishnavas it is the terrestrial Ganga which Shiva received upon his head as it fell from heaven. The famous shrine of Badrinath is situated on the banks of this stream.(Dow). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
alacananda ::: "One of the four head streams of the river Ganga in the Himalayas. According to the Vaishnavas it is the terrestrial Ganga which Shiva received upon his head as it fell from heaven. The famous shrine of Badrinath is situated on the banks of this stream. (Dow.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
ALIEN BEINGS. ::: No trust can be put on the beauty of the eyes or the face. There are many Beings of the inferior planes who have a captivating beauty and can enthrall with it and they can give too an Ananda which is not of the highest and may on the contrary by its lure take away from the path altogether.
“All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.”
"All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.” ::: "The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings" or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined"? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see"?” Letters on Savitri
ama1 (kama; kamah) ::: desire; same as suddha kama, "a divine desire other than the vital craving, a God-desire of which this other and lower phenomenon is an obscure shadow and into which it has to be transfigured"; the seeking for "the joy of God manifest in matter", an attribute of the sūdra and of Aniruddha; short for kamananda; same as samaja, the social part of karma; the divine enjoyment that accompanies a divine action in the world, a member of the karma catus.t.aya; (on page 1281) the lowest svarga 88.KKama
ama ::: kama1 (divine desire or enjoyment) in its subjective aspect; same as subjective kamananda. subjective k kamananda
Amal: “The ‘inner prophet’ is the psychic being who corresponds in the lower hemisphere of the cosmos to the higher hemisphere’s ananda planes.”
Amal: “The phrase ‘the Book of Bliss’ is a reference to the plane of Ananda which is beyond-behind the plane of the Supermind. I have equated ‘beyond’ to ‘behind’ because there is nothing higher than the Supermind. Through Supermind comes the disclosure of the supreme Ananda which may be called its inmost self.”
Amal: “The reference here seems to be to satchitananda in its ultimate reality. There it is one single reality with a threefold aspect on the one hand and on the other an exclusive character of its own. This character is beyond everything—and is a mystery which cannot be expressed.”
Amal: “They must be Sat-Chit-Ananda.”
Amal: “This must be sat-chit-ananda - Being, Consciousness and Bliss. Here the threefold reality seems subsumed under one category doing duty for the three.
amananda ::: kamananda as physical ananda manifesting in the sthūla deha or gross body, distinguished from subjective kamananda. physical pr prana
amananda ::: kamananda manifesting in the sūks.ma deha (subtle body) as the form of subjective ananda closest to the physical. subjective vis visaya
amananda (prema-kamananda; prema kamananda) ::: premananda combined with (subjective) kamananda.
amaya ::: the supreme Reality and the power of its "infinite consciousness to comprehend, contain in itself and measure out . . . Name and Shape out of the vast illimitable Truth of infinite existence", the duality of brahman and maya in its highest "biune" form. par parajayananda
ana ahaituka ::: ahaituka ananda without vijñana. nirvikalpa samadhi
ana (ananda-vijnana; ananda vijnana) ::: the principle of ananda reflected in the plane of vijñana. ananda-vij ananda-vij ñanamaya
anamaya ::: (van.i) expressing the delight and wisdom of the vijñanamaya anandamaya isvara.
anaṁ brahma ::: sarvaṁ brahma combined with jñanaṁ brahma. sarva sarvam ṁ samam anandam
anam ::: same as jñana or jñanaṁ brahma. j ñanam anam anandam
ananda ::: absence of ananda. negative samat samata
ananda-akasa (ananda-akasha; ananda akasha) ::: ether of ananda, ananda-akasa "a supra-ethereal . . . ether of bliss . . . which is the matrix and continent of the universal expression of the Self". ananda atman ananda
ananda akasa (Ananda Akasha) ::: ether of bliss.
ananda ::: ananda (especially physical ananda or any of its forms) awakened by a stimulus (hetu); since "ideal delight in the body . . . is self-existent even when sahaituka", the hetu "only awakens, it does not produce it".
ananda ::: ananda filled with force.
ananda ::: ananda full of the light of sūrya1 on the plane of vijñana. ssurya
ananda ::: ananda manifesting on the various levels of the inner being, as distinct from physical ananda; especially, the five forms of ananda called suddhananda, cidghanananda, ahaituka ananda, premananda and subjective kamananda, or any one of these.
ananda ::: ananda revealing itself in the body "as an ecstasy pouring into it from the heights of the spirit and the peace and bliss of a pure and spiritualised physical existence"; same as sarirananda in its totality or in any of its five forms.
ananda ::: an intensity of kamananda comparable in some way to sexual ecstasy: a kind of physical ananda born of brahmananda "which is far higher, finer and more intense than the sexual, but of which the sexual is a coarse and excited degradation"; another term for kamananda itself as one of the five forms of sarirananda.
anandabhoga (anandabhoga; ananda-bhoga) ::: enjoyment of deanandabhoga light; same as bhoga as a term for the third and highest stage of active / positive samata, also called (sama) ananda. ananda bhumi ananda
ananda ::: bliss, delight, beatitude, spiritual ecstasy; the essential principle of delight; a self-delight which is the very nature of the transcendent and infinite existence.
ananda. ::: bliss &
anandabodha ::: awareness of bliss. anandabodha
anandabrahmadarsana (anandabrahmadarshana) ::: vision of anananandabrahmadarsana daṁ brahma.
ananda brahman ::: same as anandaṁ brahma ananda
ananda brahma ::: same as anandaṁ brahma ananda
anandabuddha ::: (van.i) expressing ananda on the mental plane. anandabuddha
ananda candra (ananda chandra) ::: the moon (candra1) as a symbol ananda of ananda.
ananda (chakshush ananda) ::: visual ananda, delight in all that is seen with the eyes, a kind of indriya-ananda.
ananda (chanda ananda) ::: same as can.d.ananda.. d.a ananda
ananda (chidghana ahaituka ananda) ::: ahaituka ananda combined with cidghanananda. cidghana ananda
ananda (chidghana ananda) ::: same as cidghanananda. cidghan cidghanananda
ananda (chidghanananda) ::: bliss of "dense self-luminous consciousness" (cidghana), ananda possessed not "by reflection in the mental experience" (see ahaituka ananda) but "with a greater fullness and directness in the massed and luminous consciousness . . . which comes by the gnosis"; the form of subjective ananda connected with the plane of vijñana. cidghana suddha
ananda (chidghana-shuddhananda) ::: suddhananda combined with cidghanananda; suddhananda on the plane of vijñana.
ananda cidghana (ananda chidghana) ::: same as suddha cidghana ananda ananda.
ananda-cit-sat (ananda-chit-sat) ::: Bliss-Consciousness-Being; cit-ananda with the terms reversed.
ananda ::: delight, bliss, ecstasy, beatitude; "a profound concentrated ananda intense self-existent bliss extended to all that our being does, envisages, creates, a fixed divine rapture"; same as sama ananda, the universal delight which constitutes active / positive samata, "an equal delight in all the cosmic manifestation of the Divine", whose "foundation is the Atmajnana or Brahmajnana by which we perceive the whole universe as a perception of one Being that manifests itself in multitudinous forms and activities"; the highest of the three stages of active / positive . 12 samata, "the joy of Unity" by which "all is changed into the full and pure ecstasy" of the Spirit; the third and highest state of bhukti, consisting of the delight of existence experienced "throughout the system" in seven principal forms (kamananda, premananda, ahaituka ananda, cidghanananda, suddhananda, cidananda and sadananda) corresponding to the seven kosas or sheaths of the being and the seven lokas or planes of existence; physical ananda or sarirananda in its five forms, also called vividhananda (various delight), the fourth member of the sarira catus.t.aya; (especially in the plural, "anandas") any of these forms of ananda; same as anandaṁ brahma, the last aspect of the fourfold brahman; bliss of infinite conscious existence, "the original, all-encompassing, all-informing, all-upholding delight", the third aspect of saccidananda and the principle manifested in its purity in janaloka or anandaloka, also present in an involved or subordinated form on every other plane.
ANANDA. ::: Delight; essential principle of delight; bliss; spiritual ecstasy; the bliss of the Spirit which is the secret source· and support of all existence.
Ānanda is the secret delight from which all things are born, by which all is sustained in existence and to which all can rise in the spiritual culmination.
It is the Divine Bliss which comes from above. It is not joy or pleasure, but something self-existent, pure and quite beyond what any joy or pleasure can be.
Something greater than peace or joy, something that, like Truth and Light, is the very nature of the supramental Divine. It can come by frequent inrushes or descents, partially or for a time, but it cannot -remain in the system so long as the system has not been prepared for it.
It can come not only with its fullest intensity but with a more enduring persistence when the mind is at peace and the heart delivered from ordinary joy and sorrow. If the mind and heart are restless, changeful, unquiet, Ānanda of a kind may come, but it is mixed with vital excitement and cannot abide. One must get peace and calm fixed in the consciousness first, then there is a solid basis on which Ānanda can spread itself and in its turn become an enduring part of the consciousness and the nature.
Ānanda (ascension into) ::: It is quite impossible to ascend to the real Ānanda plane (except in a profound trance), until after the supramental consciousness has been entered, realised and possessed; but it is quite possible and normal to feel some form of Ānanda consciousness on any level. This consciousness, wherever it is felt, is a derivation from the Ānanda plane, but it is very much diminished in power and modified to suit the lesser power of receptivity of the inferior levels.
Ānanda (divine) in the physical ::: self-existent in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine.
Ānanda (of the Brahman) ::: there is an absoluteness of immutable ecstasy in it, a concentrated intensity of silent and inalienable rapture.
ananda ::: delight full of laughter; (sama) ananda full of hasya.
anandadharan.asakti (anandadharanashakti) ::: the power to sustain anandadharanasakti ananda of any intensity ananda
ananda (drashta ananda) ::: same as dras.t.r. ananda.. t.a ananda drasta dras t a
ananda (drashtri ananda; drastri ananda) ::: ananda experi. t.r. ananda enced in the revelatory logistis.
ananda ::: equal ananda; the universal delight in all experiences which constitutes active / positive samata; the third stage of active / positive samata, in which "all is changed into the full and pure ecstasy of the spiritual Ananda".
anandaghanaloka ::: [world of compact bliss].
ananda ideality ::: same as ananda-vijñana. ananda isvara ananda
ananda (indriya-ananda; indriya ananda) ::: sense-delight; the ananda of the indriyas in general or of any particular indriya, "a beatitude of the senses perceiving and meeting the One [eka1] everywhere, perceiving as their normal aesthesis of things a universal beauty [sarvasaundarya] and a secret harmony of creation"; the sahaituka form of vis.ayananda.
anandakosa (anandakosha; ananda-kosha) ::: the sheath (kosa) coranandakosa responding to the plane of ananda, the "bliss-sheath" which is the spiritual body of the "bliss soul" and in which, together with the vijñanakosa, "all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be found, a yet unmanifested divine law of the body".
anandakosa ::: [bliss-sheath].
anandaloka (anandaloka; ananda-loka; ananda loka) ::: the world anandaloka (loka) of the supreme bliss (ananda) of saccidananda, the plane of "the joy of absolute identity in innumerable oneness", where all "consciousness is of the bliss of the Infinite, all power is power of the bliss of the Infinite, all forms and activities are forms and activities of the bliss of the Infinite"; there is also "a repetition of the Ananda plane in each lower world of consciousness", but "in the lower planes not only is it reached by a sort of dissolution into it of the pure mind or the life-sense or the physical awareness, but it is, as it were, itself diluted by the dissolved form of mind, life or matter, held in the dilution and turned into a poor thinness wonderful to the lower consciousness but not comparable to its true intensities".
anandaloka ::: [world of bliss.]
ananda-mahat ::: (van.i) expressing ananda on the plane of vijñana. ananda-mahat
ananda manas ::: the principle of ananda reflected in the mental plane ananda
anandamaya ::: 1. [full of ananda], joyous. ::: 2. [ =anandamaya purusa].
anandamaya (anandamaya; anandamay) ::: full of or consisting of anandamaya ananda; joyous, delightful, blissful, beatific; characterized by an equal delight (sama ananda) in all experiences; having the nature of pure ananda of saccidananda, or of the principle of ananda involved in or subordinated to the principle of another plane, such as the physical, mental, etc.; ("the Anandamaya") the All-Blissful, short for anandamaya isvara or anandamaya purus.a; the third degree of . 14 the third intensity of Kr.s.n.adarsana, a kind of vision of the divine Personality corresponding to anandaṁ brahma in the impersonal brahmadarsana.
anandamaya asat (anandamay asat) ::: non-being (asat) conceived as anandamaya "some inexpressible Beatitude [ananda] . . . into which even the notion of self-existence seems to be swallowed up"; "a pure causeless eternal Bliss so intense that we are that alone", experienced when the mind, in approaching saccidananda, dwells exclusively "on the aspect of delight, Ananda, and existence [sat] and consciousness [cit] then seem to disappear into a bliss without basis of self-possessing awareness or constituent being".
anandamaya asura ::: the sadhyadeva (mind raised to the plane of anandamaya ananda) of the asura type, who evolves in the eleventh and twelfth manvantaras of the sixth pratikalpa.
anandamaya avesa ::: [a blissful avesa].
anandamaya brahmamaya ::: consisting of anandaṁ brahma anandamaya anandamaya isvara anandamaya
anandamaya ::: fear turned into delight.
anandamaya isvara (Anandamaya Ishwara) ::: [the Lord whose substance is ananda], the Lord of existence and works and the Spirit of bliss.
anandamaya ::: joyless; the opposite of anandamaya. nir nirananda ananda ssanti
ananda maya kosha. ::: the sheath of bliss; the causal body; dreamless sleep; the borderline of the Self
anandamaya lilamaya ::: (brahman or isvara) full of ananda exanandamaya pressed in the lila of the world; short for anandamaya lilamaya sagun.a or anandamaya lilamaya Kr.s.n.a. anandamaya lil anandamaya lilamaya amaya Kr Krsna
anandamaya namaskara ::: [a blissful salutation].
anandamaya nati ::: ecstatic submission; the highest form of nati anandamaya which comes when one learns "to take delight in all things even as the Lord takes delight in them", becoming "capable of receiving all contacts with a blissful equality, because we feel in them the touch of the imperishable Love and Delight, the happiness absolute that hides . ever in the heart of things".
anandamaya purusa (Anandamaya Purusha) ::: Bliss-Self; the all-blissful being or all-enjoying and all-productive soul; an infinite "I Am" of Bliss.
ananda mayi. :::filled with bliss; consisting of bliss
anandam brahma (Ananda Brahman) ::: the brahman as the self-existent bliss and its universal delight of being; the bliss-existence.
anandaṁ (brahma) ::: brahman as Knowledge and Bliss, the last two elements of the brahma catus.t.aya. j ñanamaya
anandam brahmano vidvan na bibheti kutascana ::: He who possesses the delight of the brahman has no fear from anything in the world. [Tait. 2.4]
anandaṁ brahma ::: sarvaṁ brahma combined with anandaṁ brahma.
anandaṁ brahma ::: the formula expressing the realisation of the fourfold brahman, when one sees "all the universe as the manifestation of the One" (sarvaṁ brahma), "all quality and action as the play of his universal and infinite energy" (anantaṁ brahma), "all knowledge and conscious experience as the outflowing of that consciousness" (jñanaṁ brahma), and "all in the terms of that one Ananda" (anandaṁ brahma). sarvam anantaṁ jñanam anandaṁ brahma, iti brahmacatus.t.ayam (sarvam anantam jnanam anandam brahma, iti brahmachatushtayam)
anandaṁ brahma ::: the universal and equal delight of brahman.
anandam (sacchidanandam) ::: saccidananda in its impersonal aspect as brahman, "That which Is, which, being, comprehends Its own existence, which, comprehending, has in its silence of being or in its play of comprehension a self-existent delight".
anandam ::: same as anandaṁ brahma. anandam
ananda ::: "objectless bliss"; a kind of subjective ananda,"self-existent and independent of objects and particular experiences", which manifests on the plane of mind (manas) as "an even and tranquil neutral joy"; any form of physical ananda not associated with an external stimulus. ahaituk ahaitukananda
ananda ::: same as kamananda.
ananda ::: same as maithunananda. maithun maithunananda
ananda ::: same as physical ananda.
ananda ::: same as positive samata. positive asraddh asraddha
ananda ::: same as premananda.
ananda ::: same as raudrananda. raudra raudr a K Kali
ananda ::: same as vaidyutananda. elementary utth utthapana
ananda (shama ananda) ::: ananda filled with peace; calm delight. sama ananda
ananda (sharira ananda) ::: same as sarirananda. sarira catustaya sarira
ananda (sharirika ananda) ::: same as sarirananda. sarupa sar ūpa dhyana
ananda (shuddha ananda; suddha ananda) ::: pure ananda, the "unalloyed delight" of eternal existence; same as suddhananda. suddha ananta ananda suddha
ananda (shuddha ananta ananda) ::: pure infinite delight. suddha cidghana ananda suddha
ananda (shuddha chidghana ananda; shuddhachidghana-ananda) ::: cidghanananda full of suddha ananda. suddha kama suddha
anandasiddhi (anandasiddhi; ananda siddhi) ::: the perfection of anandasiddhi ananda, especially in the sense of sama ananda or any form of physical ananda.
anandatattva (anandatattwa; ananda tattwa) ::: the principle of bliss, anandatattva usually referring not to the supreme ananda of saccidananda, but to its diluted manifestation on a lower plane.
ananda ::: the bliss of absolute existence (kaivalya, the condition of that which is kevala, sole or absolute), a term used for the union of sadananda, cidananda and suddhananda, the three highest forms of ananda, which are based on the "Joy of the spirit in the Ekam" (One) in its threefold aspect as saccidananda or infinite Existence-Consciousness-Bliss; also applied to sadananda by itself.
ananda ::: the form of ananda corresponding to the mental plane (same as ahaituka ananda).
ananda ::: the infinite delight (ananda) of saccidananda; (in brahmadarsana) "the sense of the infinite Ananda in each thing".
ananda ::: the opposite of ananda; pain, distress, discomfort. positive samat samata
ananda ::: the opposite of indriya-ananda; sensational discomfort.
ananda ::: the sanmaya level of the plane of ananda.
ananda ::: the tapomaya level of the ananda plane.
anandavan.i (anandavani; ananda vani) ::: beatific voice: van.i originating on the ananda plane or expressing the delight of the anandamaya isvara. ananda-vij ananda-vij ñana
ananda ::: vehement delight.
ananda yatnam. ::: empire of bliss
ananta ::: infinite; brahman as the Infinite (short for ananta brahman). ananta ananda
an.a (panchaprana) ::: the five "vital currents of energy" in the . body, called pran.a, apana, samana, vyana and udana; the "fivefold movement" of the physical life-force "pervading all the nervous system and the whole material body and determining all its functionings". pañcavidha ssarirananda
(and through the supramental into nature of Ananda) — thk Is the third or supnnental transformation.
an.i ::: beatific voice. anandam ananda
anti (nirananda shanti) ::: peace without ananda, a form of negative santi.
apakars.an.a (apakarshana) ::: tearing away; cutting off; one of the five apakarsana forms of pain to be turned into raudrananda.
apikars.an.a (apikarshana) ::: injuring; breaking; one of the five forms apikarsana of pain to be turned into raudrananda. apo m matarisva atarisva dadhati
arayan.a ::: Narayan.a seen in relation to the cosmic game or lila as an aspect of the "divine Anandamaya personality" at play in the world.
arirananda (panchavidha sharirananda)—fivefold physical ananda, consisting of kamananda, vis.ayananda, tivrananda, raudrananda and vaidyutananda.
arogyam ::: see arogya. arogyam arogyam utthapana saundaryaṁ vividhananda iti sarira catus.t.ayam arogyam
arogyam utthapana saundaryam vividhanandah iti sariracatustayam ::: see these words separately
(arogyam, utthapana, saundaryam, vividhananda iti sharirachatushtayam) ::: arogya, utthapana, saundarya and vividhananda: these constitute the sarira catus.t.aya.
. a ::: same as anandamaya sagun.a brahman. anandamaya saguna anandamaya
a ::: same as saṁsaya, doubt. positive nir nirananda
a ::: the world as a rapturous game of the anandamaya isvara / purus.a.
atman ::: delight-self; anandaṁ brahma seen or experienced as the atman, "the calm, motionless, blissful Self within us which is eternally untroubled and unaffected by the touches of things". ananda bh ananda bhava
. a-udasinata-nati (anandamaya titiksha-udasinatanati) ::: joyous endurance-indifference-submission; anandamaya nati unified with titiks.a and udasinata. anandamaya vvani anandamaya
ava (ananda bhava) ::: condition of spiritual bliss; state of consciousness on a plane of ananda.
ava (madhurabhava; madhur bhava)—the sweet (madhura) relation (bhava) between the jiva and the isvara (or between Kali and Kr.s.n.a), the relation of lover and beloved which "is the most intense and blissful of all and carries up all the rest into its heights"(see composite bhava); the spiritual emotion proper to that relation, in which "the turning of human emotion Godwards finds its full meaning and discovers all the truth of which love is the human symbol, all its essential instincts divinised, raised, satisfied in the bliss from which our life was born and towards which by oneness it returns in the Ananda of the divine existence where love is absolute, eternal and unalloyed". madhura madhur a d dasi
. ayananda (vishayananda) ::: vis.ayananda generated "objectively in the physical response to all experiences".
. ayananda (vishayananda) ::: vis.ayananda generated "subjectively in the mind"s reception of all actions, sights, sounds, touches etc". subjective vis visaya-nirananda
. aya-nirananda (vishaya-nirananda) ::: the negation of subjective vis.ayananda. subtle akasa
. aya (vishaya) ::: same as subjective vis.ayananda. subjective vis visayananda
bala-Kr.s.n.a (bala-Krishna; bala Krishna) ::: the boy Kr.s.n.a, "the divine bala-Krsna Child" at play in the worlds in "the free infinity of the self-delight of Sachchidananda"; Kr.s.n.a as the lilamaya purus.a in a condition of balabhava.
Ananda) and if the lower movements are active, it forms an obstacle to the establishment of the higher consciousness. But the higher can descend, if there is at all an opening, even before
Ananda Brahman ::: see anandam brahma
Ananda cannot descend or are mixed and split from the effer- vescing crude emotional vesseL No amount of ordinary reason- ing can get rid of the necessity of surmounting the lower in order that the higher may be there.
Ananda in the consciousness, their workings there, the realisation of the divine or spiritual love, the perception of on€’s own psy- chic being, the discovery of one’s own true mental being, true wtal being, true physical being, the realisation of the overmind or the Supramental consciousness, the clear perception of the relation of all these things to our present inferior nature and their action on it to change that lower nature. These things also are often called experiences when they only come in flashes, snatches or rare visitations ; they are spoken of as full realisa- tions only when they become very positive or frequent or con- tinuous or normal.
Ananda. ,
Ananda.
Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the
Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines! Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe. But human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth move- ment and the supramental action become possible.
Bbakti and the heart's call for the Divine have a truth — it is the truth of the divine Love and Ananda.
BEAUTY. ::: Beauty is as much an expression of the Divine as Knowledge, Power or Ananda.
"To find highest beauty is to find God ; to reveal, to embody, to create as we say, highest beauty is to bring out of our souls the living image and power of God.
"Beauty is Ananda taking form — but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.” The Future Poetry
“Beauty is Ananda taking form—but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.” The Future Poetry
"Beauty is not the same as Delight, but like love it is an expression, a form of Ananda, created by Ananda and composed of Ananda.” The Future Poetry
“Beauty is not the same as Delight, but like love it is an expression, a form of Ananda, created by Ananda and composed of Ananda.” The Future Poetry
bhavitavyam ::: that which is to be. bhaya anandamaya
bhoga ::: enjoyment; a response to experience which "translates itself into joy and suffering" in the lower being, where it "is of a twofold kind, positive and negative", but in the higher being "it is an actively equal enjoyment of the divine delight in self-manifestation";(also called sama bhoga) the second stage of active / positive samata, reached when the rasagrahan.a or mental "seizing of the principle of delight" in all things takes "the form of a strong possessing enjoyment . . . which makes the whole life-being vibrate with it and accept and rejoice in it"; the second stage of bhukti, "enjoyment without desire" in the pran.a or vital being; (when priti is substituted for bhoga as the second stage of positive samata or bhukti) same as (sama) ananda, the third stage of positive samata or bhukti, the "perfect enjoyment of existence" that comes "when it is not things, but the Ananda of the spirit in things that forms the real, essential object of our enjoying and things only as form and symbol of the spirit, waves of the ocean of Ananda". bhoga h hasyam asyaṁ karmalips karmalipsa a samabh samabhava
bhojanananda ::: delight in eating. bhojanananda
bhū ::: earth, the plane of terrestrial existence; the world of Matter bhu (anna1), which is "Sachchidananda represented to His own mental experience as a formal basis of objective knowledge, action and delight of existence", the lowest world of the triloka; it includes the physical plane, along with its vital and mental envelopes (triloka in bhū), and the subtle bhū.
bhukti ::: enjoyment; the "enjoyment of our liberated being which brings us into unity or union with the Supreme"; the third member of the siddhi catus.t.aya, resulting from suddhi and mukti and consisting of "the Delight of existence in itself, independent of every experience and extending itself to all experiences". It has three states (rasagrahan.a, bhoga and ananda), each with three intensities (rati, ratna and ratha), on each of seven levels corresponding to the seven planes of existence.
Blue ::: Fundamental colour of the Ananda ; Krishna’s special and significant colour, the colour of his aura when he manifests ;
brahmadarsana (brahmadarshana; brahma-darshana; brahma darshana; brahmadarshan) ::: the vision (darsana) of brahman in all things and beings; the perception of the fourfold brahman as "the impersonal Sarvam Anantam Jnanam Anandam" (also called "simple Brahmadarshana"), sometimes extended to the perception of "the Personal in & embracing the Impersonal", the latter perception including isvaradarsana and such specific forms of darsana as Narayan.adarsana, Kr.s.n.adarsana and Kr.s.n.akali darsana. The vision of "the one and indivisible eternal transcendent and cosmic Brahman that is in its seeming divided in things and creatures" is in its nature a "spiritual seeing of God and world" which is a "direct experience [upalabdhi] and as real, vivid, near, constant, effective, intimate as to the mind its sensuous seeing and feeling of images, objects and persons"
brahmananda ::: [the ananda of the brahman]
brahmananda ::: the bliss of brahman, "the self-existent bliss of the spirit which depends on no object or circumstance"; it "can be described as the eternity of an uninterrupted supreme ecstasy", a bliss of which "peace . . . is the intimate core and essence".
brahmananda. ::: the bliss of communion with Brahman, the Final Reality; the experience of one's own being, of the vision of one's own Self and the eventual peace that is unparalleled
brahman ::: (in the Veda) "the soul or soul-consciousness emerging from the secret heart of things" or "the thought, inspired, creative, full of the secret truth, which emerges from that consciousness and becomes thought of the mind"; (in Vedanta) the divine Reality, "the One [eka1] besides whom there is nothing else existent", the Absolute who is "at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements". Its nature is saccidananda, infinite existence (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananda), whose second element can also be described as consciousness-force (cit-tapas), making four fundamental principles of the integral Reality; brahman seen in all things in terms of these principles is called in the Record of Yoga the fourfold brahman, whose aspects form the brahma catus.t.aya. The complete realisation of brahman included for Sri Aurobindo not only the unification of the experiences of the nirgun.a brahman (brahman without qualities) and sagun.a brahman (brahman with qualities), but the harmonisation of the impersonal brahman which is "the spiritual material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe" with the personal isvara in the consciousness of parabrahman, the brahman in its supreme status as "a transcendent Unthinkable too great for any manifestation", which "is at the same time the living supreme Soul of all things" (purus.ottama) and the supreme Lord (paramesvara) and supreme Self (paramatman), "and in all these equal aspects the same single and eternal Godhead". Brahman is represented in sound by the mystic syllable OM.
brahma-purus.a (sarvam anantam anandam brahma-purusha) ::: a union of the impersonal and personal aspects of sarvam anantam anandaṁ brahma..
(bringing with it Knowledge) or Force (bringing strength and dynamism of many kinds) or Ananda (bringing love and joy of existence) can come next according to the trend of the nature.
“But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different,—something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” Letters on Yoga
But with the extension of our knowledge we discover what this spirit or oversoul is: it is ultimately our own highest deepest vastest Self, it is apparent on its summits or by reflection in ourselves as Sachchidananda creating us and the world by the power of His divine Knowledge-Will, spiritual, supramental, truth-conscious, infinite. That is the real Being, Lord and Creator, who, as the Cosmic Self veiled in Mind and Life and Matter, has descended into that which we call the Inconscient and constitutes and directs its subconscient existence by His supramental will and knowledge, has ascended out of the Inconscient and dwells in the inner being constituting and directing its subliminal existence by the same will and knowledge, has cast up out of the subliminal our surface existence and dwells secretly in it over seeing with the same supreme light and mastery its stumbling and groping movements.
caitanyamaya (chaitanyamaya) ::: having the nature of caitanya, the principle of pure consciousness (cit) that is the second aspect of saccidananda; expressing the principle of caitanya or cit contained in the principle of any other plane, such as the physical.
caks.us.a (chakshusha; chakshush) ::: ocular, visual; pertaining to the eye or to the physical or subtle sense of vision (caks.us); the visual form of subtle sense-perception (vis.ayadr.s.t.i), also called darsana. ccaksusa aks.us.a ananda
can.d.ananda (chandananda) ::: intense delight. candananda can canda
candra1 (chandra) ::: moon; the lunar orb as a symbol of the mind, especially the intuitive mind, which reflects the light of vijñana symbolised by sūrya1, the sun; also a symbol of ananda, sometimes identified with soma1.
çarira -) ::: physical perfection, consisting of the siddhi of the sarira catus.t.aya: "a perfection of the body as the outer instrument of a complete divine living on earth . . . effected by bringing in the law of the gnostic Purusha, vijñanamaya purus.a, and of that into which it opens, the Anandamaya, into the physical consciousness", leading to "a divinising of the law of the body".
catus.t.aya (sharirachatusthaya; sharira chatusthaya)—the fourth catus.t.aya, the quaternary of the body, whose members are arogya, utthapana, saundarya and ananda (or vividhananda) ssarira
chidananda. ::: the bliss of pure consciousness
cidananda (chidananda) ::: (also called nirgun.a, qualitiless) "Ananda cidananda of pure consciousness [cit] without the gunas", one of the seven principal forms of ananda, corresponding to the principle of ananda involved in cit-tapas, an "infinite inalienable delight" implicit in the "infinite imperishable force of self-conscious being".
cid. (chid.) ::: abbreviation of cidghanananda.
cidghana (chidghana) ::: the "dense light of essential consciousness" belonging to the vijñana or gnosis, "in which the intense fullness of the Ananda can be": "a dense luminous consciousness, . . . the seedstate of the divine consciousness in which are contained living and . concrete all the immutable principles of the divine being and all the inviolable truths of the divine conscious-idea and nature"; short for cidghanananda. cidghana ahaituka ananda
cit (chit) ::: consciousness; the infinite self-awareness that is "the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience", the second term of saccidananda; "an inherent self-consciousness" in brahman,"inseparable from its being [sat] and throwing itself out as a force [tapas] of movement of consciousness which is creative of forces, forms and worlds"; the "universal conscious-stuff of existence", the "original Consciousness" which "modifies itself so as to become on the Truthplane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself".
citra ratih. (chitra ratih) ::: various delight; a combination of different forms of ananda. citra rupa
cit-tapas (chit-tapas; chittapas; chit tapas) ::: consciousness-force; knowledge-power; the unity of cit and tapas; "the infinite divine selfawareness which is also the infinite all-effective Will", represented by cit in the description of the nature of divine being as sat-cit-ananda or saccidananda; the "divine Conscious-Force" which "is omnipresent ... in the material cosmos, but veiled, operative secretly behind the actual phenomenon of things, and it expresses itself there characteristically through its own subordinate term, Life" (pran.a).
Conquest of desire for food ::: There are two ways of con- quering it ::: one of detachment, learning to regard food as only a physical necessity and the vital satisfaction of the stomach and the palate as a thing of no importance ; the other is to be able to take without insistence or seeking any food given and to find in it the equal rasa, not of the food for its own sake, but of the universal ananda.
cosmos ::: “But if the individual is a persistent reality, an eternal portion or power of the Eternal, if his growth of consciousness is the means by which the Spirit in things discloses its being, the cosmos reveals itself as a conditioned manifestation of the play of the eternal One in the being of Sachchidananda with the eternal Many.” The Life Divine
dadasa (sutuko dadásha) ::: a Vedic phrase, occurring in the sortilege on page 460, whose precise interpretation is problematic; Sri Aurobindo translates sutukah. elsewhere as "swift", but connects it here with "samata & ananda", while he takes dadasa, "he has given", to refer to "complete dasya subjective & objective". [R . g Veda 1.149.5]
delight ::: “… the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss [is that] from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss without which nothing could remain in being. In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d’être of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness.” The Secret of the Veda
Descent into the most physical ::: It brings light, consciousness, force, Ananda into the cells and all the physical movements. The body becomes conscious and vi^ant and performs the right movements, obeying the higher will or else automatically by the force of the consciousness that has come into iL It becomes more possible to control the functions of the body and set right any> thing that is mong, to deal with illness and pain etc. A greater control comes over the actions of the body and even ov'er bap> penings to it from outside, e.g. minimising of aeddents and small happenings. The body becomes a more effective instrument for work. It becomes possible to mimmise fatigue. Peace, happiness, strength, lightness come in the whole system. There is also the unity with the earth-consdousness, the constant sense of the
Desire nothing but the purity, force, fight, wideness, calm, Ananda of the divine consciousness and Us insistence to transform and perfect your mind, life and body. Ask for notfifng 6ut the divine, spiritual and supramenfal Truth, its realisation on earth and in you and in all who arc called and chosen and the condi- tions needed for its creation and its Wcfoiy over all opposing forces.
devihasya (devihasya; devi-hasya; devi hasya; devihasyam) ::: laughter devihasya of the Goddess, "the laughter of the Shakti doing luminously the work of the Divine and taking his Ananda in all the worlds"; a union of the .. four kinds of hasya proper to the four aspects of devibhava.
dharanasamarthya ::: holding and responsive power; the power of sustaining the full stream of force, of ananda, of widening knowledge and being which descends into the mind and prana and the vital and bodily functions. ::: dharanasamarthyam [nominative]
Divine and surrender more and more one’s ordinary persona! ideas, desires, attachments, urges to action or habits of actions so that the Divine may lake up cveiything. Surrender means that, to give up our little mind and its mental ideas and prefe- rences into a divine Light and a greater knowledge, our petty persona] troubled blind stumbling will into a great calm, tran- quil, luminous Will and Force, our little, restless, tormented feel- ings into a wide intense divine Love and Ananda, our small suffering personality into the one Person of which it is an obs- cure outcome. If one insists on one's own ideas and reasonfogs, the greater Light and Knowledge cannot come or else is marked and obstructed in the coming at every step by a lower inter- ference ,* if one insists on one’s desires and fancies, that great luminous Will and Force cannot act in its own true power— for you ask it to be the servant of your desires ; if one refuses to give up one’s petty ways of feeling, eternal Love and supreme
Divine Love and psychic love ::: The Divine’s love is that which comes from above poured down from the Divine Oneness and its Ananda on the being ; psychic love is a form taken by divine love in the human being according to the need and pos- sibilities of the human consciousness.
Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences p indispensable for the Supramental realisation, — most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine lx>ve, the
Divine Power, Light, Ananda may descend and work behind the veil, but we shall feel nothing and only sec certain results after a long time. Or at most we feel a certain clarity and peace in the mind, a joy in the vital, a happy state in the physical and infer the touch of the Divine. But if we are aware in the physical, we shall feel the I^t, power or Ananda flowing through the body, the limbs, nerves, blood, breath and, through
DIVINE. ::: The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.
Divine Will is something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the ‘Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty, and Ananda, for these arc the Divine Nature.
::: "Divinisation itself does not mean the destruction of the human elements; it means taking them up, showing them the way to their own perfection, raising them by purification and perfection to their full power and Ananda and that means the raising of the whole of earthly life to its full power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
“Divinisation itself does not mean the destruction of the human elements; it means taking them up, showing them the way to their own perfection, raising them by purification and perfection to their full power and Ananda and that means the raising of the whole of earthly life to its full power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
DIVINISATION. ::: Taking up of the human elements, show- ing them the way to their own perfection, raising them by purifi- cation and perfection to their full power and Ananda and that means the raising of the whole earthly life to its full power and Ananda.
This divinisation of the nature is a metamorphosis, a change from the falsehood of our ignorant nature into the truth of God- nature.
Earth ::: “The earth is a material field of evolution. Mind and life, supermind, Sachchidananda are in principle involved there in the earth-consciousness; but only Matter is at first organized; then life descends from the life plane and gives shape and organization and activity to the life principle in Matter, creates the plant and animal; then mind descends from the mind plane, creating man. Now supermind is to descend so as to create a supramental race.” Letters on Yoga
eka1 (eka; ekam) ::: one; the One, the sole Reality, brahman or saccidananda, seen "as one Existence, Being gathered in itself and Being displayed in all existences; as one Consciousness concentrated in the unity of its existence, extended in universal nature and many-centred in innumerable beings; one Force static in its repose of self-gathered consciousness and dynamic in its activity of extended consciousness; one Delight blissfully aware of its featureless infinity and blissfully aware of all feature and force and forms as itself".
emotion ::: “Emotion itself is not a bad thing; it is a necessary part of the nature, and psychic emotion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed: …” Letters on Yoga
essential trinity of Sachchidananda, ::: Existence, Consciousness, Bliss with self-awareness and self-force, Chit and Tapas, for double terms of Consciousness".
ethics ::: “In other words, ethics is a stage in evolution. That which is common to all stages is the urge of Sachchidananda towards self-expression. This urge is at first non-ethical, then infra-ethical in the animal, then in the intelligent animal even anti-ethical for it permits us to approve hurt done to others which we disapprove when done to ourselves. In this respect man even now is only half-ethical. And just as all below us is infra-ethical, so there may be that above us whither we shall eventually arrive, which is supra-ethical, has no need of ethics. The ethical impulse and attitude, so all-important to humanity, is a means by which it struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon inconscience and broken up by Life into individual discords towards a higher harmony and universality based upon conscient oneness with all existences. Arriving at that goal, this means will no longer be necessary or even possible, since the qualities and oppositions on which it depends will naturally dissolve and disappear in the final reconciliation.” The Life Divine
"Everything is a ‘substance" — even peace, consciousness, Ananda, — only there are different orders of substance.” *Letters on Yoga
“Everything is a ‘substance’—even peace, consciousness, Ananda,—only there are different orders of substance.” Letters on Yoga
fourfold brahman ::: the omnipresent Reality, brahman, "seen everywhere in the whole & in each object" in the four aspects that constitute the brahma catus.t.aya; sarvaṁ brahma is seen "when we realise one thing in the universe", anantaṁ brahma "when we realise Infinite Force and Quality at play in all forms", jñanaṁ brahma "when we realise a consciousness in everything which is aware of all", and anandaṁ brahma "when we realise in that consciousness a delight in all things".
Four, the ::: same as the fourfold isvara; the four Vedic gods (Varun.a,Four Mitra, Aryaman and Bhaga) who "build up the whole divine state into its perfection by the natural interaction of its four essential elements", the four gods representing respectively "the all-pervading purity" of sat (Varun.a), "the all-uniting light" of cit (Mitra), "the movement and all-discerning force" of tapas (Aryaman) and "the allembracing joy" of ananda (Bhaga), thus being "practically the later
.GOLOKA. ::: Vaikuntha and Goloka arc human conceptions of states of being that arc be)ond humanity. Goloka is evidently a world of Love, Beauty and Ananda full of spiritual radiances
goloka ::: world of Love, beauty and ananda full of spiritual radiances; the vaisnava heaven of eternal Beauty and Bliss.
hasyam ::: see hasya. hasyam h hasyamaya asyamaya ananda
hetu ::: cause; an object or external stimulus (usually a touch) associated with the experience of sahaituka ananda.
holocaust ::: “The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
“Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth,—truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
indriya (indriya; indriyam) ::: sense-organ, especially any of "the five perceptive senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell, which make the five properties of things their respective objects" (see vis.aya); the sense-faculty in general, "fundamentally not the action of certain physical organs, but the contact of consciousness with its objects" (saṁjñana). Each of the physical senses has two elements, "the physical-nervous impression of the object and the mental-nervous value we give to it"; the mind (manas) is sometimes regarded as a "sixth sense", though "in fact it is the only true sense organ and the rest are no more than its outer conveniences and secondary instruments". indriyaindriya-ananda
indriyam ::: see indriya. indriya-nir indriya-nirananda
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
isvara (ananda ishwara) ::: anandaṁ brahma seen as an aspect of the Lord.
isvara (anandamaya ishwara) ::: "the all-blissful Lord", the isvara as the anandamaya purus.a, "the Lord of existence and works and Spirit of bliss". anandamaya Kr anandamaya Krsna
It is only the ordinaiy vital emotions which waste the energy and disturb the concentration and peace that have to be dis- couraged. Emotion itself is not a bad thing ; it is a necessary part of nature and psychic emoiion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed ::: it is only a vital mixture that brings disturbance in the sadhana.
It is the insinimentation of the Sachchidananda, — the Infinite consciousness higher than the mental being. It Is a Self- awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of Self- determination Inherent in that Self-awareness. Supermind keeps always and in every status and condition the spiritual realisation of the unity of all. It is the Consciousness creatrix of the world, a W”!!! to light and vision and also a will to power of works. It
“It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind’s highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.” The Life Divine
janaloka ::: the world (loka) of the "creative delight of existence", the plane of ananda, also called anandaloka, where the "soul may dwell . . . in the principle of infinite self-existent delight and be aware .82 of the divine Ananda creating out of its self-existence by its energy whatever harmony of being". janamaya dr drsti
Jhumur: “It is the creative Ananda.”
Jhumur: “The Book of bliss is really the ultimate Satchitananda, the everlasting day when one has moved out of all contact with the unconscious and lives no longer in between sunlight and darkness but wholly in the light, wholly in the Divine. There was once a question that somebody asked Mother when She used to take our classes. She (the person) said that in our world there is a change from lesser to greater if one tries to progress. It is a constant change. When one enters the higher plane, the upper hemisphere as you call it, will there be no change, will it always be the same? Mother said,”No, it is not that. One perfection can then be manifested later in another kind of perfection.” There is a variety of different laws of perfection, hence the myriad volumes of the Book of Bliss. Delight has so many modes of expression, perfection or delight, they are all the same and there is not just one way of manifesting the Divine. There are infinite modes of expression of that delight.”
.K.A. ::: abbreviation of "Kama Ananda" (see kamananda).
Kailasa (Kailas) ::: the mountain on whose summit Śiva is said to dwell, according to a popular tradition which translated inner truths "into terms familiar to our physical and objective experience, . . . turned the rarer heights of subtle substance into material heights and placed the abodes of the gods on the summits of physical mountains". kaivaly kaivalyananda
Kalikr.s.n.a (Kalikrishna; Kali krishna) ::: (also called Kr.s.n.akali) the Kalikrsna union of Kali and Kr.s.n.a, whether seen in the perception (darsana) of the external world or experienced in oneself in a spiritual realisation which is the basis of karma and kama1, where Kali as prakr.ti "take[s] up the whole nature into the law of her higher divine truth and act[s] in that law offering up the universal enjoyment of her action and being to the Anandamaya Ishwara" (Kr.s.n.a), while the individual soul (jiva) is "the channel of this action and offering".
kamabhoga ::: kamananda in the state of bhoga.
kamacakra (kamachakra) ::: the "sensational desire centre", the abdominal cakra, also called svadhis.t.hana, on whose strength kamananda and arogya depend.
kamananda ::: a form of sarirananda or physical ananda associkamananda ated with (suddha) kama or purified desire, also referred to as maithunananda (though that term is usually reserved for a high intensity of kamananda); a general term for ananda as experienced on the physical plane: "the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy", realised as part of "the total perfection of the spiritualised body". Kamananda manifests both in the sūks.ma deha (subtle body) and the sthūla deha (gross body), and there is a subjective kamananda besides the physical kamananda that is more often meant by the word. The perfection of kamananda, as the "most central" form of physical ananda, depends on a "transformation of the sex-centre and its energy" so that this energy which "is the support in the body of all the mental, vital and physical forces of the nature" is "changed into a mass and a movement of intimate Light, creative Power, pure divine Ananda".
kamaprema ::: (subjective) kamananda combined with premananda. kamaprema
. kar korbbo? [Bengali] ::: shall I clean it right now? electric ananda
kars.an.a (karshana) ::: tearing, forcing, hurting; one of the five forms karsana of pain to be turned into raudrananda.
K. Ananda ::: abbreviation of "Kama Ananda" (see kamananda).
Knowledge, Power, Purity, Peace, Ananda, of which we become aware and which descends into the being and progressively replaces the ordinary consciousness itself by its own mos’cments
kosa (kosha) ::: sheath, case, covering; "a grade of our substance, kosa a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language", of which there are principally five (annakosa, pran.akosa, manah.kosa, vijñanakosa and anandakosa) corresponding to "five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific"; two additional kosas (tapas-kosa and sat-kosa) are said to be "not yet developed" in the human evolution, "but only unformed nimbuses of concrete being".
"Krishna as a godhead is the Lord of Ananda, Love and Bhakti; as an incarnation, he manifests the union of wisdom (Jnana) and works and leads the earth-evolution through this towards union with the Divine by Ananda, Love and Bhakti.” Letters on Yoga
“Krishna as a godhead is the Lord of Ananda, Love and Bhakti; as an incarnation, he manifests the union of wisdom (Jnana) and works and leads the earth-evolution through this towards union with the Divine by Ananda, Love and Bhakti.” Letters on Yoga
"Krishna is the Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the overmind leading it towards the Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
“Krishna is the Anandamaya; he supports the evolution through the overmind leading it towards the Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
Krishna ::: “Krishna is the Eternal’s Personality of Ananda; because [of] him all creation is possible, because of his play, because of his delight, because of his sweetness.” Essays Divine and Human
KRISHNA. ::: The Eternal's Personality of Ananda ; because of him all creation is possible, because of his play, because of hjs delight, because of his sweetness.
Krsna (Krishna, Srikrishna) ::: a godhead, the Lord of ananda, Love and bhakti, [considered to be one of the ten incarnations of Visnu], as an incarnation he manifests the union of wisdom (jnana) and works and leads the earth-evolution through this towards union with the Divine by ananda, Love and bhakti. ::: Krsnah [nominative]
Kr.s.n.a (Krishna) ::: the eighth avatara of Vis.n.u in the Hindu tradition, regarded by Sri Aurobindo as an embodiment of "the complete divine manhood" and as the avatara who opened the possibility of overmind in the evolution of consciousness on earth; a name of the universal Deity (deva) and supreme Being (purus.ottama) who is the fourfold isvara and also "the Destroyer, Preserver, Creator in one" (Rudra2,Vis.n.u, Brahma), manifesting "through the Vishnu aspect as his frontal appearance"; "the Ishwara taking delight in the world" (anandamaya isvara or lilamaya purus.a), realisation of oneness with whom is the first part of the karma catus.t.aya, seen in all things and beings in the several intensities and degrees of Kr.s.n.adarsana.
Kutsa ::: a Vedic r.s.i, companion of Indra; his name is interpreted in the translation of a sortilege from R . g Veda 5.31.9 to mean "SensePleasure", explained as the intensity of subjective ananda in relation to sensory experience... 96L
Light ; one feeb the descent of Peace or Ananda.
lilamaya ananda brahman ::: anandaṁ brahma seen as expressing its universal delight through the lila of the world. lil lilamaya amaya darsana
lilamaya ::: playful; enjoying the cosmic game; pertaining to the lila; lilamaya (sagun.a brahman) perceived as pouring out the delight of existence .... (ananda) into the play of the world; ("the Lilamaya") short for lilamaya isvara or lilamaya purus.a, the Lord or Soul of bliss who "can play with the manifestation without being imbued with the Ignorance".
loka ::: "a way in which conscious being images itself", a world or plane of existence, including planes other than the material world, with which we may come into contact by "an opening of our mind and life parts to a great range of subjective-objective experiences in which these planes present themselves no longer as extensions of subjective being and consciousness, but as worlds; for the experiences there are organised as they are in our own world, but on a different plan, with a ... different process and law of action and in a substance which belongs to a supraphysical Nature". The principal lokas, described as the "seven worlds", are in ascending order: bhū (the world of anna1, matter), bhuvar (the world of pran.a, life-force), svar (the world of manas, mind), maharloka (the world of vijñana, gnosis), janaloka (the world of ananda, bliss), tapoloka (the world of [cit-]tapas, [consciousness]force), and satyaloka (the world of sat, absolute existence); when the three highest planes are combined into one world of saccidananda (existence-consciousness-bliss), the result is a scheme of five worlds, sometimes counted in descending order so that bhū becomes the fifth.
"Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight and without love we may get the rapt peace of its infinity, the absorbed silence of the Ananda, but not its absolute depth of richness and fullness. Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul"s greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment. ” The Synthesis of Yoga
“Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight and without love we may get the rapt peace of its infinity, the absorbed silence of the Ananda, but not its absolute depth of richness and fullness. Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul’s greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Love ::: “Love is an intense self-expression of the soul of Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
love ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Love is an intense self-expression of the soul of Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
Madhav: “Each of the seven worlds—the earths—were seen in their innate immortal nature. The principle of Sat-Chit-Ananda is embedded in each of them.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The triple heavens are the heavens of Sat, Chit and Ananda.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Triune ecstasies are the rapturous delights of Sat, Chit, Ananda, each with its distinct flavour.” The Book of the Divine Mother
madira ::: wine, liquor, any intoxicating drink; a form of kamananda madira felt pervading the sūks.ma deha and sometimes the sthūla deha, so that "even the physical body takes its share of the joy, feels the touch, is filled in all its limbs, veins, nerves with the flowing of the wine of the ecstasy, amr.ta".
mahabuddhi ::: great buddhi; the supreme creative intelligence of mahabuddhi janaloka, the world of ananda above that of vijñana; also, vijñana itself.
mahajana ::: the great all-productive principle of janaloka (the world mahajana of ananda).
MAHALAKSHMI ::: Goddess of the supreme love and delight ; her gifts are the spirits grace and the charm and beauty of the Ananda and protection and every divine and human blessing.
maharloka ::: the world (loka) of vastness (mahas); the plane whose basis is vijñana or supermind, which links saccidananda in the higher hemisphere of existence (parardha) with the mental, vital and physical principles in the lower hemisphere (aparardha) and makes it possible "to realise the one Existence, Consciousness, Delight in the mould of the mind, life and body".
maithuna ::: (literally "sexual") pertaining to or short for maithunananda. maithuna ananda
manasa ananda ::: [mental bliss].
manas-citta (manas-chitta; manas chitta) ::: the emotional mind, "the life of sensations and emotions which are at the mercy of the outward touches of life and matter and their positive or negative reactions, joy and grief, pleasure and pain", constituting a "surface desire-soul" behind which is "the subliminal soul in us open to the universal delight [ananda] which the cosmic soul takes in its own existence and in the existence of the myriad souls that represent it and in the operations of mind, life and matter by which Nature lends herself to their play and development".
mano vidván na bibheti kutaschana) ::: he who possesses the delight of the brahman (see brahmananda) has no fear from anything in the world. [Cf. Taittiriya Upanis.ad 2.4]Ananda Mimamsa Ānanda
"Matter is the form of substance of being which the existence of Sachchidananda [a trinity of Existence (sat), Consciousness (cit), and Delight (ananda),] assumes when it subjects itself to this phenomenal action of its own consciousness and force.” The "Matter is the body or field of a consciousness hidden within it, the material universe a form and movement of the Spirit.” The Renaissance in India
“Matter is the form of substance of being which the existence of Sachchidananda [a trinity of Existence (sat), Consciousness (cit), and Delight (ananda),] assumes when it subjects itself to this phenomenal action of its own consciousness and force.” The”Matter is the body or field of a consciousness hidden within it, the material universe a form and movement of the Spirit.” The Renaissance in India
mayas ::: bliss; the world of ananda.
ṁ brahman ::: same as anandaṁ brahma anandaṁ brahman.o vidvan na bibheti kutascana (anandam brahanandam
ṁ brahma ::: the realisation of "Brahman as the self-existent bliss and its universal delight of being", the last member of the brahma catus.t.aya; the divine Reality (brahman) realised as a supreme and all-pervading ananda, also called brahmananda. anandam ananda
Mediums’ trance ::: They get not into touch with Sachchidananda but with the beings of the lowrr vital plane. To doxlop the power of going into this higher kind of trance, one must haw done sadhana. Entire purification is not necessary, but some part of the being must have turned to higher things.
mental bhoga ::: mental or subjective ananda, or any of its forms, in the state of bhoga which is the second stage of bhukti.
Mimaṁsa (Ananda Mimansa) ::: "inquiry into the nature of bliss", a Sanskrit work. anandam ananda ṁ j ñanam anam anantam anantaṁ sarvam
Moon ::: Spirituality, sometimes also spiritual Ananda. A golden moon means a form of spirituality full of the light of higher
moon ::: Tehmi: “The moon is symbol of Ananda.”
Mother of Ananda \ There are other great Personalities of the
nati ::: resignation, submission; the "equal acceptance by the soul" of "all things as the play of the all-Blissful Lord, the Will of the supreme self and Ishwara", the third stage of passive / negative samata, whose highest form is anandamaya nati.
nih.smaran.a ::: without smaran.a; (physical ananda) not being dependent on attention.
nirananda ::: [blisslessness].
nirananda ::: inert joylessness.. a nirananda 80
nirananda ::: "undelight", the absence or contrary of ananda. nirananda nir niranandamaya
niratisayapremaspadatvam anandatattvam ::: [the status of divine delight (ananda) is that in which is experienced the union of utter love].
nirgun.a (nirguna; nirgunam) ::: without qualities; absence of qualities; nirguna short for nirgun.a brahman, "an Infinite essentially free from all limitation by qualities, properties, features"; the ananda of pure featureless consciousness (cit), another term for cidananda. nirgun nirguna
nirvises.a (nirvisesha) ::: unqualified; undifferentiated; associated with nirvisesa no specific object or stimulus; used in July 1912 for various forms of physical and subjective ananda in a sense similar to ahaituka.
Nolini: “The river known as the Ganges actually has three different names corresponding to the different worlds in which it exists—Heaven = Alacananda, Earth = Ganges, Lower world = Bogavati (river of enjoyment).”
“ Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
of its own particular system of psychological powers, energies and operations, ::: each system corresponding to a plane of our psychological existence"; these centres or "lotuses", connected with certain centres in the physical nervous system and arranged "in a line corresponding to the spinal cord", are called (from the highest to the lowest) sahasradala, ajñacakra, visuddha, anahata, man.ipura, svadhis.t.hana and mūladhara, of which man.ipura (the nabhicakra or "navel centre") and especially svadhis.t.hana (the "penultimate chakra" or, counting from the bottom, the "second chakra", also called the kamacakra or simply "the chakra") are often mentioned in the Record of Yoga in connection with arogya and kamananda.
OM Agnih. ::: an invocation to Agni2.OM anandamayi anandamayi caitanyamayi satyamayi parame (OM anandamayi
Om anandamayi caitanyamayi satyamayi parame ::: [om O Thou full of bliss, full of consciousness, full of truth, supreme].
"One starts by an intense idea and will to know or reach the Divine and surrenders more and more one"s ordinary personal ideas, desires, attachments, urges to action or habits of action so that the Divine may take up everything. Surrender means that, to give up our little mind and its mental ideas and preferences into a divine Light and a greater Knowledge, our petty personal troubled blind stumbling will into a great, calm, tranquil, luminous Will and Force, our little, restless, tormented feelings into a wide intense divine Love and Ananda, our small suffering personality into the one Person of which it is an obscure outcome.” Letters on Yoga
“One starts by an intense idea and will to know or reach the Divine and surrenders more and more one’s ordinary personal ideas, desires, attachments, urges to action or habits of action so that the Divine may take up everything. Surrender means that, to give up our little mind and its mental ideas and preferences into a divine Light and a greater Knowledge, our petty personal troubled blind stumbling will into a great, calm, tranquil, luminous Will and Force, our little, restless, tormented feelings into a wide intense divine Love and Ananda, our small suffering personality into the one Person of which it is an obscure outcome.” Letters on Yoga
— or in it, our Father in heaven, — and t\e'do not feel or sec him in ourselves or around us. So long as we keep this vision, fbe mortaUty in us is queilcd by that Immortality ; it feeis the light, power and joy and responds to it according to its capa- city ; or it feels the descent of the spirit and it is then for a time transformed or else uplifted into some lustre of reflection of the light and power ; it ^comes a vessel of the Ananda. But at other times it lapses into old mortality and exists or works dully or pettily in the ruck of its earthly habits. The complete redemption comes by the descent of the divine Power into the
overmind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental) — the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The overmind is the highest of the planes below the supramental.” *Letters on Yoga
"In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light.” The Life Divine
"The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind, — although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature.” The Life Divine
"The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way — it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators.” *Letters on Yoga
"The Overmind is essentially a spiritual power. Mind in it surpasses its ordinary self and rises and takes its stand on a spiritual foundation. It embraces beauty and sublimates it; it has an essential aesthesis which is not limited by rules and canons, it sees a universal and an eternal beauty while it takes up and transforms all that is limited and particular. It is besides concerned with things other than beauty or aesthetics. It is concerned especially with truth and knowledge or rather with a wisdom that exceeds what we call knowledge; its truth goes beyond truth of fact and truth of thought, even the higher thought which is the first spiritual range of the thinker. It has the truth of spiritual thought, spiritual feeling, spiritual sense and at its highest the truth that comes by the most intimate spiritual touch or by identity. Ultimately, truth and beauty come together and coincide, but in between there is a difference. Overmind in all its dealings puts truth first; it brings out the essential truth (and truths) in things and also its infinite possibilities; it brings out even the truth that lies behind falsehood and error; it brings out the truth of the Inconscient and the truth of the Superconscient and all that lies in between. When it speaks through poetry, this remains its first essential quality; a limited aesthetical artistic aim is not its purpose.” *Letters on Savitri
"In the overmind the Truth of supermind which is whole and harmonious enters into a separation into parts, many truths fronting each other and moved each to fulfil itself, to make a world of its own or else to prevail or take its share in worlds made of a combination of various separated Truths and Truth-forces.” Letters on Yoga
*Overmind"s.
Overmind ::: “The overmind is a sort of delegation from the supermind (this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative Power, a world of the kind we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of the divine Light from the beginning, there would be no involution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual striving evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, parardha , and the lower half, aparardha. The higher half is constituted of Sat, Chit, Ananda, Mahas (the supramental)—the lower half of mind, life, Matter. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which it is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.” Letters on Yoga
Oversoul ::: “But with the extension of our knowledge we discover what this Spirit or Oversoul is: it is ultimately our own highest deepest vastest Self, it is apparent on its summits or by reflection in ourselves as Sachchidananda creating us and the world by the power of His divine Knowledge-Will, spiritual, supramental, truth-conscious, infinite.” The Life Divine.
oversoul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "But with the extension of our knowledge we discover what this Spirit or Oversoul is: it is ultimately our own highest deepest vastest Self, it is apparent on its summits or by reflection in ourselves as Sachchidananda creating us and the world by the power of His divine Knowledge-Will, spiritual, supramental, truth-conscious, infinite.” *The Life Divine.
Pain and pleasure arc both of them degradations of an origi- nal Ananda and can be reduced Into terms of each other or else sublimated into their original principle of Ananda.
"Pain is caused because the physical consciousness in the Ignorance is too limited to bear the touches that come upon it. Otherwise, to cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience all touches come as Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
“Pain is caused because the physical consciousness in the Ignorance is too limited to bear the touches that come upon it. Otherwise, to cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience all touches come as Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
paramananda. ::: supreme bliss; great beatitude
parardha ::: "the upper half of world-existence", consisting of the parardha worlds of saccidananda linked by vijñana to the aparardha or lower . hemisphere of mind, life and matter, "an upper hemisphere of manifestation based on the Spirit"s eternal self-knowledge" (vidya). para par a sakti
PATH. ::: Rising to a station above the mind and opening out of the cosmic consciousness ; psychic opening ; descent of a higher consciousness with its peace, light, force, knowledge, Ananda etc. into all the planes of the being down to the most physical. All this has to be done by the working of the Mother’s force aided by your aspiration, devotion and surrender.
patience to develop. For instance, the neutral quiet so dissatis- fying to five vital eagerness of the sadhaka is the first step towards the peace that passeth all understanding, the small current or thrill of inner delight the first trickling of the ocean of Ananda, the play of tights or colours the key of the doors of the inner vision and experience, the descent that stifTens the body into a concentrated stillness that first touch of something at the end of which is the presence of the Divine.
peace ::: a deep quietude bringing not merely a release but a certain happiness or Ananda of itself, a harmony that gives a feeling of liberation and full satisfaction.
::: "Peace is a calm deepened into something that is very positive amounting almost to a tranquil waveless Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
“Peace is a calm deepened into something that is very positive amounting almost to a tranquil waveless Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
Peace is more positive than calm ; there can be a negative calm which is merely an absence of disturbance or trouble, but peace is always something positive bringing not merely a release as calm docs but a certain happiness or Ananda of itself.
PEACE. ::: Peace is a calm deepened into something that is very positive amounting almost to a tranquil waveless Ananda.
"Perishable and transitory delight is always the symbol of the eternal Ananda, revealed and rapidly concealed, which seeks by increasing recurrence to attach itself to some typal form of experience in material consciousness. When the particular form has been perfected to express God in the type, its delight will no longer be perishable but an eternally recurrent possession of mental beings in matter manifest in their periods & often in their moments of felicity.” Essays Divine and Human*
“Perishable and transitory delight is always the symbol of the eternal Ananda, revealed and rapidly concealed, which seeks by increasing recurrence to attach itself to some typal form of experience in material consciousness. When the particular form has been perfected to express God in the type, its delight will no longer be perishable but an eternally recurrent possession of mental beings in matter manifest in their periods & often in their moments of felicity.” Essays Divine and Human
phalakaṅks.a (phalakanksha) ::: desire for the fruit of one"s acts. phalakanksa physical ananda
physical bhoga ::: physical ananda, or any of its forms, in the state of bhoga (the second stage of bhukti), where the seizing of the rasa in things is made concrete by the participation of the pran.a bringing in "the full sense of life and the occupying enjoyment by the whole being".
physical bhukti ::: bhukti in the physical body or sthūla deha, consisting of physical ananda in its five forms (kamananda, vis.ayananda, tivrananda, raudrananda and vaidyutananda) with the corresponding forms of bhoga and rasagrahan.a..
politēs [Greek] ::: freeman. polites positive ananda
Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, infinite Wideness and that must be possessed and descend into the whole being. Otherwise one can get multi but not perfection or transformation (except a relative psycho-spiritual change).
prakars.an.a (prakarshana) ::: stretching out; one of the five forms of prakarsana pain to be turned into raudrananda.
premabhoga ::: premananda in the state of bhoga.
prema, kama, dasyalipsatmasamarpan.am ::: love, desire, the urge . towards service (dasyalipsa), self-giving (atmasamarpan.a): the attributes of the sūdra. premak premakamananda
premakama (premakama; prema-kama) ::: prema and kama1, two atpremakama tributes of the sūdra; short for premakamananda.
prema ::: love; "the love which consecrates service, a love which asks for no return, but spends itself for the satisfaction of that which we love", an attribute of the sūdra; an attribute of Mahalaks.mi and of Pradyumna; short for premananda; (on page 1281) the name of a svarga. prema ananda
premamaya ::: full of love; of the nature of premananda.
premananda ::: the ananda of love, the form of subjective ananda that premananda manifests in the vital-emotional being (pran.a and citta); the "fundamental ecstasy of being" translated "in the heart into a wide or deep or passionate delight of universal union and love and sympathy and the joy of beings and the joy of things". prema n natha
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
presence ::: “It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one›s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence’ it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance,—the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” Letters on Yoga
purusha. ::: the supreme Self which pervades the universe; conscious spirit; the living Principle; cosmic being whose mind is the moon, whose eyes are the sun and whose breath is the wind; That which fills the whole world with the form of sat-chit-ananda
RADHA-KRISHNA. ::: The true symbol for it would not be the human sex-attraction, but the soul, the psychic, hearing the call of the Divine and flowering into the complete love and sur- render that brings the supreme Ananda.
RaDHA. ::: Personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiri- tual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.
Radha ::: “Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
rasabhoga ::: full enjoyment (bhoga) of the rasa or essence of delight in all things, a term used for the third state of bhukti when the second state is called rasapriti, equivalent to ananda as "the divine bhoga superior to all mental pleasure with which God enjoys the rasa".
rasah., pritir anandah. [iti sarvanandah.] ::: rasa, priti and ananda rasah, constitute sarvananda or complete delight. rasaj ñanam
rasa (rasa; rasah) ::: sap, juice; body-fluid; "the upflow of essential being in the form, that which is the secret of its self-delight", whose perception is the basis of the sensation of taste; a non-material (sūks.ma) taste; the sūks.ma vis.aya of subtle taste; (short for rasadr.s.t.i) the subtle sense of taste; "the pure taste of enjoyment" in all things, a form of ananda "which the understanding can seize on and the aesthesis feel as the taste of delight in them"; (also called sama rasa or rasagrahan.a) the perception by the mind of the essential quality (gun.a) in each object of experience, the "essence of delight" in it, the first stage of active / positive samata or bhukti.
ratha ::: chariot; joy; a Vedic symbol of "the happy movement of the Ananda".
ratha ::: (coined from the same root as ratha) the highest intensity ratha ... of each of the three states of bhukti called rasagrahan.a, bhoga and ananda.
rati ::: pleasure; the lowest intensity of each of the three states of bhukti called rasagrahan.a, bhoga and ananda.
ratna ::: (in the Veda) delight; the second intensity of each of the three states of bhukti called rasagrahan.a, bhoga and ananda.
raudra ::: fierce, violent; short for raudrananda.
raudrananda ::: fierce or violent delight; a form of sarirananda assoraudrananda ciated with the conversion of suffering into ananda. It arises "when this human being, imprisoned in matter, subjected to mind, emerges from his subjection, conquers his mind and delivers himself utterly in his body, realising his true anandamaya self in every part of the adhara", so that "physical pain itself, the hardest thing for material man to bear, changes its nature in experience" and becomes a kind of physical ananda.
raudra ::: see raudra Kali. raudra raudra ananda
Returns of an old nature that is long expelled from the con- scious part of the being always happen in sadhana. It docs not at all mean that the nature is unchangeable. Try to recover the inner quietude, draw back from these movements and look at them calmly, reducing them to their true proportions. Your true nature is that in which you have peace and Ananda and the love of the Divine. This other B only a fringe of the outer personality which in spite of these returns is destined to drop away as the true being extends and increases.
Rudra2 ::: "the terrible", a Vedic deity who is "the Violent and Merciful, the Mighty One, . . . the armed, wrathful and beneficent Power of God who lifts forcibly the creation upward, smites all that opposes, scourges all that errs and resists, heals all that is wounded and suffers"; (in the plural) gods with the qualities of this deity, "the fierce, impetuous ones", such as the Maruts; in later Hinduism, a name of Śiva as the Destroyer, one of the "three Powers and Personalities of the One Cosmic Godhead", of which the other two are Brahma, the Creator, and Vis.n.u, the Preserver; in the Record of Yoga, sometimes identified with the Balarama personality of the fourfold isvara. rudra ananda
rudrananda ::: same as raudrananda. rudrananda
saccidananda (Sachchidananda) ::: a trinity of Existence [sat], Consciousness [cit], and Delight [ananda]; the Divine Being. ::: saccidanandam [nominative]
saccidananda (sachchidananda; sacchidananda) ::: "the triune princisaccidananda ple of transcendent and infinite Existence [sat], Consciousness [cit] and Bliss [ananda] which is the nature of divine being" and "the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate reality of all that is in the cosmos"; in its supreme manifestation in which the three poises or worlds (lokas) called satyaloka, tapoloka and janaloka are sometimes distinguished, "the consciousness of unity dominates; the soul lives in its awareness of eternity, universality, unity, and whatever diversity there is, is not separative, but only a multitudinous aspect of oneness".Saccidananda is "the highest positive expression of the Reality to our consciousness" and "at once impersonal and personal", though the neuter form saccidanandam is sometimes used for the impersonal aspect, describing the nature of brahman, while the personal aspect of saccidananda is identified with the isvara. saccid saccidanandam
"Sachchidananda is the One with a triple aspect. In the Supreme the three are not three but one — existence is consciousness, consciousness is bliss, and they are thus inseparable, not only inseparable but so much each other that they are not distinct at all. In the superior planes of manifestation they become triune — although inseparable, one can be made more prominent and base or lead the others.” Letters on Yoga*
“Sachchidananda is the One with a triple aspect. In the Supreme the three are not three but one—existence is consciousness, consciousness is bliss, and they are thus inseparable, not only inseparable but so much each other that they are not distinct at all. In the superior planes of manifestation they become triune—although inseparable, one can be made more prominent and base or lead the others.” Letters on Yoga
Sachchidananda ::: see saccidananda
sadananda ::: "Ananda of pure existence apart from all objects and exsadananda periences", one of the seven forms of ananda, consisting of the delight of existence absorbed in unconditioned being (sat), where it is "at rest in peace of existence"; together with cidananda and suddhananda it comprises kaivalyananda, the bliss of the absolute, a term also applied to sadananda by itself. sadarsa sadarsa samadhi
sadhyadeva ::: a term for the eighth of the ten types of consciousness (dasa-gavas) in the evolutionary scale, also called siddhadeva: mind raised to the plane of ananda.
sagun.a ::: anandamaya sagun.a brahman in its lilamaya aspect, seen as the source of the cosmic play.
sagun.a brahman ::: sagun.a brahman perceived as full of the universal delight that is the nature of anandaṁ brahma. anandamaya titiks anandamaya titiksa-udasinata-nati
sahaituka ::: having a cause (hetu); associated with a stimulus; (with reference to any kind of physical ananda or certain types of subjective ananda) awakened by a sensation or object; short for sahaituka ananda. sahaituka ananda
sakama ::: accompanied by kama1 or kamananda. sakama
sama ananda ::: equal ananda.
samadhi (sushupta samadhi) ::: the state of profound samadhi . upta samadhi that is compared to dreamless sleep. It is not an unconscious state, but "the Yogic sleep of the mind with wakefulness of the vijnana", which "is the gate of union with the supreme state of Sachchidananda". sus susupta-svapna
sama ::: equal; even; universal. sama ananda sama
samananda (chanda samananda) ::: intense equal delight.. d.a samananda canda can d a sukham
samananda ::: equal delight; same as sama ananda. samananda samanvita sam
saman (Sama) ::: the mantra of the divine ananda, the word of calm and harmonious attainment for the bringing of the divine desire of the spirit. [Ved.]
— same as suddha cidghana ananda.
saṅkars.an.a (sankarshana) ::: squeezing together; one of the five forms sankarsana of pain to be turned into raudrananda.
sanmaya ::: having the nature of sat, the principle of pure existence that is the first aspect of saccidananda; expressing the principle of sat contained in the principle of any other plane, such as the physical or ... the ananda plane (see next).
saprema ::: accompanied by prema or premananda. sapta catus catustaya
sarirananda ::: [ananda in the body].
sarirananda (sharirananda) ::: (also called physical ananda) "the total sarirananda physical delight" experienced when spiritual ananda "can flow into the body and inundate cell and tissue"; ananda manifesting in the body in the five forms called kamananda, vis.ayananda, tivrananda, raudrananda and vaidyutananda; (especially in the plural, "shariranandas") any of these forms of physical ananda; the forms of physical ananda other than kamananda.
sarira (shárı́ra; shârira; sharira; çarira) ::: relating to the body; physisarira cal; short for sarira ananda or sarirasiddhi ssarira arira ananda
sarirayatra (sharirayatra) ::: the journey or pilgrimage of the body; the sarirayatra maintenance of one"s physical life. [Gita 3.8 ssaririka aririka ananda
sarva ananta jñana ananda Kr.s.n.a (sarva ananta jnana ananda Krishna) ::: Kr.s.n.a as the fourfold brahman in its personal aspect. sarva ananta jñana
sarvadarsana (sarvadarshana) ::: vision of all; especially, the vision of sarvadarsana ananda on every plane. sarvakarmas sarvakarmasamarthya
sarvam anantam anandaṁ brahma ::: sarvam anantam combined with anandaṁ brahma. sarvam anantam anandam anandaṁ brahma-purusa
sarvam anantam jnanam anandam brahma iti brahmacatustayam ::: see these words separately
sarvam anantaṁ jñanam anandam ::: same as sarvam anantaṁ jñanam anandaṁ brahma.
— sarvaṁ brahma, anantaṁ brahma, jñanaṁ brahma and anandaṁ brahma: these constitute the brahma catus.t.aya.
sarvaṁ (brahma) ::: brahman as Bliss, as Knowledge, as the Infinite, as the All; the formula of the brahma catus.t.aya with its terms in reverse order. ananda purus ananda purusa
sarvam ::: same as sarvaṁ brahma. sarvam anandam
sarvananda ::: complete delight; a term for active / positive samata, sarvananda including all its three stages; universal ananda. sarv sarvarambhan
sat ::: being, existence; substance; "pure existence, eternal, infinite, indefinable, not affected by the succession of Time, not involved in the extension of Space, beyond form, quantity, quality", the first term of saccidananda and the principle that is the basis of satyaloka;"the spiritual substance of being" which is cast "into all manner of forms and movements"; existence as "the stuff of its own becoming", which on every plane is "shaped into the substance with which Force has to deal" and "has formed itself here, fundamentally, as Matter; it has been objectivised, made sensible and concrete to its own .. self-experiencing conscious-force in the form of self-dividing material substance" (anna1); short for sat brahman.
sat-chit-ananda. ::: the natural state of being-knowledge-bliss; Truth being in bliss; Truth being in bliss; the Source of knowledge or consciousness; pure knowledge &
sat-cit-ananda (sat-chit-ananda) ::: (usually spelled saccidananda) sat-cit-ananda Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, "the infinite being [sat], the infinite consciousness [cit], the infinite delight [ananda] which are the supreme planes of existence and from which all else derives or descends into this obscurer ambiguous manifestation"; referred to as "thrice seven" planes because "each of the divine principles contains in itself the whole potentiality of all the other six notes of our being" (see loka).
savises.a (savishesha) ::: qualified; differentiated; (ananda) associated with specific objects, equivalent to sahaituka.
Self and of the impersonal Sacchidananda is only a step, though a very important step, or part of the integral knowledge. It is a beginning, not an end of the highest realisation.
Sex is a degradation or distortion of the Ananda Force.
shana; ishwaradarshan) ::: the vision of the Lord (isvara) who "knows, lives in, identifies himself with all and yet is not subjugated by the reactions or limited in his knowledge, power and Ananda by the limitations of the mind and life and physical being in the universe", a form of darsana related to brahmadarsana or regarded as part of it. isvaradarsana sarvabhutesu isvaradarsana
shana; Krishnadarshan) ::: the vision of Kr.s.n.a, the para purus.a or purus.ottama, seen in relation to the world as the transcendent and universal anandamaya purus.a and isvara who is "not only the origin and spiritual container, but the spiritual inhabitant in all forces, in all things and in all beings, and not only the inhabitant but . . . himself all energies and forces, all things and all beings", a form of darsana regarded as the highest bhava of brahmadarsana or as . a distinct darsana related to isvaradarsana. The three intensities of Kr.s.n.adarsana in human beings (applicable with modifications to all things and beings) are described in the entry of 30 May 1915 as (1) "Krishna seen behind the human mask" (distinguished from the preliminary stage, "Krishna sensed behind the disguise"), (2)"Krishna seen in the human being", and (3) "The human being seen in Krishna" (with three degrees of the third intensity, the vision of sarvamaya, anantagun.amaya and anandamaya Kr.s.n.a), leading to the consummation: "The human being = Krishna".
Shiva ::: “The One is Four for ever in his supramental quaternary of Being, Consciousness, Force and Ananda.
Shruti: “Vijnana or Gnosis. The region of Sacchidananda where one becomes pure Truth Consciousness.”
siddha ::: perfected; perfect; the "perfected soul", same as siddha yogin; a type of consciousness above the deva; (on page 1280) another term for sadananda.
smaran.a ::: memory, attention; remembrance of brahman or the isvara; conscious attention to the development of the siddhi as a whole or to any part of it; especially, mental attention stimulating the experience of physical ananda.
. s.n.a (anandamaya Krishna) ::: Kr.s.n.a as the anandamaya isvara / purus.a, the deva of whom ananda is "the subtle body and being"; Kr.s.n.a seen in the highest form (third degree of the third intensity) of Kr.s.n.adarsana. anandamaya lil anandamaya lila
. s.n.a (anandamaya lilamaya Krishna) ::: Kr.s.n.a as the anandamaya and the lilamaya, taking divine delight in the cosmic game. anandamaya lil anandamaya lilamaya amaya saguna
soma1 ::: the "mystic wine" of the Vedic sacrifice, "the wine of delight [ananda], the wine of immortality [amr.ta]"; an "ecstatic subtle liquor of delight" which is felt physically like "wine [madira] flowing through the system"; ananda on the mental plane, a "beatitude . . . inseparable from the illumined state of the being"; sometimes identified with candra1, the moon, as a symbol of the "intuitive mind-orb".
Soma2 ::: a Vedic deity, "lord of the delight of immortality", the god of ananda as symbolised by the "wine of delight" (soma1); also the god of the moon (Candra2), who manifests himself as mind
"Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods" is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
“Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods’ is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
“Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharvaitthâpadamasyarakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâtidevânâmjanimâniadbhutah. The ‘births of the gods’ is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
soma ::: the plant which yielded the mystic wine for the Vedic sacrifice; the wine itself, which represents the intoxication of the ananda, the divine delight of being; Soma: the Lord of this wine of delight and immortality, the representative deity of the beatitude.
SORROW. ::: Sorrow is not a way to sM/i / ; it confuses and weakens and distracts the mind, depresses the vital forces, darkens the spirit. A relapse from joy and vital elasticity and Ananda to sorrow, self-distrust, despondency and weakness is a recoil from a greater to a lesser consciousness.
sparsananda (sparshananda) ::: the ananda of touch, a kind of sparsananda vis.ayananda.
sparsa (sparsha) ::: touch; any contact of outward things, physical or sparsa mental, pleasant or unpleasant; a touch on the body as a stimulus awakening sahaituka ananda; a non-material (sūks.ma) touch; the sūks.ma vis.aya of subtle touch; (short for sparsadr.s.t.i) the subtle sense of touch.
spirit of Delight ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Spiritualisation and transformation ::: Spiritual experiences can fix themselves in the inner consciousness and alter it, transform it, if you like ; one can realise the Divine everywhere, the Self in qU and all in the Self, the universal Shakti doing all things ; one can feel merged in the Cosmic Self or full of ecstatic bhakti or Ananda. But one may and usually does still go on in the outer parts of Nature thinking with the intellect or at best the intuitive mind, willing with a menial will, feeling joy and sorrow on the vital surface, undergoing physical oHIictions and suffering from the struggle of life in the body with death and disease.
SPIRITUALISATION. ::: Spiritualisation means the descent of the jiigher peace, force, light, knowledge, purity, Ananda, etc. which belong to any of the higher planes from Higher Mind to
sravan.a (sravana; çravana) ::: hearing; the ear; the subtle sense sravana (sūks.ma indriya) of hearing, "the essential hearing of which our apprehension of physical sound or the spoken word is only the most outward result", the means of sabdadr.s.t.i; the sense of hearing as a means of vis.ayananda.
Sri Aurobindo: "But if the individual is a persistent reality, an eternal portion or power of the Eternal, if his growth of consciousness is the means by which the Spirit in things discloses its being, the cosmos reveals itself as a conditioned manifestation of the play of the eternal One in the being of Sachchidananda with the eternal Many.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a vital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something yet deeper and more fundamental than mere pleasure and enjoyment, to some form of the spirit"s delight of existence, Ananda.” *Letters on Savitri
*Sri Aurobindo: "Emotion itself is not a bad thing; it is a necessary part of the nature, and psychic emotion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed: . . . .” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "In other words, ethics is a stage in evolution. That which is common to all stages is the urge of Sachchidananda towards self-expression. This urge is at first non-ethical, then infra-ethical in the animal, then in the intelligent animal even anti-ethical for it permits us to approve hurt done to others which we disapprove when done to ourselves. In this respect man even now is only half-ethical. And just as all below us is infra-ethical, so there may be that above us whither we shall eventually arrive, which is supra-ethical, has no need of ethics. The ethical impulse and attitude, so all-important to humanity, is a means by which it struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon inconscience and broken up by Life into individual discords towards a higher harmony and universality based upon conscient oneness with all existences. Arriving at that goal, this means will no longer be necessary or even possible, since the qualities and oppositions on which it depends will naturally dissolve and disappear in the final reconciliation.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "In other words, that which has thrown itself out into forms is a triune Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sachchidananda, whose consciousness is in its nature a creative or rather a self-expressive Force capable of infinite variation in phenomenon and form of its self-conscious being and endlessly enjoying the delight of that variation.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "In the ancient Indian system there is only one triune supernal, Sachidananda. Or if you speak of the upper hemisphere as the supernal, there are three, Sat plane, Chit plane and Ananda plane. The Supermind could be added as a fourth, as it draws upon the other three and belongs to the supper hemisphere.” Letters on Yoga and On Himself*
Sri Aurobindo: "It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than what they are in the spiritual mind"s highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Krishna is the Eternal"s Personality of Ananda; because [of] him all creation is possible, because of his play, because of his delight, because of his sweetness.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: “Krishna is the Eternal’s Personality of Ananda; because [of] him all creation is possible, because of his play, because of his delight, because of his sweetness.” Essays Divine and Human
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss [is that] from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss without which nothing could remain in being. In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d"être of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness.” The Secret of the Veda
*Sri Aurobindo: "The earth is a material field of evolution. Mind and life, supermind, Sachchidananda are in principle involved there in the earth-consciousness; but only Matter is at first organized; then life descends from the life plane and gives shape and organization and activity to the life principle in Matter, creates the plant and animal; then mind descends from the mind plane, creating man. Now supermind is to descend so as to create a supramental race.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother
Sri Aurobindo: "The One is Four for ever in his supramental quaternary of Being, Consciousness, Force and Ananda.
Sri Aurobindo: “The One is Four for ever in his supramental quaternary of Being, Consciousness, Force and Ananda.
Sri Krishna is the Lord of the Divine Love and Ananda. His flute calls the physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn to that Love and Ananda.
::: "Sri Krishna . . . Lord of the divine love and Ananda — and his flute calls the physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn to that love and Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
“Sri Krishna . . . Lord of the divine love and Ananda—and his flute calls the physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn to that love and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
. s.t.i (janamaya drishti) ::: vision on the plane of jana or ananda. janm janmantara antara dr drsti
suddha (chidghana shuddha) ::: same as cidghana-suddhananda. cidghana-suddh cidghana-suddhananda
suddhananda (shuddhananda; suddhananda) ::: pure ananda, "the suddhananda pure delight of the Infinite"; the form of subjective ananda corresponding to the plane of transcendent bliss (anandaloka) or to the sub-planes created by the "repetition of the Ananda plane in each lower world of consciousness". It brings the "sense of Supreme Beauty in all things" (sarvasaundarya), differing from cidghanananda in that it "transcends or contains" the beauty of gun.a (quality) proper to vijñana, depending "not on knowledge-perception of the separate guna & yatharthya [truth] of things, but on being-perception in chit of the universal ananda of things"; its highest intensities are experienced when the soul "casts itself into the absolute existence of the spirit and is enlarged into its own entirely self-existent bliss infinitudes". suddha pravr suddha pravrtti
suddha (shuddha; suddha) ::: purified, pure; unmixed, unmodified; suddha free from impurity (asuddhi); short for suddhananda. suddha ananda suddha
suddhata ::: purity. suddhata suddha-vij suddha-vij ñanananda anananda (shuddha-vijnanananda; suddha vijnanananda)
supermind ::: "a principle superior to mentality", which "has the knowledge of the One, but is able to draw out of the One its hidden multitudes" and "manifests the Many, but does not lose itself in their differentiations", forming a link between "the unitarian or indivisible consciousness of pure Sachchidananda in which there are no separating distinctions" and "the analytic or dividing consciousness of Mind which can only know by separation and distinction" and making it "possible for us to realise the one Existence, Consciousness,Delight in the mould of the mind, life and body"; (up to 1920) a general term for the supra-intellectual faculty or plane (vijñana); (c.December 1926) the "Truth-Mind" or plane of "luminous DivineMind-Existence" below the "Divine Truth and Vastness" of mahad . brahma; (in 1927 before 29 October) same as supreme supermind, one of a series of planes above ideality which seem to correspond to those later included in the overmind system, a series that also included other planes sometimes designated as forms of "supermind", such as supreme supramental supermind and gnostic supermind; (from 29October 1927 onwards) equivalent to divine gnosis, the plane of "selfdetermining infinite consciousness" above overmind, from which it differs in that "the overmind knows the One as the support, essence, fundamental power of all things, but in the dynamic play proper to it it lays emphasis on its divisional power of multiplicity", while in the supermind all is "held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence" even in its "working out of the diversity of the Infinite".
Supermind consciousness. Overmind has not the integrality of the supramental truth but it is n'ell aware of the essential truth of things. Thus overmind gives to the Sacchidananda Brahman the character of a teeming infinite of possibilities which can be developed into worlds or one world.
SUPERMIND. ::: The supermind is between the Sachchidananda and the lower creation. It alone contains the sclf-detennining
Supermind ::: the Supramental, the Truth-Consciousness, the Divine Gnosis, the highest divine consciousness and force operative in the universe. A principle of consciousness superior to mentality, it exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions. Its fundamental character is knowledge by identity, by which the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of manifestation is known because this too is that.
supernal ::: “In the ancient Indian system there is only one triune supernal, Sachidananda. Or if you speak of the upper hemisphere as the supernal, there are three, Sat plane, Chit plane and Ananda plane. The Supermind could be added as a fourth, as it draws upon the other three and belongs to the supper hemisphere.” Letters on Yoga and On Himself
tapas ::: "concentration of power of consciousness"; will-power; the force that acts through aisvarya, isita and vasita, or the combination of these siddhis of power themselves, sometimes listed as the fourth of five members of the vijñana catus.t.aya; the divine force of action into which rajas is transformed in the liberation (mukti) of the nature from the trigun.a of the lower prakr.ti, a power "which has no desire because it exercises a universal possession and a spontaneous Ananda .. of its movements"; the force manifested by an aspect of daivi prakr.ti (see Mahakali tapas, Mahasarasvati tapas); (also called cit-tapas)"infinite conscious energy", the principle that is the basis of tapoloka; limited mental will and power. Tapas is "the will of the transcendent spirit who creates the universal movement, of the universal spirit who supports and informs it, of the free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its multiplicities. . . . But the moment the individual soul leans away from the universal and transcendent truth of its being, . . . that will changes its character: it becomes an effort, a straining". tapas ananda
tapatya ::: (in 1913-16) a form of tapas, sometimes associated with Mahakali bhava and with a "higher rudra intensity of knowledge, action, ananda", described in its true form as sasraddha sakti, a "selffulfilling force which is sure beforehand of its result", though there is also a "disinterested and instrumental Tapatya not depending on faith in the results"; an instance of the use of such a force; (in 1917-19) a form of intellectual / mental tapas intermediate between tapastya and tapata, defined as "the straining to know and fulfil" which, when desire is eliminated, remains "as an illegitimate prolongation and stress of what is received in the ideality . . . bringing false stress and falsification . of values".
tapomaya ::: consisting of or relating to tapas in any form (mental, ideal, etc.); volitional; dynamic. tapomaya ananda
. t.aya (brahma chatusthaya; brahmachatusthaya; brahmachatushtaya) ::: the sixth catus.t.aya, the quaternary of the divine Reality (brahman), consisting of sarvaṁ brahma, anantaṁ brahma, jñanaṁ brahma and anandaṁ brahma (combined in sarvam anantaṁ jñanam anandaṁ brahma, the formula of the fourfold brahman). brahmadarsana
Tehmi: “It is Ananda. This is preceded by a description of Satchitananda.”
Tehmi: “Satchitananda. In the previous line it is the holocaust of the Purusha . By that sacrifice heaven comes down to us.”
::: "The ancient Vedanta presents us with . . . the conception and experience of Brahman as the one universal and essential fact and of the nature of Brahman as Sachchidananda [Existence, Consciousness, Bliss]. In this view the essence of all life is the movement of a universal and immortal existence, the essence of all sensation and emotion is the play of a universal and self-existent delight in being, the essence of all thought and perception is the radiation of a universal and all-pervading truth, the essence of all activity is the progression of a universal and self-effecting good.” The Life Divine
“The ancient Vedanta presents us with . . . the conception and experience of Brahman as the one universal and essential fact and of the nature of Brahman as Sachchidananda [Existence, Consciousness, Bliss]. In this view the essence of all life is the movement of a universal and immortal existence, the essence of all sensation and emotion is the play of a universal and self-existent delight in being, the essence of all thought and perception is the radiation of a universal and all-pervading truth, the essence of all activity is the progression of a universal and self-effecting good.” The Life Divine
“the basic syllable OM, which is the foundation of all the perfect creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak (speech, the goddess Speech) and Shabda (sound, vibration, word). The mantra of the divine consciousness brings its light of revelation, the Mantra of the divine Power, its will of effectuation, the Mantra of the divine Ananda is equal fulfilment of the spiritual delight of existence. All word and thought are an outflowing of he great OM,—OM, the Word, the Eternal Manifest in the forms of sensible objects; manifest in that conscious play of creative self-conception of which forms and objects are the figures, manifest behind in the self-gathered superconscient power of the Infinite, OM is the sovereign source, seed, womb of thing and idea, form and name—it is itself, integrally, the supreme Intangible, the original Unity, the timeless Mystery self—existent above all manifestation in supernal being.” SABCL Volume 13—Page 315
"the basic syllable OM, which is the foundation of all the perfect creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak (speech, the goddess Speech) and Shabda (sound, vibration, word). The mantra of the divine consciousness brings its light of revelation, the Mantra of the divine Power, its will of effectuation, the Mantra of the divine Ananda is equal fulfilment of the spiritual delight of existence. All word and thought are an outflowing of he great OM, - OM, the Word, the Eternal Manifest in the forms of sensible objects; manifest in that conscious play of creative self-conception of which forms and objects are the figures, manifest behind in the self-gathered superconscient power of the Infinite, OM is the sovereign source, seed, womb of thing and idea, form and name – it is itself, integrally, the supreme Intangible, the original Unity, the timeless Mystery self- existent above all manifestation in supernal being.” SABCL Volume 13 – Page 315*
“The Chhandogya,… is to be a work in the right and perfect way of devoting oneself to the Brahman; its subject is the Brahman, but the Brahman as symbolised in the OM, the sacred syllable of the Veda, not therefore, the pure state of existence only, but that existence in all its parts… OM is the symbol and the thing symbolised.”the basic syllable OM, which is the foundation of all the perfect creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthesises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak (speech, the goddess Speech) and Shabda (sound, vibration, word). The mantra of the divine consciousness brings its light of revelation, the Mantra of the divine Power, its will of effectuation, the Mantra of the divine Ananda is equal fulfilment of the spiritual delight of existence. All word and thought are an outflowing of he great OM,—OM, the Word, the Eternal Manifest in the forms of sensible objects; manifest in that conscious play of creative self-conception of which forms and objects are the figures, manifest behind in the self-gathered superconscient power of the Infinite, OM is the sovereign source, seed, womb of thing and idea, form and name—it is itself, integrally, the supreme Intangible, the original Unity, the timeless Mystery self—existent above all manifestation in supernal being.” SABCL Volume 13—Page 315
The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve, and in all their parts to the Divine. For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda.
"The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives, and to return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul"s aim in life. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
“The Divine is that from which all comes, in which all lives, and to return to the truth of the Divine now clouded over by Ignorance is the soul’s aim in life. In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
The last stage of this perfection will come when you are com* pletely identified with the Divine Mother and feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being, hstwmeM, sen'ani or worker but truly a child and eternal portion of her conscious- ness and force. Always she will be in you and you in her ; it will be your constant, simple and natural experience that all your thought and seeing and action, your very breathing or moving come from her and are here. You will know and see and feel that you are a person and power formed by her out of herself, put out from her for the play and yet always safe in her, being of her being, consciousness of her consciousness, force of her force, ananda of her Ananda. When this condition is entire and her supramental energies can freely move you then you will be perfect in divine works; knowledge, will, action will become sure, simple, luminous, spontaneous, flawless, an outflow from the Supreme, a divine movement of the Eternal.
the opposites of its own truths of being ::: an abyss of non-existence,24 a profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and delight of existence [saccidananda] can manifest themselves"; (same as asat brahma)"something beyond the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or conceive it while in this universe", not a mere negation but "a zero which is All or an indefinable Infinite which appears to the mind a blank, because mind grasps only finite constructions".
"The personal and the impersonal are themselves posited and experienced by mind as separate realities and one or other is declared and seen as supreme, so that the personal can have laya in the Impersonal or, on the contrary, the impersonal disappears into the absolute reality of the supreme and divine Person — the impersonal in that view is only an attribute or power of the personal Divine. But at the summit of spiritual experience passing beyond mind one begins to feel the fusion of all these things into one. Consciousness, Existence, Ananda return to their indivisible unity, Sachchidananda. The personal and the impersonal become irrevocably one, so that to posit one as against the other appears as an act of ignorance.” *Letters on Yoga
“The personal and the impersonal are themselves posited and experienced by mind as separate realities and one or other is declared and seen as supreme, so that the personal can have laya in the Impersonal or, on the contrary, the impersonal disappears into the absolute reality of the supreme and divine Person—the impersonal in that view is only an attribute or power of the personal Divine. But at the summit of spiritual experience passing beyond mind one begins to feel the fusion of all these things into one. Consciousness, Existence, Ananda return to their indivisible unity, Sachchidananda. The personal and the impersonal become irrevocably one, so that to posit one as against the other appears as an act of ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
The personal effort required Is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender ; an aspiration vigilant, constant, un- ceasing — the mind’s will, the heart's seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature ; rejection of the movements of the lower nature — rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, prefer- ences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find room in a silent mind, — rejection of the vital nature’s desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arro- gance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, — rejection of the physical nature’s stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine ; surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the ShaUi.
The pleasure attached to it b a degradation and not a true form of the divine Ananda.
The Prakrti b divided into the lower and the Ji/g/ter ::: the lower b the Prakrti of the Ignorance, the Prakrti of mind, life and matter separated in consdonsness from the Divine ; the higher b the Divine Prakrti of Sachchidananda with its mani-
“The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” The Life Divine
". . . there are a series of subtler and subtler formulations of substance which escape from and go beyond the formula of the material universe. Without going deeply into matters which are too occult and difficult for our present inquiry, we may say, adhering to the system on which we have based ourselves, that these gradations of substance, in one important aspect of their formulation in series, can be seen to correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of Sachchidananda. In other words, we find that substance in its ascension bases itself upon each of these principles and makes itself successively a characteristic vehicle for the dominating cosmic self-expression of each in their ascending series.” The Life Divine
“… there are a series of subtler and subtler formulations of substance which escape from and go beyond the formula of the material universe. Without going deeply into matters which are too occult and difficult for our present inquiry, we may say, adhering to the system on which we have based ourselves, that these gradations of substance, in one important aspect of their formulation in series, can be seen to correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of Sachchidananda. In other words, we find that substance in its ascension bases itself upon each of these principles and makes itself successively a characteristic vehicle for the dominating cosmic self-expression of each in their ascending series.” The Life Divine
There must be a desceat of the light not merely into the mind or part of it but into all the being down to the physical and below before a real Iransformatioo can take place. A-ligbt in the mind may spiritualise or otherwise change .the mind or part of it in one way or another, but it need not change the vital nature ; a light in the vital may purify and enlarge the vital movements or else silence and immobilise the vital being, but leave the body and the physical consciousness as it was, or even leave it inert or shake its balance. And the descent of Light is not enough, it must be the descent of the whole higher conscious- ness, its Peace, Power, Knowledge, Love, Ananda. Moreover the descent may be enough to liberate, but not to perfect, or it may be enough to make a great change in the inner being, while the outer remains an imperfect instrument, clumsy, sick or inexpressive. Finaliy, transfonnation eflected by the sadhana cannot be complete unless it is a supramenfalisafion of the being.
The sadhaka has to turn away entirely from the invasion of the vital and the physical by the sex-impulse — for, if he does not conquer the sex-impulse there can be no settling in the body of the divine consciousness and the divine Ananda.
"The triple principle was doubly recognised, first in the threefold divine principle answering to the later Sachchidananda, the divine existence, consciousness and bliss, and secondly in the threefold mundane principle, Mind, Life, Body, upon which is built the triple world of the Veda and Puranas.” *The Secret of the Veda
“The triple principle was doubly recognised, first in the threefold divine principle answering to the later Sachchidananda, the divine existence, consciousness and bliss, and secondly in the threefold mundane principle, Mind, Life, Body, upon which is built the triple world of the Veda and Puranas.” The Secret of the Veda
"The true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not self-mutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not self-mutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda.” The Synthesis of Yoga
The Truth-Consciousness whether above or in the universe by which the Divine knows not only hts own essence and being but his manifestation also. The fundamental character is knowledge by identity, by that the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of manifestation is known because this too is That, Mind is an Instrument of the Ignorance trying to know •— Supermind is the Knower possessing Knowledge, because one with it and the known, therefore seeing all things in the light of His own Truth, the light of their true self which is He. U is a dynamic and not only a siatic Power, not only a
the vital nature’s desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hosti- lity to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being ; rejection of the physical nature’s stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine.
This is the Diwne seen around us and on our own physical plane. But he may reveal himself above. We see or feel him as a high-lifted Presence, a great infinite of Ananda above us,
"This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga. and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. ” Letters on Savitri*
“This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga. and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty.” Letters on Savitri
tions; but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own possibilities. The natural possibilities of a world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which they live, an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error, an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to enjoy, parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark Infinite. …
Trinity ::: Madhav: “The Trinity is Sat-Chit-Ananda, the triple formulation of the Reality as Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.” The Book of the Divine Mother
triune ::: “In other words, that which has thrown itself out into forms is a triune Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sachchidananda, whose consciousness is in its nature a creative or rather a self-expressive Force capable of infinite variation in phenomenon and form of its self-conscious being and endlessly enjoying the delight of that variation.” The Life Divine
turiya ananda. ::: bliss experienced in the state of Turiya, the fourth state
upadhi ananda. ::: bliss rising from something external and limited
ūrn.a yoga ::: integral yoga, a spiritual path whose aim is "union with the being, consciousness and delight of the Divine [saccidananda] through every part of our human nature . . . so that the whole may be transformed into a divine nature of being"; its central method is for the individual "to spiritualise his being by the power of the soul in mind opening itself directly to a higher spiritual force and being and to perfect by that higher force [sakti] so possessed and brought into action the whole of his nature". purna p
ūrya2 ::: the Vedic sun-god, the "Lord of Light and Truth", of whom the "solar energy is the physical form". ssurya ūrya ananda
vamamarga ::: the left-hand path (of the tantra) , "the way of ananda", nature in man liberating itself by joyous acceptance in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities.
vividhanandah ::: [manifold delight].
"We are ignorant also of the superconscient, that which we ordinarily call spirit or oversoul; yet this we find to be our highest and widest self, Sachchidananda creating and governing all that we are and become by His divine Maya.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“We are ignorant also of the superconscient, that which we ordinarily call spirit or oversoul; yet this we find to be our highest and widest self, Sachchidananda creating and governing all that we are and become by His divine Maya.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
We are ignorant also of the superconscient, that which we ordinarily call spirit or oversoul; yet this we find to be our highest and widest self, Sachchidananda creating and governing all that we are and become by His divine Maya.
WEEPING. ::: Weeping brings in the forces that should be kept outside ; for weeping is a giving way of the inner control and an expression of vital reaction and ego. Tt is only the psychic weeping that does not open the door to these forces ; but that weeping is without affliction, tears of Bhakti, spiritual emotion, or Ananda.
We realise also the consciousness Itself as moving upward, ascending through many planes, physical, vital, mental, over- mental to the supramental and Ananda planes. We become aware of a pouring do\vn of the posver of the higher Self, so that there comes in the possibility of a descent of the supramental
Will (Divine) ::: something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will not be an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda.
KEYS (10k)
29 Swami Vivekananda
5 Anandamayi Ma
4 Swami Vijnanananda
3 Swami Turiyananda
3 Swami Saradananda
3 Swami Ramakrishnananda
3 SWAMI PREMANANDA
3 Swami Akhandananda
2 SWAMI TRIGUNATITANANDA
2 Swami Sivananda
2 Swami Satchidananda
2 Swami Chinmayananda
2 Swami Adbhutananda
2 Paramahansa Yogananda
1 Swami Vivekananda
1 SWAMI SUBODHANANDA
1 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
1 SWAMI ABHEDANANDA
1 Sri Swami Sivananda
1 PARAMAHAMSA YOGANANDA
1 MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI
1 Manapurush Swami Shivananda
1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
105 Swami Vivekananda
18 Paramahansa Yogananda
13 Sivananda
6 Swami Satchidananda
4 Mata Amritanandamayi
2 Goswami Kriyananda
2 Chinmayananda Saraswati
1:Ananda (bliss) lives in every being. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
2:Peace is a sign of mukti—Ananda moves towards siddhi. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Peace, #KEYS
3:If desire comes up, the Ananda is obliged to draw back. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
4:All evil shall perforce change itself into good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
5:The gnostic soul is the child, but the king-child. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
6:Love, joy and happiness come from the psychic. The Self gives peace or a universal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS
7:Ananda is the true creative principle. For all takes birth from this divine Bliss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
8:Ananda is the secret principle of all being and the support of all activity of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man and the Evolution, #KEYS
9:Ananda is the very essence of the Brahman, it is the supreme nature of the omnipresent Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
10:Love and Ananda are the last word of being, the secret of secrets, the mystery of mysteries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love, #KEYS
11:In Supermind is the integrating Light, the consummating Force, the wide entry into the supreme Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man, #KEYS
12:The ecstasy of the spirit's calm needs to be transformed by the ecstasy of the soul's Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action, #KEYS
13:The nearer we get to the absolute Ananda, the greater becomes our joy in man and the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty, #KEYS
14:The pure psychic being is of the essence of Ananda, it comes from the delight-soul in the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #KEYS
15:Through all ways of our being the Divine can touch us and make use of them to awaken and liberate the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ananda Brahman, #KEYS
16:Bhakti and the heart's call for the Divine have a truth—it is the truth of the divine Love and Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Adwaita of Shankaracharya, #KEYS
17:It is for ananda that the world exists; for joy that the Self puts Himself into the great and serious game of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Awakening Soul of India, #KEYS
18:Even the highest spiritual realisation on the plane of mentality has in it something top-heavy, one-sided and exclusive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
19:The true nirvāṇa is the release of all that is bindingly characteristic of the lower into the larger being of the Higher. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
20:Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
~ SATM?,#KEYS
21:All spiritual experience is a substantial experience—consciousness, Ananda even are felt as something substantial. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Experiences and Realisations, #KEYS
22:It is a deep spiritual calm and peace that is the only stable foundation for a lasting Bhakti and Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Human Relations and the Spiritual Life, #KEYS
23:Ananda is the presence of the Self and Master of our being and the stream of its out-flowing can be the pure joy of his Lila. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ananda Brahman, #KEYS
24:It is only by the loss of the bound soul's exclusive passion for its freedom that there can come an absolute liberation of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
25:To get the universal Ananda all our instruments must learn to take not any partial or perverse, but the essential joy of all things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Equality, #KEYS
26:It is not possible for the tongue of human speech to tell all the utter unity and all the eternal variety of the ananda of divine love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love, #KEYS
27:Once the Ananda, the divine delight in all things is attained, it sets right all the distortions, all the evil of the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, To Bhaga Savitri, the Enjoyer, #KEYS
28:Fear, desire and sorrow are diseases of the mind; born of its sense of division and limitation, they cease with the falsehood that begot them. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
29:The Supreme has laid his luminous hand upon a chosen human vessel of his miraculous Light and Power and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Consecration, 88,#KEYS
30:The Spirit created the world for Ananda, enjoyment and possession of the many by the One, of the One by the many and of the many too by the many. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Instruments of the Spirit, #KEYS
31:It is, I suppose, the image of Sri Krishna as Lord of the divine Love and Ananda - and his flute calls the physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn to that Love and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I,#KEYS
32:Aspiration is a turning upward of the inner being with a call, yearning, prayer for the Divine, for the Truth, for the Consciousness, Peace, Ananda, Knowledge, descent of Divine Force or whatever else is the aim of one's endeavour.
~ The Mother, [T2],#KEYS
33:The purpose and law of the birth-series is for the soul in the body to rise from plane to plane and substitute always the rule of the higher for the rule of the lower play even down to the material field. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #KEYS
34:[...]The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him many other things and one may seek him for any of them, for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything else of which one may feel the pull or impulse.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
35:People say like that [the Transcendent is something beyond Sachchidananda] because the transcendent Absolute is not only what to us is existence but also what to us is non-existence. But there is really no such thing as non-existence. So the Transcendent can be conceived as transcendent Sat, transcendent Chit, transcendent Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #KEYS
36:The boy with the flute is Sri Krishna, the Lord descended into the world-play from the divine Ananda; his flute is the music of the call which seeks to transform the lower ignorant play of mortal life and bring into it and establish in its place the lila of his divine Ananda. It was the psychic being in you that heard the call and followed after it.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
37:Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
38:SRI AUROBINDO'S SYMBOL
[facsimile]
The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda.
The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love.
The junction of both - the central square - is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme - the lotus.
The water - inside the square - represents the multiplicity,
the creation.
4 April 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
39:As gnostic knowledge, will and ananda are a direct instrumentation of spirit and can only be won by growing into the spirit, into divine being, this growth has to be the first aim of our Yoga. The mental being has to enlarge itself into the oneness of the Divine before the Divine will perfect in the soul of the individual its gnostic outflowering. That is the reason why the triple way of knowledge, works and love becomes the key-note of the whole Yoga, for that is the direct means for the soul in mind to rise to its highest intensities where it passes upward into the divine oneness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
40:Purusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha. The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Soul and Nature,#KEYS
41:compensation for sacrificed discipline of the lesser for greater :::
...a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
42:It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga #KEYS
43:D.: Will the description of Brahman as Sat-Chit-Ananda suit this suddha manas? For this too will be destroyed in the final emancipation.
M.: If suddha manas is admitted, the Bliss (Ananda) experienced by the Jnani must also be admitted to be reflected. This reflection must finally merge into the Original. Therefore the jivanmukti state is compared to the reflection of a spotless mirror in another similar mirror. What will be found in such a reflection? Pure Akasa (Ether). Similarly, the jnani's reflected Bliss (Ananda) represents only the true Bliss. These are all only words. It is enough that a person becomes antarmukhi (inward-bent). The sastras are not needed for an inward turned mind. They are meant for the rest. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 513,#KEYS
44:Overmind is the highest source of the cosmic consciousness available to the embodied being in the Ignorance. It is part of the cosmic consciousness-but the human individual when he opens into the cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-Life-Matter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer- although influences and experiences can come down from there.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 152,#KEYS
45:Why do you indulge in these exaggerated feelings of remorse and despair when these things come up from the subconscient? They do not help and make it more, not less difficult to eliminate what comes. Such returns of an old nature that is long expelled from the conscious parts of the being always happen in sadhana. It does not at all mean that the nature is unchangeable. Try to recover the inner quietude, draw back from these movements and look at them calmly, reducing them to their true proportions. Your true nature is that in which you have peace and ananda and the love of the Divine. This other is only a fringe of the outer personality which in spite of these returns is destined to drop away as the true being extends and increases. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #KEYS
46:Calm, even if it seems at first only a negative thing, is so difficult to attain, that to have it at all must be regarded as a great step in advance.
"In reality, calm is not a negative thing, it is the very nature of the Sat-Purusha and the positive foundation of the divine consciousness. Whatever else is aspired for and gained, this must be kept. Even Knowledge, Power, Ananda, if they come and do not find this foundation, are unable to remain and have to withdraw until the divine purity and peace of the Sat-Purusha are permanently there.
"Aspire for the rest of the divine consciousness, but with a calm and deep aspiration. It can be ardent as well as calm, but not impatient, restless or full of rajasic eagerness.
"Only in the quiet mind and being can the supramental Truth build its true creation." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#KEYS
47:Maheshwari can appear too calm and great and distant for the littleness of earthly nature to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and formidable for its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to Mahalakshmi.
For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart is to make the existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and tenderness flow from her like the light from the sun and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall of the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss.
Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines the mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
48:The usual sadhanas have for aim the union with the Supreme Consciousness (Sat-chit-ananda). And those who reach there are satisfied with their own liberation and leave the world to its unhappy plight. On the contrary, Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts where the others end. Once the union with the Supreme is realised one must bring down that realisation to the exterior world and change the conditions of life upon the earth until a total transformation is accomplished. In accordance with this aim, the sadhaks of the integral yoga do not retire from the world to lead a life of contemplation and meditation. Each one must devote at least one third of his time to a useful work. All activities are represented in the Ashram and each one chooses the work most congenial to his nature, but must do it in a spirit of service and unselfishness, keeping always in view the aim of integral transformation. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, #KEYS
49:The greatest value of the dream-state of Samadhi lies, however, not in these more outward things, but in its power to open up easily higher ranges and powers of thought, emotion, will by which the soul grows in height, range and self-mastery. Especially, withdrawing from the distraction of sensible things, it can, in a perfect power of concentrated self-seclusion, prepare itself by a free reasoning, thought, discrimination or more intimately, more finally, by an ever deeper vision and identification, for access to the Divine, the supreme Self, the transcendent Truth, both in its principles and powers and manifestations and in its highest original Being. Or it can by an absorbed inner joy and emotion, as in a sealed and secluded chamber of the soul, prepare itself for the delight of union with the divine Beloved, the Master of all bliss, rapture and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Part Two: The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Chapter 26, Samadhi, pg. 503,#KEYS
50:But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be no more happy condition than this union and dependence; for this step carries you back beyond the border-line from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, into its deep peace and its intense Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 12, #KEYS
51:[...]For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they exist because of Him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect of another of his. The only thing needed for that is, first, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet. ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
52:Only by our coming into constant touch with the divine Consciousness and its absolute Truth can some form of the conscious Divine, the dynamic Absolute, take up our earth-existence and transform its strife, stumbling, sufferings and falsities into an image of the supreme Light, Power and Ananda.
The culmination of the soul's constant touch with the Supreme is that self-giving which we call surrender to the divine Will and immergence of the separated ego in the One who is all. A vast universality of soul and an intense unity with all is the base and fixed condition of the supramental consciousness and spiritual life. In that universality and unity alone can we find the supreme law of the divine manifestation in the life of the embodied spirit; in that alone can we discover the supreme motion and right play of our individual nature. In that alone can all these lower discords resolve themselves into a victorious harmony of the true relations between manifested beings who are portions of the one Godhead and children of one universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, 205,#KEYS
53:One perceives the true nature of existence. One discovers the why and the raison d'être of existence, not by the mind and the scientific pursuit, but by the knowledge of the self and the discovery of one's soul which is all-powerful.
This is the true method for knowing, for understanding and for realising the secrets of Nature, of the universe and the path which leads to the Divine. One can do everything with this realisation, one can know everything and finally become the master of one's existence. Nothing will be impossible … nothing will be left out. One has only to see with another sense which is within us, develop another faculty by a rigourous sadhana, to discover the secrets of all existence. Voilà.
The means are in you, the path opens up more and more, gets clearer and clearer, and with the help which is at your disposal, you have only to make an effort and you shall be crowned with a Knowledge, a Light and an Ananda which surpass all existence. Whether it be to see the functioning of the atom, or to know the process of thought or the flights of imagination or even the unknown … to know oneself is to know all. It is this that one must find. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
54:The Transcendent Mother and the Higher Hemisphere
"At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power."1 The Transcendent Mother thus stands above the Ananda plane.There are then four steps of the Divine Shakti:
(1) The Transcendent Mahashakti who stands above the Ananda plane and who bears the Supreme Divine in her eternal consciousness.
(2) The Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of SatChit-Ananda where all beings live and move in an ineffable completeness.
(3) The Supramental Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Supermind.
(4) The Cosmic Mahashakti immanent in the lower hemisphere.
Yes; that is all right. One speaks often however of all above the lower hemisphere as part of the transcendence. This is because the Supermind and Ananda are not manifested in our universe at present, but are planes above it. For us the higher hemisphere is pr [para], the Supreme Transcendence is prA(pr [paratpara]. The Sanskrit terms are here clearer than the English.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Three Aspects of the Mother, 52,#KEYS
55:The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and to nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother-Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine. In this Yoga, therefore, there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others; any such relation or interchange immediately ties down the soul to the lower consciousness and its lower nature, prevents the true and full union with the Divine and hampers both the ascent to the supramental Truth consciousness and the descent of the supramental Ishwari Shakti. Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation or a sexual enjoyment, even if kept free from any outward act; therefore these things are absolutely forbidden in the sadhana. It goes without saying that any physical act of the kind is not allowed, but also any subtler form is ruled out. It is only after becoming one with the supramental Divine that we can find our true spiritual relations with others in the Divine; in that higher unity this kind of gross lower vital movement can have no place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, #KEYS
56:the psychic transformation :::
The soul, the psychic being is in direct touch with the divine Truth, but it is hidden in man by the mind, the vital being and the physical nature. One may practise yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason; one may conquer power and luxuriate in all kinds of experiences in the vital; one may establish even surprising physical Siddhis; but if the true soul-power behind does not manifest, if the psychic nature does not come into the front, nothing genuine has been done. In this yoga the psychic being is that which opens the rest of the nature to the true supramental light and finally to the supreme Ananda. Mind can open by itself to its own higher reaches; it can still itself in some kind of static liberation or Nirvana; but the supramental cannot find a sufficient base in a spiritualised mind alone. If the inmost soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then this yoga can be done; otherwise (by the sole power of the mind or any other part) it is impossible.... If there is a refusal of the psychic new birth, a refusal to become the child new born from the Mother, owing to attachment to intellectual knowledge or mental ideas or to some vital desire, then there will be a failure in the sadhana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
57:need for the soul's spiritualization :::
And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness. All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the Beloved, and all forms of beauty have to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating and transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. All Bliss and Joy are there of the All-Blissful, and all inferior forms of enjoyment, happiness or pleasure are subjected to the shock of the intensity of its floods or currents and either they are broken to pieces as inadequate things under its convicting stress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 168,#KEYS
58:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,#KEYS
59:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 219, #KEYS
60:In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature.
In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
an aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing - the mind's will, the heart's seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature;
rejection of the movements of the lower nature - rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
61:What your reasoning ignores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute in man and his seeking as well as in the Divine - something not to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive, but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking that is the soul's inherent aspiration, not a vital longing. That is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when "I seek you for this, I seek you for that" changes to a sheer "I seek you for you." It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna."
The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and He is He. That is all about it.
I have written all that only to explain what we mean whenwe speak of seeking the Divine for himself and not for anything else - so far as it is explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being - for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Seeking the Divine,#KEYS
62:... The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed - for there is no absolute rule for all, - but if the peace has not come first, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.
The result of the concentration is not usually immediate - though to some there comes a swift and sudden outflowering; but with most there is a time longer or shorter of adaptation or preparation, especially if the nature has not been prepared already to some extent by aspiration and tapasya. ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
63:Nati is the submission of the soul to the will of God; its acceptance of all touches as His touches, of all experience as His play with the soul of man. Nati may be with titiksha, feeling the sorrow but accepting it as God's will, or with udasinata, rising superior to it and regarding joy and sorrow equally as God's working in these lower instruments, or with ananda, receiving everything as the play of Krishna and therefore in itself delightful. The last is the state of the complete Yogin, for by this continual joyous or anandamaya namaskara to God constantly practised we arrive eventually at the entire elimination of grief, pain etc, the entire freedom from the dwandwas, and find the Brahmananda in every smallest, most trivial, most apparently discordant detail of life & experience in this human body. We get rid entirely of fear and suffering; Anandam Brahmano vidvan na bibheti kutaschana. We may have to begin with titiksha and udasinata but it is in this ananda that we must consummate the siddhi of samata. The Yogin receives victory and defeat, success and ill-success, pleasure and pain, honour and disgrace with an equal, a sama ananda, first by buddhi-yoga, separating himself from his habitual mental & nervous reactions & insisting by vichara on the true nature of the experience itself and of his own soul which is secretly anandamaya, full of the sama ananda in all things. He comes to change all the ordinary values of experience; amangala reveals itself to him as mangala, defeat & ill-success as the fulfilment of God's immediate purpose and a step towards ultimate victory, grief and pain as concealed and perverse forms of pleasure. A stage arrives even, when physical pain itself, the hardest thing for material man to bear, changes its nature in experience and becomes physical ananda; but this is only at the end when this human being, imprisoned in matter, subjected to mind, emerges from his subjection, conquers his mind and delivers himself utterly in his body, realising his true anandamaya self in every part of the adhara.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Record Of Yoga,#KEYS
64:It is your birthday tomorrow?
Yes, Mother.
How old will you be?
Twenty-six, Mother.
I shall see you tomorrow and give you something special. You will see, I am not speaking of anything material- that, I shall give you a card and all that- but of something...You will see, tomorrow, now go home and prepare yourself quietly so that you may be ready to receive it.
Yes, Mother.
You know, my child, what "Bonne Fete" signifies, that is, the birthday we wish here?
Like that, I know what it means, Mother, but not the special significance you want to tell me.
Yes, it is truly a special day in one's life. It is one of those days in the year when the Supreme descends into us- or when we are face to face with the Eternal- one of those days when our soul comes in contact with the Eternal and, if we remain a little conscious, we can feel His Presence within us. If we make a little effort on this day, we accomplish the work of many lives as in a lightning flash. That is why I give so much importance to the birthday- because what one gains in one day is truly something incomparable. And it is for this that I also work to open the consciousness a little towards what is above so that one may come before the Eternal. My child, it is a very, very special day, for it is the day of decision, the day one can unite with the Supreme Consciousness. For the Lord lifts us on this day to the highest region possible so that our soul which is a portion of that Eternal Flame, may be united and identified with its Origin.
This day is truly an opportunity in life. One is so open and so receptive that one can assimilate all that is given. I can do many things, that is why it is important.
It is one of those days when the Lord Himself opens the doors wide for us. It is as though He were inviting us to rekindle more powerfully the flame of aspiration. It is one of those days which He gives us. We too, by our personal effort, could attain to this, but it would be long, hard and not so easy. And this- this is a real chance in life- the day of Grace.
It is an occult phenomenon that occurs invariably, without our knowledge, on this particular day of the year. The soul leaves behind the body and journeys up and up till it merges into the Source in order to replenish itself and absorb from the Supreme Its Power, Light and Ananda and comes down charged for a whole year to pass. Then again and again... it continues like this year after year. ~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, Mona Sarkar,#KEYS
65:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #KEYS
66:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
67:root of the falsification and withdrawl of divine love :::
At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,#KEYS
68:But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration [83],#KEYS
69:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],#KEYS
70:[desire and its divine form:]
Into all our endeavour upward the lower element of desire will at first naturally enter. For what the enlightened will sees as the thing to be done and pursues as the crown to be conquered, what the heart embraces as the one thing delightful, that in us which feels itself limited and opposed and, because it is limited, craves and struggles, will seek with the troubled passion of an egoistic desire. This craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to be accepted at first, but only in order that it may be transformed. Even from the very beginning it has to be taught to renounce all other desires and concentrate itself on the passion for the Divine. This capital point gained, it has to be aught to desire, not for its own separate sake, but for God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves; it has to fix itself upon no personal spiritual gain, though of all possible spiritual gains we are sure, but on the great work to be done in us and others, on the high coming manifestation which is to be the glorious fulfilment of the Divine in the world, on the Truth that has to be sought and lived and enthroned for eveR But last, most difficult for it, more difficult than to seek with the right object, it has to be taught to seek in the right manner; for it must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine. It must insist no longer, as the strong separative will always insists, on its own manner of fulfilment, its own dream of possession, its own idea of the right and the desirable; it must yearn to fulfil a larger and greater Will and consent to wait upon a less interested and ignorant guidance. Thus trained, Desire, that great unquiet harasser and troubler of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, will become fit to be transformed into its divine counterpart. For desire and passion too have their divine forms; there is a pure ecstasy of the soul's seeking beyond all craving and grief, there is a Will of Ananda that sits glorified in the possession of the supreme beatitudes.
When once the object of concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the heart and the will,-a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law,-the perfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal satisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For that work can be truly performed only when the instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action,-and that will be when personal desire and egoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true spiritual Person can still remain and God's will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will then be divine and done divinely; our mind and life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and in the world that which has been first realised in ourselves,- all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom, Strength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the Spirit's terrestrial adventure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration [83] [T1],#KEYS
71:We have now completed our view of the path of Knowledge and seen to what it leads. First, the end of Yoga of Knowledge is God-possession, it is to possess God and be possessed by him through consciousness, through identification, through reflection of the divine Reality. But not merely in some abstraction away from our present existence, but here also; therefore to possess the Divine in himself, the Divine in the world, the Divine within, the Divine in all things and all beings. It is to possess oneness with God and through that to possess also oneness with the universal, with the cosmos and all existences; therefore to possess the infinite diversity also in the oneness, but on the basis of oneness and not on the basis of division. It is to possess God in his personality and his impersonality; in his purity free from qualities and in his infinite qualities; in time and beyond time; in his action and in his silence; in the finite and in the infinite. It is to possess him not only in pure self, but in all self; not only in self, but in Nature; not only in spirit, but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our life, to be one with all life; for our mind, to be one with the universal mind; for our spirit, to be identified with the universal spirit. It is to merge in him in the absolute and find him in all relations. Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge [511] [T1],#KEYS
72:[an Integral conception of the Divine :::
But on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate? And yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this concentration of our being upon him. A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophical reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable : it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul's call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man's avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice.
But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 82-83 [T1],#KEYS
73:The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or lateR But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, 558,#KEYS
74:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Thus one should know oneself to be of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss[Sat-Chit-Ananda]. ~ adi-shankara, @wisdomtrove 2:The man of Self-realization knows a bliss that cannot be compared to anything in this world. His joy is independent of any object or sensory experience. It is an incomparable happiness that cannot be described in words. Such joy is known as sattvik-ananda. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 3:As one and the same material, viz. water, is called by different names by different people& 4:The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Industry without art is brutality. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
2:Ananda (bliss) lives in every being. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
3:Les religions vous dispensent d'écouter Dieu. ~ Ananda Devi, #NFDB
4:Beauty is the attractive power of perfection. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
5:What I have sought is to understand what has been said. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
6:What I have sought is to understand what has been said. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
7:Becoming is not a contradiction of being but the epiphany of being. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
8:[...] Buddhism has been so much admired mainly for what it is not. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
9:Becoming is not a contradiction of being but the epiphany of being. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
10:Ananda: that joy without which the universe will fall apart and collapse. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
11:No creature can attain a higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
12:Peace is a sign of mukti—Ananda moves towards siddhi. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Peace, #NFDB
13:If desire comes up, the Ananda is obliged to draw back. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #NFDB
14:Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
15:Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
16:The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
17:The man incapable of contemplation cannot be an artist, but only a skillful workman. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
18:All evil shall perforce change itself into good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #NFDB
19:From one point of view becoming is a humiliation, and from another a royal procession. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
20:The gnostic soul is the child, but the king-child. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #NFDB
21:From one point of view becoming is a humiliation, and from another a royal procession. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
22:Free thought is a passion; it is much rather the thoughts than ourselves that are free. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
23:Thus one should know oneself to be of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss[Sat-Chit-Ananda]. ~ Adi Shankara, #NFDB
24:"Buddhist practice is simply a system directed to the one end of lessening the suffering of life." ~ Ananda Metteyya, #NFDB
25:I think it's all that's holding me together," Kade said. "Then perhaps you should fall apart," Ananda replied. ~ Ramez Naam, #NFDB
26:There is then no sacred or profane, spiritual or sensual, but everything that lives is pure and void. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
27:Love, joy and happiness come from the psychic. The Self gives peace or a universal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #NFDB
28:All that is best for us comes of itself into our hands-but if we strive to overtake it, it perpetually eludes us. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
29:When you suffer, Ananda had told him, When you rage. When you weep. When you crave. That is when you must still your mind. ~ Ramez Naam, #NFDB
30:To keep the mind constantly turned within and to abide in the Self is Atmavichara, Sat-Chit-Ananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss). ~ Sri Ramana, #NFDB
31:Ananda is the true creative principle. For all takes birth from this divine Bliss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #NFDB
32:Ananda is the secret principle of all being and the support of all activity of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man and the Evolution, #NFDB
33:Let us tell them the painful truth, that most of these works of art are about God, whom we never mention in polite society. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
34:Ananda is the very essence of the Brahman, it is the supreme nature of the omnipresent Reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #NFDB
35:Love and Ananda are the last word of being, the secret of secrets, the mystery of mysteries. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love, #NFDB
36:In Supermind is the integrating Light, the consummating Force, the wide entry into the supreme Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Double Soul in Man, #NFDB
37:The ecstasy of the spirit’s calm needs to be transformed by the ecstasy of the soul’s Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action, #NFDB
38:The nearer we get to the absolute Ananda, the greater becomes our joy in man and the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty, #NFDB
39:The pure psychic being is of the essence of Ananda, it comes from the delight-soul in the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Power of the Instruments, #NFDB
40:Through all ways of our being the Divine can touch us and make use of them to awaken and liberate the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ananda Brahman, #NFDB
41:Bhakti and the heart’s call for the Divine have a truth—it is the truth of the divine Love and Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Adwaita of Shankaracharya, #NFDB
42:It is for ananda that the world exists; for joy that the Self puts Himself into the great and serious game of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin, The Awakening Soul of India, #NFDB
43:The life or lives of man may be regarded as constituting a curve —an arc of time-experience subtended by the duration of the individual Will to Life. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
44:Even the highest spiritual realisation on the plane of mentality has in it something top-heavy, one-sided and exclusive. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #NFDB
45:The true nirvāṇa is the release of all that is bindingly characteristic of the lower into the larger being of the Higher. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #NFDB
46:We have come to think of art and work as incompatible, or at least independent categories and have for the first time in history created an industry without art. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
47:All spiritual experience is a substantial experience—consciousness, Ananda even are felt as something substantial. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Experiences and Realisations, #NFDB
48:If the “signs and wonders” are lightly dismissed, it is not because they are unreal, but because it is an evil and adulterous generation that asketh for a sign. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
49:It is a deep spiritual calm and peace that is the only stable foundation for a lasting Bhakti and Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Human Relations and the Spiritual Life, #NFDB
50:Ananda is the presence of the Self and Master of our being and the stream of its out-flowing can be the pure joy of his Lila. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ananda Brahman, #NFDB
51:It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job, that the price of things is approximate to their real value. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
52:Man's activity consists in either a making or doing. Both of these aspects of the active life depend for their correction upon the contemplative life (that is, the Hero). ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
53:It is only by the loss of the bound soul’s exclusive passion for its freedom that there can come an absolute liberation of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #NFDB
54:It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job, that the price of things is approximate to their real value. . . . ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
55:To get the universal Ananda all our instruments must learn to take not any partial or perverse, but the essential joy of all things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Equality, #NFDB
56:It is not possible for the tongue of human speech to tell all the utter unity and all the eternal variety of the ananda of divine love. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love, #NFDB
57:Once the Ananda, the divine delight in all things is attained, it sets right all the distortions, all the evil of the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, To Bhaga Savitri, the Enjoyer, #NFDB
58:Fear, desire and sorrow are diseases of the mind; born of its sense of division and limitation, they cease with the falsehood that begot them. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #NFDB
59:The Supreme has laid his luminous hand upon a chosen human vessel of his miraculous Light and Power and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Consecration, 88,#NFDB
60:Plant the seeds of Love in your hearts. Let them grow into trees of Service and shower the sweet fruit of Ananda. Share the Ananda with all. That is the proper way to celebrate the Birthday ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
61:Those who think of their house as only a ‘machine to live in’ should judge their point of view by that Neolithic man, who also lived in a house, but a house that embodied a cosmology. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
62:Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
~ SATM?,#NFDB
63:The Spirit created the world for Ananda, enjoyment and possession of the many by the One, of the One by the many and of the many too by the many. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Instruments of the Spirit, #NFDB
64:It is the natural instinct of a child to work from within outwards; "First I think, and then I draw my think." What wasted efforts we make to teach the child to stop thinking, and only to observe! ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
65:The highest octave kundalini is the golden light which occurs in the supraconscious; it is the supraconscious. It's what they call Sat Chit Ananda - existence, consciousness, bliss ... full consciousness. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
66:We ‘preserve' folk songs, at the same time that our way of life destroys the singer…we are proud of our museums, where we display the damning evidence of a way of life that we have made impossible. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
67:His essential nature is sat-chit-ananda: (Sat) Absolute Being - He encompasses everything because there is nothing outside of him; (Chit) Absolute Consciousness - He is the complete consciousness ~ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, #NFDB
68:What we see in a democracy governed by “representatives” is not a government “for the people” but an organized conflict of interests that only results in the setting up of unstable balances of power. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
69:Autobiografía de un yogui, de Paramahansa Yogananda (Ananda, 2010). Éste es uno de los libros más impactantes que leyó Dan mientras vivió en la selva. Steve Jobs pidió que repartieran este libro entre los asistentes a su funeral. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
70:It is, I suppose, the image of Sri Krishna as Lord of the divine Love and Ananda - and his flute calls the physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn to that Love and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I,#NFDB
71:It is one of the prime errors of historical and rational analysis to suppose that the “truth” and “original form” of a legend can be separated from its miraculous elements. It is in the marvels themselves that the truth inheres. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
72:Aspiration is a turning upward of the inner being with a call, yearning, prayer for the Divine, for the Truth, for the Consciousness, Peace, Ananda, Knowledge, descent of Divine Force or whatever else is the aim of one's endeavour.
~ The Mother, [T2], #index,#NFDB
73:The purpose and law of the birth-series is for the soul in the body to rise from plane to plane and substitute always the rule of the higher for the rule of the lower play even down to the material field. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Gnosis and Ananda, #NFDB
74:The Lord is the refuge of all who seek refuge, the saviour of all who have to be saved. He is the Embodiment of Being-Awareness-Bliss (Sat-chit-ananda). He is now at Puttaparthi as the Effulgent Emperor over the region of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
75:Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
76:Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting ‘art’ as the words ‘artifact’ and ‘artificial’ imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
77:This is the entire spiritual life, Ananda, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship. When a monk has a good friend, a good companion, a good comrade, it is to be expected that he will develop and cultivate the Noble Eightfold Path. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
78:The Avatar is a child to the children, a boy to the boys, a man among men, a woman among women, so that the Avatar?s message might reach each heart and receive enthusiastic response as Ananda. It is the compassion of the Avatar that prompts His every action. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
79:The man of Self-realization knows a bliss that cannot be compared to anything in this world. His joy is independent of any object or sensory experience. It is an incomparable happiness that cannot be described in words. Such joy is known as sattvik-ananda. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
80:The vocation, whether it be that of the farmer or the architect, is a function; the exercise of this function as regards the man himself is the most indispensable means of spiritual development, and as regards his relation to society the measure of his worth. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
81:The vocation, whether it be that of the farmer or the architect, is a function; the exercise of this function as regards the man himself is the most indispensable means of spiritual development, and as regards his relation to society the measure of his worth. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
82:The most awkward means are adequate to the communication of authentic experience, and the finest words no compensation for lack of it. It is for this reason that we are moved by the true Primitives and that the most accomplished art craftsmanship leaves us cold. ~ Ananda Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
83:Many feel the urge to create a new and better world. Rather than let your thoughts dwell on such matters, you should concentrate on That by the contemplation of which there is hope of perfect peace. It is man’s duty to become a seeker after God or Truth.” —Ananda Moyi Ma. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
84:You are still in 100% body consciousness. Do not stay with this body consciousness. Remove that. What will remain will be Atma-consciousness. Then there will be no anger, no hatred, no envy, no jealousy, no hunger, no desire . . . only complete Ananda . . . only bliss, bliss, bliss! ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
85:[...]The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him many other things and one may seek him for any of them, for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything else of which one may feel the pull or impulse.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB
86:The essence of Ananda is both personal and sociological. Personally for people who seek truth or identities of God, it helps to be with other people who share those ideals. Environment is stronger than willpower, and when you are with people who have high ideals, it helps you to grow in your ideals. ~ Goswami Kriyananda, #NFDB
87:The concept (of happiness) is universal. In Buddhism, it is called causeless joy, in Christianity, the kingdom of heaven within, and in Judaism it is called ashrei, an inner sense of holiness and health. Is Islam it is called falah, happiness and well-being, and in Hinduism it is called ananda, or pure bliss. ~ Marci Shimoff, #NFDB
88:While there may have lived an individual teacher who gave the ancient wisdom its peculiarly “Buddhist” coloring, his personality is completely overshadowed, as he must have wished it should be, by the eternal substance with which he identified himself. In other words, “the Buddha is only anthropomorphic, not a man”. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
89:Breathturn” by Hammock “Your Hand in Mine” by Explosions in the Sky “Devi Prayer” by Craig Pruess and Ananda “Horizon” by Tycho “Recurring” by Bonobo “Hanging On” by Active Child “Long Time Sun” by Snatam Kaur “Angels Prayer” by Ty Burhoe, James Hoskins, Cat McCarthy, Manorama, and Janaki Kagel “Twentytwofourteen” by The Album Leaf ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
90:The traditional arts and crafts are, in fact, “mysteries,” with “secrets” that are not merely “tricks of the trade” of economic value (like the so-much-abused European “patents”), but pertain to the worldwide and immemorial symbolism of the techniques, all of which are analogies or imitations of the creative nature in operation ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
91:We who play the game of life so desperately for temporal stakes might be playing at love with God for higher stakes—our selves, and his. We play against one another for possessions, who might be playing with the King who stakes his throne and what is his against our lives and all we are: a game in which the more is lost, the more is won. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
92:People say like that [the Transcendent is something beyond Sachchidananda] because the transcendent Absolute is not only what to us is existence but also what to us is non-existence. But there is really no such thing as non-existence. So the Transcendent can be conceived as transcendent Sat, transcendent Chit, transcendent Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, #NFDB
93:The boy with the flute is Sri Krishna, the Lord descended into the world-play from the divine Ananda; his flute is the music of the call which seeks to transform the lower ignorant play of mortal life and bring into it and establish in its place the lila of his divine Ananda. It was the psychic being in you that heard the call and followed after it.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III, #index,#NFDB
94:Sociologically, I think it is the most important thing going on in the world today. Because you can't change people by force. Communism made a great mistake in trying to inflict its beliefs on everybody. People have to find their own understanding, and if you can offer them an example that will inspire, they will come naturally to it. Ananda tries to offer this inspiring example. ~ Goswami Kriyananda, #NFDB
95:Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB
96:To propose an agreement on principles does not involve or imply that the Western world should be Orientalized ; propaganda is out of the question as between gentlemen, and everyone must make use of the forms appropriate to his own psychophysical constitution. It is the European that wants to practice Yoga ; the Oriental points out that he has already contemplative disciplines of his own. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
97:Our hankering for a state of leisure or leisure state is the proof of the fact that most of us are working at a task to which we could never have been called by anyone but a salesman, certainly not by God or by our own natures. Traditional craftsmen whom I have known in the East cannot be dragged away from their work, and will work overtime to their own pecuniary loss.
"Why Exhibit Works of Art? ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy,#NFDB
98:29. Lại nữa, này Ananda, lạc thọ là vô thường, hữu vi, là pháp duyên khởi, là pháp đoạn hoại, là pháp đoạn diệt, là pháp ly dục, là pháp diệt tận. Này Ananda, khổ thọ là vô thường, hữu vi, là pháp duyên khởi, là pháp đoạn hoại, là pháp đoạn diệt, là pháp ly dục, là pháp diệt tận. Này Ananda, bất khổ bất lạc thọ là vô thường, hữu vi, là pháp duyên khởi, là pháp đoạn hoại, là pháp đoạn diệt, là pháp ly dục, là pháp diệt tận. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
99:SRI AUROBINDO'S SYMBOL
[facsimile]
The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda.
The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love.
The junction of both - the central square - is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme - the lotus.
The water - inside the square - represents the multiplicity,
the creation.
4 April 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#NFDB
100:The philosopher Vatsigotra asked, “Is there a self?” and the Buddha did not say anything. Vatsigotra persisted, “Do you mean there is no self?” but the Buddha still did not reply. Finally, Vatsigotra left. Ananda, the Buddha’s attendant, was puzzled. “Lord, you always teach that there is no self. Why did you not say so to Vatsigotra?” The Buddha told Ananda that he did not reply because Vatsigotra was looking for a theory, not a way to remove obstacles. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
101:The dull pulse-like beat started at eleven o’clock at night. It was a new kind of music called ‘rap’. It baffled Ananda even more than disco. He had puzzled and puzzled over why people would want to listen and even move their bodies to an angry, insistent onrush of words – words that rhymed, apparently, but had no echo or afterlife. It was as if they were an extension of the body: never had words sounded so alarmingly physical, and pure physicality lacks empathy, it’s machine-like. ~ Amit Chaudhuri, #NFDB
102:We say that what seems to "us" irrational in the life of "savages", and may be unpractical, since it unfits them to compete with our material force, represents the vestiges of a primordial state of metaphysical understanding, and tl'1at if the savage himself is, generally speaking, no longer a comprehensor of his own "divine inheritance", this ignorance on his part is no more shameful than ours who do not recognize the intrinsic nature of his "lore", and understand it no better than he does. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
103:We can only suppose that Buddhism has been so much admired mainly for what it is not. A well known modern writer on the subject has remarked that “Buddhism in its purity ignored the existence of a God; it denied the existence of a soul; it was not so much a religion as a code of ethics”. We can understand the appeal of this on the one hand to the rationalist and on the other to the sentimentalist. Unfortunately for these, all three statements are untrue, at least in the sense in which they are meant. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
104:Do you know the bodhisattva vow?” Ananda asked. Kade shook his head. “It’s from the Mahāyāna school of Buddhism,” Ananda said, “different than my own, but still beautiful. The most basic expression of it is ‘May I attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings.’ It’s a pledge to keep being reborn into the material world of suffering, to put nirvana off indefinitely, until all beings in the universe have attained enlightenment and can also enter nirvana. It’s perhaps the ultimate vow of placing others before oneself. ~ Ramez Naam, #NFDB
105:We find “Nirvana” rendered by “annihilation” (no one stops to ask of what?), though the word means “despiration”, as Meister Eckhart uses the term. I accuse the majority of Christian writers of a certain irresponsibility, or even levity, in their references to other religions. I should never dream of making use of a Gospel text without referring to the Greek, and considering also the earlier history of the Greek words employed, and I demand as much of Christian writers.
To THE NEW ENGLISH WEEKLY, LONDON - January 8, 1946 ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy,#NFDB
106:You are in charge, though.” Ananda looked at him calmly. “In the perceptions of outsiders, perhaps. But here? I’m the oldest. I have the most experience. My thoughts carry some weight. When our minds are apart I have certain authority. But when we are connected… the group mind contains me. I’m just one part of it. The decisions it makes are wiser and more just than the ones I can make alone. The insights it can glean and the truths it can reveal are deeper than those I can glimpse alone. I respect that. I am a piece of this, not its master. ~ Ramez Naam, #NFDB
107:A customs man at JFK had asked them to open the suitcases (in case they were smuggling in Indian fruits or sweets, perhaps). ‘Ulysses!’ the large bespectacled disbelieving customs man had said. ‘Are you a student?’ Ananda had nodded, though he was in the equivalent of high school. ‘I wouldn’t read Ulysses unless I was a student!’ said the customs man, shutting the suitcase after his glimpse into the tantalising freemasonry of studenthood. A potentially incendiary book then—on the verge of being, but not quite, contraband. And near-unreadable. Ananda ~ Amit Chaudhuri, #NFDB
108:The yoga we practice is not for ourselves alone, but for the Divine; its aim is to work out the will of the Divine in the world, to effect a spiritual transformation and to bring down a divine nature and a divine life into the mental, vital and physical nature and life of humanity. Its object is not personal Mukti, although Mukti is a necessary condition of the yoga, but the liberation and transformation of the human being. It is not personal Ananda, but the bringing down of the divine Ananda - Christ's kingdom of heaven, our Satyayuga - upon the earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
109:Be lamps unto yourselves. Be refuges unto yourselves. Take yourself no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast to the truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead, Shall be a lamp unto themselves, Shall betake themselves as no external refuge, But holding fast to the truth as their lamp, Holding fast to the truth as their refuge, Shall not look for refuge to anyone else besides themselves, It is they who shall reach to the very topmost height; But they must be anxious to learn. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
110:As gnostic knowledge, will and ananda are a direct instrumentation of spirit and can only be won by growing into the spirit, into divine being, this growth has to be the first aim of our Yoga. The mental being has to enlarge itself into the oneness of the Divine before the Divine will perfect in the soul of the individual its gnostic outflowering. That is the reason why the triple way of knowledge, works and love becomes the key-note of the whole Yoga, for that is the direct means for the soul in mind to rise to its highest intensities where it passes upward into the divine oneness.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
111:Purusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha. The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Soul and Nature,#NFDB
112:compensation for sacrificed discipline of the lesser for greater :::
...a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
113:The Sinhalese people are not, in my opinion, happier or better than they were in the eighteenth century. Talk of progress, and the reality, are not the same. Civilisation is supposed to advance by the creation of new desires, to gratify which the individual must endeavour to improve his position. But in reality it is not quantity, but quality of wants that may be taken as evidence of progress in the Art of Living. No one acquainted with modern Sinhalese taste will pretend that it gives evidence of any improvement in the quality of wants. Indeed, it is sufficiently obvious that quantity, variety, and novelty are not really compatible with quality. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
114:Recent scientific research reveals that the human system is capable of producing its own narcotic if it is maintained in a certain way. It is a completely self-contained system. And, what’s more, this is a narcotic which has a tremendous impact on health, well-being, alertness and perception. This chemical has been termed Anandamide (after the ancient Sanskrit word ‘ananda’, which refers to the core of life as blissfulness). If a sufficient amount is generated in the system, an individual can be intoxicated and fully awake at the same time. So, what Adiyogi disclosed, in effect, was that there is a whole marijuana mountain inside you! If you cultivate it properly, you could be stoned and yet stable, exuberant and yet aware all the time. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
115:D.: Will the description of Brahman as Sat-Chit-Ananda suit this suddha manas? For this too will be destroyed in the final emancipation.
M.: If suddha manas is admitted, the Bliss (Ananda) experienced by the Jnani must also be admitted to be reflected. This reflection must finally merge into the Original. Therefore the jivanmukti state is compared to the reflection of a spotless mirror in another similar mirror. What will be found in such a reflection? Pure Akasa (Ether). Similarly, the jnani's reflected Bliss (Ananda) represents only the true Bliss. These are all only words. It is enough that a person becomes antarmukhi (inward-bent). The sastras are not needed for an inward turned mind. They are meant for the rest. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 513,#NFDB
116:The contentment of innumerable people can be destroyed in a generation by the withering touch of our civilisation; the local market is flooded by a production in quantity with which the responsible maker of art cannot complete; the vocational structure of society, with all its guild organisation and standards of workmanship, is undermined; the artist is robbed of his art and forced to find himself a "job"; until finally the ancient society is industrialised and reduced to the level of such societies as ours in which business takes precedence of life. Can one wonder that Western nations are feared and hated by other people, not alone for obvious political or economic reasons, but even more profoundly and instinctively for spiritual reasons? ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
117:Overmind is the highest source of the cosmic consciousness available to the embodied being in the Ignorance. It is part of the cosmic consciousness-but the human individual when he opens into the cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-Life-Matter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer- although influences and experiences can come down from there.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 152,#NFDB
118:Why do you indulge in these exaggerated feelings of remorse and despair when these things come up from the subconscient? They do not help and make it more, not less difficult to eliminate what comes. Such returns of an old nature that is long expelled from the conscious parts of the being always happen in sadhana. It does not at all mean that the nature is unchangeable. Try to recover the inner quietude, draw back from these movements and look at them calmly, reducing them to their true proportions. Your true nature is that in which you have peace and ananda and the love of the Divine. This other is only a fringe of the outer personality which in spite of these returns is destined to drop away as the true being extends and increases. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV, Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #NFDB
119:Calm, even if it seems at first only a negative thing, is so difficult to attain, that to have it at all must be regarded as a great step in advance.
"In reality, calm is not a negative thing, it is the very nature of the Sat-Purusha and the positive foundation of the divine consciousness. Whatever else is aspired for and gained, this must be kept. Even Knowledge, Power, Ananda, if they come and do not find this foundation, are unable to remain and have to withdraw until the divine purity and peace of the Sat-Purusha are permanently there.
"Aspire for the rest of the divine consciousness, but with a calm and deep aspiration. It can be ardent as well as calm, but not impatient, restless or full of rajasic eagerness.
"Only in the quiet mind and being can the supramental Truth build its true creation." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1954,#NFDB
120:Maheshwari can appear too calm and great and distant for the littleness of earthly nature to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and formidable for its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to Mahalakshmi.
For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart is to make the existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and tenderness flow from her like the light from the sun and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall of the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss.
Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines the mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB
121:The usual sadhanas have for aim the union with the Supreme Consciousness (Sat-chit-ananda). And those who reach there are satisfied with their own liberation and leave the world to its unhappy plight. On the contrary, Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts where the others end. Once the union with the Supreme is realised one must bring down that realisation to the exterior world and change the conditions of life upon the earth until a total transformation is accomplished. In accordance with this aim, the sadhaks of the integral yoga do not retire from the world to lead a life of contemplation and meditation. Each one must devote at least one third of his time to a useful work. All activities are represented in the Ashram and each one chooses the work most congenial to his nature, but must do it in a spirit of service and unselfishness, keeping always in view the aim of integral transformation. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, #NFDB
122:The greatest value of the dream-state of Samadhi lies, however, not in these more outward things, but in its power to open up easily higher ranges and powers of thought, emotion, will by which the soul grows in height, range and self-mastery. Especially, withdrawing from the distraction of sensible things, it can, in a perfect power of concentrated self-seclusion, prepare itself by a free reasoning, thought, discrimination or more intimately, more finally, by an ever deeper vision and identification, for access to the Divine, the supreme Self, the transcendent Truth, both in its principles and powers and manifestations and in its highest original Being. Or it can by an absorbed inner joy and emotion, as in a sealed and secluded chamber of the soul, prepare itself for the delight of union with the divine Beloved, the Master of all bliss, rapture and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Part Two: The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Chapter 26, Samadhi, pg. 503,#NFDB
123:One of the strangest controversies in the history of Orientalism turned upon the “origin of bhakti”, as if devotion had at some given moment been a new idea and thenceforth a fashionable one. It would have been simpler to observe that the word bhakti means primarily a given share, and therefore also the devotion or love that all liberality presupposes; and so that inasmuch as one “gives God his share” (bhagam), i.e. sacrifces, one is his bhakta. Thus in the hymn, “If thou givest me my share” amounts to saying “If thou lovest me”. It has often been pointed out that the Sacrifice was thought of as a commerce between Gods and men: but not often realised that by introducing into traditional conceptions of trade notions derived from our own internecine commercial transactions, we have falsified our understanding of the original sense of such a commerce, which was actually more of the potlatsh type, a competition in giving, than like our competitions in taking. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
124:Let us now turn for a moment to the word karman which has been cited above. The meanings of the verbal root kar, present also in the Latin creare and the Greek κραίνω [kraino], are to make, do, and effect. And significantly, just as the Latin facere is originally sacra facere, literally “make sacred,” and as the Greek πoιέω = ἱερoπoιέω [poieo = hieropoieo], so karman is originally and very often not merely “work” or “making,” but synonymous with yajna, “sacrifice” and also with vrata, “sacred operation,” “obedience,” “sphere of activity,” “function,” and especially as in the Bhagavad Gita, with dharma, “justice” or “natural law.” In other words, the idea is deeply rooted in our humanity that there is no real distinction of work from holy works, and no necessary opposition of profane to sacred activities. And it is precisely this idea that finds such vivid expression in the well-known Indian philosophy of action, the “Way of Works” (karmamarga) of the Bhagavad Gita. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
125:It is in fact surprising that such a body of doctrine as the Buddhist, with its profoundly other-wordly and even anti-social emphasis, in the Buddha's own words "hard to be understood by you who are of different views, another tolerance, other tastes, other allegiance and other training", can have become even as "popular" as it is in the modern Western environment.
[...]
We can only suppose that Buddhism has been so much admired mainly for what it is not. A well known modem writer on the subject has remarked that “Buddhism in its purity ignored the existence of a God; it denied the existence of a soul; it was not so much a religion as a code of ethics”. We can understand the appeal of this on the one hand to the rationalist and on the other to the sentimentalist. Unfortunately for these, all three statements arc untrue, at least in the sense in which they are meant. It is with another Buddhism than this that we are in sympathy and are able to agree; and that is the Buddhism of the texts as they stand. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy,#NFDB
126:But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be no more happy condition than this union and dependence; for this step carries you back beyond the border-line from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, into its deep peace and its intense Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 12, #NFDB
127:[...]For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they exist because of Him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect of another of his. The only thing needed for that is, first, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet. ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB
128:Only by our coming into constant touch with the divine Consciousness and its absolute Truth can some form of the conscious Divine, the dynamic Absolute, take up our earth-existence and transform its strife, stumbling, sufferings and falsities into an image of the supreme Light, Power and Ananda.
The culmination of the soul's constant touch with the Supreme is that self-giving which we call surrender to the divine Will and immergence of the separated ego in the One who is all. A vast universality of soul and an intense unity with all is the base and fixed condition of the supramental consciousness and spiritual life. In that universality and unity alone can we find the supreme law of the divine manifestation in the life of the embodied spirit; in that alone can we discover the supreme motion and right play of our individual nature. In that alone can all these lower discords resolve themselves into a victorious harmony of the true relations between manifested beings who are portions of the one Godhead and children of one universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, 205,#NFDB
129:Quand aux traditions «pré-hindoues» dans l’Inde, je me suis sans doute insuffisamment expliqué. Il est bien entendu que tous les peuples sont ou ont été en possession de traditions qui dérivent d’une source unique, mais de façon plus ou moins distincte. Les traditions summériennes, dravidiennes, etc., paraissent procéder de formes se rattachant plus spécialement à certains centres secondaires, tandis que la tradition «hindoue», venue du Nord, est celle qui provient le plus directement de la Tradition primordiale (pour notre Manvantara), indiqué partout comme «polaire» à l’origine. Ceci a naturellement un lien direct avec la question du «Paradis Terrestre» à laquelle vous faîtes allusion, et dont j’ai déjà parlé dans mon livre «Le Roi du Monde», ce qui n’empêche que j’y reviendrai peut-être encore quelque jour comme vous le me suggérez. - Pour ce qui est de l’analogie des événements historiques avec les principes, d’où leur valeur symbolique (qui n’exclue aucunement leur réalité de fait), j’y ai insisté souvent; c’est là une chose que les occidentaux semblent avoir beaucoup de peine à comprendre en général.
[lettre à Ananda Coomaraswamy 24 juin 1935] ~ Ren Gu non,#NFDB
130:One perceives the true nature of existence. One discovers the why and the raison d'être of existence, not by the mind and the scientific pursuit, but by the knowledge of the self and the discovery of one's soul which is all-powerful.
This is the true method for knowing, for understanding and for realising the secrets of Nature, of the universe and the path which leads to the Divine. One can do everything with this realisation, one can know everything and finally become the master of one's existence. Nothing will be impossible … nothing will be left out. One has only to see with another sense which is within us, develop another faculty by a rigourous sadhana, to discover the secrets of all existence. Voilà.
The means are in you, the path opens up more and more, gets clearer and clearer, and with the help which is at your disposal, you have only to make an effort and you shall be crowned with a Knowledge, a Light and an Ananda which surpass all existence. Whether it be to see the functioning of the atom, or to know the process of thought or the flights of imagination or even the unknown … to know oneself is to know all. It is this that one must find. ~ The Mother,#NFDB
131:The Transcendent Mother and the Higher Hemisphere
"At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power."1 The Transcendent Mother thus stands above the Ananda plane.There are then four steps of the Divine Shakti:
(1) The Transcendent Mahashakti who stands above the Ananda plane and who bears the Supreme Divine in her eternal consciousness.
(2) The Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of SatChit-Ananda where all beings live and move in an ineffable completeness.
(3) The Supramental Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Supermind.
(4) The Cosmic Mahashakti immanent in the lower hemisphere.
Yes; that is all right. One speaks often however of all above the lower hemisphere as part of the transcendence. This is because the Supermind and Ananda are not manifested in our universe at present, but are planes above it. For us the higher hemisphere is pr [para], the Supreme Transcendence is prA(pr [paratpara]. The Sanskrit terms are here clearer than the English.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Three Aspects of the Mother, 52,#NFDB
132:There never was a face as fair as yours,
A heart as true, a love as pure and keen.
These things endure, if anything endures.
But, in this jungle, what high heaven immures
Us in its silence, the supreme serene
Crowning the dagoba, what destined die
Rings on the table, what resistless dart
Strike me I love you; can you satisfy
The hunger of my heart!
Nay; not in love, or faith, or hope is hidden
The drug that heals my life; I know too well
How all things lawful, and all things forbidden
Alike disclose no pearl upon the midden,
Offer no key to unlock the gate of Hell.
There is no escape from the eternal round,
No hope in love, or victory, or art.
There is no plumb-line long enough to sound
The abysses of my heart!
There no dawn breaks; no sunlight penetrates
Its blackness; no moon shines, nor any star.
For its own horror of itself creates
Malignant fate from all benignant fates,
Of its own spite drives its own angel afar.
Nay; this is the great import of the curse
That the whole world is sick, and not a part.
Conterminous with its own universe
the horror of my heart!
ANANDA VIJJA.
~ Aleister Crowley, The Buddhist
,#NFDB
133:The Buddhist
There never was a face as fair as yours,
A heart as true, a love as pure and keen.
These things endure, if anything endures.
But, in this jungle, what high heaven immures
Us in its silence, the supreme serene
Crowning the dagoba, what destined die
Rings on the table, what resistless dart
Strike me I love you; can you satisfy
The hunger of my heart!
Nay; not in love, or faith, or hope is hidden
The drug that heals my life; I know too well
How all things lawful, and all things forbidden
Alike disclose no pearl upon the midden,
Offer no key to unlock the gate of Hell.
There is no escape from the eternal round,
No hope in love, or victory, or art.
There is no plumb-line long enough to sound
The abysses of my heart!
There no dawn breaks; no sunlight penetrates
Its blackness; no moon shines, nor any star.
For its own horror of itself creates
Malignant fate from all benignant fates,
Of its own spite drives its own angel afar.
Nay; this is the great import of the curse
That the whole world is sick, and not a part.
Conterminous with its own universe
the horror of my heart!
ANANDA VIJJA.
~ Aleister Crowley,#NFDB
134:Looking at the works of art that are considered worthy of preservation in our Museums, and that were once the common objects of the market place, I could not but realise that a society can only be considered truly civilised when it is possible for every man to earn his living by the very work he would rather be doing than anything else in the world, a condition that has only been attained in social orders integrated on the basis of vocation, "svadharma".
At the same time I should like to emphasis that I have never built up a philosophy of my own or wished to establish a new school of thought. Perhaps the greatest thing I have learnt is never to think for myself; I fully agree with Andre Gide that "Toutes choses sont dites deja", and what I have sought is to understand what has been said, while taking no account of the "inferior philosophers". Holding with Heraclitus that the Word is common to all, and that Wisdom is to know the Will whereby all things are steered, I am convinced with Jeremias that the human cultures in all their apparent diversity are but the dialects of one and the same language of the spirit, that there is a "common universe of discourse" transcending the differences of tongues". ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy,#NFDB
135:The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and to nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother-Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine. In this Yoga, therefore, there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others; any such relation or interchange immediately ties down the soul to the lower consciousness and its lower nature, prevents the true and full union with the Divine and hampers both the ascent to the supramental Truth consciousness and the descent of the supramental Ishwari Shakti. Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation or a sexual enjoyment, even if kept free from any outward act; therefore these things are absolutely forbidden in the sadhana. It goes without saying that any physical act of the kind is not allowed, but also any subtler form is ruled out. It is only after becoming one with the supramental Divine that we can find our true spiritual relations with others in the Divine; in that higher unity this kind of gross lower vital movement can have no place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, #NFDB
136:En el flujo y reflujo de nuestras pasiones y quehaceres (escindidos siempre, siempre yo y mi doble y el doble de mi otro yo), hay un momento en que todo pacta. Los contrarios no desaparecen, pero se funden por un instante. Es algo así como una suspensión del ánimo: el tiempo no pesa. Los Upanishad enseñan que esta reconciliación es “ananda” o deleito con lo Uno. Cierto, pocos son capaces de alcanzar tal estado. Pero todos, alguna vez, así haya sido por una fracción de segundo, hemos vislumbrado algo semejante. No es necesario ser un místico para rozar esta certidumbre. Todos hemos sido niños. Todos hemos amado. El amor es un estado de reunión y participación, abierto a los hombres : en el acto amoroso la conciencia es como la ola que, vencido el obstáculo, antes de desplomarse, se yergue en una plenitud en la que todo - forma y movimiento, impulso hacia arriba y fuerza de gravedad - alcanza un equilibrio sin apoyo, sustentado en sí mismo. Quietud del movimiento. Y del mismo modo que a través de un cuerpo amado entrevemos una vida más plena, más vida que la vida, a través del poema vislumbramos el rayo fijo de la poesía. Ese instante contiene todos los instantes. Sin dejar de fluir, el tiempo se detiene, colmado de sí.
El Arco Y La Lira ~ Octavio Paz,#NFDB
137:As tears become rivers emptying into a sea of pain, there you'll find my heart, smashed into a thousand pieces littered in the rain. Amongst the shadows is where you'll see a glimpse of the woman I used to be. I used to believe in the good of everything, everyone; an optimist...nothing could cloud my day; my world I met him on a sunny June day and knew he was heaven sent the sun shined brighter, the world was happier; here standing in front of me was the one I'd waited my whole life for Him, my destroyer, the man that cracked my universe and taught me things and people weren't always what they seemed and no matter how I tried, there was no longer a sun in sight to see I trusted him, gave my heart to him; he used me; did he ever love me? Does he know what love means? Loyalty? Please! He has none, except to himself... I lost myself in him and his world; who am I? I'm not sure They call me Ananda, I call me damaged I'm not who I used to be and unsure of who I'm supposed to be and there is the problem... I'm a broken reflection of someone I used to know and can never be again am I better or worse after him? My heart is definitely worse, but my spirit--the one thing he couldn't touch is unbroken my spirit survived his wrath and in due time so will I.... ~ Mychea, #NFDB
138:the psychic transformation :::
The soul, the psychic being is in direct touch with the divine Truth, but it is hidden in man by the mind, the vital being and the physical nature. One may practise yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason; one may conquer power and luxuriate in all kinds of experiences in the vital; one may establish even surprising physical Siddhis; but if the true soul-power behind does not manifest, if the psychic nature does not come into the front, nothing genuine has been done. In this yoga the psychic being is that which opens the rest of the nature to the true supramental light and finally to the supreme Ananda. Mind can open by itself to its own higher reaches; it can still itself in some kind of static liberation or Nirvana; but the supramental cannot find a sufficient base in a spiritualised mind alone. If the inmost soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then this yoga can be done; otherwise (by the sole power of the mind or any other part) it is impossible.... If there is a refusal of the psychic new birth, a refusal to become the child new born from the Mother, owing to attachment to intellectual knowledge or mental ideas or to some vital desire, then there will be a failure in the sadhana. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#NFDB
139:One would begin, for example, by remarking that the Vedic doctrine is neither pantheistic" nor polytheistic, nor a worship of the powers of Nature except in the sense that Natura naturans est Deus and all her powers but the names of God’s acts; that karma is not ‘‘fate’’ except in the orthodox sense of the character and destiny that inhere in created things themselves, and rightly understood, determines their vocation; 5 that 'maya' is not ‘illusion", but rather the material measure and means essential to the manifestation of a quantitative and in this sense “material”, world of appearances, by which we may be either enlightened or deluded according to the degree of our own maturity; that the notion of a “reincarnation” in the popular sense of the return of deceased individuals to rebirth on this earth represents only a misunderstanding of the doctrines of heredity, transmigration and regeneration; and that the six darshanas the later Sanskrit “philosophy” are not so many mutually exclusive “systems'’ but, as their name implies, so many “points of view" which are no more mutually contradictory than are, let us say, botany and mathematics. We shall also deny in Hinduism the existence of anything unique and peculiar to itself, apart from the local colouring and social adaptations that must be expected under the sun where nothing can be known except in the mode of the knower. ~ Ananda K Coomaraswamy, #NFDB
140:need for the soul's spiritualization :::
And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness. All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the Beloved, and all forms of beauty have to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating and transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. All Bliss and Joy are there of the All-Blissful, and all inferior forms of enjoyment, happiness or pleasure are subjected to the shock of the intensity of its floods or currents and either they are broken to pieces as inadequate things under its convicting stress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 168,#NFDB
141:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,#NFDB
142:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 219, #NFDB
143:In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature.
In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
an aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing - the mind's will, the heart's seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature;
rejection of the movements of the lower nature - rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB
144:What your reasoning ignores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute in man and his seeking as well as in the Divine - something not to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive, but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking that is the soul's inherent aspiration, not a vital longing. That is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when "I seek you for this, I seek you for that" changes to a sheer "I seek you for you." It is that marvellous and ineffable absolute in the Divine that Krishnaprem means when he says, "Not knowledge nor this nor that, but Krishna."
The pull of that is indeed a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because of the imperative call of its greater Self, the soul ineffably drawn towards the object of its adoration, because it cannot be otherwise, because it is it and He is He. That is all about it.
I have written all that only to explain what we mean whenwe speak of seeking the Divine for himself and not for anything else - so far as it is explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being - for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Seeking the Divine,#NFDB
145:... The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed - for there is no absolute rule for all, - but if the peace has not come first, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.
The result of the concentration is not usually immediate - though to some there comes a swift and sudden outflowering; but with most there is a time longer or shorter of adaptation or preparation, especially if the nature has not been prepared already to some extent by aspiration and tapasya. ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB
146:As for the negation of the Christian Trinity in the Quran - and this negation is extrinsic and conditional - we must take account of certain shades of meaning. The Trinity can be envisaged according to a "vertical" perspective or according to either of two "horizontal" perspectives, one of them being supreme and the other not. The vertical perspective- Beyond-Being, Being and Existence - envisages the hypostases as "descending" from Unity or from the Absolute - or from the Essence it could be said - which means that it envisages the degrees of Reality. The supreme horizontal perspective corresponds to the Vedantic triad Sat (supraontological Reality), Chit (Absolute Consciousness) and Ananda (Infinite Beatitude), which means that it envisages the Trinity inasmuch as It is hidden in Unity(1). The non-supreme horizontal perspective on the contrary situates Unity as an essence hidden within the Trinity, which is then ontological and represents the three fundamental aspects or modes of Pure Being, whence the triad : Being, Wisdom, Will (Father, Son, Spirit).
Now the concept of a Trinity seen as a deployment (tajalli) of Unity or of the Absolute is in no way opposed to the unitary doctrine of Islam ; what is opposed to it is solely the attribution of absoluteness to the Trinity alone, or even to the ontological Trinity alone, as it is envisaged exoterically. This last point of view does not, strictly speaking, attain to the Absolute and this is as much as to say that it attributes an absolute character to what is relative and is ignorant of Maya and the degrees of reality or of illusion ; it does not conceive of the metaphysical - but not pantheistic - identity between manifestation and the Principle; still less, therefore, does it conceive of the consequence this identity implies from the point of view of the intellect and the knowledge which delivers.
(1) The Absolute is not the Absolute inasmuch as it contains aspects, but inasmuch as It transcends them; inasmuch as It is Trinity It is therefore not Absolute. ~ Frithjof Schuon,#NFDB
147:Nati is the submission of the soul to the will of God; its acceptance of all touches as His touches, of all experience as His play with the soul of man. Nati may be with titiksha, feeling the sorrow but accepting it as God's will, or with udasinata, rising superior to it and regarding joy and sorrow equally as God's working in these lower instruments, or with ananda, receiving everything as the play of Krishna and therefore in itself delightful. The last is the state of the complete Yogin, for by this continual joyous or anandamaya namaskara to God constantly practised we arrive eventually at the entire elimination of grief, pain etc, the entire freedom from the dwandwas, and find the Brahmananda in every smallest, most trivial, most apparently discordant detail of life & experience in this human body. We get rid entirely of fear and suffering; Anandam Brahmano vidvan na bibheti kutaschana. We may have to begin with titiksha and udasinata but it is in this ananda that we must consummate the siddhi of samata. The Yogin receives victory and defeat, success and ill-success, pleasure and pain, honour and disgrace with an equal, a sama ananda, first by buddhi-yoga, separating himself from his habitual mental & nervous reactions & insisting by vichara on the true nature of the experience itself and of his own soul which is secretly anandamaya, full of the sama ananda in all things. He comes to change all the ordinary values of experience; amangala reveals itself to him as mangala, defeat & ill-success as the fulfilment of God's immediate purpose and a step towards ultimate victory, grief and pain as concealed and perverse forms of pleasure. A stage arrives even, when physical pain itself, the hardest thing for material man to bear, changes its nature in experience and becomes physical ananda; but this is only at the end when this human being, imprisoned in matter, subjected to mind, emerges from his subjection, conquers his mind and delivers himself utterly in his body, realising his true anandamaya self in every part of the adhara.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Record Of Yoga,#NFDB
148:1. In the court, Siva, though motionless, dances before Shakti in stillness. In Arunachala, with solemnity, He stands. She withdraws there into His still Self. 2. 'A,' 'Ru,' and 'Na' Sat, Chit, and Ananda -- the Supreme Self, the individual self -- their union is Absolute; Thus, the great saying -- 'You are That.' 'Achala' bespeaks perfection. Worship Arunachala shining, golden; simply remembering unlocks the door. 3. Touching the lotus feet of the Lord of Arunachala, freed from attachment to wealth, family, place, ever purer, seeking grace -- darkness recedes. In the rising sun, golden, steady, full of grace, there abide, joyously sunk in the Sea of Bliss. 4. Annamalai! Don't let me pine forgetful. Don't crush me to dust, leaving me confused between body and Self. Turn Your restoring glance upon me, eye of my eyes! You Who are all Consciousness, You Who are neither male nor female, don't fail me! Seat Yourself in my heart. 5. You Who are all Consciousness, ruling over sublime Shonagiri, forgive the stumblings of this little one. Rain Cloud, shower me with Your gracious glance. Save me from being lost once more in the dreary waste. I cannot ford the grim stream of manifestation. Mother, what can match Your care? 6. 'Killer of Kama, Destroyer of Desire,' tied to You we know Your name. A question, though, if the title fits: How can mighty Kama continue, bold and conquering? How can he creep unseen upon one sheltered beneath Your feet? Tell me, You Who killed him? 7. Arunachala! As soon as You claimed me, I was Yours, body and soul. What is left to want? You are success and You are failure both, Oh my life! They are meaningless without You. Beloved, do as You will with me, but promise me ever greater desire for Your Feet! 8. To rescue me -- born of virtuous Sundara and Sundari in holy Tiruchuli, seat of Bhuminatheshware -- from the pain of the world, He raised me to his seat, His heart rejoices. Siva shines forth. And the Self flowers. Such is Arunachala, known across the universe! 9. Bearing me in the world as my father and mother, You hid in my mind. Before I drowned in the deep illusion, You drew me, Arunachala, You Who are All Consciousness, such is the wonder of Your Grace!
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, The Necklet of Nine Gems
,#NFDB
149:It is your birthday tomorrow?
Yes, Mother.
How old will you be?
Twenty-six, Mother.
I shall see you tomorrow and give you something special. You will see, I am not speaking of anything material- that, I shall give you a card and all that- but of something...You will see, tomorrow, now go home and prepare yourself quietly so that you may be ready to receive it.
Yes, Mother.
You know, my child, what "Bonne Fete" signifies, that is, the birthday we wish here?
Like that, I know what it means, Mother, but not the special significance you want to tell me.
Yes, it is truly a special day in one's life. It is one of those days in the year when the Supreme descends into us- or when we are face to face with the Eternal- one of those days when our soul comes in contact with the Eternal and, if we remain a little conscious, we can feel His Presence within us. If we make a little effort on this day, we accomplish the work of many lives as in a lightning flash. That is why I give so much importance to the birthday- because what one gains in one day is truly something incomparable. And it is for this that I also work to open the consciousness a little towards what is above so that one may come before the Eternal. My child, it is a very, very special day, for it is the day of decision, the day one can unite with the Supreme Consciousness. For the Lord lifts us on this day to the highest region possible so that our soul which is a portion of that Eternal Flame, may be united and identified with its Origin.
This day is truly an opportunity in life. One is so open and so receptive that one can assimilate all that is given. I can do many things, that is why it is important.
It is one of those days when the Lord Himself opens the doors wide for us. It is as though He were inviting us to rekindle more powerfully the flame of aspiration. It is one of those days which He gives us. We too, by our personal effort, could attain to this, but it would be long, hard and not so easy. And this- this is a real chance in life- the day of Grace.
It is an occult phenomenon that occurs invariably, without our knowledge, on this particular day of the year. The soul leaves behind the body and journeys up and up till it merges into the Source in order to replenish itself and absorb from the Supreme Its Power, Light and Ananda and comes down charged for a whole year to pass. Then again and again... it continues like this year after year. ~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, Mona Sarkar,#NFDB
150:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #NFDB
151:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#NFDB
152:root of the falsification and withdrawl of divine love :::
At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 166,#NFDB
153:But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration [83],#NFDB
154:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],#NFDB
155:[desire and its divine form:]
Into all our endeavour upward the lower element of desire will at first naturally enter. For what the enlightened will sees as the thing to be done and pursues as the crown to be conquered, what the heart embraces as the one thing delightful, that in us which feels itself limited and opposed and, because it is limited, craves and struggles, will seek with the troubled passion of an egoistic desire. This craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to be accepted at first, but only in order that it may be transformed. Even from the very beginning it has to be taught to renounce all other desires and concentrate itself on the passion for the Divine. This capital point gained, it has to be aught to desire, not for its own separate sake, but for God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves; it has to fix itself upon no personal spiritual gain, though of all possible spiritual gains we are sure, but on the great work to be done in us and others, on the high coming manifestation which is to be the glorious fulfilment of the Divine in the world, on the Truth that has to be sought and lived and enthroned for eveR But last, most difficult for it, more difficult than to seek with the right object, it has to be taught to seek in the right manner; for it must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine. It must insist no longer, as the strong separative will always insists, on its own manner of fulfilment, its own dream of possession, its own idea of the right and the desirable; it must yearn to fulfil a larger and greater Will and consent to wait upon a less interested and ignorant guidance. Thus trained, Desire, that great unquiet harasser and troubler of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, will become fit to be transformed into its divine counterpart. For desire and passion too have their divine forms; there is a pure ecstasy of the soul's seeking beyond all craving and grief, there is a Will of Ananda that sits glorified in the possession of the supreme beatitudes.
When once the object of concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the heart and the will,-a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law,-the perfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal satisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For that work can be truly performed only when the instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action,-and that will be when personal desire and egoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true spiritual Person can still remain and God's will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will then be divine and done divinely; our mind and life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and in the world that which has been first realised in ourselves,- all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom, Strength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the Spirit's terrestrial adventure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration [83] [T1],#NFDB
156:We have now completed our view of the path of Knowledge and seen to what it leads. First, the end of Yoga of Knowledge is God-possession, it is to possess God and be possessed by him through consciousness, through identification, through reflection of the divine Reality. But not merely in some abstraction away from our present existence, but here also; therefore to possess the Divine in himself, the Divine in the world, the Divine within, the Divine in all things and all beings. It is to possess oneness with God and through that to possess also oneness with the universal, with the cosmos and all existences; therefore to possess the infinite diversity also in the oneness, but on the basis of oneness and not on the basis of division. It is to possess God in his personality and his impersonality; in his purity free from qualities and in his infinite qualities; in time and beyond time; in his action and in his silence; in the finite and in the infinite. It is to possess him not only in pure self, but in all self; not only in self, but in Nature; not only in spirit, but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our life, to be one with all life; for our mind, to be one with the universal mind; for our spirit, to be identified with the universal spirit. It is to merge in him in the absolute and find him in all relations. Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge [511] [T1], #index,#NFDB
157:[an Integral conception of the Divine :::
But on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate? And yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this concentration of our being upon him. A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophical reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable : it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul's call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man's avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice.
But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 82-83 [T1],#NFDB
158:The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or lateR But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, 558,#NFDB
159:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#NFDB
749 Integral Yoga
6 Yoga
5 Philosophy
5 Occultism
4 Psychology
2 Mythology
1 Poetry
883 Sri Aurobindo
69 The Mother
51 Satprem
24 Nolini Kanta Gupta
13 A B Purani
5 Aldous Huxley
4 Sri Ramana Maharshi
4 George Van Vrekhem
3 Sri Ramakrishna
3 Aleister Crowley
2 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
2 Nirodbaran
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Joseph Campbell
2 Carl Jung
563 Record of Yoga
94 The Synthesis Of Yoga
30 Letters On Yoga III
27 Letters On Yoga IV
26 Letters On Yoga II
20 The Life Divine
18 Letters On Yoga I
13 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
11 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
10 Essays On The Gita
9 Essays Divine And Human
8 Talks
8 Isha Upanishad
8 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
7 The Secret Of The Veda
7 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
6 Questions And Answers 1956
6 Agenda Vol 05
5 The Perennial Philosophy
5 Agenda Vol 06
5 Agenda Vol 04
4 Vedic and Philological Studies
4 The Integral Yoga
4 Preparing for the Miraculous
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
4 Agenda Vol 11
4 Agenda Vol 07
4 Agenda Vol 03
4 Agenda Vol 01
3 The Human Cycle
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Questions And Answers 1954
3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
3 Magick Without Tears
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
3 Agenda Vol 09
3 Agenda Vol 08
3 Agenda Vol 02
2 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
2 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Questions And Answers 1953
2 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
2 Letters On Poetry And Art
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Amrita Gita
2 Agenda Vol 10
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to brea the the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man has two aspects or natures; he dwells in two worlds. The first is the manifest world the world of the body, the life and the mind. The body has flowered into the mind through the life. The body gives the basis or the material, the life gives power and energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another world where man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the world where man's nature is transmuted into another triune realitySat, Chit and Ananda.
The one, however, is not completely divorced from the other. The apparent, the inferior nature is only a preparation for the real, the superior nature. The Path of the Fathers concerns itself with man as a mental being and seeks so to ordain and accomplish its duties and ideals as to lead him on to the Path of the Gods; the mind, the life, and the body consciousness should be so disciplined, educated, purified, they should develop along such a line and gradually rise to such a stage as to make them fit to receive the light which belongs to the higher level, so allowing the human soul imbedded in them to extricate itself and pass on to the Immortal Life.
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In Yajnavalkya's enumeration, however, it is to be noted, first of all, that he stresses on the number three. The principle of triplicity is of very wide application: it permeates all fields of consciousness and is evidently based upon a fundamental fact of reality. It seems to embody a truth of synthesis and comprehension, points to the order and harmony that reigns in the cosmos, the spheric music. The metaphysical, that is to say, the original principles that constitute existence are the well-known triplets: (i) the superior: Sat, Chit, Ananda; and (ii) the inferior: Body, Life and Mindthis being a reflection or translation or concretisation of the former. We can see also here how the dual principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 14 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so for a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the manifesting activity of the Reality. But what is this one and a half to which Yajnavalkya refers? It simply means that the other created out of the one is not a wholly separate, independent entity: it is not an integer by itself, as in the Manichean system, but that it is a portion, a fraction of the One. And in the end, in the ultimate analysis, or rather synthesis, there is but one single undivided and indivisible unity. The thousands and hundreds, very often mentioned also in the Rig Veda, are not simply multiplications of the One, a graphic description of its many-sidedness; it indicates also the absolute fullness, the complete completeness (prasya pram) of the Reality. It includes and comprehends all and is a rounded totality, a full circle. The hundred-gated and the thousand-pillared cities of which the ancient Rishis chanted are formations and embodiments of consciousness human and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness.
Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult aspect in numerology of which Pythagoras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of emanation. The One has divided and subdivided itself, but not in a haphazard way: it is not like the chaotic pulverisation of a piece of stone by hammer-blows. The process of division and subdivision follows a pattern almost as neat and methodical as a genealogical tree. That is to say, the emanations form a hierarchy. At the top, the apex of the pyramid, stands the one supreme Godhead. That Godhead is biune in respect of manifestation the Divine and his creative Power. This two-in-one reality may be considered, according to one view of creation, as dividing into three forms or aspects the well-known Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra of Hindu mythology. These may be termed the first or primary emanations.
00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Poet creates forms of beauty in Heaven; but these forms are not made out of the void. It is the Earth that is raised to Heaven and transmuted into divine truth forms. The union of Earth and Heaven is the source of the Joy, the Ananda, that the Poet unseals and distributes. Heaven and Earth join and meet in the world of Delight; between them they press out Soma, the drink of the gods.
The Mind and the Body are held together by means of the Life, the mid-world. The Divine Mind by raising the body-consciousness into itself gathers up too, by that act, the delight of life and releases the fountain of immortal Bliss. That is the work and achievement of the gods as poets.
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All the gods are poetstheir forms are perfect, surpa, suda, their Names full of beauty,cru devasya nma.31 This means also that the gods embody the different powers that constitute the poetic consciousness. Agni is the Seer-Will, the creative vision of the Poet the luminous energy born of an experience by identity with the Truth. Indra is the Idea-Form, the architectonic conception of the work or achievement. Mitra and Varuna are the large harmony, the vast cadence and sweep of movement. The Aswins, the Divine Riders, represent the intense zest of well-yoked Life-Energy. Soma is Rasa, Ananda, the Supreme Bliss and Delight.
The Vedic Poet is doubtless the poet of Life, the architect of Divinity in man, of Heaven upon earth. But what is true of Life is fundamentally true of Art tooat least true of the Art as it was conceived by the ancient seers and as it found expression at their hands.32
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
According to the Tantra, the Ultimate Reality is Chit, or Consciousness, which is identical with Sat, or Being, and with Ananda, or Bliss. This Ultimate Reality, Satchid Ananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, is identical with the Reality preached in the Vedas. And man is identical with this Reality; but under the influence of maya, or illusion, he has forgotten his true nature. He takes to be real a merely apparent world of subject and object, and this error is the cause of his bondage and suffering. The goal of spiritual discipline is the rediscovery of his true identity with the divine Reality.
For the achievement of this goal the Vedanta prescribes an austere negative method of discrimination and renunciation, which can be followed by only a few individuals endowed with sharp intelligence and unshakable will-power. But Tantra takes into consideration the natural weakness of human beings, their lower appetites, and their love for the concrete. It combines philosophy with rituals, meditation with ceremonies, renunciation with enjoyment. The underlying purpose is gradually to train the aspirant to meditate on his identity with the Ultimate.
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Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra; and at the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brahmani as his guru. He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound. He practised all the disciplines of the sixty-four principal Tantra books, and it took him never more than three days to achieve the result promised in any one of them. After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into samadhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him. The word "carnal" lost its meaning. The whole world and everything in it appeared as the lila, the sport, of Siva and Sakti. He beheld held everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother; the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ananda, Bliss.
He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
vijnanakos.a and Anandakos.a.
The Three Steps of Nature
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This system is the way of the Tantra. Owing to certain of its developments Tantra has fallen into discredit with those who are not Tantrics; and especially owing to the developments of its left-hand path, the Vama Marga, which not content with exceeding the duality of virtue and sin and instead of replacing them by spontaneous rightness of action seemed, sometimes, to make a method of self-indulgence, a method of unrestrained social immorality. Nevertheless, in its origin, Tantra was a great and puissant system founded upon ideas which were at least partially true. Even its twofold division into the right-hand and left-hand paths, Dakshina Marga and Vama Marga, started from a certain profound perception. In the ancient symbolic sense of the words Dakshina and Vama, it was the distinction between the way of Knowledge and the way of Ananda, - Nature in man liberating itself by right discrimination in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities and Nature in man
The Synthesis of the Systems
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Purusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceeding from an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all
Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of
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functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ananda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ananda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Perfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the highest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by mankind. At any rate a full development of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by humanity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral method. Nor would these have any raison d'etre unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has evolved or is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base, and the mental life, our intermediate instrument.
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
arms alone will I have peace and joy and Ananda and
the true truth and fulfilment of my life and being. But
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when one has to live in the ordinary occupations and surroundings is to cultivate an entire equality and detachment and the samata of the Gita with the faith that the Divine is there and the Divine Will at work in all things even though at present under the conditions of a world of Ignorance. Beyond this are the Light and Ananda towards which life is working, but the best way for their advent and foundation in the individual being and nature is to grow in this spiritual equality. That would also solve your difficulty about things unpleasant and disagreeable. All unpleasantness should be faced with this spirit of samata.
I may say briefly that there are two states of consciousness in either of which one can live. One is a higher consciousness which stands above the play of life and governs it; this is variously called the Self, the Spirit or the Divine. The other is the normal consciousness in which men live; it is something quite superficial, an instrument of the Spirit for the play of life. Those who live and act in the normal consciousness are governed entirely by the common movements of the mind and are naturally subject to grief and joy and anxiety and desire or to everything else that makes up the ordinary stuff of life.
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Let us first put aside the quite foreign consideration of what we would do if the union with the Divine brought eternal joylessness, Nir Ananda or torture. Such a thing does not exist and to drag it in only clouds the issue. The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him many other things and one may seek him for any of them, for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything else of which one may feel the pull or the impulse. It is quite possible for someone to say: "Let me have Power from the
Divine and do His work or His will and I am satisfied, even if the use of Power entails suffering also." It is possible to shun bliss as a thing too tremendous or ecstatic and ask only or rather for peace, for liberation, for Nirvana. You speak of self-fulfilment,
- one may regard the Supreme not as the Divine but as one's highest Self and seek fulfilment of one's being in that highest Self; but one need not envisage it as a self of bliss, ecstasy, Ananda - one may envisage it as a self of freedom, vastness, knowledge, tranquillity, strength, calm, perfection - perhaps too calm for a ripple of anything so disturbing as joy to enter. So even if it is for something to be gained that one approaches the Divine, it is not a fact that one can approach Him or seek union only for the sake of Ananda and nothing else.
That involves something which throws all your reasoning out of gear. For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they existing because of him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing needed for that is, first, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet.
Your argument that because we know the union with the
Divine will bring Ananda, therefore it must be for the Ananda that we seek the union, is not true and has no force. One who loves a queen may know that if she returns his love it will bring him power, position, riches and yet it need not be for the power, position, riches that he seeks her love. He may love her for herself and could love her equally if she were not a queen; he might have no hope of any return whatever and yet love her, adore her, live for her, die for her simply because she is she. That has happened and men have loved women without any hope of enjoyment or result, loved steadily, passionately after age has come and beauty has gone. Patriots do not love their country only when she is rich, powerful, great and has much to give them; their love for country has been most ardent, passionate, absolute when the country was poor, degraded, miserable, having nothing to give but loss, wounds, torture, imprisonment, death as the wages of her service; yet even knowing that they would never see her free, men have lived, served and died for her - for her own sake, not for what she could give. Men have loved Truth for her own sake and for what they could seek or find of her, accepted poverty, persecution, death itself; they have been content even to seek for her always, not finding, and yet never given up the search.
That means what? That men, country, Truth and other things besides can be loved for their own sake and not for anything else, not for any circumstance or attendant quality or resulting enjoyment, but for something absolute that is either in them or behind their appearance and circumstance. The Divine is more than a man or woman, a stretch of land or a creed, opinion, discovery or principle. He is the Person beyond all persons, the
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I have written all that only to explain what we mean when we speak of seeking the Divine for himself and not for anything else - so far as it is explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being
- for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine.
I am not saying that there is to be no Ananda. The selfgiving itself is a profound Ananda and what it brings, carries in its wake an inexpressible Ananda - and it is brought by this method sooner than by any other, so that one can say almost,
"A self-less self-giving is the best policy." Only one does not do it out of policy. Ananda is the result, but it is done not for the result, but for the self-giving itself and for the Divine himself - a subtle distinction, it may seem to the mind, but very real.
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In an age when Reason was considered as the highest light given to man, Tagore pointed to the Vision of the mystics as always the still greater light; when man was elated with undreamt-of worldly success, puffed up with incomparable material possessions and powers, Tagore's voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am not made immortal by that?" When men, in their individual as well as collective egoism, were scrambling for earthly gains and hoards, he held before them vaster and cleaner horizons, higher and deeper ways of being and living, maintained the sacred sense of human solidarity, the living consciousness of the Divine, one and indivisible. When the Gospel of Power had all but hypnotised men's minds, and Superman or God-man came to be equated with the Titan, Tagore saw through the falsehood and placed in front and above all the old-world eternal verities of love and self-giving, harmony and mutuality, sweetness and light. When pessimism, cynicism, agnosticism struck the major chord of human temperament, and grief and frustration and death and decay were taken as a matter of course to be the inevitable order of earthlylifebhasmantam idam shariramhe continued to sing the song of the Rishis that Ananda and Immortality are the breath of things, the birth right of human beings. When Modernism declared with a certitude never tobe contested that Matter is Brahman, Tagore said with the voice of one who knows that Spirit is Brahman.
Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes from an unknown country, as a sort of irruption or on the peak of the poetic afflatus or enthousiasmos.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is the difference between pleasure, joy, happiness, ecstasy and Ananda? Can we find one in the
other?
--
The Supreme Lord can give his Ananda to whomever He
wants and as He wants.
--
supreme Ananda and forget life as it really is. What does
all this mean?
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"'Listen to this!' shouted Monkey. 'After all the trouble we had getting here from China, and after you specially ordered that we were to be given the scriptures, Ananda and Kasyapa made a fraudulent delivery of goods. They gave us blank copies to take away; I ask you, what is the good of that to us?' 'You needn't shout,' said the Buddha, smiling. 'As a matter of fact, it is such blank scrolls as these that are the true scriptures. But I quite see that the people of China are too foolish and ignorant to believe this, so there is nothing for it but to give them copies with some writing on.' "
A sage can smile and smile delightfully! The parable illustrates the well-known Biblical phrase, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life'. The monkey is symbolical of the ignorant, arrogant, fussy human mind. There is another Buddhistic story about the monkey quoted in the book and it is as delightful; but being somewhat long, we cannot reproduce it here. It tells how the mind-monkey is terribly agile, quick, clever, competent, moving lightning-fast, imagining that it can easily go to the end of the world, to Paradise itself, to Brahmic status. But alas! when he thought he was speeding straight like a rocket or an arrow and arrive right at the target, he found that he was spinning like a top at the same spot, and what he very likely took to be the very fragrance of the topmost supreme heaven was nothing but the aroma of his own urine.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All pleasure is a perversion, by egoistic limitation, of the Ananda
which is the purpose of the universal manifestation.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realization,most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda1 which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe.
Sri Aurobindo, The Mother
--
But if She is ever to reside and act here, She has to find at least a minimal receptivity, at least one human being with the required vital and physical qualities, a kind of super-Parsifal gifted with an innate and integral purity, yet possessing at the same time a body strong enough and poised enough to bear unwaveringly the intensity of the Ananda She brings.
Thus far, She has not found what is needed. Men remain obstinately men and do not want to or are unable to become supermen. All they can receive and express is a love at their own dimension: a human lovewhereas the supreme bliss of divine Ananda eludes their perception.
At times, finding the world unready to receive Her, She contemplates withdrawing. But how cruel a loss this would be!
--
But the vibrations of divine Bliss and those of pleasure cannot cohabit in the same vital and physical house. We must therefore TOTALLY renounce all feelings of pleasure to be ready to receive the divine Ananda. But rare are those who can renounce pleasure without thereby renouncing all active participation in life or sinking into a stern asceticism. And among those who realize that the transformation is to be wrought in active life, some pretend that pleasure is a form of Ananda gone more or less astray and legitimize their search for self-satisfaction, thereby creating a virtually insuperable obstacle to their own transformation.
Now, if there is anything else you wish to ask me Anyone may ask, anyoneanyone who has something to saynot just the students.
--
Ananda: Divine Joy.
Sadhana: yogic discipline or effort.
--
The Mother of Ananda, or the Creative Power's aspect of Joy.
W.W. Pearson, a friend of Rabindranath Tagore, who had come from Tagore's Ashram in 1923; Mother had met him with Tagore in 1916 in Japan.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The three Supreme Principles were very clearly there: Existence, Consciousness (an active, realizing consciousness) and Ananda. A universal vastness that kept going on and on and on
It moves and it doesnt move. How can you explain that? It was in motion, a constant, unceasing motion, and yet there was no shifting of place. I had the perception, or rather there was the perception, of something which WAS forever, which never repeated itself, neither began nor ended, which didnt shift places yet was always in motion.
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And sometimes things stagnate, they seem so absolutely obscure and stupid. And then, if you simply go like this (gesture of offering), simply, trulydo it, not think itits instantly like a shower of bliss A tiny point, something very small which looks stubbornly stupid and obstinate, if only you do this (and if you want, you can): Take, take! Give it to Him, simply, like this, truly give it to Him: Its You, its Yours, take it, do with it what You want. And instantly, instead of this shrinking and this painful feelingWhat in the world can I do with all this?a shower, it comes like a shower. Truly Ananda. Of course, if you are stupid enough to call back the difficulty, it returns. But if you remain quiet, if you keep your head quiet, it goesfinished, cured. But there are thousands and thousands and thousands of such points
With my japa, Ive reached about seven lakhs2. I repeat it 1,400 times a day. But you must be much further than I!3
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This, too, Sri Aurobindo had explained to me. I used to tell him, Yes, you always speak of lifes delight, life for the sake of its delight. But as soon as I had the notion, as soon as I was put in the presence of the Supreme, it was: For Youexclusively what You want. You are the sole, the unique and exclusive reason for being. And that has remained, and this movement is so strong that even when you see, now I have ecstasy and Ananda in abundanceeverything comes, everything. But even then, even when that is there, something in me always turns towards the Supreme and says, Does this TRULY serve You? Is it what You expect of me, what You want from me?
This has protected me from all seeking for pleasure in life. It was a wonderful protection, because pleasure always seemed so futile to meyes, futile; for the sake of your personal satisfaction. Later, I even understood how foolish it is, for you can never be satisfiedthough when youre small you dont yet know that. I never liked it: But is it really useful, does it serve some purpose? And I still have this attitude in regard to my nights. I have this widening of the consciousness, this impersonalization, this wonderful joy of being above all that. But at the same time I also have, Im here in this body, on earth, to do something I mustnt forget it. And this is what I have to do. But probably Im wrong!
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had already had the experience for the sense of smell the divine vibration, the vibration of Ananda in odors. Just under my window, you know, Nripendra has his kitchen, where every morning and afternoon food is prepared for the children2it all comes wafting up on gusts of air. And when the Samadhi tree is in flower, the scent wafts up to me on gusts of air; when people burn incense down below, it comes wafting up here on gusts of aireach and every fragrance (fragrancelets say odor). And generally it all comes while I am walking for my japaan Ananda of odors, each one with its meaning, its expression, its (how to say it?) its motivation and its goal. Marvelous! And there are no longer any good or bad odors that notion is gone completely. Each one has its meaningits meaning and its raison dtre. I have been experiencing this for a long time.
But this experience of taste was completely new. It didnt last long, only a few minutes, because it amazed me so! It was as if I had a mouthful of the most marvelous foods one could imagine. And my hands were gathering it up in the atmosphere it was so funny!
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Certain things can be called sin, if you like, such as cruelty. Well, the only explanation I see for such things is the deformation of the need or taste for extremely strong sensations. I have noticed that cruel people experience an Ananda in their cruelty they find an intense joy in it. It is thereby legitimized. Only its in such a deformed state that its repugnant.
The idea that things are not in their place, mon petit, is something I understood even as a youngster, and it was eventually explained to me by Theon.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The way Theon told it, there was first the universal Mother (he didnt call her the universal Mother, but Sri Aurobindo used that name), the universal Mother in charge of creation. For creating she made four emanations: Consciousness or Light; Life; Love or Beatitude and (Mother tries in vain to remember the fourth) I must have cerebral anemia today! In India they speak only of three: Sat-Chit- Ananda (Sat is Existence, expressed by Life; Chit is Consciousness, expressed by Power; Ananda is Bliss, synonymous with Love). But according to Theon, there were four (I knew them by heart). Well, these emanations (Theon narrated it in such a way that someone not a philosopher, someone with a childlike mind, could understand), these emanations, conscious of their own power, separated themselves from their Origin; that is, instead of being entirely surrendered to the supreme Will and expressing only. Ah, the fourth emanation is Truth! Instead of carrying out only the supreme Will, they seem to have acquired a sense of personal power. (They were personalities of sorts, universal personalities, each representing a mode of being.) Instead of remaining connected, they cut the linkeach acted on his own, to put it simply. Then, naturally, Light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of Inconscience, the Asura of Falsehood, the Asura of Suffering and the Asura of Death.
Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said (Mother laughs): Well, heres what has happened. Whats to be done? Then from the Divine came an emanation of Love (in the first emanation it wasnt Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, the Delight of being which became Suffering), and from the Supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of Inconscience, the result of the creation of the first emanation, Consciousness Consciousness and Light had become Inconscience and Darkness. Love descended straight from the Supreme into this Inconscience; the Supreme, that is, created a new emanation, which didnt pass through the intermediate worlds (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the Supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counterbalance this fallits the old story of the Fall, this fall into the Inconscient. But that wasnt enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. Thats the story of the first Descent. But youre speaking of the descent heralded by Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Descent, arent you?
Not only that. For example, Sri Aurobindo says that when Life appeared there was a pressure from below, from evolution, to make Life emerge from Matter, and simultaneously a descent of Life from its own plane. Then, when Mind emerged out of Life, the same thing from above happened again. Why this intervention from above each time? Why dont things emerge normally, one after another, without needing a descent?
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So She made her first four emanations. The first was Consciousness and Light (arising from Sachchid Ananda); the second was Ananda and Love; the third was Life; and Truth was the fourth. Then, so the story goes, conscious of their infinite power, instead of keeping their connection with the supreme Mother and, through Her, with the Supreme, instead of receiving indications for action from Him and doing things in proper order, they were conscious of their own power and each one took off independently to do as he pleased they had power and they used it. They forgot their Origin. And because of this initial oblivion, Consciousness became unconsciousness, and Light became darkness; Ananda became suffering, Love became hate; Life became Death; and Truth became Falsehood. And they were instantly thrown headlong into what became Matter. According to Theon, the world as we know it is the result of that. And that was the Supreme himself in his first manifestation.
But the story is easy to understand, and quite evocative. On the surface, for intellectuals, its very childish; but once you have the experience you understand it very well I understood and felt the thing immediately.
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Manifestation is always said to begin with Sachchid Ananda: first Sat, pure Existence; then Chit, the awareness of this Existence; and then Ananda, the Delight of Existence which makes it go on. But between Chit and Ananda there is Tapas that is, Chit realizing itself. And when you become this tapas, this tapas of things, you have the knowledge that gives the power to change.9 The tapas of things is what governs their existence in the Manifestation.
You see, I am expressing this for the first time, but I began to live it a while back. When you are THERE, you have a feeling of (what shall I say?) of such formidable power! The universal power, really. You have the sense of total mastery over the universe.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The old way of yoga failed to bring about the harmony or unity of Spirit and life: it instead dismissed the world as Maya [Illusion] or a transient Play. The result has been loss of life-power and the degeneration of India. As was said in the Gita, These peoples would perish if I did not do worksthese peoples of India have truly gone down to ruin. A few sannyasins and bairagis [renunciants] to be saintly and perfect and liberated, a few bhaktas [lovers of God] to dance in a mad ecstasy of love and sweet emotion and Ananda [Bliss], and a whole race to become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep tamas [inertia]is this the effect of true spirituality? No, we must first attain all the partial experiences possible on the mental level and flood the mind with spiritual delight and illumine it with spiritual light, but afterwards we must rise above. If we cannot rise above, to the supramental level, that is, it is hardly possible to know the worlds final secret and the problem it raises remains unsolved. There, the ignorance which creates a duality of opposition between the Spirit and Matter, between truth of spirit and truth of life, disappears. There one need no longer call the world Maya. The world is the eternal Play of God, the eternal manifestation of the Self. Then it becomes possible to fully know and fully realize Godto do what is said in the Gita, To know Me integrally. The physical body, the life, the mind and understanding, the supermind and the Ananda these are the spirits five levels. The higher man rises on this ascent the nearer he comes to the state of that highest perfection open to his spiritual evolution. Rising to the Supermind, it becomes easy to rise to the Ananda. One attains a firm foundation in the condition of the indivisible and infinite Ananda, not only in the timeless Parabrahman [Absolute] but in the body, in life, in the world. The integral being, the integral consciousness, the integral Ananda blossoms out and takes form in life. This is the central clue of my yoga, its fundamental principle.
This is no easy change to make. After these fifteen years I am only now rising into the lowest of the three levels of the Supermind and trying to draw up into it all the lower activities. But when this siddhi will be complete, then I am absolutely certain that through me God will give to others the siddhi of the Supermind with less effort. Then my real work will begin. I am not impatient for success in the work. What is to happen will happen in Gods appointed time. I have no hasty or disorderly impulse to rush into the field of work in the strength of the little ego. Even if I did not succeed in my work I would not be shaken. This work is not mine but Gods. I will listen to no other call; when God moves me then I will move.
--
The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
What I am aiming at is not a society like the present rooted in division. What I have in view is a Samgha [community] founded in the spirit and in the image of its oneness. It is with this idea that the name Deva Samgha has been given the commune of those who want the divine life is the Deva Samgha. Such a Samgha will have to be established in one place at first and then spread all over the country. But if any shadow of egoism falls over this endeavor, then the Samgha will change into a sect. The idea may very naturally creep in that such and such a body is the one true Samgha of the future, the one and only centre, that all else must be its circumference, and that those outside its limits are not of the fold or even if they are, have gone astray, because they think differently.
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sat: existence or being; Chit-Tapas: consciousness-energy; the third member of the trinity is Ananda: bliss.
Satprem has just turned thirty-nine.
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Such is the case, for example, of Anandamayi-M, who was said to be hysterical because of the strange gestures she made during her meditations, until it turned out that they were ritual asanas and mudras which she performed spontaneously.
As long as Nature lasts, he too is there; For this is sure that he and she are one.
0 1963-05-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother seems to have forgotten the red of the vital, which comes between material Nature's violet and the Mind's blue. Thus we have twelve worlds: violet, red, blue (the Mind's three blues), yellow, then the Overmind's prismatic colors, which makes five lower worlds, then finally the three golds of the Supermind and the four whites of the supreme creative Joy or Ananda.
Mother means that there is no proof that the order was restored because of the Lord's intervention rather than by some other, "natural" mechanism.
0 1963-07-17, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It requires no preparation, it isnt something you have to attain: its ALWAYS there. Only, it also stems from the fact that I am not here (thats so clear, so clear, it needs no reflection or observation, its such a well-established fact) I am not here for anything, anything whatsoever, any satisfaction of any sort, on any level, any pointnone of that exists any more, that has no more reality, no more existence. The only thing I still FEEL is a sort of not an aspiration, not a will, not an adherence or enthusiasm, but something that is maybe its more like a power: to do the Lords Work. At the same time, I feel the Lord you understand, He isnt in front of me or outside of me! Thats not it, He is everywhere and He is everywhere and I am everywhere with Him. But what holds these cells together in a permanent form is that something which is at once the will and power (and something more than both) to do the Lords work. It contains something which probably is translated in peoples consciousnesses as Bliss, Ananda (I must say its an aspect of the problem I am not concerned with). Something like the intensity of a superlove as yet unmanifestits impossible to say.
Some time ago I made a discovery of that kind: someone asked me if there was any difference between Ananda and Love; I said, No. Then he said to me, But then how is it that some people feel Ananda while others feel Love? I answered him, Yes! Those who feel Ananda are those who like to receive, who have the capacity to receive, and those who feel Love are those who have the capacity to give. But its the same thing: you receive it as Ananda, you give it as Love.
So, probably, someone more on the receiving side would call that Vibration Anandamaybe thats what people call the joy of life, I dont know. It has absolutely nothing to do with what human beings call joy. Its really the feeling of something full rather than emptylife as people live it, as I see them live it, is something hollow, empty, dry. Hollow. Hard and hollow together. And empty. So when I do that work, as I told you, all thats around me, all the work and everything is yes, it gives an impression of being dry and hollow; while when the other thing is there, you instantly get an impression of full-full-full-fullfull! Overflowing, you know, no more bounds. So full that all, but all bounds are swept away, erased, gone and there remains only That, that Something. Thats why the cells remain held togetherits because of That, for That, by That. For no other reason.
Its growing increasingly constant and evidentnatural, spontaneous. And the growing feeling that Youyou know, the You, the You of adorationYou is only for the fun of it! I dont know how to explain. Its almost like a burst of laughter so obvious is it that there is no difference. Yes, theres only this: Oh, its so much fun to say You! Thats how it is.
0 1963-07-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To bring the Divine Love and Beauty and Ananda into the world is, indeed, the whole crown and essence of our yoga. But it has always seemed to me impossible unless there comes as its support and foundation and guard the Divine Truthwhat I call the supramental and its Divine Power.
(XXIII.753)
0 1963-12-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, when you have the certitude the certitude that Ananda, joy, blossoming are the Truth of your being, when you have that inner certitude and look at life as it is, it appears incredible (not the certitude, but life as it is!), an incredible deformation.
Just recently I have been observing this fact. Apart from Sri Aurobindo, all the people I have ever met and had around me were dissatisfied. And in some cases (cases of lives more constantly intimate with me), either rebels, or people terribly bitter about life as it iswhich is the very opposite of my nature. I am rather on the side of those who take things quite philosophically as they areeven when I was a very small child. So then I wondered (I saw this these last few days): Why is it like that?
0 1964-03-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And something began to descendnot descend: to manifest and permeate; permeate and fill this terrestrial consciousness. What a force it had! What a power! I had never felt that kind of intensity in the material world. A stability, a power! Everything in the sense of a power, everything in the sense of a thrust forwarda thrust forward: progress, evolution, transformation. Everything like that. As if everything, everything were filled with a power of transformationnot transformation, not transmutation, I dont know how to explain it. Not the final transformation that will change the appearance, not that: it was the Ananda of progress. The Ananda of progress, like the Ananda of progress of the animal becoming man, of man becoming supermanit wasnt transformation, it wasnt what will respond to that progress: it was progress. And with a plenitude, a constancy, and No RESISTANCE ANYWHERE: there was no panic anywhere, no resistance anywhere; everything was enthusiastically participating.
It lasted more than an hour.
--
The penetration and permeation into material substance of the Ananda of the power of progress in Life.
It wasnt a permeation into the Mind: it was a permeation into Lifeinto Life, into the material, earthly substance, which had become alive. Even plants participated in last nights experience: it isnt something that was the privilege of the mental being, its the whole vital substance (vitalized material substance) of the earth that received this Ananda of the power of progressit was triumphant. Triumphant.
And when I came back (it took me perhaps five or six minutes to come back), it was with a sort of quiet certainty that the return was a necessity, and that something else would occur thanks to which it wont be necessary to leave one state for the other (thats the trouble, we still have to leave one state for the other). It hasnt left, but its in the backgroundit should be in the front.
--
It was luminousluminous the whole time. That diamond-like sparkling turning into something much more compact, but less intense, that is, less brightfar more powerful. There was, above all, that sense of power: a power that can crush everything and rebuild everything. And in such an Ananda! But with nothing, absolutely nothing that had the slightest excitement, nothing of that bubbling which comes from the mind the mind was like this (gesture, both hands open towards the Eternal), peaceful, peaceful, quiet, absolutely quiet. And while the experience went on, I knew (because the consciousness above was watching it all), I knew that only when the flash the dazzlingly intense flash of the mental transformation through the supramental descentonly when the Light, the burst of Light, joins the Ananda of Power will there occur things that will be a bit indisputable.
Because in an experience of this type, only the one who has it can be sure. The effects are visible in tiny details that can be observed only by those who are already well-disposed, that is (to translate), by those who have faiththose who have faith can see. And I know that because they tell me: they see examples of those tiny miracles of every minute (they arent miracles) multiply; theyre everywhere, all the time, all the timelittle facts, harmonies, realizations, concords all of which are quite unusual in this world of Disorder. But while the experience was there, I knew there would be another one, which is yet to come (God knows when!), and which would join with this one to form a third. And it is that junction that will then probably cause something to be changed in the appearances.
0 1964-03-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Then Mother refers to the preceding conversation, of March 7, and to her experience of the Ananda of progress in life.)
I feel it as something decisive, because, for me, things have changed. Its not one of those things that come and then go away.
0 1964-03-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience of the Ananda of progress in life (conversation of March 7).
We cannot help thinking of what was going to happen in France in 1968.
0 1964-03-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then all these cells, in a fervor (it was truly an Ananda, so inexpressible) hurled themselves at the Lord and told Him, But its so much more marvelous when we know its You!the whole body.
And the light and warmth were expressed, that intensity of Ananda, that bliss You understand, it wasnt in opposition to but like a COMPLEMENT of this vibratory knowledge, which was I cant say a coldly scientific knowledge because that introduces mental notions, but it was of such a wisdom! A knowledge so wise, so calm, so imperturbably quiet, absolutely free from any notion of good and evil, of divine, of positive and negative, absolutely independent of all of thatpurely material. And with an absolute power. Then in these same cells, which were fully conscious of this knowledge of vibrations as being the supreme means of control for their harmony, suddenly there arose in them a sort of not a flame (a flame is dark in comparison), a luminous Ananda: Love in its perfect reality.
And it was translated like this: Its so much more marvelous when we know its You!
--
Truly the sensation, in the entire body, of Loves perfect Ananda.
The other thing is very fine, its the vibratory knowledge and the Power but this, this Ananda
(silence)
0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The most material consciousness, the most material mind, is in the habit of having to be whipped into acting, into making effort and moving forward, otherwise its tames. So then, if it imagines, it always imagines the difficultyalways the obstacle, always the opposition, always the difficulty and that slows down the movement terribly. So it needs very concrete, very tangible and VERY REPEATED experiences to be convinced that behind all its difficulties, there is a Grace; behind all its failures, there is the Victory; behind all its pain and suffering and contradictions, there is Ananda. Of all the efforts, this is the one that has to be repeated most often: you are constantly forced to stop, put an end to, drive away, convert a pessimism, a doubt or a totally defeatist imagination.
I am speaking exclusively of the material consciousness.
0 1964-10-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, what it still has is the fear of joynot positively fear, but a timidity in the face of joy. Sometimes waves of an intense Bliss come to it, waves of Ananda, in which all the cells begin to swell with a joyous golden light, and then its as if one dared notone dare not. Thats the difficulty.
The people around me dont help. Those immediately around me have no faith.
0 1965-03-20, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its rather strange: all these cells have in their aspiration an Ananda of Light, of Truth, but that doesnt satisfy them completely, that is, they still have a sensation of helplessness. Of course, its all the Darkness, all the Falsehood, all the Disorder, all the Disharmony of the world that you constantly absorb every time you brea the (not to speak of all that you absorb with food, and all the rest the worst of all that you absorb mentally through contact with others, mentally and vitally). And all that has to be changed, transformed, constantly. Well, the cells feel their helplessness to face the work if That, that Vibration, isnt there. They find that Vibration irresistible, they find its the only irresistible one.
Naturally, there is a progress (a work that can be noted, discerned) in the consciousness of the cells, in their receptivity and their resistance to Disorder; but its just a progress, meaning that the possibility, and even the recurrence of disorder, decomposition, disharmony, wrong functioning, none of that is conquered at all, not at all. There is a growing feeling of being the docile instrument of the supreme Will, to such a point that the cells feel that whatever they may be asked to do they can do, but there is at the same time the very clear perception that the field of what is asked of them is still very limitedvery limited and that they would be unable to do better or more. And thats what gives weight to the notion of wear and tear, of agingnot that they feel like that, but in material fact, what is asked of them is very limited.
0 1965-03-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a rather curious development. For some time now, but more and more precisely, when I hear something, when someone reads something to me or I listen to some music or am told of some event, immediately something vibrates: the origin of the activity or the level on which its taking place or the origin of the inspiration is automatically translated as a vibration in one of the centers. And then, depending on the quality of the vibration, its something constructive or negative; and when at some point it makes contact, however slightly, with a domain of Truth, there is (how can I explain?) like the spark of a vibration of Ananda. And the thought is absolutely silent, still, nothingnothing (Mother opens her hands Upward in a gesture of complete offering). But this perception is growing increasingly precise. And thats how I know: I know the source of the inspiration, where the action is located and the quality of the thing.
What precision! Oh, an infinitesimal precision, in the details.
--
And the other day, when Nolini read me his article, it was neutral (vague gesture to a medium height), neutral all the time, and then, suddenly, a spark of Ananda; thats what made me appreciate it. And when you read me just now that text by Y., when she expressed her experience of the sunrise, there was a little beam of light (gesture to the throat level), so I knew. A pleasant beam of lightnot Ananda, but a pleasant light here (same gesture), so I knew there was something there, that she had touched something.
And there are degrees in quality, you know, its almost infinite.
0 1965-07-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, yes, its a disorder. But disorder is everywhere! If its any consolation to you, my body too is in disorder. It isnt clearly a disorder but an almost total lack of harmonyits the constant condition of life; its the result of effort, of resistance, of enduring, and also of that tension of being in search of something you hope to reach, but which always eludes you the something that eludes you is That, its that Harmony (a Harmony which, in its perfection, is Ananda, thats obvious). And the constant state is like that. In fact, thats what causes fatigue, tension and so on. Last night, I spent the whole night looking at that, and I was wondering, Why is that so? We are constantly in that state, straining after something that eludes us. And then the senses, the whole realm of the senses seems to be in a constantly false state, and they use that state of tension to give you the feeling that this is going wrong, that is going wrong, and this and that. And if by ill luck there is a vague hint of mental collaboration (from that famous physical mind), then things go awry, they become something really unpleasant.
But its not inescapable. Its not inescapable and its not realwhat I call real is something that comes from the supreme Will directly. That is true; the rest isnt true, its the product of all the confusion (zigzag gesture downward) and of all the disorder of the human consciousness illness isnt true. I dont think that one illness in a hundred (oh, maybe in a thousand) is true. Some are the expression of a Will for something wrong to be well shaken, demolished, so that, in that chaos, something truer may take form but thats an exceptional state.
--
Naturally, people arent openly and constantly like that because another consciousness is there a little and controls things, but if you leave them on their own I did the experiment, you see, of leaving that field of cellular consciousness fully free, and then there was moaning and groaning. But there was behind, in the background, deep down in the cells, that sort of faith, of absolute need for the Ananda; so they were complaining: We have been deceived; we are for That alone, why arent we given it? (I am adding words to it, but there were no words: there were sensations.)
Of course, we dont take notice, because in the stream of life thats not what governsfortunately! We look at it from a certain height and dont want to see it but IT IS THERE. And it is terribly defeatist.
0 1965-10-13, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, you can only be filled with wonder! (How can I put it?) A sort of laughterof sunny laughterwhich is full of an intensity of love and Yes, this must be the Ananda, the true Ananda.
(Same alternating gesture) Like this, like that, like this, like that
0 1965-11-15, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you must learn to bear them. Just do this: when you get a shock, stay very quiet and callcall the Lord or call me, it doesnt matter (laughing), it has the same effect! (Dont go about repeating this!) And then say, Give me a widened consciousness, thats all. And then remain quiet. And then the next time the smell comes, youll notice that, oh, its not so unpleasant, and the third or fourth time, you will feel the Ananda behind it.
I know this from experience.
0 1966-02-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thons idea (which also fits with the teaching here in India in which they say it was the sense of separation that created the whole DisorderDeath, Falsehood and all the rest), Thons idea was that those first four Emanations, that is, Consciousness, Love, Life, and Truth (Love was the last, I think, but I no longer remember what he said), those four individual emanated Beings, according to him, in full consciousness of their power and existence, cut themselves off from their Origin. In other words, they wanted to depend only on themselves, they didnt even feel the need to keep the connection with their Origin (I am putting it very materially). So then, that cut is what instantly caused Consciousness to become Unconsciousness, Love to become Suffering (it wasnt Loveit was actually Ananda which became Suffering), Life to become Death and Truth to become Falsehood. And they hurled themselves into the creation like that. Then, there was a second creation, which was the creation of the gods, to mend the mischief caused by those four (the story is told in almost a childlike way in order not to be abstract, in order to become concrete). The gods are the second emanation and they came to mend. In India and everywhere, they were given various names and functions, and they are found in the Overmind region, that is to say, above the physical quaternary, the material quaternary. And the function of those gods is to mend the damage wrought by the others. And the region in which the others (the first Emanations) concentrated is the vital region.
All this can be translated philosophically, intellectually and so on. It is told as a story so that the most physical intellectuality may understand. But in principle, its the separation from the Origin that created the whole Disorder. And, as far as I know, in India too the Upanishads say the same thing; Sri Aurobindo, at any rate, says that Disorder came with the sense of Separation. So those are different ways of saying the same thing. In one case, seen in a certain way, its a willed separation; in the other case, its an inevitable consequenceinevitable consequence of of what? I dont know.
0 1966-06-02, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I lie down on my bed at night, there is an offering of all the cells, which regularly surrender as completely as they can, with an aspiration not only for union but for fusion: let there remain nothing but the Divine. Its regular, every day, every single day. And for some time, these cells or this body consciousness (but it isnt organized as a consciousness: its like a collective consciousness of the cells), it seemed to be complaining a little, to be saying, But we dont feel much. We do feel (they cant say they dont feel: they feel protected, supported), but still They are like children, they were complaining that it wasnt spectacular: It HAS to be marvelous. (Mother laughs) Ah, very well, then! So two nights ago, they were in that state when I went to bed. I didnt move from the bed till about two in the morning. At two in the morning I got up, and I suddenly noticed that all the cells, the whole body (but it really is a cellular consciousness, not a body consciousness; it isnt the consciousness of this or that person: theres no person, its the consciousness of a cellular aggregate), that consciousness felt bathed in and at the same time shot through by a MATERIAL power of a fan-tas-tic velocity bearing no relation to the velocity of light, none at all: the velocity of light is something slow and unhurried in comparison. Fantastic, fantastic! Something that must be like the movement of the centers out there (Mother gestures towards faraway galactic space). It was so awesome! I remained quite peaceful, still, I sat quite peaceful; but still, peaceful as I could be, it was so awesome, as when you are carried away by a movement and are going so fast that you cant breathe. A sort of discomfort. Not that I couldnt breathe, that wasnt the point, but the cells felt suffocated, it was so awesome. And at the same time with a sensation of power, a power that nothing, nothing whatsoever can resist in any way. So I had been pulled out of my bed (I noticed it) so that the BODY consciousness (mark the difference: it wasnt the cells consciousness, it was the bodys consciousness) would teach the cells how to surrender and tell them, There is only one way: a total surrender, then you will no longer have that sensation of suffocation. And there was a slight concentration, like a little lesson. It was very interesting: a little lesson, how it should be done, what should be done, how to abandon oneself entirely. And when I saw it had been understood, I went back to bed. And then, from that time (it was two, two: twenty) till quarter to five, I was in that Movement without a single break! And the peculiar thing was that when I got up, there was in that consciousness (which is both cellular and a bit corporeal) the sense of Ananda [divine joy] in everything the body did: getting up, walking, washing its eyes, brushing its teeth. For the first time in my life I felt the Ananda (a quite impersonal Ananda), an Ananda in those movements. And with the feeling, Ah, thats how the Lord enjoys Himself.
Its no longer in the foreground (it was in the foreground for an hour or two to make me understand), now its a bit further in the background. But, you understand, previously the body used to feel that its whole existence was based on the Will, the surrender to the supreme Will, and endurance. If it was asked, Do you find life pleasant?, it didnt dare to say no, because but it didnt find it pleasant. Life wasnt for its own pleasure and it didnt understand how it could give pleasure. There was a concentration of will in a surrender striving to be as perfectpainstakingly perfectas possible, and a sense of endurance: holding on and holding out. That was the basis of its existence. Then, when there were transitional periods which are always difficult, like, for instance, switching from one habit to another, not in the sense of changing habits but of switching from one support to another, from one impulsion to another (what I call the transfer of power), its always difficult, it occurs periodically (not regularly but periodically) and always when the body has gathered enough energy for its endurance to be more complete; then the new transition comes, and its difficult. There was that will and that endurance, and also, Let Your Will be done, and Let me serve You as You want me to, as I should serve You, let me belong to You as You want me to, and also, Let there remain nothing but You, let the sense of the person disappear (it had indeed disappeared to a considerable extent). And there was this sudden revelation: instead of that base of enduranceholding on at any costinstead of that, a sort of joy, a very peaceful but very smiling joy, very smiling, very sweet, very smiling, very charmingcharming! So innocent, something so pure and so lovely: the joy which is in all things, in everything we do, everything, absolutely everything. I was shown last night: everything, but everything, there isnt one vibration that isnt a vibration of joy.
0 1966-06-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They say, Sat, Chit-Tapas, Ananda. They put Chit-Tapas together. And its Chit first, then Tapas. Its the creative power of consciousness.
But Sri Aurobindo always said Consciousness-Force, indissolubly. We cant separate one from the other. There is no consciousness without force and no force without consciousness its Consciousness-Force. Thats what the world is!
0 1966-09-28, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This analysis expresses very imperfectly what we could call the content of the Ananda.
I think its something that has been felt, experienced (partially and very fleetingly) through all ages, but which is beginning to be concentrated and almost concretized on earth. But physical Matter in its cellular form has, we cant say a fear or an anxiety, but a sort of apprehension of new vibrations, and that apprehension naturally takes away from the cells their receptivity and takes on the appearance of a discomfort (its not a suffering but a discomfort). But when that apprehension is counterbalanced and cured by aspiration and the will for total surrender and the act of total surrender, then that sort of apprehension having disappeared, there comes supreme ease.
0 1967-01-28, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But as soon as you are capable of having the true Ananda, truly, spontaneously, its absolutely repugnant, just like wallowing in mud.
Only, with this method there will be a good amount of wastage.
0 1967-09-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But now, its the body that has the Experience. In a certain state, the state which corresponds to That, the essential state, everything is harmonious, with a living, smiling, happy peace; then as soon as there is a nothing, you know, a mere trifle, simply the coming into the atmosphere of something conflictinga mere nothingits felt like something extremely acute and painful. But not in the way of the pain of Ignorance, its more like you could call it an uneasiness, but its not even that. Everyone has explained it in his own way: some have called it falling from the Truth into Falsehood, others falling from the Light into Darkness, others falling from Ananda into suffering, yet others Everyone has given his explanation, but its something else. As for me, I have no words for it, but the body feels it, feels it very acutely, and it sees that at the end of it, the consequence of it, is disintegration. And its whole effort is to strive to reestablish that inner harmony, that harmonic state in which everything becomes harmonious, everything and in their appearance things havent changed! Yet in one way they are marvellous, and in the other detestable.
The opposition between the two things is becoming more pronounced every minute: one moment everything is divine, the next moment everything is detestableyet its the same thing.
0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats simply from the intellectual standpoint. Because if he isnt a philosopher, if he doesnt live in ideas, it doesnt matter at all: its rather a question of EXPERIENCE. It seems that the experience he had3 was a descent of Ananda, something he had never felt before, which came to him all of a sudden. Then he told his Superior, Id like to go all alone into solitude, to the countryside, because he didnt like rites, ceremonies and all that. So that was the starting point, and then he felt the need to come to India. And in India he travelled all around, until he came here. He has been in Orders for only two or three years, its a recent conversion (not conversion from a religious standpoint but from the standpoint of life, because he must have been Catholic since his childhood, but he desired to leave life and become a monk), thats recent.
But its a strange monastery, because Pavitra has had quite a sustained correspondence with an abbot who was in that monastery (he has a file this thick!), then it stopped abruptly, I dont know why.
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is an error too to imagine that, although the physical sexual action is to be abandoned, yet some inward reproduction of it is part of the transformation of the sex-centre. The action of the animal sex-energy in Nature is a device for a particular purpose in the economy of the material creation in the Ignorance. But the vital excitement that accompanies it makes the most favourable opportunity and vibration in the atmosphere for the inrush of those very vital forces and beings whose whole business is to prevent the descent of the supramental Light. The pleasure attached to it is a degradation and not a true form of the divine Ananda. The true divine Ananda in the physical has a different quality and movement and substance; self-existent in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine. You have spoken of Divine Love; but Divine Love, when it touches the physical, does not awaken the gross lower vital propensities; indulgence of them would only repel it and make it withdraw again to the heights from which it is already difficult enough to draw it down into the coarseness of the material creation which it alone can transform. Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error.8
Sri Aurobindo
0 1968-03-16, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So in order to give form to those elements, it all began with Separation, and it was Separation that gave birth to this division between what we call good and evil; but from the point of view of sensationsensation in the most material partwe may say its suffering and Ananda. And the movement is to put a stop to all separation and to realize the total consciousness in every part (which mentally speaking is absurd, but its like that).
Thats far too philosophical for my taste, not concrete enough. But this mornings experience was concrete, and concrete because it stemmed from extremely concrete sensations in the body, from the presence of this constant duality which looks like an opposition (not only opposition, but mutual negation) between we may take the symbol of suffering and Ananda. And the true state (which for the moment appears impossible to formulate in words, but which was lived and felt) is an all-containing totality; but instead of containing everything as clashing elements, its a harmony of everything, an equilibrium of everything. And once this equilibrium is realized in the creation, the creation will be able (if you put it into words, its no longer that) we might say, able to go on progressing without break.
But thats not it.
These last few days, seen again in the present imperfect consciousness, there repeatedly came (but its all methodical and organized by an overall organization infinitely superior to anything we can imagine) a state which is the state causing a break in the equilibrium, that is, the dissolution of the formwhats usually called death. And that state went up to the extreme limit, like a demonstration, with at the same time the state (not a perception the state) that prevents the break in the equilibrium and allows progress to go on without break. The result, in the body consciousness, is the simultaneous perception (so to speak simultaneous) of what we might describe as the extreme anguish of dissolution (though its not quite that, but anyway) and the extreme Ananda of union the two simultaneously.
So if you translate it into ordinary words: the extreme fragility (more than fragility) of the form, and the eternity of the form.
0 1968-11-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It remains to be seen if, for some reason or other, it was necessary or if it was an accident but how could it be an accident! For the moment (theres no thought, so its a little vague), for the moment there is an impression I might put it simply like this: the impression of a TREMENDOUS acquisition of consciousness, which has been gained by paying the very high price of all the suffering and all the disorder. Yesterday or today (I forget when, I think yesterday), at one point the problem was so acute (Mother touches her cheek and throat), and then the divine Consciousness seemed to be saying, In all this suffering, its I who suffer (the Consciousness, you understand), its I who suffer, but in a way different from yours. I dont know how to express it. There was a sort of impression that the divine Consciousness was perceiving what to us was a suffering, that it existedit existed for the divine Consciousness. But not in the same way as it exists for our own consciousness. So then, there was an attempt to make understood the consciousness of the whole at the same time, the simultaneous consciousness of everything to express myself I might just say, the consciousness of suffering (the most acute disorder) and of Harmony (the most perfect Ananda)both together, perceived together. Naturally that changes the nature of suffering.
But all that is very conscious of being some kind of chatter. Its not the translation of what is.
--
But you know, Sri Aurobindo too wrote in Thoughts and Glimpses, I think, that suffering was a preparation for Ananda.2
Yes. I must say there are many things from Sri Aurobindo that I am beginning to understand in a very different way.
0 1969-04-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Message given for the April 24 darshan: "The best possible way is to allow the Divine Grace to work in you, never to oppose it, never to be ungrateful and turn against it but to follow it always to the goal of Light and Peace and unity and Ananda."
A former minister of the Central government, S. K. Patil.
0 1969-08-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, no, its not like that! Its done consciously against not against him, but against what lie receives here. So it changes his personal sensation (theyre very skilled at those things); to his personal sensation, the sense of Ananda, of (its not quite a joy, its really the Ananda of the presence of the Force) is turned into pain. That they know how to do. For the very sensation.
Because its well known that in a general way, when the Light touches the lower centers, sometimes it provokes this violent sensation.
0 1970-03-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there is one thing. In what he wrote, in what he told me, Sri Aurobindo seemed to take as a sign of the transformation the constant presence of Ananda [bliss]. And that was one of the things I told him about: the being manifesting in this body, and consequently the body (because even from a very young age, the body had tried to surrender to the inner being, not to remain independent), in the body itself, there had never been either the feeling or the need, or even the intent of living in Ananda. Since it was very small, the body was built with I might put it like this: the will to do what had to be doneto be what it had to be and to do it. When it was very small, the object of the surrender was not known, but the minute it knew it, for it that was very definitive. You understand, the first contact (as I said) was the divine Presence in the psychic being, and so, the minute it became a facta patent fact, there was no arguing, the experience was perfectly conclusivefrom that minute, the body had only one idea left (not even one idea, one will), to be what THAT wanted it to be. Now, for it, its beyond any possible discussion: its like this (gesture hands open), simply attentive and anxious to do what the Divine wants it to do, and it tries more and more not to feel any difference. Thats beginningits not yet there everywhere. In many parts of the body, there is only ONE thing left: there is not the Thing that wants and the thing that obeys, its no longer like thatonly ONE Vibration. Its beginning. But it doesnt expect it to result in a sense of delight or Ananda or In fact, its quite indifferent to that. It was born and formed quite indifferent.
I said that to Sri Aurobindo. (Laughing) He looked at me and said, There arent two people like you on earth! (Mother laughs) Because, he says, people may overcome the need to be happy (not be happy, that doesnt mean anything), anyway the need of satisfaction, of Ananda, but for it to be spontaneous! Like that, effortless.
No merit! It was quite natural.
0 1970-07-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The conception of the Divine as an external omnipotent Power who has created the world and governs it like an absolute and arbitrary monarch the Christian or Semitic conceptionhas never been mine; it contradicts too much my seeing and experience during thirty years of sadhana. It is against this conception that the atheistic objection is aimed,for atheism in Europe has been a shallow and rather childish reaction against a shallow and childish exoteric religionism and its popular inadequate and crudely dogmatic notions. But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different,something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature. The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers. If we take the facts of the world as they are and the facts of spiritual experience as a whole, neither of which can be denied or neglected, then I do not see what other Divine there can be. This Divine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us and around us, but it is to the Light he is leading and not to anything else.
Letters on Yoga, 22.174
0 1970-09-12, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its likely that its likely that I couldnt have borne this work, I would have left my body; it was too natural to (gesture of going out above). But (Mother brings her two fists down as if she were forcibly pushed down or held in Matter). But I didnt take the precaution of really pulling the Force into the body. I might say that my body had too much (probably the way of seeing and reacting to the material world), too much1 Extremely rarely in my lifeextremely rarely did I have Ananda in the physical body. Its only when I would see beautiful things (Mother lifts her eyes as if to look at the coconut tree near the Samadhi, which she can no longer see), that it, certain moments of contact with Nature then I had it but otherwise all my life there was never (how can I put it?) an occasion for Ananda, you understand.
(Mother stops and tries to breathe)
0 1970-09-16, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I even had, for one or two hours, the Ananda of the creation. And it appeared so natural! So I wondered, Whatever was that aberration I was in? But I couldnt understand. I couldnt understand that you know, that hell. I couldnt understand how I was in it. And I must say, I didnt try, because I said to myself, I dont want to go back into that! So I didnt try to understand. With the concrete perception of the divine Presence and the constant action of the Grace, it has totally come back, so I didnt try to understand how I could be in the other state I had enough of it! But it happened all at once: suddenly, one morning, after I had spent a relatively tranquil night. There is still, now and then, a kind of anguish, something that feels a discomforta discomfort and an anguishso I take great care not to concentrate within.
(silence)
0 1971-07-14, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Everything internal is ripe or ripening, but there is a sort of locked struggle in which neither side can make a very appreciable advance (somewhat like the trench warfare in Europe), the spiritual force insisting against the resistance of the physical world, that resistance disputing every inch and making more or less effective counter-attacks. And if there were not the strength and Ananda within, it would be harassing and disgusting work; but the eye of knowledge looks beyond and sees that it is only a protracted episode.
***
02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Power, Purity, Peace, Ananda of which we become aware above and which descends into the being and progressively replaces the ordinary consciousness by its own movements - that is the second transformation. We realise also the consciousness itself as moving upward, ascending through many planes physical, vital, mental, overmental to the supramental and Ananda planes.
This is nothing new; it is stated in the Taittiriya Upanishad that there are five Purushas, the physical, the vital, the mental, the
Truth Purusha (supramental) and the Bliss Purusha; it says that one has to draw the physical self up into the vital, the vital into the mental, the mental into the Truth Self, the Truth Self into the Bliss Self and so attain perfection. But in this Yoga we become aware not only of this taking up but of a pouring down of the powers of the higher Self, so that there comes in the possibility of a descent of the Supramental Self and nature to dominate and change our present nature and turn it from nature of Ignorance into nature of Truth-Knowledge (and through the supramental into nature of Ananda) - this is the third or supramental transformation. It does not always go in this order, for with many the spiritual descent begins first in an imperfect way before the psychic is in front and in charge, but the psychic development has to be attained before a perfect and unhampered spiritual descent can take place, and the last or supramental change is impossible so long as the two first have not become full and complete. That's the whole matter, put as briefly as possible.
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thus, for example, we would not say pain is an illusion, because Ananda is the root of all and is the All. We say pain is also a reality: it is a temporary and localised form of Ananda, Ananda muted and deformed, under certain stresses and conditions. Ananda is there always but not away and aloof from pain; it is not the opposite or the negation of pain. Nor is pain a superimposition, as something foreign, upon Ananda, so that when it passes away, like a cloud, Ananda appears automatically in its full glory. We consider pain as a formation of Ananda, it is the first result of an effort of consciousness to hold Ananda in and through a form, but it need not and cannot be the last consummation.
In fact, the Mayavadin ascribes true reality (pramrthika) to the transcendental alone; even when that reality is spoken of as within and behind and not merely beyond the world and the individual, he takes it to mean as something away and aloof from the appearances, unmixed and untouched by these, and hence practically transcendent. Sri Aurobindo gives full and independent value to each of these triple states which, united and fused together, form the true and total reality. The transcendent reality is also immanent in the cosmos as the World-Power and the World-Consciousness and the creative Delight: it is also resident in the individual as the individual godheadantarymin the conscious Energy that informs, inspires, drives and directs all local formations towards a divine fulfilment in time and in this physical domain. In this view nothing is illusoryeven though some may be temporary they are all contri butory to thy Divine End and take their place there in a transfigured form and rhythm. We are here far from being such stuffs as dreams are made of.
03.15 - Origin and Nature of Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Suffering there is, some say, because the soul takes delight in it: if there was not the soul's delight behind, there would not be any suffering at all. There are still two other positions with regard to suffering which we do not deal with in the present context, namely, (1) that it does not exist at all, the absolute Ananda of the Brahman being the sole reality, suffering, along with the manifested world of which it is a part, is illusion pure and simple, (2) that suffering exists, but it comes not from soul or God but from the Anti-divine: it is at the most tolerated by God and He uses it as best as He can for His purpose. That, however, is not our subject here. We ask then what delight can the soul take when the body is suffering, say, from cancer. If it is delight, it must be of a perverse variety. Is it not the whole effort of mankind to get rid of pain and suffering, make of our life and of the world, if possible, a visible play of pure and undefiled Ananda?
On the other hand, we do find that suffering is not always mere suffering, that it can be turned into a thing of joy; it is a fact proved in the lives of many a martyr and many a saint. Many indeed are those who have not only borne suffering passively but have welcomed it and courted it with happiness and delight. If it is said it is a perverse kind of pleasure, and if one wishes to hang it by calling it masochism, well, we do not solve the problem in that way, we seek to hide it behind a big word; it is at the most a point of view. What agrees with one's temperament (or prejudices) one calls natural and what one does not like appears to him perverse. Another person may have a different temperament and accordingly a different vocabulary.
05.01 - Of Love and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Of Love Ananda is the soul, self-mastery the head, and purity the foundation.
The human approaches to the Divine are dangerous. Seek God in God's ways.
--
Love is ascending Ananda that leads to Immortality.
Lust is descending Ananda that leads to Death.
The secret of Love is the joy of self-giving.
05.03 - Of Desire and Atonement, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Of the Divine and its Help Of Beauty and Ananda
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Towards The Lightof Desire and Atonement
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Of the Divine and its Help Of Beauty and Ananda
05.04 - Of Beauty and Ananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:05.04 - Of Beauty and Ananda
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Towards The LightOf Beauty and Ananda
Of Beauty and Ananda
Truth is Beauty's substance-it is Beauty self-governed.
--
The stress of Life is to reveal and incarnate more and more of the dynamic Divine, the creative Ananda of consciousness in its self-nature.
The progress of art too consists in recording this march of the soul in its ever-growing consciousness and ever-deepening Ananda towards a higher incarnation of the Divine.
***
05.05 - Of Some Supreme Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Of Beauty and Ananda The Birth of Maya
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Towards The LightOf Some Supreme Mysteries
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Of Beauty and Ananda The Birth of Maya
06.16 - A Page of Occult History, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
At the beginning of creation, four individual formations the first personalitiesmade their appearance. There were: (1) a Being of Light or Consciousness, (2) a Being of Truth or Reality, (3) a Being of Love or Ananda and (4) a Being of Life. And the first law of creation was freedom of decision. These Beings were manifestations in the free movement of the Divine; they themselves moved free, according to their individualised conscious will. They stood out, as if in bold relief, on the background of the Divine Existence. For originally, although they differentiated themselves from each other and from the Divine, yet they formed a unified harmony and lived and moved and had their being as different members of the same divine Body. At first they stood out, but still essentially and apparently linked on to their fount and origin. Soon, however, they stood out no longer on the Divine, but moved out of him, away and separate; they sought to fulfil their individualised will and destiny. The Divine did not impose its will or force these individualities to turn round: that would frustrate the very purpose of creation. He allowed these independent beings to enjoy their full independence, although they were born out of him and essential part and parcel of his own being. They went abroad on a journey of adventure, each carving out its own line of growth and fulfilment. The first fruit, the inevitable reaction of freedom was precisely, as is just said, a separation from the Divine, each one encircled within its ego, limited and bound to its own fund of potency: individualism means limitation. Now, once separated, the connection with the source snapped, that is to say in the outward activity, in dynamic movement or becoming (not in essential being), the Four Independents lapsed into their opposites: Light changed to Darkness, i.e. conscious-ness to unconsciousness, Truth changed to Falsehood, Delight changed to Pain and Suffering, and Life changed to Death. That is how the four undivine principles, the Powers of the Undivine came to rule and fashion the material creation.
Into the heart of this Darkness and Falsehood and Pain and Death, a seed was sown, a grain that is to be the epitome and symbol of material creation and in and through which the Divine will claim back all the elements gone astray, the prodigal ones who will return to recognise and fulfil the Divine. That was Earth. And the earth, in her turn, in her labour towards the Divine Fulfilment, out of her bosom, threw up a being who would again symbolise and epitomise the earth and material creation. That is Man. For, man came with the soul in him, the Psychic Being, the Divine Flame, the spark of consciousness in the midst of universal unconsciousness, a miniature of the original Divine Light-Truth-Love-Life. In the meantime, to help the evolution, to join hands with the aspiring soul in the human being, there was created, on the defection of the First Lords the Asuric Quaternitya second hierarchy of luminous beingsDevas, gods. (Some-thing of this inner history of the world is reflected in the Greek legend of struggle between the Titans and the Olympians.) These gods, however, being a latter creation, perhaps because they were young and inexperienced, could not cope immediately with their strong Elders. It is why we see in the mythological legends the gods very often worsted at the hands of the Asuras: Indra hiding under the sea, Zeus threatened often with defeat and disaster. It is only an intervention from the Supreme (the Greeks called it Fate) that saved them in the end and restored the balance.
09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If there were not the circuit, there would never be the Ananda of union, there would be only the Ananda of identity. And it is precisely in order that this Ananda of identity may find its culmination and crowning in the Ananda of union that the whole circuit has been done.
The very moment when the individual consciousness moved away from its divine origin and remained no longer identified with the movement of the divine consciousness, the sense of separation was created. The individual consciousness did not separate wilfully, but it remained no longer identified. Not being identified, the Divine Consciousness followed a certain movement and the individual consciousness followed another, and naturally they drifted apart from each other more and more. Let us say, as an image, that the Divine Consciousness advances at a certain speed and the individual consciousness, not having remained united with it, could not keep pace with it and therefore fell back more and more, far behind. The Divine moves forward, the individual stops; when the individual moves, the Divine flies. When the individual takes one step, the Divine leaps. That increases the gap of separation more and more. It is this original separation that has produced others in its train and these separations all together have created the universal misery, at least the earthly misery as we know it.
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Evidently, if the sense of unity were re-established, the miseries would disappear. But if you realised the perfect identity and the whole universe in its totality realised this absolute unity in which there is no possibility of any distinction, then there would be no universe at all, it would be the return to Pralaya. The solution then is to find Ananda in the play of mutual exchange and union.
What has been projected into space and time must be brought back to itself, without thereby annulling the world so created. That is why Love burst forth as the irresistible power of Union. It soared over darkness and unconsciousness, it scattered itself, pulverised itself into the bosom of unfathomable night. It is then that the awakening and the ascension began the slow formation in and out of Matter and a progress without end.
--
Radha consciousness is essentially the way in which the individual answers to the divine call. Sri Aurobindo describes it as the capacity to find Ananda in all things through identification with the one divine Presence and through total self-giving to this Presence. That has the power of changing everything into perpetual ecstasy. Instead of seeing things in their apparent discord, you see the Presence alone, the Will and the Grace in all things. And every event, every element, every circumstance, every form changes into a way, a detail through which you can approach more intimately and more profoundly the Divine. The discordances disappear, the uglinesses vanish, there remains only the splendour of the divine presence in the Love that radiates in all things.
III
10.02 - Beyond Vedanta, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Vedanta ends in Ananda, it is a static unitary Ananda. The Tantra posits a dynamic Ananda, a dual Ananda between Ishwara and Ishwari, Shiva and Shakti. The Vaishnava takes a further step and transmutes Ananda into Love, a terrestrial humanised love.
An earlier form of this humanised love was given in Buddha's Compassion. The transcendent Delight ( Ananda) was made terrestrial and human in Buddha. But Buddha's compassion was a universal feeling and had no personal frame as it were. Vaishnavism gave it a personal frame and a human form. Radha and Krishna are not figures of an allegory but concrete realities. Vrindavan is not merely the land of heart's desire, a garden of paradise but real habitation in a real and concrete consciousness and life. The human frame assumed by Radha and Krishna is not merely an assumption, an illusion but an eternal reality in an eternal domain. The gradation of the spiritual domains is thus sometimes given as (1) Brahmaloka of the Vedantin, (2) Shivaloka of the Tantrik and finally (3) Goloka of the Vaishnava.
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
One Truth, Light or Consciousness, Life, and Ananda
or Bliss as the main elements of the manifestation. But,
1.02.1 - The Inhabiting Godhead - Life and Action, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
in ours and in the cosmic Being's, delight of universal selfexpression. It is only by this Ananda at once transcendent and
universal that man can be free in his soul and yet live in the
1.02.2.1 - Brahman - Oneness of God and the World, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
has also three constituents, Sat, Chit-Tapas and Ananda.
Sat is essence of our being, pure, infinite and undivided,
--
pleasure and pain. Ananda is the divine counterpart of the lower
emotional and sensational being.
1.02.2.2 - Self-Realisation, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Atman becomes the all-blissful being or all-enjoying and allproductive Soul, Anandamaya purus.a.
In the consciousness proper to the infinite divine selfawareness which is also the infinite all-effective Will (ChitTapas), Atman is the all-conscious Soul that is source and lord
--
the material to the all-blissful being. Through the Anandamaya
he can enter into the Chaitanya and Sat Purusha.
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are seen to be perverse terms of Ananda, and that Ananda which
they veil here and for which they prepare the lower existence
1.02.3.2 - Knowledge and Ignorance, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
All of the ego's attempt to confine the universal Ananda to
a false and self-regarding formation of limited and exclusive
1.02.9 - Conclusion and Summary, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
on the idea that desire is only an egoistic and vital deformation of the divine Ananda or delight of being from which the
1 This is also the view of the Gita and generally accepted.
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egoism means the renunciation of all world-existence, for it sees desire and not Ananda
as the cause of world-existence.
world is born; by extirpation of ego and desire Ananda again
becomes the conscious principle of existence. This substitution is
--
the enjoyment of the Ananda, the Lord's delight in self-being,
the state of Immortality. In our acts also we become one with
1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
20:But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
21:Into all our endeavour upward the lower element of desire will at first naturally enter. For what the enlightened will sees as the thing to be done and pursues as the crown to be conquered, what the heart embraces as the one thing delightful, that in us which feels itself limited and opposed and, because it is limited, craves and struggles, will seek with the troubled passion of an egoistic desire. This craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to be accepted at first, but only in order that it may be transformed. Even from the very beginning it has to be taught to renounce all other desires and concentrate itself on the passion for the Divine. This capital point gained, it has to be taught to desire, not for its own separate sake, but for God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves; it has to fix itself upon no personal spiritual gain, though of all possible spiritual gains we are sure, but on the great work to be done in us and others, on the high coming manifestation which is to be the glorious fulfilment of the Divine in the world, on the Truth that has to be sought and lived and enthroned for ever. But last, most difficult for it, more difficult than to seek with the right object, it has to be taught to seek in the right manner; for it must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine. It must insist no longer, as the strong separative will always insists, on its own manner of fulfilment, its own dream of possession, its own idea of the right and desirable; it must yearn to fulfil a larger and greater Will and consent to wait upon a less interested and ignorant guidance. Thus trained, Desire, that great unquiet harasser and troubler of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, will become fit to be transformed into its divine counterpart. For desire and passion too have their divine forms; there is a pure ecstasy of the soul's seeking beyond all craving and grief, there is a Will of Ananda that sits glorified in the possession of the supreme beatitudes.
22:When once the object of concentration has possessed and is possessed by the three master instruments, the thought, the heart and the will, -- a consummation fully possible only when the desire-soul in us has submitted to the Divine Law, -- the perfection of mind and life and body can be effectively fulfilled in our transmuted nature. This will be done, not for the personal satisfaction of the ego, but that the whole may constitute a fit temple for the Divine Presence, a faultless instrument for the divine work. For the work can be truly performed only when the instrument, consecrated and perfected, has grown fit for a selfless action, -- and that will be when personal desire and egoism are abolished, but not the liberated individual. Even when the little ego has been abolished, the true Spiritual Person can still remain and God's will and work and delight in him and the spiritual use of his perfection and fulfilment. Our works will then be divine and done divinely; our mind arid life and will, devoted to the Divine, will be used to help fulfil in others and in the world that which has been first realised in ourselves, -all that we can manifest of the embodied Unity, Love, Freedom, Strength, Power, Splendour, immortal Joy which is the goal of the spirit's terrestrial adventure.
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27:These movements are indeed not always or absolutely arranged in a strict succession to each other. The second stage begins in part before the first is completed; the first continues in part until the second is perfected; the last divine working can manifest from time to time as a promise before it is finally settled and normal to the nature. Always too there is something higher and greater than the individual which leads him even in his personal labour and endeavour. Often he may become, and remain for a time, wholly conscious, even in parts of his being permanently conscious, of this greater leading behind the veil, and that may happen long before his whole nature has been purified in all its parts from the lower indirect control. Even, he may be thus conscious from the beginning; his mind and heart, if not his other members, may respond to its seizing and penetrating guidance with a certain initial completeness from the very first steps of the Yoga. But it is the constant and complete and uniform action of the great direct control that more and more distinguishes the transitional stage as it proceeds and draws to its close. This predominance of a greater diviner leading, not personal to ourselves, indicates the nature's increasing ripeness for a total spiritual transformation. It is the unmistakable sign that the self-consecration has not only been accepted in principle but is fulfilled in act and power. The Supreme has laid his luminous hand upon a chosen human vessel of his miraculous Light and Power and Ananda.
1.02 - Shakti and Personal Effort, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
3:The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
--
3.2:rejection of the movements of the lower nature - rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
3.3:surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
Among Shakyamuni's42 ten greatest disciples, Ananda43 was
foremost in learning. But he didn't know the Buddha. All he did
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: I believe it leads to a kind of trance which may give a certain Ananda.
Disciple: The idea seems to be to invert the freed tongue so as to close the passage of breathing. The two nostrils are called the Ida and Pingala currents of Prana. The third current is Sushumna on the crown of the head. When these two are stopped, by inverting the tongue and blocking the passage of breathing, then Sushumna begins to function. The theory is that Amrita, nectar, is dropping from the Sushumna even now but as the tongue does not taste it, man does not enjoy the nectar. There is also a tradition that in Khechari Mudra one is able to fly.
Sri Aurobindo: It only gives a kind of trance and a consequent Ananda: I do not know what else it does.
Disciple: And about Trataka?
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The Logos passes out of eternity into time for no other purpose than to assist the beings, whose bodily form he takes, to pass out of time into eternity. If the Avatars appearance upon the stage of history is enormously important, this is due to the fact that by his teaching he points out, and by his being a channel of grace and divine power he actually is, the means by which human beings may transcend the limitations of history. The author of the Fourth Gospel affirms that the Word became flesh; but in another passage he adds that the flesh profiteth nothingnothing, that is to say, in itself, but a great deal, of course, as a means to the union with immanent and transcendent Spirit. In this context it is very interesting to consider the development of Buddhism. Under the forms of religious or mystical imagery, writes R. E. Johnston in his Buddhist China, the Mahayana expresses the universal, whereas Hinayana cannot set itself free from the domination of historical fact. In the words of an eminent orientalist, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Mahayanist believer is warnedprecisely as the worshipper of Krishna is warned in the Vaishnavite scriptures that the Krishna Lila is not a history, but a process for ever unfolded in the heart of man that matters of historical fact are without religious significance (except, we should add, insofar as they point to or themselves constitute the meanswhe ther remote or proximate, whether political, ethical or spiritualby which men may come to deliverance from selfness and the temporal order.)
In the West, the mystics went some way towards liberating Christianity from its unfortunate servitude to historic fact. (or, to be more accurate, to those various mixtures of contemporary record with subsequent inference and phantasy, which have, at different epochs, been accepted as historic fact). From the writings of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroeck, of Boehme, William Law and the Quakers, it would be possible to extract a spiritualized and universalized Christianity, whose narratives should refer, not to history as it was, or as someone afterwards thought it ought to be, but to processes forever unfolded in the heart of man. But unfortunately the influence of the mystics was never powerful enough to bring about a radical Mahayanist revolution in the West. In spite of them, Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in timeevents and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine. Moreover such improvements on history as were made in the course of centuries were, most imprudently, treated as though they themselves were a part of historya procedure which put a powerful weapon into the hands of Protestant and, later, of Rationalist controversialists. How much wiser it would have been to admit the perfectly avowable fact that, when the sternness of Christ the Judge had been unduly emphasized, men and women felt the need of personifying the divine compassion in a new form, with the result that the figure of the Virgin, mediatrix to the mediator, came into increased prominence. And when, in course of time, the Queen of Heaven was felt to be too awe-inspiring, compassion was re-personified in the homely figure of St. Joseph, who thus became me thator to the me thatrix to the me thator. In exactly the same way Buddhist worshippers felt that the historic Sakyamuni, with his insistence on recollectedness, discrimination and a total dying to self as the principal means of liberation, was too stern and too intellectual. The result was that the love and compassion which Sakyamuni had also inculcated came to be personified in Buddhas such as Amida and Maitreyadivine characters completely removed from history, inasmuch as their temporal career was situated somewhere in the distant past or distant future. Here it may be remarked that the vast numbers of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of whom the Mahayanist theologians speak, are commensurate with the vastness of their cosmology. Time, for them, is beginningless, and the innumerable universes, every one of them supporting sentient beings of every possible variety, are born, evolve, decay and the, only to repeat the same cycleagain and again, until the final inconceivably remote consummation, when every sentient being in all the worlds shall have won to deliverance out of time into eternal Suchness or Buddhahood This cosmological background to Buddhism has affinities with the world picture of modern astronomyespecially with that version of it offered in the recently published theory of Dr. Weiszcker regarding the formation of planets. If the Weiszcker hypothesis is correct, the production of a planetary system would be a normal episode in the life of every star. There are forty thousand million stars in our own galactic system alone, and beyond our galaxy other galaxies, indefinitely. If, as we have no choice but to believe, spiritual laws governing consciousness are uniform throughout the whole planet-bearing and presumably life-supporting universe, then certainly there is plenty of room, and at the same time, no doubt, the most agonizing and desperate need, for those innumerable redemptive incarnations of Suchness, upon whose shining multitudes the Mahayanists love to dwell.
1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our purpose in Yoga is to exile the limited outward-looking ego and to enthrone God in its place as the ruling Inhabitant of the nature. And this means, first, to disinherit desire and no longer accept the enjoyment of desire as the ruling human motive. The spiritual life will draw its sustenance not from desire but from a pure and selfless spiritual delight of essential existence. And not only the vital nature in us whose stamp is desire, but the mental being too must undergo a new birth and a transfiguring change. Our divided, egoistic, limited and ignorant thought and intelligence must disappear; in its place there must stream in the catholic and faultless play of a shadowless divine illumination which shall culminate in the end in a natural self-existent Truth-consciousness free from groping half-truth and stumbling error. Our confused and embarrassed ego-centred small-motived will and action must cease and make room for the total working of a swiftly powerful, lucidly automatic, divinely moved and guided unfallen Force. There must be implanted and activised in all our doings a supreme, impersonal, unfaltering and unstumbling will in spontaneous and untroubled unison with the will of the Divine. The unsatisfying surface play of our feeble egoistic emotions must be ousted and there must be revealed instead a secret deep and vast psychic heart within that waits behind them for its hour; all our feelings, impelled by this inner heart in which dwells the Divine, will be transmuted into calm and intense movements of a twin passion of divine Love and manifold Ananda. This is the definition of a divine humanity or a supramental race. This, not an exaggerated or even a sublimated energy of human intellect and action, is the type of the superman whom we are called to evolve by our Yoga.
In the ordinary human existence an outgoing action is obviously three-fourths or even more of our life. It is only the exceptions, the saint and the seer, the rare thinker, poet and artist who can live more within themselves; these indeed, at least in the most intimate parts of their nature, shape themselves more in inner thought and feeling than in the surface act. But it is not either of these sides separated from the other, but rather a harmony of the inner and the outer life made one in fullness and transfigured into a play of something that is beyond them which will create the form of a perfect living. A Yoga of works, a union with the Divine in our will and acts - and not only in knowledge and feeling - is then an indispensable, an inexpressibly important element of an integral Yoga. The conversion of our thought and feeling without a corresponding conversion of the spirit and body of our works would be a maimed achievement.
1.03 - The Armour of Grace, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:To walk through life armoured against all fear, peril and disaster, only two things are needed, two that go always together - the Grace of the Divine Mother and on your side an inner state made up of faith, sincerity and surrender. Let your faith be pure, candid and perfect. An egoistic faith in the mental and vital being tainted by ambition, pride, vanity, mental arrogance, vital self-will, personal demand, desire for the petty satisfactions of the lower nature is a low and smoke-obscured flame that cannot burn upwards to heaven. Regard your life as given you only for the divine work and to help in the divine manifestation. Desire nothing but the purity, force, light, wideness, calm, Ananda of the divine consciousness and its insistence to transform and perfect your mind, life and body. Ask for nothing but the divine, spiritual and supramental Truth, its realisation on earth and in you and in all who are called and chosen and the conditions needed for its creation and its victory over all opposing forces.
2:Let your sincerity and surrender be genuine and entire. When you give yourself, give completely, without demand, without condition, without reservation so that all in you shall belong to the Divine Mother and nothing be left to the ego or given to any other power.
1.04 - Money, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:The ideal Sadhaka in this kind is one who if required to live poorly can so live and no sense of want will affect him or interfere with the full inner play of the divine consciousness, and if he is required to live richly, can so live and never for a moment fall into desire or attachment to his wealth or to the things that he uses or servitude to self-indulgence or a weak bondage to the habits that the possession of riches creates. The divine Will is all for him and the divine Ananda.
8:In the supramental creation the money-force has to be restored to the Divine Power and used for a true and beautiful and harmonious equipment and ordering of a new divinised vital and physical existence in whatever way the Divine Mother herself decides in her creative vision. But first it must be conquered back for her and those will be strongest for the conquest who are in this part of their nature strong and large and free from ego and surrendered without any claim or withholding or hesitation, pure and powerful channels for the Supreme Puissance.
1.04 - The Crossing of the First Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
1943, pp. 31-37; and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "A Note on the Stickfast
Motif," ibid., 57, 1944, pp. 128-131.)
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Nicholas of Cusa, De visione Dei, 9,11; cited by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,
"On the One and Only Transmigrant" (Supplement to the Journal of the American
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(3) Corresponding to Mahas is Maharloka or Mahi Dyaus, the great heavens (pure Buddhi or Vijnana, the ideal world). The Pranava in its three essentialities rules over the three supreme worlds, the Satyaloka (divine being), Tapoloka (divine Awareness & Force), Anandaloka (divine Bliss) of the Puranas, which constitute Amritam, immortality or the true kingdom of heaven of the Vedic religion. These are the Vedic sapta dhamani & the seven different movements of consciousness to which they correspond are the sapta sindhu of the hymns.
(4) According to the Vedanta, man has five koshas or sheaths of existence, the material (Annamaya), vital (Pranamaya), mental (Manomaya) which together make up the aparardha or lower half of our conscious-being; the ideal (vijnanamaya) which links the lower to the parardha or higher half; the divine or Anandamaya in which the divine existence (Amrita) is concentrated for communion with our lower human being. These are the pancha kshitis, five earths or rather dwelling places of the Veda. But in Yoga we speak usually of the five koshas but the sapta bhumis, seven not five. The Veda also speaks of sapta dhamani.
(5) In each of the seven strata of consciousness all the other six work under the law of the stratum which houses them. This means seven sub-strata in each; in the three vyahritis there are therefore thrice seven, trih saptani.
(6) Man, although living here in Bhu, belongs to Swar & Bhuvar. He is manu, the Thinker,the soul in him is the manomayah pranasarira neta of the Upanishad, the mental captain & guide of life & body. He has to become vijnanamaya (mahan) and Anandamaya, to become in a word immortal, divine in all his laws of being (vrata & dharman). By rising to Mahas in himself he enters into direct touch with ideal Truth, gets truth of knowledge by drishti, sruti & smriti, the three grand ideal processes, and by that knowledge truth of being, truth of action (satyadharma), truth of bliss (satyaradhas) constituting amritam, swarajyam & samrajyam, immortality, self-rule & mastery of the world. It is this evolution which the Vedic hymns are intended to assist.
(7) In his progress man is helped by the gods, resisted by the Asuras & Rakshasas. For the worlds behind have their own inhabitants, who, the whole universe being inextricably one, affect & are affected by the activities of mankind. The Bhuvar is the great place of struggle in which forces work behind the visible movements we see here and determine all our actions & fortunes. Swar is mans resting place but not his final or highest habitation which is Vishnus highest footing, Vishnoh paramam padam, high in the supreme parardha.
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But we have first one more step in our evidence to notice,the final & conclusive link. In the Taittiriya Upanishad we are told that there are three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, but the Rishi Mahachamasya insisted on a fourth, Mahas. What is this fourth vyahriti? It is evidently some old Vedic idea and can hardly fail to be our maho arnas. I have already, in my introduction, outlined briefly the Vedic, Vedantic & Puranic system of the seven worlds and the five bodies. In this system the three vyahritis constitute the lower half of existence which is in bondage to Avidya. Bhurloka is the material world, our dwelling place, in which Annam predominates, in which everything is subject to or limited by the laws of matter & material consciousness. Bhuvar are the middle worlds, antariksha, between Swar & Bhur, vital worlds in which Prana, the vital principle predominates and everything is subject to or limited by the laws of vitality & vital consciousness. Swarloka is the supreme world of the triple system, the pure mental kingdom in which manasei ther in itself or, as one goes higher, uplifted & enlightened by buddhipredominates & by the laws of mind determines the life & movements of the existences which inhabit it. The three Puranic worlds Jana, Tapas, Satya,not unknown to the Vedaconstitute the Parardha; they are the higher ranges of existence in which Sat, Chit, Ananda, the three mighty elements of the divine nature predominate respectively, creative Ananda or divine bliss in Jana, the power of Chit (Chich-chhakti) or divine Energy in Tapas, the extension [of] Sat or divine being in Satya. But these worlds are hidden from us, avyaktalost for us in the sushupti to which only great Yogins easily attain & only with the Anandaloka have we by means of the Anandakosha some difficult chance of direct access. We are too joyless to bear the surging waves of that divine bliss, too weak or limited to move in those higher ranges of divine strength & being. Between the upper hemisphere & the lower is Maharloka, the seat of ideal knowledge & pure Truth, which links the free spirits to the bound, the gods who deliver to the gods who are in chains, the wide & immutable realms to these petty provinces where all shifts, all passes, all changes. We see therefore that Mahas is still vijnanam and we can no longer hesitate to identify our subjective principle of mahas, source of truth & right thinking awakened by Saraswati through the perceptive intelligence, with the Vedantic principle of vijnana or pure buddhi, instrument of pure Truth & ideal knowledge.
We do not find that the Rishi Mahachamasya succeeded in getting his fourth vyahriti accepted by the great body of Vedantic thinkers. With a little reflection we can see the reason why. The vijnana or mahat is superior to reasoning. It sees and knows, hears and knows, remembers & knows by the ideal principles of drishti, sruti and smriti; it does not reason and know.Or withdrawing into the Mahan Atma, it is what it exercises itself upon and therefore knowsas it were, by conscious identity; for that is the nature of the Mahan Atma to be everything separately and collectively & know it as an object of his Knowledge and yet as himself. Always vijnana knows things in the whole & therefore in the part, in the mass & therefore in the particular. But when ideal knowledge, vijnana, looks out on the phenomenal world in its separate details, it then acquires an ambiguous nature. So long as it is not assailed by mind, it is still the pure buddhi and free from liability to errors. The pure buddhi may assign its reasons, but it knows first & reasons afterwards,to explain, not to justify. Assailed by mind, the ideal buddhi ceases to be pure, ceases to be ideal, becomes sensational, emotional, is obliged to found itself on data, ends not in knowledge but in opinion and is obliged to hold doubt with one hand even while it tries to grasp certainty by the other. For it is the nature of mind to be shackled & frightened by its data. It looks at things as entirely outside itself, separate from itself and it approaches them one by one, groups them & thus arrives at knowledge by synthesis; or if [it] looks at things in the mass, it has to appreciate them vaguely and then take its parts and qualities one by one, arriving at knowledge by a process of analysis. But it cannot be sure that the knowledge it acquires, is pure truth; it can never be safe against mixture of truth & error, against one-sided knowledge which leads to serious misconception, against its own sensations, passions, prejudices and false associations. Such truth as it gets can only be correct even so far as it goes, if all the essential data have been collected and scrupulously weighed without any false weights or any unconscious or semi-conscious interference with the balance. A difficult undertaking! So we can form reliable conclusions, and then too always with some reserve of doubt,about the past & the present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses or on its own inner sensations & perceptions & it can never be sure that these are informing it correctly or are, even, in their nature anything but lying instruments. Therefore we say we know the objective world on the strength of a perpetual hypothesis. The subjective world we know only as in a dream, sure only of our own inner movements & the little we can learn from them about others, but there too sure only of this objective world & end always in conflict of transitory opinions, a doubt, a perhaps. Yet sure knowledge, indubitable Truth, the Vedic thinkers have held, is not only possible to mankind, but is the goal of our journey. Satyam eva jayate nanritam satyena pantha vitato devayanah yenakramantyrishayo hyaptakama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam. Truth conquers and not falsehood, by truth the path has been extended which the gods follow, by which sages attaining all their desire arrive where is that Supreme Abode of Truth. The very eagerness of man for Truth, his untameable yearning towards an infinite reality, an infinite extension of knowledge, the fact that he has the conception of a fixed & firm truth, nay the very fact that error is possible & persistent, mare indications that pure Truth exists.We follow no chimaera as a supreme good, nor do the Powers of Darkness fight against a mere shadow. The ideal Truth is constantly coming down to us, constantly seeking to deliver us from our slavery to our senses and the magic circle of our limited data. It speaks to our hearts & creates the phenomenon of Faith, but the heart has its lawless & self-regarding emotions & disfigures the message. It speaks to the Imagination, our great intellectual instrument which liberates us from the immediate fact and opens the mind to infinite possibility; but the imagination has her pleasant fictions & her headlong creative impulse and exaggerates the truth & distorts & misplaces circumstances. It speaks to the intellect itself, bids it criticise its instruments by vichara and creates the critical reason, bids it approach the truth directly by a wide passionless & luminous use of the pure judgment, and creates shuddha buddhi or Kants pure reason; bids it divine truth & learn to hold the true divination & reject the counterfeit, and creates the intuitive reason & its guardian, intuitive discrimination or viveka. But the intellect is impatient of error, eager for immediate results and hurries to apply what it receives before it has waited & seen & understood. Therefore error maintains & even extends her reign. At last come the logician & modern rationalist thinker; disgusted with the exaggeration of these movements, seeing their errors, unable to see their indispensable utility, he sets about sweeping them away as intellectual rubbish, gets rid of faith, gets rid of flexibility of mind, gets rid of sympathy, pure reason & intuition, puts critical reason into an ill lightened dungeon & thinks now, delivered from these false issues, to compass truth by laborious observation & a rigid logic. To live on these dry & insufficient husks is the last fate of impure vijnanam or buddhi confined in the data of the mind & sensesuntil man wronged in his nature, cabined in his possibilities revolts & either prefers a luminous error or resumes his broadening & upward march.
It was this aspect of impure mahas, vijnanam working not in its own home, swe dame but in the house of a stranger, as a servant of an inferior faculty, reason as we call it, which led the Rishi Mahachamasya to include mahas among the vyahritis. But vijnana itself is an integral part of the supreme movement, it is divine thought in divine being,therefore not a vyahriti. The Veda uses to express this pure Truth &ideal knowledge another word, equivalent in meaning to mahat,the word brihat and couples with it two other significant expressions, satyam & ritam. This trinity of satyam ritam brihatSacchid Ananda objectivisedis the Mahan Atma. Satyam is Truth, the principle of infinite & divine Being, Sat objectivised to Knowledge as the Truth of things self-manifested; Ritam is Law, the motion of things thought out, the principle of divine self-aware energy, Chit-shakti objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things selfarranged; Brihat is full content & fullness, satisfaction, Nature, the principle of divine Bliss objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things contented with its own manifestation in law of being & law of action. For, as the Vedanta tells us, there is no lasting satisfaction in the little, in the unillumined or half-illumined things of mind & sense, satisfaction there is only in the large, the self-true & self-existent. Nalpe sukham asti bhumaiva sukham. Bhuma, brihat, mahat, that is God. It is Ananda therefore that insists on largeness & constitutes the mahat or brihat. Ananda is the soul of Nature, its essentiality, creative power & peace. The harmony of creative power & peace, pravritti & nivritti, jana & shama, is the divine state which we feelas Wordsworth felt itwhen we go back to the brihat, the wide & infinite which, containing & contented with its works, says of it Sukritam, What I have made, is good. Whoever enters this kingdom of Mahat, this Maho Arnas or great sea of ideal knowledge, comes into possession of his true being, true knowledge, true bliss. He attains the ideal powers of drishti, sruti, smritisees truth face to face, hears her unerring voice or knows her by immediate recognising memoryjust as we say of a friend This is he and need no reasoning of observation, comparison, induction or deduction to tell us who he is or to explain our knowledge to ourselvesthough we may, already knowing the truth, use a self-evident reasoning masterfully in order to convince others. The characteristic of ideal knowledge is first that it is direct in its approach, secondly, that it is self-evident in its revelation, swayamprakasha, thirdly, that it is unerring fact of being, sat, satyam in its substance. Moreover, it is always perfectly satisfied & divinely pleasurable; it is atmarati & atmastha, confines itself to itself & does not reach out beyond itself to grasp at error or grope within itself to stumble over ignorance. It is, too, perfectly effective whether for knowledge, speech or action, satyakarma, satyapratijna, satyavadi. The man who rising beyond the state of the manu, manishi or thinker which men are now, becomes the kavi or direct seer, containing what he sees,he who draws the manomaya purusha up into the vijnanamaya,is in all things true. Truth is his characteristic, his law of being, the stamp that God has put upon him. But even for the manishi ideal Truth has its bounties. For from thence come the intuitions of the poet, the thinker, the artist, scientist, man of action, merchant, craftsman, labourer each in his sphere, the seed of the great thoughts, discoveries, faiths that help the world and save our human works & destinies from decay & dissolution. But in utilising these messages from our higher selves for the world, in giving them a form or a practical tendency, we use our intellects, feelings or imaginations and alter to their moulds or colour with their pigments the Truth. That alloy seems to be needed to make this gold from the mines above run current among men. This then is Maho Arnas.The psychological conceptions of our remote forefa thers concerning it have so long been alien to our thought & experience that they may be a little difficult to follow & more difficult to accept mentally. But we must understand & grasp them in their fullness if we have any desire to know the meaning of the Veda. For they are the very centre & keystone of Vedic psychology. Maho Arnas, the Great Ocean, is the stream of our being which at once divides & connects the human in us from the divine, & to cross over from the human to the divine, from this small & divided finite to that one, great & infinite, from this death to that immortality, leaving Diti for Aditi, alpam for bhuma, martyam for amritam is the great preoccupation & final aim of Veda & Vedanta.
We can now understand the intention of the Rishi in his last verse and the greatness of the climax to which he has been leading us. Saraswati is able to give impulsion to Truth and awaken to right thinking because she has access to the Maho Arnas, the great ocean. On that level of consciousness, we are usually it must be remembered asleep, sushupta. The chetana or waking consciousness has no access; it lies behind our active consciousness, is, as we might say, superconscious, for us, asleep. Saraswati brings it forward into active consciousness by means of the ketu or perceptive intelligence, that essential movement of mind which accepts & realises whatever is presented to it. To focus this ketu, this essential perception on the higher truth by drawing it away from the haphazard disorder of sensory data is the great aim of Yogic meditation. Saraswati by fixing essential perception on the satyam ritam brihat above makes ideal knowledge active and is able to inform it with all those plentiful movements of mind which she, dhiyavasu, vajebhir vajinivati, has prepared for the service of the Master of the sacrifice. She is able to govern all the movements of understanding without exception in their thousand diverse movements & give them the single impression of truth and right thinkingvisva dhiyo vi rajati. A governed & ordered activity of soul and mind, led by the Truth-illuminated intellect, is the aim of the sacrifice which Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra is offering to the Gods.
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But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, the Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in the Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in the vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means the Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchid Ananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit-shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma the Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purposeya thatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.
Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek . We may also compare the Greek , meaning judgment, opinion etc & , I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,by virtue of his purified discernment.
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We see the results & the conditions of the action ofVaruna in the four remaining verses. By their protection we have safety from attack, sanema, safety for our shansa, our rayah, our radhas, by the force of Indra, by the protecting greatness of Varuna against which passion & disturbance cast themselves in vain, only to be destroyed. This safety & this settled Ananda or delight, we use for deep meditation, ni dhimahi, we go deep into ourselves and the object we have in view in our meditation is prarechanam, the Greek katharsis, the cleansing of the system mental, bodily, vital, of all that is impure, defective, disturbing, inharmonious. Syad uta prarechanam! In this work of purification we are sure to be obstructed by the powers that oppose all healthful change; but Indra & Varuna are to give us victory, jigyushas kritam. The final result of the successful purification is described in the eighth sloka. The powers of the understanding, its various faculties & movements, dhiyah, delivered from self-will & rebellion, become obedient to Indra & Varuna; obedient to Varuna, they move according to the truth & law, the ritam; obedient to Indra they fulfil with that passivity in activity, which we seek by Yoga, all the works to which mental force can apply itself when it is in harmony with Varuna & the ritam. The result is sharma, peace. Nothing is more remarkable in the Veda than the exactness with which hymn after hymn describes with a marvellous simplicity & lucidity the physical & psychological processes through which Indian Yoga proceeds. The process, the progression, the successive movements of the soul here described are exactly what the Yogin experiences today so many thousands of years after the Veda was revealed. No wonder, it is regarded as eternal truth, not the expression of any particular mind, not paurusheya but impersonal, divine & revealed.
This hymn differs greatly, interestingly & instructively, from the hymn in which Varuna first appears. There the object is to ensure the Ananda, the rayah & radhas spoken of in this hymn by the advent of the gods of Vitality & Mind-Force, Indra & Vayu, to protect from the attack of disintegrating forces the Soma or Amrita, the juice of immortality expressed in the Yogins system. Varuna & Mitra are then called for a particular & restricted purpose to perfect the discernment & to uphold it in its works by the sustaining force of a calm, wide, comprehensive self-expression full of peace & love. The Rishi of that sukta is using the amrita to feed the activity of a sattwic state of mind for acquiring added knowledge. The present hymn belongs to a more advanced state of the Yoga. It is sadhastuti, a hymn of fulfilment or for fulfilment, in which peace & a calm, assured, untroubled activity of the soul are very near. Varuna here leads. He is here for Indras purposes, but his activity predominates; it is his spirit that pervades the action and purpose of the hymn.
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1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not self-mutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the sacrifice and the manner of the sacrifice. The sacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme. The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to us and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by the One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through them to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice.
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For the Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies which she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the universe, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing substance; on the other by the reascending current of the same energies she leads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its evolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there or here put on its divine character. There is not in her, although she devises a cosmic mechanism, the character of an inconscient mechanical Executrix which we find in the first physiognomy of Prakriti, the Nature-Force; neither is there that sense of an Unreality, creatrix of illusions or semi-illusions, which is attached to our first view of Maya. It is at once clear to the experiencing soul that here is a conscious Power of one substance and nature with the Supreme from whom she came. If she seems to have plunged us into the Ignorance and Inconscience in pursuance of a plan we cannot yet interpret, if her forces present themselves as all these ambiguous forces of the universe, yet it becomes visible before long that she is working for the development of the Divine Consciousness in us and that she stands above drawing us to her own higher entity, revealing to us more and more the very essence of the Divine Knowledge, Will and Ananda. Even in the movements of the Ignorance the soul of the seeker becomes aware of her conscious guidance supporting his steps and leading them slowly or swiftly, straight or by many detours out of the darkness into the light of a greater consciousness, out of mortality into immortality, out of evil and suffering towards a highest good and felicity of which as yet his human mind can form only a faint image. Thus her power is at once liberative and dynamic, creative, effective,creative not only of things as they are, but of things that are to be; for, eliminating the twisted and tangled movements of his lower consciousness made of the stuff of the Ignorance, it rebuilds and new-makes his soul and nature into the substance and forces of a higher divine Nature.
In this Duality too there is possible a separative experience. At one pole of it the seeker may be conscious only of the Master of Existence putting forth on him His energies of knowledge, power and bliss to liberate and divinise; the Shakti may appear to him only an impersonal Force expressive of these things or an attribute of the Ishwara. At the other pole he may encounter the World-Mother, creatrix of the universe, putting forth the Gods and the worlds and all things and existences out of her spirit-substance. Or even if he sees both aspects, it may be with an unequal separating vision, subordinating one to the other, regarding the Shakti only as a means for approaching the Ishwara. There results a one-sided tendency or a lack of balance, a power of effectuation not perfectly supported or a light of revelation not perfectly dynamic. It is when a complete union of the two sides of the Duality is effected and rules his consciousness that he begins to open to a fuller power that will draw him altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance. He has begun to lay his hand on the integral secret which in its fullness can be grasped only when he overpasses the double term that reigns here of Knowledge inextricably intertwined with an original Ignorance and crosses the border where spiritual mind disappears into supramental Gnosis. It is through this third and most dynamic dual aspect of the One that the seeker begins with the most integral completeness to enter into the deepest secret of the being of the Lord of the Sacrifice.
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
cosmic Ananda. 13
Sri Aurobindo touches here upon the question that has
1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Yechidah adds to itself a Creative vehicle of an Ideal nature, Chiah, which is the Will or creative impulse of the original Point-of-View. Its Theosophical title is Buddhi, the direct spiritual vehicle of Atma. The Yedantic term is the Anandamayakosa, the Sheath of Bliss ; and in Raja
Yoga, it is the Karanopadhi or the Causal instrument or vehicle. Its Chakra or astral nerve centre is the Ajna, two- petalled, situate in the skull in or near the pineal gland, which some occultists claim is an atrophied third eye, the physical organ of true spiritual clairvoyance or intuition.
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This trinity of the original spiritual Monad, its Creative vehicle, and Intuition, form a synthetic integral Unity which philosophically may be denominated the Transcen- dental Ego. It is a Unity in a unique manner, and its attri butes are summed up in the three Hindu hypostases, more true, perhaps, of the Sephiros than the parts of man, of Sat, Chit, Ananda ; Absolute Being, Wisdom, and Bliss.
" Below " the real man exists that part of him which is perishable - the so-called lower self. " Below " and
1.05 - Ritam, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the next hymn the word ritam does not occur, but the continual refrain of its strophes is the cognate word ritunpibartun, Medhatithi cries to each of the gods in turn,ritun yajnam sh the .. ritubhir ishyata, pibatam ritun yajnavhas, ritun yajnanr asi. Ritu is supposed to have here & elsewhere its classical & modern significance, a season of the year; the ritwik is the priest who sacrifices in the right season; the gods are invited to drink the soma according to the season! It may be so, but the rendering seems to me to make all the phrases of this hymn strangely awkward & improbable. Medhatithi invites Indra to drink Soma by the season, Mitra & Varuna are to taste the sacrifice, this single sacrifice offered by this son of Kanwa, by the season; in the same single sacrifice the priests or the gods are to be impelled by the seasons, by many seasons on a single sacrificial occasion! the Aswins are to drink the Soma by the sacrifice-supporting season! To Agni it is said, by the season thou art leader of the sacrifice. Are such expressions at all probable or even possible in the mouth of a poet using freely the natural language of his age? Are they not rather the clumsy constructions of the scholar drawn to misinterpret his text by the false clue of a later & inapplicable meaning of the central word ritu? But if we suppose the sacrifice to be symbolic &, as ritam means ideal truth in general, so ritu to mean that truth in its ordered application, the ideal law of thought, feeling or action, then this impossible awkwardness vanishes & gives place to a natural construction & a lucid & profound significance. Indra is to drink the wine of immortality according to or by the force of the ideal law, by that ideal law Varuna &Mitra are to enjoy the offering of Ananda of the human mind & the human activity, the gods are to be impelled in their functioning ritubhih, by the ideal laws of the truth,the plural used, in the ordinary manner of the Veda, to express the particular actions of the law of truth, the singular its general action. It is the ideal law that supports the human offering of our activities to the divine life above us, ritun yajnavhas; by the force of the law of Truth Agni leads the sacrifice to its goal.
In this suggestive & significant hymn packed full of the details of the Vedic sacrificial symbolism we again come across Daksha in close connection with Mitra, Varuna & the Truth.
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Soma is the lord of the immortalising nectar, he is the god of Ananda, the divine bliss which belongs to the Amrita or divine nature of Sacchid Ananda and is its foundation. The most high seat of the truth, Mahas, the pure ideal principle which links the kingdom of Immortality to our mortal worlds, is peopled with the children of Immortalitywe recall at once the phrase of the Upanishad, visve amritasya putrh, all ye children of immortality & the lord of Ananda is to take them into his being through knowledge, the head, through enjoyment, the navel. By Ritam, the ideal Truth, the Rishi ascends through the gates [of] Ananda, divine beatitude, out of this death into the kingdom of Immortality, mrityum trtw amritam asnute.
And then, to complete this preliminary foundation of our knowledge of the Ritam, we can go back to a neglected passage of the thirteenth hymn, to a couple of riks in which the secret of the Veda, the true symbolic nature of Vedic ritual & Vedic sacrifice, start out clearly before the eyes.
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We find once more, so fixed are the terms & associations, so persistently coherent is the language of the Veda, ghritaprishtha in connection with mental activity, ghritaprishtham placed designedly before manshinah, just as we find elsewhere ghritaprishth manoyujah, just as we find in the passage from which we started dhiyam ghritchm sdhant. Have we not, then, a right considering this remarkable persistence & considering the rest of the context to suggest & even to infer that the sacrificial seat anointed with the shining ghee is in symbol the fullness of the mind clarified & purified, continuously bright & just in its activity, without flaw or crevice, richly bright of surface & therefore receiving without distortion the messages of the ideal faculty? It is in this clear, pure & rightly ordered state of his thinking & emotional mind that man gets the first taste of the immortal life to which he aspires, yatr mritasya chakshanam, through the joy of the self-fulfilling activity of Gods Truth in him. The condition of his entry into the kingdom of immortality, the kingdom of heaven is that he shall increase ideal truth in him and the condition again of increasing ideal truth is that he shall be unattached, rit vridho asaschatah. For so long as the mind is attached either by wish or predilection, passion or impulse, pre-judgment or impatience, so long as it clings to anything & limits its pure & all-comprehensive wideness of potential knowledge, the wideness of Varuna in it, it cannot attain to the self-effulgent nature of Truth, it can only grope after & grasp portions of Truth, not Truth in itself & in its nature. And so long as it clings to any one thing in wish & enjoyment, it must by the very act shut out others & cannot then embrace the divine vast & all-comprehending love & bliss of the immortal nature which it is, as I shall suggest, the function of Mitra to establish in the human temperament. But when these conditions are fulfilled, the bright-surfaced purified mind widely extended without flaw or crevice as the seat of the gods in their sacrificial activity, the taste of the wine of immortality, the freedom from attachment, the increasing force of ideal Truth in the human being, then it is impossible for the great divine Powers to fling wide open for us the doors of the higher Heavens, the gates of Ananda, the portals of our immortal life. They start wide open on their hinges to receive before the throne of God the sacrifice & the sacrificer.
Truth & purity the Road, divine bliss the gate, the immortal nature the seat & kingdom, this is the formula of Vedic aspiration. Truth the roadPraskanwa the Knwa makes it clear enough in his hymn to the Aswins, the 46th of the MandalaMade was the road of Truth for our going to that other effectively fulfilling shore, seen was the wide-flowing stream of Heaven. It is the heaven of the pure mind of which he speaks; beyond, on its other shore, are the gates divine, the higher heaven, the realms of immortality.
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In return for his offering the gods give to the sacrificer the results of the divine nature. The mortal favoured by them moves forward unstumbling & unoverthrown, accha gacchati astrita,towards or to what? Ratnam vasu visvam tokam uta tman. This is his goal; but we have seen too that the goal is the ritam. Therefore the expressions ratnam vasu, visvam tokam tman must describe either the nature of the ritam or the results of successful reaching & habitation in the ritam. Toka means son, says the ritualist. I fail to see how the birth of a son can be the supreme result of a mans perfecting his nature & reaching the divine Truth; I fail to see also what is meant by a man marching unoverthrown beyond sin & falsehood towards pleasant wealth & a son. In a great number of passages in the Veda, the sense of son for toka or of either son or grandson for tanaya is wholly inadmissible except by doing gross violence to sense, context & coherence & convicting the Vedic Rishis of an advanced stage of incoherent dementia. Toka, from the root tuch, to cut, form, create (cf tach & twach, in takta, tashta, twashta, Gr. tikto, etekon, tokos, a child) may mean anything produced or created. We shall see, hereafter, that praj, apatyam, even putra are used in the Veda as symbolic expressions for action & its results as children of the soul. This is undoubtedly the sense here. There are two results of life in the ritam, in the vijnana, in the principle of divine consciousness & its basis of divine truth; first ratnam vasu, a state of being the nature of which is delight, for vijnana or ritam is the basis of divine Ananda; secondly, visvam tokam uta tman,this state of Ananda is not the actionless Brahm Ananda of the Sannyasin, but the free creative joy of the Divine Nature, universal creative action by the force of the self. The action of the liberated humanity is not to be like that of the mortal bound, struggling & stumbling through ignorance & sin towards purity & light, originating & bound by his action, but the activity spontaneously starting out of self-existence & creating its results without evil reactions or bondage.
To complete our idea of the hymn & its significance, I shall give my rendering of its last three slokas,the justification of that rendering or comment on it would lead me far from the confines of my present subject. How, O friends, cries Kanwa to his fellow-worshippers, may we perfect (or enrich) the establishment in ourselves (by the mantra of praise) of Mitra & Aryaman or how the wide form of Varuna? May I not resist with speech him of you who smites & rebukes me while he yet leads me to the godhead; through the things of peace alone may I establish you in all my being. Let a man fear the god even when he is giving him all the four states of being (Mahas, Swar, Bhuvah, Bhuh), until the perfect settling in the Truth: let him not yearn towards evil expression. In other words, perfect adoration & submission to the gods who are leading us in the path, those who are yajnanh, leaders of the sacrifice, is the condition of the full wideness of Varunas being in us & the full indwelling ofMitra & Aryaman in the principles of the Ananda & the Ritam.
In this simple, noble & striking hymn we arrive at a number of certainties about the ideas of the Vedic Rishis & usual images of their poetry which are of the last importance to our inquiry. First we see that the ascension or the journey of the human soul to a state of divine Truth is among the chief objects of the prayers & sacrifices of the Veda. Secondly, we see that this Truth is not merely the simple primitive conception of truth-speaking, but a condition of consciousness consisting in delight & resulting in a perfect spontaneous & free activity in which there is no falsehood or error; it is a state of divine nature, the Vedantic amritam. Thirdly, we see that this activity of self-perfection, the sadhana of modern Yoga, is represented in the Veda under the image of a journey or of a battle or both in one image. It is a struggle to advance beset by pitfalls & difficult passages, assailed & beset by hostile spiritual forces, the enemies, hurters or destroyers. Whenever therefore we have the image of a battle or a journey, we have henceforth the right to enquire whether it is not in every case the symbol of this great spiritual & psychological process. Fourthly we see that the Vedic sacrifice is in some hymns & may be in all a symbol of the same purport. It is an activity offered to the gods, led by them in this path, directed towards the attainment of the divine Truth-Consciousness & Truth-Life &, presumably, assailed by the same spiritual enemies. Fifthly, we find that words like vasu & tokam, representing the result of the sacrifice, & usually understood as material wealth & children, are used here, must presumably be used in passages & may, possibly, be used in all in a symbolic sense to express by a concrete figure psychological conceptions like Christs treasure laid up in heaven or the common image of the children of ones brain or of ones works. We have in fact, provided always our conclusions are confirmed by the evidence of other hymns, the decisive clue to the Secret of the Veda.
1.05 - The Belly of the Whale, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
"No creature," writes Ananda Coomaraswamy, "can attain a
higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist." Indeed, the
1.05 - The True Doer of Works, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct comm and or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be no more happy condition than this union and dependence; for this step carries you back beyond the border-line from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, into its deep peace and its intense Ananda.
4:While this transformation is being done it is more than ever necessary to keep yourself free from all taint of the perversions of the ego. Let no demand or insistence creep in to stain the purity of the self-giving and the sacrifice. There must be no attachment to the work or the result, no laying down of conditions, no claim to possess the Power that should possess you, no pride of the instrument, no vanity or arrogance. Nothing in the mind or in the vital or physical parts should be suffered to distort to its own use or seize for its own personal and separate satisfaction the greatness of the forces that are acting through you. Let your faith, your sincerity, your purity of aspiration be absolute and pervasive of all the planes and layers of the being; then every disturbing element and distorting influence will progressively fall away from your nature.
5:The last stage of this perfection will come when you are completely identified with the Divine Mother and feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being, instrument, servant or worker but truly a child and eternal portion of her consciousness and force. Always she will be in you and you in her; it will be your constant, simple and natural experience that all your thought and seeing and action, your very breathing and moving come from her and are hers. You will know and see and feel that you are a person and power formed by her out of herself, put out from her for the play and yet always safe in her, being of her being, consciousness of her consciousness, force of her force, Ananda of her Ananda. When this condition is entire and her supramental energies can freely move you, then you will be perfect in divine works; knowledge, will, action will become sure, simple, luminous, spontaneous, flawless, an outflow from the Supreme, a divine movement of the Eternal.
1.060 - Tracing the Ultimate Cause of Any Experience, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Hence, there is tension, and the so-called satisfaction that is arrived at by the contact of senses with objects is due to the cessation of this tension. Ananda is felt in the contact of the senses with objects on account of the retrogression of the senses back to their source, under the impression that their purpose has been fulfilled. In the contact there is a notion created in the mind that the purpose of the contact has been fulfilled, and so the forces of the senses return to their cause. Then the mind ceases to function for a while, and the tension caused by the movement of the Self towards the not-Self is brought to a cessation temporarily so there is a flash of Ananda. A conviction arises in the mind that the object has brought the satisfaction required, and so there is a persistent effort to repeat the experience again and again. This has been caused, therefore, by a muddled understanding a confusion, totally. The happiness has not come from the object, and therefore, the rise of an impulse in the direction of an object is illogical, ultimately.
Such analysis of this type would be helpful in the reversion of the effect into the cause and the sublimation of the effect in the cause, so that the vehemence or the force of the effect in the direction of its fulfilment will be mitigated to a large extent. Thus, effort has to be made. We have to be very vigilant, every day, in seeing that the force of the manifestation of an effect in the form of an impulse in the direction of an object is brought down to the minimum by such intelligent analysis.
1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
18:We have seen that the Non-Being beyond may well be an inconceivable existence and perhaps an ineffable Bliss. At least the Nirvana of Buddhism which formulated one most luminous effort of man to reach and to rest in this highest Non-Existence, represents itself in the psychology of the liberated yet upon earth as an unspeakable peace and gladness; its practical effect is the extinction of all suffering through the disappearance of all egoistic idea or sensation and the nearest we can get to a positive conception of it is that it is some inexpressible Beatitude (if the name or any name can be applied to a peace so void of contents) into which even the notion of self-existence seems to be swallowed up and disappear. It is a Sachchid Ananda to which we dare no longer apply even the supreme terms of Sat, of Chit and of Ananda. For all terms are annulled and all cognitive experience is overpassed.
19:On the other hand, we have hazarded the suggestion that since all is one Reality, this inferior negation also, this other contradiction or non-existence of Sachchid Ananda is none other than Sachchid Ananda itself. It is capable of being conceived by the intellect, perceived in the vision, even received through the sensations as verily that which it seems to deny, and such would it always be to our conscious experience if things were not falsified by some great fundamental error, some possessing and compelling Ignorance, Maya or Avidya. In this sense a solution might be sought, not perhaps a satisfying metaphysical solution for the logical mind, - for we are standing on the border-line of the unknowable, the ineffable and straining our eyes beyond, - but a sufficient basis in experience for the practice of the divine life.
1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
"But what about the 'Heart'?" we may protest. Well, isn't the heart in fact the most ambivalent place of all? It tires easily, too. And this is our third observation: Our capacity for joy is small, as is our capacity for suffering; we soon grow indifferent to the worst calamities. What waters of oblivion have not flowed over our greatest sorrows? We can contain very little of the great Force of Life we cannot withstand the charge, as Mother says; a mere breath beyond the limit, and we cry out with joy or pain, we weep, dance, or faint. It is always the same ambiguous Force that flows, and before long overflows. The Force of Life does not suffer; it is not troubled or exalted, evil or good it just is, flowing serenely, all-encompassing. All the contrary signs it assumes in us are the vestiges of our past evolution, when we were small and separate, when we needed to protect ourselves from this living enormity too intense for our size, and had to distinguish between "useful" and "harmful" vibrations, the ones getting a positive coefficient of pleasure or sympathy or good, the others a negative coefficient of suffering or repulsion or evil. But suffering is only a too great intensity of the same Force, and too intense a pleasure changes into its painful "opposite": They are conventions of our senses,73 says Sri Aurobindo. It only takes a slight shift of the needle of consciousness, says the Mother. To cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience all touches come as joy, Ananda.74 It is the narrowness and deficiency of consciousness that cause all our troubles, moral and even physical, as well as our impotence and the perpetual tragicomedy of our existence. But the remedy is not to starve the vital, as the moralists would have us do; it is to widen it; not to renounce, but to accept more, always more, and to extend one's consciousness. For such is the very sense of evolution.
Basically, the only thing we must renounce is our ignorance and 73
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Light, Knowledge, Ananda.76 The least pain, of any kind, is the immediate sign of a contraction in the being and of a loss of consciousness.
A very important corollary follows upon this widening of the being, which will make us appreciate the absolute necessity of vital immobility, not only for the sake of clarity of communications,
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
IT IS therefore through the sacrifice of love, works and knowledge with the psychic being as the leader and priest of the sacrifice that life itself can be transformed into its own true spiritual figure. If the sacrifice of knowledge rightly done is easily the largest and purest offering we can bring to the Highest, the sacrifice of love is not less demanded of us for our spiritual perfection; it is even more intense and rich in its singleness and can be made not less vast and pure. This pure wideness is brought into the intensity of the sacrifice of love when into all our activities there is poured the spirit and power of a divine infinite joy and the whole atmosphere of our life is suffused with an engrossing adoration of the One who is the All and the Highest. For then does the sacrifice of love attain its utter perfection when, offered to the divine All, it becomes integral, catholic and boundless, and when, uplifted to the Supreme, it ceases to be the weak, superficial and transient movement men call love and becomes a pure and grand and deep uniting Ananda.
Although it is a divine love for the supreme and universal Divine that must be the rule of our spiritual existence, this does not exclude altogether all forms of individual love or the ties that draw soul to soul in manifested existence. A psychic change is demanded, a divestiture of the masks of the Ignorance, a purification of the egoistic mental, vital and physical movements that prolong the old inferior consciousness; each movement of love, spiritualised, must depend no longer on mental preference, vital passion or physical craving, but on the recognition of soul by soul, - love restored to its fundamental spiritual and psychic essence with the mind, the vital, the physical as manifesting instruments and elements of that greater oneness.
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As with individual, so with universal Love; all that widening of the self through sympathy, goodwill, universal benevolence and beneficence, love of mankind, love of creatures, the attraction of all the myriad forms and presences that surround us, by which mentally and emotionally man escapes from the first limits of his ego, has to be taken up into a unifying divine love for the universal Divine. Adoration fulfilled in love, love in Ananda, - the surpassing love, the self-wrapped ecstasy of transcendent delight in the Transcendent which awaits us at the end of the path of Devotion, - has for its wider result a universal love for all beings, the Ananda of all that is; we perceive behind every veil the Divine, spiritually embrace in all forms the All-Beautiful. A universal delight in his endless manifestation flows through us, taking in its surge every form and movement, but not bound or stationary in any and always reaching out to a greater and more perfect expression. This universal love is liberative and dynamic for transformation; for the discord of forms and appearances ceases to affect the heart that has felt the one Truth behind them all and understood their perfect significance. The impartial equality of soul of the selfless worker and knower is transformed by the magic touch of divine Love into an all-embracing ecstasy and million-bodied beatitude. All things become bodies and all movements the playings of the divine Beloved in his infinite house of pleasure. Even pain is changed and in their reaction and even in their essence things painful alter; the forms of pain fall away, there are created in their place the forms of Ananda.
1- param bhavam.
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Love and Ananda. In its essence it begins for the seeker when he passes from the ordinary to the spiritual level and looks with a new heart of luminous vision and feeling on the world and self and others. It reaches its height when the spiritual becomes also the supramental level and then also it is possible not only to feel it in essence but realise it dynamically as a Power for the transformation of the whole inner life and the whole outer existence.
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It is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness, are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. Always the greater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the old law, the deceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with reluctance, alarm or revolt or obstructing inertia the voices and the forces that call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being and a wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance or a qualified or temporising acquiescence; for even if they follow the call, they yet tend - when not consciously, then by automatic habit - to bring into the spiritual action their own natural disabilities and errors. At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Natureforces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure.
And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness.
All Beauty in the world is there the beauty of the Beloved, and all forms of beauty have to stand under the light of that eternal Beauty and submit themselves to the sublimating and transfiguring power of the unveiled Divine Perfection. All Bliss and Joy are there of the All-Blissful, and all inferior forms of enjoyment, happiness or pleasure are subjected to the shock of the intensity of its floods or currents and either they are broken to pieces as inadequate things under its convicting stress or compelled to transmute themselves into the forms of the Divine Ananda. Thus for the individual consciousness a Force is manifested which can deal sovereignly in it with the diminutions and degradations of the values of the Ignorance. At last it begins to be possible to bring down into life the immense reality and intense concreteness of the love and joy that are of the Eternal. Or at any rate it will be possible for our spiritual consciousness to raise itself out of mind into the supramental Light and Force and Vastness; there in the light and potency of the supramental Gnosis are the splendour and joy of a power of divine self-expression and selforganisation which could rescue and re-create even the world of the Ignorance into a figure of the Truth of the Spirit.
There in the supramental Gnosis is the fulfilment, the culminating height, the all-embracing extent of the inner adoration, the profound and integral union, the flaming wings of Love upbearing the power and joy of a supreme Knowledge. For supramental Love brings an active ecstasy that surpasses the void passive peace and stillness which is the heaven of the liberated Mind and does not betray the deeper greater calm which is the beginning of the supramental silence. The unity of a love which is able to include in itself all differences without being diminished or abrogated by their present limitations and apparent dissonances is raised to its full potentiality on the supramental level. For there an intense oneness with all creatures founded on a profound oneness of the soul with the Divine can harmonise with a play of relations that only makes the oneness more perfect and absolute. The power of Love supramentalised can take hold of all living relations without hesitation or danger and turn them Godwards delivered from their crude, mixed and petty human settings and sublimated into the happy material of a divine life.
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the subordination and disappearance of the ego. This is life's true object: growth, but a growth of the spirit in Nature, affirming and developing itself in mind, life and body; possession, but a possession by the Divine of the Divine in all things, and not of things for their own sake by the desire of the ego; enjoyment, but an enjoyment of the divine Ananda in the universe; battle and conquest and empire in the shape of a victorious conflict with the Powers of Darkness, an entire spiritual self-rule and mastery over inward and outward Nature, a conquest by Knowledge,
Love and Divine Will over the domains of the Ignorance.
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Force a single movement; the opposites that afflict us here are resolved into their reconciled unity: good develops its absolute and evil divesting itself of its error returns to the good that was behind it; sin and virtue vanish in a divine purity and an infallible truth-movement; the dubious evanescence of pleasure disappears in a Bliss that is the play of an eternal and happy spiritual certitude, and pain in perishing discovers the touch of an Ananda which was betrayed by some dark perversion and
The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2
1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe. The Supreme is manifest in her for ever as the everlasting Sachchid Ananda, manifested through her in the worlds as the one and dual consciousness of Ishwara-Shakti and the dual principle of Purusha-Prakriti, embodied by her in the Worlds and the Planes and the Gods and their Energies and figured because of her as all that is in the known worlds and in unknown others. All is her play with the Supreme; all is her manifestation of the mysteries of the Eternal, the miracles of the Infinite. All is she, for all are parcel and portion of the divine Conscious-Force. Nothing can be here or elsewhere but what she decides and the Supreme sanctions; nothing can take shape except what she moved by the Supreme perceives and forms after casting it into seed in her creating Ananda.
4:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda. But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
5:The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put out in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds to intervene, to govern, to battle and conquer, to lead and turn their cycles, to direct the total and the individual lines of their forces. These Emanations are the many divine forms and personalities in which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhutis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhutis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence. All the scenes of the earth-play have been like a drama arranged and planned and staged by her with the cosmic Gods for her assistants and herself as a veiled actor.
6:The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Naturebody and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother
7:Four great Aspects of the Mother four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it is these powers that they bring with them into the world, manifest in a human disguise in their Vibhutis and shall found in the divine degree of their ascension in those who can open their earthly nature to the direct and living influence of the Mother To the four we give the four great names, Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati.
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9:MAHAKALI is of another nature. Not wideness but height, not wisdom but force and strength are her peculiar power. There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity leaps out in a splendour of tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer. The impulses that are swift and straight and frank, the movements that are unreserved and absolute, the aspiration that mounts in flame are the motion of Mahakali. Her spirit is tameless, her vision and will are high and far-reaching like the flight of an eagle, her feet are rapid on the upward way and her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour. For she too is the Mother and her love is as intense as her wrath and she has a deep and passionate kindness. When she is allowed to intervene in her strength, then in one moment are broken like things without consistence the obstacles that immobilise or the enemies that assail the seeker. If her anger is dreadful to the hostile and the vehemence of her pressure painful to the weak and timid, she is loved and worshipped by the great, the strong and the noble; for they feel that her blows beat what is rebellious in their material into strength and perfect truth, hammer straight what is wry and perverse and expel what is impure or defective. But for her what is done in a day might have taken centuries; without her Ananda might be wide and grave or soft and sweet and beautiful but would lose the flaming joy of its most absolute intensities. To knowledge she gives a conquering might, brings to beauty and harmony a high and mounting movement and imparts to the slow and difficult labour after perfection an impetus that multiplies the power and shortens the long way. Nothing can satisfy her that falls short of the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims, the largest vistas. Therefore with her is the victorious force of the Divine and it is by grace of her fire and passion and speed if the great achievement can be done now rather than hereafter.
10:Wisdom and Force are not the only manifestations of the supreme Mother there is a subtler mystery of her nature and without it Wisdom and Force would be incomplete things and without it perfection would not be perfect. Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures. This is the power of MAHALAKSHMI and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of embodied beings. Maheshwari can appear too calm and great and distant for the littleness of earthly nature to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and formidable for its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to Mahalakshmi. For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart is to make existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and tenderness flow out from her like light from the sun and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss. Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.
11:And yet it is not easy to meet the demand of this enchanting Power or to keep her presence. Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the demand of Mahalakshmi. Where there is affinity to the rhythms of the secret world-bliss and response to the call of the AllBeautiful and concord and unity and the glad flow of many lives turned towards the Divine, in that atmosphere she consents to abide. But all that is ugly and mean and base, all that is poor and sordid and squalid, all that is brutal and coarse repels her advent. Where love and beauty are not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come; where they are mixed and disfigured with baser things, she turns soon to depart or cares little to pour her riches. If she finds herself in men's hearts surrounded with selfishness and hatred and jealousy and malignance and envy and strife, if treachery and greed and ingratitude are mixed in the sacred chalice, if grossness of passion and unrefined desire degrade devotion, in such hearts the gracious and beautiful Goddess will not linger. A divine disgust seizes upon her and she withdraws, for she is not one who insists or strives; or, veiling her face, she waits for this bitter and poisonous devil's stuff to be rejected and disappear before she will found anew her happy influence. Ascetic bareness and harshness are not pleasing to her nor the suppression of the heart's deeper emotions and the rigid repression of the soul's and the life's parts of beauty. For it is through love and beauty that she lays on men the yoke of the Divine. Life is turned in her supreme creations into a rich work of celestial art and all existence into a poem of sacred delight; the world's riches are brought together and concerted for a supreme order and even the simplest and commonest things are made wonderful by her intuition of unity and the breath of her spirit. Admitted to the heart she lifts wisdom to pinnacles of wonder and reveals to it the mystic secrets of the ecstasy that surpasses all knowledge, meets devotion with the passionate attraction of the Divine, teaches to strength and force the rhythm that keeps the might of their acts harmonious and in measure and casts on perfection the charm that makes it endure for ever.
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13:There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation, - most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divinest Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe. But human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action become possible. For when her Personalities are all gathered in her and manifested and their separate working has been turned into a harmonious unity and they rise in her to their supramental godheads, then is the Mother revealed as the supramental Mahashakti and brings pouring down her luminous transcendences from their ineffable ether. Then can human nature change into dynamic divine nature because all the elemental lines of the supramental Truth-consciousness and Truth-force are strung together and the harp of life is fitted for the rhythms of the Eternal.
14:If you desire this transformation, put yourself in the hands of the Mother and her Powers without cavil or resistance and let her do unhindered her work within you. Three things you must have, consciousness, plasticity, unreserved surrender. For you must be conscious in your mind and soul and heart and life and the very cells of your body, aware of the Mother and her Powers and their working; for although she can and does work in you even in your obscurity and your unconscious parts and moments, it is not the same thing as when you are in an awakened and living communion with her. All your nature must be plastic to her touch, - not questioning as the self-sufficient ignorant mind questions and doubts and disputes and is the enemy of its enlightenment and change; not insisting on its own movements as the vital in man insists and persistently opposes its refractory desires and ill-will to every divine influence; not obstructing and entrenched in incapacity, inertia and tamas as man's physical consciousness obstructs and clinging to its pleasure in smallness and darkness cries out against each touch that disturbs its soulless routine or its dull sloth or its torpid slumber. The unreserved surrender of your inner and outer being will bring this plasticity into all the parts of your nature; consciousness will awaken everywhere in you by constant openness to the Wisdom and Light, the Force, the Harmony and Beauty, the Perfection that come flowing down from above. Even the body will awake and unite at last its consciousness subliminal no longer to the supramental superconscious Force, feel all her powers permeating from above and below and around it and thrill to a supreme Love and Ananda.
15:But be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that are beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and complexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehension; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Bewildered by the swift alternation of her many different personalities, her making of rhythms and her breaking of rhythms, her accelerations of speed and her retardations, her varied ways of dealing with the problem of one and of another, her taking up and dropping now of this line and now of that one and her gathering of them together, it will not recognise the way of the Supreme Power when it is circling and sweeping upwards through the maze of the Ignorance to a supernal Light. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth. Then the Mother herself will enlighten by their psychic elements your mind and heart and life and physical consciousness and reveal to them too her ways and her nature.
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17:The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But that the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother The Mother s power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda.
1.07 - Jnana Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
2. This Atman is Satchid Ananda (Existence-Absolute, Consciousness-Absolute, Bliss-Absolute). It exists in the past, present and future. So it is Sat. It is pure or Absolute Consciousness without any thought. So it is Chit. It is absolute Bliss. So it is Ananda.
3. The unreal body perishes, but the Atman or the indweller is Immortal. So, you should not grieve when anyone dies. In essence everyone is Immortal Atman.
1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The word Go in the Vedas appears to bear two ordinary meanings, first, cow, secondly, ray, light or lustre. In the hymns of Madhuchchhanda it occurs 6 times, in five hymns. It occurs twice in the fourth hymn addressed to Indra in the first three verses which are all of them important for the discovery of the proper sense of the word as it is used in this passage. In the third verse which is the key to the passage, we find the prayer Then may we know (of) thy ultimate good thoughts. Then may we know. When? as a consequence to what? Obviously as a consequence to the result of the second verse, which I translate Come to us, O bringer out of the nectar (savana), thou the Soma-drinker; drink of the ecstatic Soma wine, a giver of illumination, enraptured or in better English bringing out the sense & association of the words, Come to us, O thou who art a distiller of the nectar, thou, the Soma-drinker, drink of the impetuously ecstatic Soma wine & be in the rapture of its intoxication our giver of illuminating light. Then may we know thy ultimate perceptions of the intellect. Pass us not byO come! Id lays emphasis on goda as the capacity in which, the purpose for which Indra is to drink. Revato and madah give the conditions under which Indra becomes a giver of illumination, the rushing & impetuous ecstasy produced by the Soma wine. It is then that men know the ultimate perceptions of mind, the highest realisations that can be given by the intellect when Indra, lord of mental force & power, is full of the ecstasy of the immortalising juice. This clear & easy sense being fixed for these two verses, we can return to the first & discover its connection with what follows. From sky to sky, its Rishi says to Indra, thou callest forth for uti, (for favour or kindness, as the ordinary interpretation would have it or for manifestation, expansion in being, as I suggest), the maker of beautiful forms, (who, being compared with a cow, must be some goddess), who is like one that gives milk freely to the milker of the cows, or, as I suggest, who milks freely to the milker of the rays. Undoubtedly, sudugham goduhe may be translated, a good milch cow to the milker of the cows; undoubtedly the poet had this idea in his mind when he wrote. The goddess is in the simile a milch cow, Indra is the milker. In each of the skies (the lower, middle & higher) he calls to her & makes her bring out the beautiful forms which she reveals to the drinker of the Soma. But it is impossible, when we take the connection with the two following verses, to avoid seeing that he is taking advantage of the double sense of go, and that while in the simile Indra is goduh the cow-milker, in the subject of the comparison he is goduh, the bringer out of the illumination, the flashes of higher light which produce the beautiful forms by the power of the goddess. The goddess herself must be one who is habitually associated with illumination, either Ila or Mahi. To anyone acquainted with the processes of Yoga, the whole passage at once becomes perfectly clear & true. The forms are those beautiful & myriad images of things in all the three worlds, the three akashas, dyavi dyavi, which appear to the eye of the Yogin when mental force in the Yoga is at its height, the impetuous & joyous activity (revato madah) of the mingled Ananda and Mahas fills the brain with Ojas and the highest intellectual perceptions, those akin to the supra-rational revelation, become not only possible, but easy, common & multitudinous. The passage describes the condition in which the mind, whether by drinking the material wine, the Karanajal of the Tantrics, or, as I hold, by feeding on the internal amrita, is raised to its highest exalted condition, before it is taken up into mahas or karanam, (whether in the state of Samadhi or in the waking state of the man who has realised his mahan atma, his ideal self), a state in which it is full of revealing thoughts & revealing visions which descend to it from the supra-rational level of the mahat, luminous & unerring, sunrita gomati mahi, where all is Truth & Light. Uti is the state of manifestation in Sat, in being, when that conscious existence which we are is stimulated into intensity & produces easily to the waking consciousness states of existence, movements of knowledge, outpourings of bliss which ordinarily it holds guha, in the secret parts of being.
The next passage to which I shall turn is the eighth verse of the eighth hymn, also to Indra, in which occurs the expression , a passage which when taken in the plain and ordinary sense of the epithets sheds a great light on the nature of Mahi. Sunrita means really true and is opposed to anrita, false for in the early Aryan speech su and s would equally signify, well, good, very; and the euphonic n is of a very ancient type of sandhioriginally, it was probably no more than a strong anuswartraces of which can still be found in Tamil; in the case of su this n euphonic seems to have been dropped after the movement of the literary Aryan tongue towards the modern principle of Sandhi,a movement the imperfect progress of which we see in the Vedas; but by that time the form an, composed of privative a and the euphonic n, had become a recognised alternative form to a and the omission of the n would have left the meaning of words very ambiguous; therefore n was preserved in the negative form, omitted from the affirmative where its omission caused no inconvenience,for to write gni instead of anagni would be confusing, but to write svagni instead of sunagni would create no confusion. In the pair sunrita and anrita it is probable that the usage had become so confirmed, so much of an almost technical phraseology, that confirmed habit prevailed over new rule. The second meaning of the word is auspicious, derived from the idea good or beneficent in its regular action. The Vedic scholars give a third sense, quick, active; but this is probably due to confusion with an originally distinct word derived from the root , to move on rapidly, to be strong, swift, active from which we have to dance, & strong and a number of other derivatives, for although ri means to go, it does not appear that rita was used in the sense of motion or swiftness. In any case our choice (apart from unnecessary ingenuities) lies here between auspicious and true. If we take Mahi in the sense of earth, the first is its simplest & most natural significance.We shall have then to translate the earth auspicious (or might it mean true in the sense observing the law of the seasons), wide-watered, full of cows becomes like a ripe branch to the giver. This gives a clear connected sense, although gross and pedestrian and open to the objection that it has no natural and inevitable connection with the preceding verses. My objection is that sunrita and gomati seem to me to have in the Veda a different and deeper sense and that the whole passage becomes not only ennobled in sense, but clearer & more connected in sense if we give them that deeper significance. Gomatir ushasah in Kutsas hymn to the Dawn is certainly the luminous dawns; Saraswati in the third hymn who as chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam shines pervading all the actions of the understanding, certainly does so because she is the impeller to high truths, the awakener to right thoughts, clear perceptions and not because she is the impeller of things auspiciousa phrase which would have no sense or appropriateness to the context. Mahi is one of the three goddesses Ila, Saraswati and Mahi who are described as tisro devir mayobhuvah, the three goddesses born of delight or Ananda, and her companions being goddesses of knowledge, children of Mahas, she also must be a goddess of knowledge, not the earth; the word mahi also bears the sense of knowledge, intellect, and Mahas undoubtedly refers in many passages to the vijnana or supra-rational level of consciousness, the fourth Vyahriti of the Taittiriya Upanishad. What then prevents us from taking Mahi, here as there, in the sense of the goddess of suprarational knowledge or, if taken objectively, the world of Mahat? Nothing, except a tradition born in classical times when mahi was the earth and the new Nature-worship theory. In this sense I shall take it. I translate the line For thus Mahi the true, manifest in action, luminous becomes like a ripe branch to the giveror, again in better English, For thus Mahi the perfect in truth, manifesting herself in action, full of illumination, becomes as a ripe branch to the giver. For the Yogin again the sense is clear. All things are contained in the Mahat, derived from the Mahat, depend on theMahat, but we here in the movement of the alpam, have not our desire, are blinded & confined, enjoy an imperfect, erroneous & usually baffled & futile activity. It is only when we regain the movement of the Mahat, the large & uncontracted consciousness that comes from rising to the infinite,it is only then that we escape from this limitation. She is perfect in truth, full of illumination; error and ignorance disappear; she manifests herself virapshi in a wide & various activity; our activities are enlarged, our desires are fulfilled. The connection with the preceding stanzas becomes clear. The Vritras, the great obstructors & upholders of limitation, are slain by the help of Indra, by the result of the yajnartham karma, by alliance with the armed gods in mighty internal battle; Indra, the god within our mental force, manifests himself as supreme and full of the nature of ideal truth from which his greatness weaponed with the vajra, vidyut or electric principle, derives (mahitwam astu vajrine). The mind, instinct with amrita, is then full of equality, samata; it drinks in the flood of activity of all kinds as the sea takes in the rivers. For the condition then results in which the ideal consciousness Mahi is like a ripe branch to the giver, when all powers & expansions of being at once (without obstacle as the Vritras are slain) become active in consciousness as masterful and effective knowledge or awareness (chit). This is the process prayed for by the poet. The whole hymn becomes a consecutive & intelligible whole, a single thought worked out logically & coherently and relating with perfect accuracy of ensemble & detail to one of the commonest experiences of Yogic fulfilment. In both these passages the faithful adherence to the intimations of language, Vedantic idea & Yogic experience have shed a flood of light, illuminating the obscurity of the Vedas, bringing coherence into the incoherence of the naturalistic explanation, close & strict logic, great depth of meaning with great simplicity of expression, and, as I shall show when I take up the final interpretation of the separate hymns, a rational meaning & reason of existence in that particular place for each word & phrase and a faultless & inevitable connection with what goes before & with what goes after. It is worth noticing that by the naturalistic interpretation one can indeed generally make out a meaning, often a clear or fluent sense for the separate verses of the Veda, but the ensemble of the hymn has almost always about it an air bizarre, artificial, incoherent, almost purposeless, frequently illogical and self-contradictoryas in Max Mullers translation of the 39th hymn, Kanwas to the Maruts,never straightforward, self-assured & easy. One would expect in these primitive writers,if they are primitive,crudeness of belief perhaps, but still plainness of expression and a simple development of thought. One finds instead everything tortuous, rugged, gnarled, obscure, great emptiness with great pretentiousness of mind, a labour of diction & development which seems to be striving towards great things & effecting a nullity. The Vedic singers, in the modern version, have nothing to say and do not know how to say it. I sacrifice, you drink, you are fine fellows, dont hurt me or let others hurt me, hurt my enemies, make me safe & comfortablethis is practically all that the ten Mandalas have to say to the gods & it is astonishing that they should be utterly at a loss how to say it intelligibly. A system which yields such results must have at its root some radical falsity, some cardinal error.
I pass now to a third passage, also instructive, also full of that depth and fine knowledge of the movements of the higher consciousness which every Yogin must find in the Veda. It is in the 9th hymn of the Mandala and forms the seventh verse of that hymn. Sam gomad Indra vajavad asme prithu sravo brihat, visvayur dhehi akshitam. The only crucial question in this verse is the signification of sravas.With our modern ideas the sentence seems to us to demand that sravas should be translated here fame. Sravas is undoubtedly the same word as the Greek xo (originally xFo); it means a thing heard, rumour, report, & thence fame. If we take it in that sense, we shall have to translate Arrange for us, O universal life, a luminous and solid, wide & great fame unimpaired. I dismiss at once the idea that go & vaja can here signify cattle and food or wealth. A herded & fooded or wealthy fame to express a fame for wealth of cattle & food is a forceful turn of expression we might expect to find in Aeschylus or in Shakespeare; but I should hesitate, except in case of clear necessity, to admit it in the Veda or in any Sanscrit style of composition; for such expressions have always been alien to the Indian intellect. Our stylistic vagaries have been of another kind. But is luminous & solid fame much better? I shall suggest another meaning for sravas which will give as usual a deeper sense to the whole passage without our needing to depart by a hairs breadth from the etymological significance of the words. Sruti in Sanscrit is a technical term, originally, for the means by which Vedic knowledge is acquired, inspiration in the suprarational mind; srutam is the knowledge of Veda. Similarly, we have in Vedic Sanscrit the forms srut and sravas. I take srut to mean inspired knowledge in the act of reception, sravas the thing acquired by the reception, inspired knowledge. Gomad immediately assumes its usual meaning illuminated, full of illumination. Vaja I take throughout the Veda as a technical Vedic expression for that substantiality of being-consciousness which is the basis of all special manifestation of being & power, all utayah & vibhutayahit means by etymology extended being in force, va or v to exist or move in extension and the vocable j which always gives the idea of force or brilliance or decisiveness in action or manifestation or contact. I shall accept no meaning which is inconsistent with this fundamental significance. Moreover the tendency of the old commentators to make all possible words, vaja, ritam etc mean sacrifice or food, must be rejected,although a justification in etymology might always be made out for the effort. Vaja means substance in being, substance, plenty, strength, solidity, steadfastness. Here it obviously means full of substance, just as gomad full of luminousness,not in the sense arthavat, but with another & psychological connotation. I translate then, O Indra, life of all, order for us an inspired knowledge full of illumination & substance, wide & great and unimpaired. Anyone acquainted with Yoga will at once be struck by the peculiar & exact appropriateness of all these epithets; they will admit him at once by sympathy into the very heart of Madhuchchhandas experience & unite him in soul with that ancient son of Visvamitra. When Mahas, the supra-rational principle, begins with some clearness to work in Yoga, not on its own level, not swe dame, but in the mind, it works at first through the principle of Srutinot Smriti or Drishti, but this Sruti is feeble & limited in its range, it is not prithu; broken & scattered in its working even when the range is wide, not unlimited in continuity, not brihat; not pouring in a flood of light, not gomat, but coming as a flash in the darkness, often with a pale glimmer like the first feebleness of dawn; not supported by a strong steady force & foundation of being, Sat, in manifestation, not vajavad, but working without foundation, in a void, like secondh and glimpses of Sat in nothingness, in vacuum, in Asat; and, therefore, easily impaired, easily lost hold of, easily stolen by the Panis or the Vritras. All these defects Madhuchchhanda has noticed in his own experience; his prayer is for an inspired knowledge which shall be full & free & perfect, not marred even in a small degree by these deficiencies.
The combination of go & vaja occurs again in the eleventh hymn where the seer writes Purvir Indrasya ratayo na vi dasyanti utayah, yadi vajasya gomatah stotribhyo manhate magham. The former delights of Indra, those first established his (new &larger) expansions of being do not destroy or scatter, when to his praisers he enlarges the mass of their illuminated substance or strength of being. Here again we have Madhuchchhandas deep experience & his fine & subtle knowledge. It is a common experience in Yoga that the Ananda and siddhi first established, is destroyed in the effort or movement towards a larger fullness of being, knowledge or delight, and a period of crisis intervenes in which there is a rending & scattering of joy & light, a period of darkness, confusion & trouble painful to all & dangerous except to the strongest. Can these crises, difficulties, perilous conditions of soul be avoided? Yes, says Madhuchchhandas in effect, when you deliver yourself with devotion into the care of Indra, he comes to your help, he removes that limitation, that concentration in detail, in the alpam, the little, that consequent necessity of losing hold of one thing in order to give yourself to another, he increases the magha, the vijnanamay state of mahattwa or relative non-limitation in the finite which shows itself by an increase of fundamental force of being filled with higher illumination. That support of vaja prevents us from falling from what we have gained; there is sufficient substance of being expressed in us to provide for the new utayah without sacrificing the joys already established; there is sufficient luminousness of mind to prevent darkness, obscuration & misery supervening. Thus we see still the same symbolic sense, the same depth, the same experience as true to the Yogin today as to Madhuchchhandas thousands of years ago.
Now that we have thus substantially fixed the meaning of go and gomat, we can go back to a passage already to some extent discussed, the third verse of the seventh hymn. Indro dirghaya chakshasa a suryam rohayad divi, vi gobhir adrim airayat; Indra for far vision ascended to the sun in heaven; he sent him abroad over all the mountain with his rays. This is so plainly the meaning of the verse that I cannot understand, once it is perceived & understood, how we can accept any other rendering. I have already discussed the relations of Indra, Surya & the Mountain of our graded ascent in beingSri Ramakrishnas staircase to the Sad Brahman. The far vision is the unlimited knowledge acquired in Mahas, in the wide supra-rational movement of our consciousness as opposed to the contracted rational or infrarational vision which works only on details or from & by details, the alpam; for that Mind has to ascend to the Sun in Heaven, the principle of Mahas on the higher levels of mind itself, not on the supra-rational level, not swe dame. Because it is not swe dame, the full illumination is not possible, we cannot become practically omniscient; all Indra can do is to send down the sun, not in itself, but in its rays to various parts of the mountain of being, all over it, it is true, but still revealing only the higher truth in its parts, not in its full sum of knowledge. The language is so precise, once we understand the Vedic terminology, that I do not think we can be mistaken in this interpretation, which, moreover, agrees perfectly with Yogic experience and the constant theme of Madhuchchhandas. He is describing the first dawn & development of the higher knowledge in the mind, still liable to attack & obstruction, (yujam vritreshu vajrinam), still uncertain in quantity (Indram vayam mahadhane indram arbhe havamahe). Irayat is naturally transitive, bears the meaning it has in prerana, prerita, and can have no object but Surya, unless we suppose, which is less natural, that it is Surya who sends Indra to the mountain accompanied by his rays.
1.07 - Samadhi, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
25:Similarly, concentration on the tip of the tongue gives the "ideal taste"; on the dorsum of the tongue, "ideal contact." "Every atom of the body comes into contact with every atom in the Universe all at once," is the description Bhikku Ananda Metteya gives of it. The root of the tongue gives the "ideal sound"; and the pharynx the "ideal sight." footnote: Similarly Patanjali tells us that by making Samyama on the strength of an elephant or a tiger, the student acquires that strength. Conquer "the nerve Udana," and you can walk on the water; "Samana," and you begin to flash with light; the "elements" fire, air, earth, and water, and you can do whatever in natural life they prevent you from doing. For instance, by conquering earth, one could take a short cut to Australia; or by conquering water, one can live at the bottom of the Ganges. They say there is a holy man at Benares who does this, coming up only once a year to comfort and instruct his disciples. But nobody need believe this unless he wants to; and you are even advised to conquer that desire should it arise. It will be interesting when science really determines the variables and constants of these equations.
26:The Samadhi "par excellence," however, is Atmadarshana, which for some, and those not the least instructed, is the first real Samadhi; for even the visions of "God" and of the "Self" are tainted by form. In Atmadarshana the All is manifested as the One: it is the Universe freed from its conditions. Not only are all forms and ideas destroyed, but also those conceptions which are implicit in our ideas of those ideas. footnote: This is so complete that not only "Black is White," but "The Whiteness of Black is the essential of its Blackness." "Naught = One = Infinity"; but this is only true "because" of this threefold arrangement, a trinity or "triangle of contradictories." Each part of the Universe has become the whole, and phenomena and noumena are no longer opposed.
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
"These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighbourhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him; He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme....
"It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, everything, in its single body....
1.07 - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
27:The higher ethical law is discovered by the individual in his mind and will and psychic sense and then extended to the race. The supreme law also must be discovered by the individual in his spirit. Then only, through a spiritual influence and not by the mental idea, can it be extended to others. A moral law can be imposed as a rule or an ideal on numbers of men who have not attained that level of consciousness or that fineness of mind and will and psychic sense in which it can become a reality to them and a living force. As an ideal it can be revered without any need of practice. As a rule it can be observed in its outsides even if the inner sense is missed altogether. The supramental and spiritual life cannot be mechanised in this way, it cannot be turned into a mental ideal or an external rule. It has its own great lines, but these must be made real, must be the workings of an active Power felt in the individual's consciousness and the transcriptions of an eternal Truth powerful to transform mind, life and body. And because it is thus real, effective, imperative, the generalisation of the supramental consciousness and the spiritual life is the sole force that can lead to individual and collective perfection in earth's highest creatures. Only by our coming into constant touch with the divine Consciousness and its absolute Truth can some form of the conscious Divine, the dynamic Absolute, take up our earth-existence and transform its strife, stumbling, sufferings and falsities into an image of the supreme Light, Power and Ananda.
28:The culmination of the soul's constant touch with the Supreme is that self-giving which we call surrender to the divine Will and immergence of the separated ego in the One who is all. A vast universality of soul and an intense unity with all is the base and fixed condition of the supramental consciousness and spiritual life. In that universality and unity alone can we find the supreme law of the divine manifestation in the life of the embodied spirit; in that alone can we discover the supreme motion and right play of our individual nature. In that alone can all these lower discords resolve themselves into a victorious harmony of the true relations between manifested beings who are portions of the one Godhead and children of one universal Mother
29:All conduct and action are part of the movement of a Power, a Force infinite and divine in its origin and secret sense and will even though the forms of it we see seem inconscient or ignorant, material, vital, mental, finite, which is working to bring out progressively something of the Divine and Infinite in the obscurity of the individual and collective nature. This power is leading towards the Light, but still through the Ignorance. It leads man first through his needs and desires; it guides him next through enlarged needs and desires modified and enlightened by a mental and moral ideal. It is preparing to lead him to a spiritual realisation that overrides these things and yet fulfils and reconciles them in all that is divinely true in their spirit and purpose. It transforms the needs and desires into a divine Will and Ananda. It transforms the mental and moral aspiration into the powers of Truth and Perfection that are beyond them. It substitutes for the divided straining of the individual nature, for the passion and strife of the separate ego, the calm, profound, harmonious and happy law of the universalised person within us, the central being, the spirit that is a portion of the supreme Spirit. This true Person in us, because it is universal, does not seek its separate gratification but only asks in its outward expression in Nature its growth to its real stature, the expression of its inner divine self, that transcendent spiritual power and presence within it which is one with all and in sympathy with each thing and creature and with all the collective personalities and powers of the divine existence, and yet it transcends them and is not bound by the egoism of any creature or collectivity or limited by the ignorant controls of their lower nature. This is the high realisation in front of all our seeking and striving, and it gives the sure promise of a perfect reconciliation and transmutation of all the elements of our nature. A pure, total and flawless action is possible only when that is effected and we have reached the height of this secret Godhead within us.
30:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule. It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Listen to this! shouted Monkey. After all the trouble we had getting here from China, and after you specially ordered that we were to be given the scriptures, Ananda and Kasyapa made a fraudulent delivery of goods. They gave us blank copies to take away; I ask you, what is the good of that to us?
You neednt shout, said the Buddha smiling. As a matter of fact, it is such blank scrolls as these that are the true scriptures. But I quite see that the people of China are too foolish and ignorant to believe this, so there is nothing for it but to give them copies with some writing on.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What then is maho arnas? Is it the great sea of general being, substance of general existence out of which the substance of thought & speech are formed? It is possible; but such an interpretation is not entirely in consonance with the context of this passage. The suggestion I shall advance will therefore be different. Mahas, as a neuter adjective, means great,maho arnas, the great water; but mahas may be equally a noun and then maho arnas will mean Mahas the sea. In some passages again, mahas is genitive singular or accusative plural of a noun mah; maho arnas may well be the flowing stream or flood of Mah, as in the expression vasvo arnavam, the sea of substance, in a later Sukta.We are therefore likely to remain in doubt unless we can find an actual symbolic use of either word Mah or Mahas in a psychological sense which would justify us in supposing this Maho Arnas to be a sea of substance of knowledge rather than vaguely the sea of general substance of being. For this is the significance which alone entirely suits the actual phraseology of the last Rik of the Sukta. We find our clue in the Taittiriya Upanishad. It is said there that there are three recognised vyahritis of the Veda, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swah, but the Rishi Mahachamasya affirmed a fourth. The name of this doubtful fourth vyahriti is Mahas. Now the mystic vyahritis of the Veda are the shabdas or sacred words expressing objectively the three worlds, subjectively mentalised material being, mentalised vital being & pure mental being, the three manifest states of our phenomenal consciousness. Mahas, therefore, must express a fourth state of being, which is so much superior to the other three or so much beyond the ordinary attainment of our actual human consciousness that it is hardly considered in Vedic thought a vyahriti, whatever one or two thinkers may have held to the contrary. What do we know of this Mahas from Vedantic or later sources? Bhuh, Bhuvah, Swar of the Veda rest substantially upon the Annam, Prana, Manas, matter, life & mind of the Upanishads. But the Upanishads speak of a fourth state of being immediately aboveManas, preceding it therefore & containing it, Vijnanam, ideal knowledge, and a fifth immediately above Vijnanam, Ananda or Bliss. Physically, these five are the pancha kshitayah, five earths or dwelling-places, of the Rig Veda and they are the pancha koshas, five sheaths or bodies of the Upanishads. But in our later Yogic systems we recognise seven earths, seven standing grounds of the soul on which it experiences phenomenal existence. The Purana gives us their names [the names of the two beyond the five already mentioned], Tapas and Satya, Energy&Truth. They are the outward expressions of the two psychological principles, Self-Awareness &Self-Being (Chit&Sat) which with Ananda, Self-Bliss, are the triune appearance in the soul of the supreme Existence which the Vedanta calls Brahman. Sat, Chit & Ananda constitute to Vedantic thought the parardha or spiritual higher half [of] our existence; in less imaginative language, we are in our supreme existence self-existence, self-awareness & self-delight. Annam, Prana & Manas constitute to Vedantic thought the aparardha or lower half; again, in more abstract speech, we are in our lower phenomenal existence mind, life & matter. Vijnana is the link; standing in ideal knowledge we are aware, looking upward, of our spiritual existence, looking downward, we pour it out into the three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvah & Swar, mental, vital & material existence, the phenomenal symbols of our self-expression. Objectively vijnana becomes mahat, the great, wide or extended state of phenomenal being,called also brihat, likewise signifying vast or great,into which says the Gita, the Self or Lord casts his seed as into a womb in order to engender all these objects & creatures. The Self, standing in vijnanam or mahat, is called the Mahan Atma, the great Self; so that, if we apply the significance [of] these terms to the Vedic words mah, mahas, mahi, mahn, then, even accepting mahas as an adjective and maho arnas in the sense of the great Ocean, it may very well be the ocean of the ideal or pure ideative state of existence in true knowledge which is intended, the great ocean slumbering in our humanity and awakened by the divine inspiration of Saraswati. But have we at all the right to read these high, strange & subtle ideas of a later mysticism into the primitive accents of the Veda? Let us at least support for a while that hypothesis. We may very well ask, if not from the Vedic forefa thers, whence did the Aryan thinkers get these striking images, this rich & concrete expression of the most abstract ideas and persist in them even after the Indian mind had rarefied & lifted its capacity to the height of the most difficult severities & abstractions known to any metaphysical thinking? Our hypothesis of a Vedic origin remains not only a possible suggestion but the one hypothesis in lawful possession of the field, unless a foreign source or a later mixed ideation can be proved. At present this later ideation may be assumed, it has not been & cannot be proved. The agelong tradition of India assigns the Veda as the source & substance of our theosophies; Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishad & Purana as only the interpretation & later expression; the burden of disproof rests on those who negative the tradition.
Vjebhir vjinvat and maho arnas are therefore fixed in their significance. The word vashtu in the tenth Rik offers a difficulty. It is equivalent to vahatu, says the Brahmana; to kmayatu, says Sayana; but, deferring to the opinion of the Brahmana, he adds that it means really kmayitw vahatu. Undoubtedly the root va means in classical Sanscrit to desire; but from the evidence of the classical Sanscrit we have it established that in more ancient times its ordinary meaning must have been to subdue or control; for although the verb has lost this sense in the later language, almost all its derivatives bear that meaning & the sense of wish, will or desire only persists in a few of them, va, wish and possibly va, a woman. It is this sense which agrees best with the context of the tenth rik and is concealed in the vahatu of the Brahmanas. There is no other difficulty of interpretation in the passage.
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The Aswins, then, are the gods of youthful delight & youthful strength, yuvn pitar, always young yet fathers of men, (purudansas, abundantly creating), as they are described in another sukta. They have a brilliant strength mental & physical, nar, a bright, strong & eager understanding, avray dhiy, full hands of bounty and strong fertility of creation, dasr, purudansas; an insatiable enjoyment, purubhuj; a swift speed and fiery energy in action, dravatpn rudravartan; they are the lords of bliss who give physical, vital & mental well-being to men and that inferior ease, pleasure and delight they lift into the high regions of the original & luminous Ananda supported on the ritam jyotih of Mahas of which all these things are but pallid & broken rays penetrating into this lower play of subjective light & shade which is called the triple world. Because of this double aspect of delight and the force for action & knowledge which is given by delight, of force and the delight in action & enjoyment which is sustained by force, they are twin gods and not one; it may be that Castor is more essentially the lord of delight, Polydeuces of force, but they are too like each other not to share in each others qualities. Eternal youth is the essence of their character & the bestowal, maintenance, & increase in men of the gifts which attend youth, is their function. This, if I do not err, was the subjective aspect of the great Twin Brethren to the sages of the Veda.
For what functions are they called to the Sacrifice by Madhuchchhanda? First, they have to take delight in the spiritual forces generated in him by the action of the internal Yajna. These they have to accept, to enter into them and use them for delight, their delight and the sacrificers, yajwarr isho .. chanasyatam; a wide enjoyment, a mastery of joy & all pleasant things, a swiftness in action like theirs is what their advent should bring & therefore these epithets are attached to this action. Then they are to accept the words of the mantra, vanatam girah. In fact, vanatam means more than acceptance, it is a pleased, joyous almost loving acceptance; for vanas is the Latin venus, which means charm, beauty, gratification, and the Sanscrit vanit means woman or wife, she who charms, in whom one takes delight or for whom one has desire. Therefore vanatam takes up the idea of chanasyatam, enlarges it & applies it to a particular part of the Yajna, the mantras, the hymn or sacred words of the stoma. The immense effectiveness assigned to rhythmic Speech & the meaning & function of the mantra in the Veda & in later Yoga is a question of great interest & importance which must be separately considered; but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to specify its two chief functions, the first, to settle, fix, establish the god & his qualities & activities in the Sacrificer,this is the true meaning of the word stoma, and, secondly, to effectualise them in action & creation subjective or objective,this is the true meaning of the words rik and arka. The later senses, praise and hymn were the creation of actual ceremonial practice, and not the root intention of these terms of Veda. Therefore the Aswins, the lords of force & joy, are asked to take up the forces of the sacrifice, yajwarr isho, fill them with their joy & activity and carry that joy & activity into the understanding so that it becomes avra, full of a bright and rapid strength.With that strong, impetuously rapid working they are to take up the words of the mantra into the understanding and by their joy & activity make them effective for action or creation. For this reason the epithet purudansas is attached to this action, abundantly active or, rather, abundantly creative of forms into which the action of the yajwarr ishah is to be thrown. But this can only be done as the Sacrificer wishes if they are in the acceptance of the mantra dhishny, firm and steady.Sayana suggests wise or intelligent as the sense of dhishnya, but although dhishan, like dh, can mean the understanding & dhishnya therefore intelligent, yet the fundamental sense is firm or steadily holding & the understanding is dh or dhishan because it takes up perceptions, thoughts & feelings & holds them firmly in their places.Vehemence & rapidity may be the causes of disorder & confusion, therefore even in their utmost rapidity & rapture of action & formation the Aswins are to be dhishnya, firm & steady. This discipline of a mighty, inalienable calm supporting & embracing the greatest fierceness of action & intensity of joy, the combination of dhishny & rudravartan , is one of the grandest secrets of the old Vedic discipline. For by this secret men can enjoy the world as God enjoys it, with unstinted joy, with unbridled power, with undarkened knowledge.
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Brahmni therefore may mean either the soul-activities, as dhiyas means the mental activities, or it may mean the words of the mantra which express the soul. If we take it in the latter sense, we must refer it to the girah of the second rik, the mantras taken up by the Aswins into the understanding in order to prepare for action & creation. Indra is to come to these mantras and support them by the brilliant substance of a mental force richly varied in its effulgent manifestation, controlled by the understanding and driven forward to its task in various ways. But it seems to me that the rendering is not quite satisfactory. The main point in this hymn is not the mantras, but the Soma wine and the power that it generates. It is in the forces of the Soma that the Aswins are to rejoice, in that strength they are to take up the girah, in that strength they are to rise to their fiercest intensity of strength & delight. Indra, as mental power, arrives in his richly varied lustre; yhi chitrabhno. Here says the Rishi are these life-forces in the nectar-wine; they are purified in their minute parts & in their whole extent, for so I understand anwbhis tan ptsah; that is to say the distillings of Ananda or divine delight whether in the body as nectar, [or] in the subjective system as streams of life-giving delight are purified of all that impairs & weakens the life forces, purified both in their little several movements & in the whole extent of their stream. These are phenomena that can easily be experienced & understood in Yoga, and the whole hymn like many in the Veda reads to those who have experience like a practical account of a great Yogic internal movement accurate in its every detail. Streng thened, like the Aswins, by the nectar, Indra is to prepare the many-sided activity supported by the Visve devah; therefore he has to come not only controlled by the understanding, dhishnya, like the Aswins, but driven forward in various paths. For an energetic & many-sided activity is the object & for this there must be an energetic and many-sided but well-ordered action of the mental power. He has to come, thus manifold, thus controlled, to the spiritual activities generated by the Soma & the Aswins in the increasing soul (vghatah) full of the life-giving nectar, the immortalising Ananda, sutvatah. He has to come to those soul-activities, in this substance of mental brilliancy, yhi upa brahmni harivas. He has to come, ttujna, with a protective force, or else with a rapidly striving force & uphold by mind the joy of the Sacrificer in the nectar-offering, the offering of this Ananda to the gods of life & action & thought, sute dadhishwa na chanah. Protecting is, here, the best sense for ttujna. For Indra is not only to support swift & energetic action; that has already been provided for; he has also to uphold or bear in mind and by the power of mind the great & rapid delight which the Sacrificer is about to pour out into life & action, jvayja. The divine delight must not fail us in our activity; hostile shocks must not be allowed to disturb our established pleasure in the great offering. Therefore Indra must be there in his light & power to uphold and to protect.
We have gained, therefore, another great step in the understanding of the Veda. The figure of the mighty Indra, in his most essential quality & function, begins to appear to us as in a half-luminous silhouette full of suggestions. We have much yet to learn about him, especially his war with Vritra, his thunderbolt & his dealings with the seven rivers. But the central or root idea is fixed. The rest is the outgrowth, foliage & branchings.
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We can now examine the functioning of the Visvadevas as they are revealed to us in these three riks of the ancient Veda: Come, says the Rishi, O Visvadevas who in your benignity uphold the activities of men, come, distributing the nectar-offering of the giver. O Visvadevas, swift to effect, come to the nectar-offering, hastening like mornings to the days (or, like lovers to their paramours). O Visvadevas, who stumble not in your work, for you are mighty for all activity and do no hurt, cleave in heart to the sacrifice & be its upbearers. The sense is clear & simple. The kindly gods who support man in his action & development, are to arrive; they are to give abroad the nectar-offering which is now given to them, to pour it out on the world in joy-giving activities of mind or body, for that is the relation of gods & men, as we see in the Gita, giving out whatever is given to them in an abundant mutual helpfulness. Swiftly have they to effect the many-sided action prepared for them, hastening to the joy of the offering of Ananda as a lover hastens to the joy of his mistress. They will not stumble or fail in any action entrusted to them, for they have full capacity for their great world-functions, nor, for the like reason, will they impair the force of the joy or the strength in the activity by misuse, therefore let them put their hearts into the sacrifice of action and upbear it by this unfaltering strength. Swiftness, variety, intensity, even a fierce intensity of joy & thought & action is the note throughout, but yet a faultless activity, fixed in its variety, unstumbling in its swiftness, not hurting the strength, light & joy by its fierceness or violent expenditure of energydhishnya, asridhah, adruhah. That which ensures this steadiness & unfaltering gait, is the control of the mental power which is the agent of the action & the holder of the joy by the understanding. Indra is dhiyeshita. But what will ensure the understanding itself from error & swerving? It is the divine inspiration, Saraswati, rich with mental substance & clearness, who will keep the system purified, uphold sovereignly the Yajna, & illumine all the actions of the understanding, by awakening with the high divine perception, daivyena ketun, the great sea of ideal knowledge above. For this ideal knowledge, as we shall see, is the satyam, ritam, brihat; it is wide expansion of being & therefore utmost capacity of power, bliss & knowledge; it is the unobscured light of direct & unerring truth, and it is the unstumbling, unswerving fixity of spontaneous Right & Law.
We have gathered much from this brief hymn, one of the deepest in thought in the Veda. If our construction is correct, then this at least appears that the Veda is no loose, empty & tawdry collection of vague images & shallow superstitions, but there are some portions of it at least which present a clear, well-knit writing full of meaning & stored with ideas. We have the work of sages & thinkers, rishayah, kavayah, manshinah, subtle practical psychologists & great Yogins, not the work of savage medicine-men evolving out of primitive barbarism the first glimpses of an embryonic culture in the half-coherent fumble, the meaningless ritual of a worship of personified rain, wind, fire, sun & constellations. The gods of the Veda have a clear & fixed personality & functions & its conceptions are founded on a fairly advanced knowledge & theory at least of our subjective nature. Nor when we look at the clearness, fixity & frequently psychological nature of the functions of the Greek gods, Apollo, Hermes, Pallas, Aphrodite, [have we] the right to expect anything less from the ancestors of the far more subtle-minded, philosophical & spiritual Indian nation.
1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:Whoever sincerely enters the path of works, must leave behind him the stage in which need and desire are the first law of our acts. For whatever desires still trouble his being, he must, if he accepts the high aim of Yoga, put them away from him into the hands of the Lord within us. The supreme Power will deal with them for the good of the sadhaka and for the good of all. In effect, we find that once this surrender is done, - always provided the rejection is sincere, - egoistic indulgence of desire may for some time recur under the continued impulse of past nature but only in order to exhaust its acquired momentum and to teach the embodied being in his most unteachable part, his nervous, vital, emotional nature, by the reactions of desire, by its grief and unrest bitterly contrasted with calm periods of the higher peace or marvellous movements of divine Ananda, that egoistic desire is not a law for the soul that seeks liberation or aspires to its own original god-nature. Afterwards the element of desire in those impulsions will be thrown away or persistently eliminated by a constant denying and transforming pressure. Only the pure force of action in them (pravr.tti) justified by an equal delight in all work and result that is inspired or imposed from above will be preserved in the happy harmony of a final perfection. To act, to enjoy is the normal law and right of the nervous being; but to choose by personal desire its action and enjoyment is only its ignorant will, not its right. Alone the supreme and universal Will must choose; action must change into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda. All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura.
4:The social law, that second term of our progress, is a means to which the ego is subjected in order that it may learn discipline by subordination to a wider collective ego. This law may be quite empty of any moral content and may express only the needs or the practical good of the society as each society conceives it. Or it may express those needs and that good, but modified and coloured and supplemented by a higher moral or ideal law. It is binding on the developing but not yet perfectly developed individual in the shape of social duty, family obligation, communal or national demand, so long as it is not in conflict with his growing sense of the higher Right. But the sadhaka of the Karmayoga will abandon this also to the Lord of works. After he has made this surrender, his social impulses and judgments will, like his desires, only be used for their exhaustion or, it may be, so far as they are still necessary for a time to enable him to identify his lower mental nature with mankind in general or with any grouping of mankind in its works and hopes and aspirations. But after that brief time is over, they will be withdrawn and a divine government will alone abide. He will be identified with the Divine and with others only through the divine consciousness and not through the mental nature.
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18:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda.
1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:At this stage of the Yoga and even throughout the Yoga this form of desire, this figure of the ego is the enemy against whom we have to be always on our guard with an unsleeping vigilance. We need not be discouraged when we find him lurking within us and assuming all sorts of disguises, but we should be vigilant to detect him in all his masks and inexorable in expelling his influence. The illumining Word of this movement is the decisive line of the Gita, "To action thou hast a right but never under any circumstances to its fruit." The fruit belongs solely to the Lord of all works; our only business with it is to prepare success by a true and careful action and to offer it, if it comes, to the divine Master. Afterwards even as we have renounced attachment to the fruit, we must renounce attachment to the work also; at any moment we must be prepared to change one work, one course or one field of action for another or abandon all works if that is the clear comm and of the Master. Otherwise we do the act not for his sake but for our satisfaction and pleasure in the work, from the kinetic nature's need of action or for the fulfilment of our propensities; but these are all stations and refuges of the ego. However necessary for our ordinary motion of life, they have to be abandoned in the growth of the spiritual consciousness and replaced by divine counterparts: an Ananda, an impersonal and God-directed delight will cast out or supplant the unillumined vital satisfaction and pleasure, a joyful driving of the Divine Energy the kinetic need; the fulfilment of the propensities will no longer be an object or a necessity, there will be instead the fulfilment of the Divine Will through the natural dynamic truth in action of a free soul and a luminous nature. In the end, as the attachment to the fruit of the work and to the work itself has been excised from the heart, so also the last clinging attachment to the idea and sense of ourselves as the doer has to be relinquished; the Divine Shakti must be known and felt above and within us as the true and sole worker.
4:The renunciation of attachment to the work and its fruit is the beginning of a wide movement towards an absolute equality in the mind and soul which must become all-enveloping if we are to be perfect in the spirit. For the worship of the Master of works demands a clear recognition and glad acknowledgment of him in ourselves, in all things and in all happenings. Equality is the sign of this adoration; it is the soul's ground on which true sacrifice and worship can be done. The Lord is there equally in all beings, we have to make no essential distinctions between ourselves and others, the wise and the ignorant, friend and enemy, man and animal, the saint and the sinner. We must hate none, despise none, be repelled by none; for in all we have to see the One disguised or manifested at his pleasure. He is a little revealed in one or more revealed in another or concealed and wholly distorted in others according to his will and his knowledge of what is best for that which he intends to become in form in them and to do in works in their nature. All is ourself, one self that has taken many shapes. Hatred and disliking and scorn and repulsion, clinging and attachment and preference are natural, necessary, inevitable at a certain stage: they attend upon or they help to make and maintain Nature's choice in us. But to the Karmayogin they are a survival, a stumbling-block, a process of the Ignorance and, as he progresses, they fall away from his nature. The child-soul needs them for its growth; but they drop from an adult in the divine culture. In the God-nature to which we have to rise there can be an adamantine, even a destructive severity but not hatred, a divine irony but not scorn, a calm, clear-seeing and forceful rejection but not repulsion and dislike. Even what we have to destroy, we must not abhor or fail to recognise as a disguised and temporary movement of the Eternal.
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7:And so too we shall have the same equality of mind and soul towards all happenings, painful or pleasurable, defeat and success, honour and disgrace, good repute and ill-repute, good fortune and evil fortune. For in all happenings we shall see the will of the Master of all works and results and a step in the evolving expression of the Divine. He manifests himself, to those who have the inner eye that sees, in forces and their play and results as well as in things and in creatures. All things move towards a divine event; each experience, suffering and want no less than joy and satisfaction, is a necessary link in the carrying out of a universal movement which it is our business to understand and second. To revolt, to condemn, to cry out is the impulse of our unchastened and ignorant instincts. Revolt like everything else has its uses in the play and is even necessary, helpful, decreed for the divine development in its own time and stage; but the movement of an ignorant rebellion belongs to the stage of the soul's childhood or to its raw adolescence. The ripened soul does not condemn but seeks to understand and master, does not cry out but accepts or toils to improve and perfect, does not revolt inwardly but labours to obey and fulfil and transfigure. Therefore we shall receive all things with an equal soul from the hands of the Master. Failure we shall admit as a passage as calmly as success until the hour of the divine victory arrives. Our souls and minds and bodies will remain unshaken by acutest sorrow and suffering and pain if in the divine dispensation they come to us, unoverpowered by intensest joy and pleasure. Thus supremely balanced we shall continue steadily on our way meeting all things with an equal calm until we are ready for a more exalted status and can enter into the supreme and universal Ananda.
8:This equality cannot come except by a protracted ordeal and patient self-discipline; so long as desire is strong, equality cannot come at all except in periods of quiescence and the fatigue of desire, and it is then more likely to be an inert indifference or desire's recoil from itself than the true calm and the positive spiritual oneness. Moreover, this discipline or this growth into equality of spirit has its necessary epochs and stages. Ordinarily we have to begin with a period of endurance; for we must learn to confront, to suffer and to assimilate all contacts. Each fibre in us must be taught not to wince away from that which pains and repels and not to run eagerly towards that which pleases and attracts, but rather to accept, to face, to bear and to conquer. All touches we must be strong to bear, not only those that are proper and personal to us but those born of our sympathy or our conflict with the worlds around, above or below us and with their peoples. We shall endure tranquilly the action and impact on us of men and things and forces, the pressure of the Gods and the assaults of Titans; we shall face and engulf in the unstirred seas of our spirit all that can possibly come to us down the ways of the soul's infinite experience. This is the stoical period of the preparation of equality, its most elementary and yet its heroic age. But this steadfast endurance of the flesh and heart and mind must be reinforced by a sustained sense of spiritual submission to a divine Will: this living clay must yield not only with a stern or courageous acquiescence, but with knowledge or with resignation, even in suffering, to the touch of the divine Hand that is preparing its perfection. A sage, a devout or even a tender stoicism of the God-lover is possible, and these are better than the merely pagan self-reliant endurance which may lend itself to a too great hardening of the vessel of God: for this kind prepares the strength that is capable of wisdom and of love; its tranquillity is a deeply moved calm that passes easily into bliss. The gain of this period of resignation and endurance is the soul's strength equal to all shocks and contacts.
1.09 - Kundalini Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
30. The Yogi attains different Siddhis at each Chakra and experiences Ananda or bliss in various degrees.
31. Anima, Mahima, Laghima, Garima, Prapti, Prakamya, Vasitvam, Ishatvam are the major eight Siddhis.
1.09 - Saraswati and Her Consorts, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
bring to birth for man the Bliss, Mayas. I have already insisted on the constant relation, as conceived by the Vedic seers, between the Truth and the Bliss or Ananda. It is by the dawning of the true or infinite consciousness in man that he arrives out of this evil dream of pain and suffering, this divided creation into the Bliss, the happy state variously described in Veda by the words bhadram, mayas (love and bliss), svasti (the good state of existence, right being) and by others less technically used such as varyam, rayih., rayah.. For the Vedic Rishi Truth is the passage and the antechamber, the Bliss of the divine existence is the goal, or else Truth is the foundation, Bliss the supreme result.
Such, then, is the character of Saraswati as a psychological principle, her peculiar function and her relation to her most immediate connections among the gods. How far do these shed any light on her relations as the Vedic river to her six sister streams?
1.09 - Sleep and Death, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
which is pure Light, ever be a prisoner of those lower vibrations? It would be like saying that infrared light controls the ultraviolet. Like goes with like, always and everywhere, whether here or on the other side. And what could ever be "eternal," truly, except the soul, except joy? If there were an unending Hell, it could only be a seat of unending rapture, said Sri Aurobindo, for God is joy, Ananda, and
than the eternity of His bliss there is no other eternity.102
1.1.01 - Seeking the Divine, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
First, it is a great exaggeration to deduce from your difficulties any idea of unfitness or of going away or being sent away or giving up the Yoga. I am certainly not going to pronounce you unfit because you want the Ananda; on such grounds I would have to pronounce myself unfit, because I have myself wanted it and many other things besides. And if I were to send you away because you are not entirely disinterested in the approach to the Divine, I should have, to be consistent, to send practically the whole Asram packing. I do not know why you are allowing yourself to indulge in such black and despondent thoughts - there is no ground for them at all, and I do not think I gave any grounds for them in my letter. Whatever your difficulties, the Mother and I have every intention of seeing you through them, and I think that you too, whatever suggestions your vital depression may make to you at the moment, have every intention of going through to the end of the Path. I imagine you have gone too far on it to go back and, if you wanted to, your psychic being which has persistently pushed you towards it, would not allow such a retreat.
Next, it was not my intention to say that it was wrong to aspire for the Ananda. What I wanted to point out was the condition for the permanent possession of the Ananda (intimations, visits, downrushes of it one can have before); the essential condition for it is a change of consciousness, the coming of peace, light, etc., all that brings about the transition from the normal to the spiritualised nature. And that being so, it is better to make this change of consciousness the first object of the sadhana. On
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the other hand, to press for the constant Ananda immediately in a consciousness which is not yet able to retain it, still more to substitute for it lesser (vital) joys and pleasures may very well stop the flow of these spiritual experiences which make the continuous ecstasy eventually possible. But I certainly never intended to say that the Ananda was not to be attained or to insist on your moving towards a nir Ananda (joyless) Brahman.
On the contrary, I said that Ananda was the crown of the Yoga, which surely means that it was part of the highest final siddhi.
Whatever one wants sincerely and persistently from the
Divine, the Divine is sure to give. If then you want Ananda and go on wanting, you will surely have it in the end. The only question is what is to be the chief power in your seeking, a vital demand or a psychic aspiration manifesting through the heart and communicating itself to the mental and vital and physical consciousness. The latter is the greatest power and makes the shortest way - and besides one has to come to that way sooner or later.
Let us first put aside the quite foreign consideration of what we would do if the union with the Divine brought eternal joylessness, Nir Ananda or torture. Such a thing does not exist and to drag it in only clouds the issue. The Divine is Anandamaya and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also in him many other things and one may seek him for any of them, for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything else of which one may feel the pull or the impulse. It is quite possible for someone to say: "Let me have Power from the
Divine and do His work or His will and I am satisfied, even if the use of Power entails suffering also." It is possible to shun bliss as a thing too tremendous or ecstatic and ask only or rather for peace, for liberation, for Nirvana. You speak of self-fulfilment,
- one may regard the Supreme not as the Divine but as one's highest Self and seek fulfilment of one's being in that highest Self; but one need not envisage it as a self of bliss, ecstasy, Ananda - one may envisage it as a self of freedom, vastness, knowledge,
Seeking the Divine
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tranquillity, strength, calm, perfection - perhaps too calm for a ripple of anything so disturbing as joy to enter. So even if it is for something to be gained that one approaches the Divine, it is not a fact that one can approach Him or seek union only for the sake of Ananda and nothing else.
That involves something which throws all your reasoning out of gear. For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they existing because of him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing needed for that is, first, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet.
Your argument that because we know the union with the
Divine will bring Ananda, therefore it must be for the Ananda that we seek the union, is not true and has no force. One who loves a queen may know that if she returns his love it will bring him power, position, riches and yet it need not be for the power, position, riches that he seeks her love. He may love her for herself and could love her equally if she were not a queen; he might have no hope of any return whatever and yet love her, adore her, live for her, die for her simply because she is she. That has happened and men have loved women without any hope of enjoyment or result, loved steadily, passionately after age has come and beauty has gone. Patriots do not love their country only when she is rich, powerful, great and has much to give them; their love for country has been most ardent, passionate, absolute when the
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else - so far as it is explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant facts of spiritual experience. The call to selfgiving is only an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being
- for these are the things that lead on towards the Divine so long as the absolute inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to the surface. But it is really that that has drawn from the beginning and is there behind - it is the categorical spiritual imperative, the absolute need of the soul for the Divine.
I am not saying that there is to be no Ananda. The selfgiving itself is a profound Ananda and what it brings, carries in its wake an inexpressible Ananda - and it is brought by this method sooner than by any other, so that one can say almost,
"A self-less self-giving is the best policy." Only one does not do it out of policy. Ananda is the result, but it is done not for the result, but for the self-giving itself and for the Divine himself - a subtle distinction, it may seem to the mind, but very real.
No, what you write in your letter was not at all what the Mother was trying to tell you. The question of ahaituk bhakti and its opposite was settled long ago and the Mother did not intend to return upon it; it is understood that whatever the motive immediately pushing the mind or the vital, an asking for Ananda or knowledge or power, yet if there is a true seeking for the
Divine in the being, it must lead eventually to the realisation of the Divine. The soul within has always the inherent (ahaituk) yearning for the Divine; the hetu or special motive is simply an impulsion used by it to get the mind and the vital to follow the inner urge. If the mind and the vital can feel and accept the soul's sheer love for the Divine for his own sake, then the sadhana gets its full power and many difficulties disappear; but even if they do not, they will get what they seek after in the Divine and through it they will come to realise something, even perhaps to pass beyond the limit of their original desire. I may say that the idea of a joyless God is an absurdity which only the ignorance of
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All this, however, has nothing to do with what the Mother wished to say in the morning. What she told you was that you seemed to have a fixed notion about the Divine, as of a rather distant Being somewhere whom you expect to give you an article called Ananda, and, when there is some prospect of his giving it to you, you are on good terms with him, but when he doesn't, you quarrel and revolt and call him names! And she said a notion of the kind was in itself an obstacle, - because it is rather far from the Truth, - in the way of realising the Divine. What is this Ananda that you seek, after all? The mind can see in it nothing but a pleasant psychological condition, - but if it were only that, it would not be the rapture which the bhaktas and the mystics find in it. When the Ananda comes into you, it is the Divine who comes into you; just as when the Peace flows into you, it is the Divine who is invading you, or when you are flooded with Light, it is the flood of the Divine Himself that is around you. Of course, the Divine is something much more; many other things besides and in them all a Presence, a
Being, a Divine Person; for the Divine is Krishna, is Shiva, is the Supreme Mother But through the Ananda you can perceive the Anandamaya Krishna; for the Ananda is the subtle body and being of Krishna; through the Peace you can perceive the
Shantimaya Shiva; in the Light, in the delivering Knowledge, the Love, the fulfilling and uplifting Power you can meet the presence of the Divine Mother It is this perception that makes the experiences of the bhaktas and mystics so rapturous and enables them to pass more easily through the nights of anguish and separation - when there is this soul-perception, it gives to even a little or brief Ananda a force or value it would not otherwise have and the Ananda itself gathers by it a growing power to stay, to return, to increase.This was what the Mother meant
Seeking the Divine
--
when she said, "Don't ask the Divine to give you Ananda, ask
Him to give you Himself" - signifying that in the Ananda and through the Ananda it would be Himself that He would give you. There would then be no cause to say, "I do not know the
Divine. I have never felt or met Him"; it would be a gate too for other experiences and make it easier to see the Divine in the material object, in the human form, in the body.
1.1.01 - The Divine and Its Aspects, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In its supreme Truth, the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and Ananda.
*
--
Love is an intense self-expression of the soul of Ananda, and Light is what always accompanies the Supramental Consciousness and its most essential power.
The Divine: One in All
1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
- although inseparable, one can be made more prominent and base or lead the others. In the lower planes below they become separable in appearance, though not in their secret reality, and one can exist phenomenally without the others so that we become aware of what seems to us an inconscient or a painful existence or a consciousness without Ananda. Indeed without this separation of them in experience pain and ignorance and falsehood and death and what we call inconscience could not have manifested themselves - there could not have been this evolution of a limited and suffering consciousness out of the universal nescience of Matter.
The Sachchid Ananda is not in itself an active consciousness, it is simply pure existence, consciousness and bliss. By a Truth
--
The original substance of the spirit is pure existence carrying in it pure self-existent consciousness (or consciousness-force) and pure self-existent Ananda.
There is no plane beyond Sachchid Ananda.
--
It is fundamentally true for most people that the pleasure of life, of existence in itself, predominates over the troubles of life; otherwise most people would want to die whereas the fact is that everybody wants to live - and if you proposed to them an easy means of eternal extinction they would decline without thanks. That is what X is saying and it is undeniable. It is also true that this comes from the Ananda of existence which is behind everything and is reflected in the instinctive pleasure of existence. Naturally, this instinctive essential pleasure is not the
Ananda, - it is only a pale and dim reflection of it in an inferior life-consciousness - but it is enough for its purpose. I have said that myself somewhere and I do not see anything absurd or excessive in the statement.
1.1.03 - Brahman, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The immutable Brahman is only a base for the transcendent action which comes down into its peace and silence and fills it with power also and Ananda and the light of knowledge.
Spirit and Life
1.1.04 - The Self or Atman, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Being is one throughout, but on each plane of Nature, it is represented by a form of itself which is proper to that plane, the mental Purusha in the mental plane, the vital Purusha in the vital, the physical Purusha in the physical. The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of two other planes of the being, the Knowledge or Truth plane and the Ananda plane, each with its Purusha, but although influences may come down from them these are superconscient to the human mind and their nature is not yet organised here.
1.10 - Aesthetic and Ethical Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Neither the ethical being nor the aesthetic being is the whole man, nor can either be his sovereign principle; they are merely two powerful elements. Ethical conduct is not the whole of life; even to say that it is three-fourths of life is to indulge in a very doubtful mathematics. We cannot assign to it its position in any such definite language, but can at best say that its kernel of will, character and self-discipline are almost the first condition for human self-perfection. The aesthetic sense is equally indispensable, for without that the self-perfection of the mental being cannot arrive at its object, which is on the mental plane the right and harmonious possession and enjoyment of the truth, power, beauty and delight of human existence. But neither can be the highest principle of the human order. We can combine them; we can enlarge the sense of ethics by the sense of beauty and delight and introduce into it to correct its tendency of hardness and austerity the element of gentleness, love, amenity, the hedonistic side of morals; we can steady, guide and streng then the delight of life by the introduction of the necessary will and austerity and self-discipline which will give it endurance and purity. These two powers of our psychological being, which represent in us the essential principle of energy and the essential principle of delight,the Indian terms are more profound and expressive, Tapas and Ananda,2can be thus helped by each other, the one to a richer, the other to a greater self-expression. But that even this much reconciliation may come about they must be taken up and enlightened by a higher principle which must be capable of understanding and comprehending both equally and of disengaging and combining disinterestedly their purposes and potentialities. That higher principle seems to be provided for us by the human faculty of reason and intelligent will. Our crowning capacity, it would seem to be by right the crowned sovereign of our nature.
The epithet is needed, for European Christianity has been something different, even at its best of another temperament, Latinised, Graecised, Celticised or else only a rough Teutonic imitation of the old-world Hebraism.
Tapas is the energising conscious-power of cosmic being by which the world is created, maintained and governed; it includes all concepts of force, will, energy, power, everything dynamic and dynamising. Ananda is the essential nature of bliss of the cosmic consciousness and, in activity, its delight of self-creation and self-experience.
***
1.10 - Laughter Of The Gods, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: Oh, so it was Vishnu's Ananda that descended!
Later on, Champaklal said, "My eyes always remain watery."
1.10 - The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
water of the river Indus or the Ganges and that this wine is a secret name for clarified butter. What he means to say is clearly that out of the subconscient depths in us arises a honeyed wave of Ananda or pure delight of existence, that it is by this Ananda that we can arrive at immortality; this Ananda is the secret being, the secret reality behind the action of the mind in its shining clarities. Soma, the god of the Ananda, the Vedanta also tells us, is that which has become mind or sensational perception; in other words, all mental sensation carries in it a hidden delight of existence and strives to express that secret of its own being.
Therefore Ananda is the tongue of the gods with which they taste the delight of existence; it is the nodus in which all the activities of the immortal state or divine existence are bound together. Vamadeva goes on to say, "Let us give expression to this secret name of the clarity, - that is to say, let us bring out this Soma wine, this hidden delight of existence; let us hold it in this world-sacrifice by our surrenderings or submissions to
Agni, the divine Will or Conscious-Power which is the Master of being. He is the four-horned Bull of the worlds and when he listens to the soul-thought of man in its self-expression, he ejects this secret name of delight from its hiding-place."
--
This goal is, again, explained to be that which is all honey, - ghr.tasya dhara madhumat pavante; it is the Ananda, the divine
Beatitude. And that this goal is the Sindhu, the superconscient ocean, is made clear in the last rik, where Vamadeva says, "May we taste that honeyed wave of thine" - of Agni, the divine
1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
word Ananda is the most difficult to translate, it means the
most intense joy, delight, felicity, ecstasy or bliss. This is
--
ings suggested by the enumeration. The truth is Ananda,
2
--
and that into which creation ceases. From Ananda, says
the Upanishad, all existences are born, by Ananda they re-
main in being and increase, to Ananda they depart. 4 And
the Mother said: It is Joy that has created, it is Joy that will
--
is the root-problem. ... There is an Anandamaya behind the
manomaya [the central sense perception], a vast Bliss-Self
--
the Ananda of the Divine in everything. It is the power of
this Love, incarnated in the soul and in the Avatars, which
--
the original divinity lies in the Love and Ananda which are
redeeming all.
--
sciousness and Ananda not in its initial transcendence but
under conditions for which the plunge into the Inconscience
--
cause one of those powers was Ananda, which assured that
it would be equal to the epic repetition of suffering, death
1.11 - Oneness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
when we see with the eye of the complete union and feel this truth in the depths of our being that we can entirely discover behind that mask too the calm and beautiful face of the all-blissful Godhead and in this touch that tests our imperfection the touch of the friend and builder of the spirit in man. The discords of the world are God's discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastness of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda. . . .137
For truth is the foundation of real spirituality and courage is its soul.138
--
And this is joy Ananda because to be all that is is to have the joy of all that is.
The bliss of a myriad myriads who are one.159
1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
and Consciousness, it is also the expression of Ananda, and
all their beings enjoy therefore perfect satisfaction and hap-
--
with the Krishna Avatar. Krishna is the Anandamaya; he
supports the evolution through the overmind leading it to-
wards Ananda. 66 ... The last Avatar, Kalki, only accom-
plishes the work Krishna began he fulfils in power the
1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For there is yet a third intensely close and personal aspect of the Master of Works which is a key to his sublimest hidden mystery and ecstasy; for he detaches from the secret of the hidden Transcendence and the ambiguous display of the cosmic Movement an, individual Power of the Divine that can mediate between the two and bridge our passage from the one to the other.. In this aspect the transcendent and universal person of the Divine conforms itself to our individualised personality and accepts a personal relation with us, at once identified with us as our supreme Self and yet close and different as our Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher, our Father and our Mother our Playmate in the great world-game who has disguised himself throughout as friend and enemy, helper and opponent and, in all relations and in all workings that affect us, has led our steps towards our perfection and our release. It is through this more personal manifestation that we are admitted to some possibility of the complete transcendental experience; for in him we meet the One not merely in a liberated calm and peace, not merely with a passive or active submission in our works or through the mystery of union with a universal Knowledge and Power filling and guiding us, but with an ecstasy of divine Love and divine Delight that shoots up beyond silent Witness and active World-Power to some positive divination of a greater beatific secret. For it is riot so much knowledge leading to some ineffable Absolute, not so much works lifting us beyond world-process to the originating supreme Knower and Master, but rather this thing most intimate to us, yet at present most obscure, which keeps for us wrapt in its passionate yell the deep and rapturous secret of the transcendent Godhead and some absolute positiveness of its perfect Being, its all-concentrating Bliss, its mystic Ananda.
But the individual relation with the Divine does not always or from the beginning bring into force a widest enlargement or a highest self-exceeding. At first this Godhead close to our being or immanent within us can be felt fully only in the scope of our personal nature and experience, a Leader and Master, a Guide and Teacher, a Friend and Lover, or else a Spirit, Power or Presence, constituting and uplifting our upward and enlarging movement by the force of his intimate reality inhabiting the heart or presiding over our nature from above even our highest intelligence. It is our personal evolution that is his preoccupation, a personal relation that is our joy and fulfilment, the building of our nature into his divine image that is our self-finding and perfection. The outside world seems to exist only as a field for this growth and a provider of materials or of helping and opposing forces for its successive stages. Our works done in that world are his works, but even when they serve some temporary universal end, their main purpose for us is to make outwardly dynamic or give inward power to our relations with this immanent Divine. Many seekers ask for no more or see the continuation and fulfilment of this spiritual flowering only in heavens beyond; the union is consummated and made perpetual in an eternal dwelling-place of his perfection, joy and beauty. But this is not enough for the integral seeker; however intense and beautiful, a personal isolated achievement cannot be his whole aim or his entire existence. A time must come when the personal opens out to the universal; our very individuality, spiritual, mental, vital, physical even, becomes universalised: it is seen as a power of his universal force and cosmic spirit, or else it contains the universe m that ineffable wideness which comes to the individual consciousness when it breaks its bonds and flows upward towards the Transcendent and on every side into the Infinite.
1.11 - The Seven Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
madhuscutah. and speaks of the Gods enjoying in them the intoxication of the energy, urjam madanti; from this we can gather that the honey or sweetness is the madhu, the Soma, the wine of the Ananda, of which the Gods have the ecstasy. But in the forty-seventh hymn he makes his meaning unmistakably clear.
"O Waters, that supreme wave of yours, the drink of Indra, which the seekers of the Godhead have made for themselves, that pure, inviolate, clarity-streaming, honeyed (ghr.taprus.am madhumantam) wave of you may we today enjoy. O Waters, may the son of the waters (Agni), he of the swift rushings, foster that most honeyed wave of you; that wave of yours in which
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
transcendent Delight, the all-blissful Ananda of which the Taittiriya Upanishad speaks as the highest Brahman from which all
existences are born, by which all existences live and increase
--
supreme Ananda? It is that towards the knower and possessor
of the Brahman is directed the desire of all creatures. In other
1.12 - Delight of Existence - The Solution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:IN THIS conception of an inalienable underlying delight of existence of which all outward or surface sensations are a positive, negative or neutral play, waves and foamings of that infinite deep, we arrive at the true solution of the problem we are examining. The self of things is an infinite indivisible existence; of that existence the essential nature or power is an infinite imperishable force of self-conscious being; and of that self-consciousness the essential nature or knowledge of itself is, again, an infinite inalienable delight of being. In formlessness and in all forms, in the eternal awareness of infinite and indivisible being and in the multiform appearances of finite division this self-existence preserves perpetually its self-delight. As in the apparent inconscience of Matter our soul, growing out of its bondage to its own superficial habit and particular mode of self-conscious existence, discovers that infinite Conscious-Force constant, immobile, brooding, so in the apparent non-sensation of Matter it comes to discover and attune itself to an infinite conscious Delight imperturbable, ecstatic, all-embracing. This delight is its own delight, this self is its own self in all; but to our ordinary view of self and things which awakes and moves only upon surfaces, it remains hidden, profound, subconscious. And as it is within all forms, so it is within all experiences whether pleasant, painful or neutral. There too hidden, profound, subconscious, it is that which enables and compels things to remain in existence. It is the reason of that clinging to existence, that overmastering will-to-be, translated vitally as the instinct of self-preservation, physically as the imperishability of matter, mentally as the sense of immortality which attends the formed existence through all its phases of self-development and of which even the occasional impulse of self-destruction is only a reverse form, an attraction to other state of being and a consequent recoil from present state of being. Delight is existence, Delight is the secret of creation, Delight is the root of birth, Delight is the cause of remaining in existence, Delight is the end of birth and that into which creation ceases. "From Ananda" says the Upanishad "all existences are born, by Ananda they remain in being and increase, to Ananda they depart."
2:As we look at these three aspects of essential Being, one in reality, triune to our mental view, separable only in appearance, in the phenomena of the divided consciousness, we are able to put in their right place the divergent formulae of the old philosophies so that they unite and become one, ceasing from their agelong controversy. For if we regard world-existence only in its appearances and only in its relation to pure, infinite, indivisible, immutable Existence, we are entitled to regard it, describe it and realise it as Maya. Maya in its original sense meant a comprehending and containing consciousness capable of embracing, measuring and limiting and therefore formative; it is that which outlines, measures out, moulds forms in the formless, psychologises and seems to make knowable the Unknowable, geometrises and seems to make measurable the limitless. Later the word came from its original sense of knowledge, skill, intelligence to acquire a pejorative sense of cunning, fraud or illusion, and it is in the figure of an enchantment or illusion that it is used by the philosophical systems.
--
9:In our ordinary life this truth is hidden from us or only dimly glimpsed at times or imperfectly held and conceived. But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master - a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within. We are aware of it within supporting and helping the apparent and superficial self and smiling at its pleasures and pains as at the error and passion of a little child. And if we can go back into ourselves and identify ourselves, not with our superficial experience, but with that radiant penumbra of the Divine, we can live in that attitude towards the contacts of the world and, standing back in our entire consciousness from the pleasures and pains of the body, vital being and mind, possess them as experiences whose nature being superficial does not touch or impose itself on our core and real being. In the entirely expressive Sanskrit terms, there is an Anandamaya behind the manomaya, a vast Bliss-Self behind the limited mental self, and the latter is only a shadowy image and disturbed reflection of the former. The truth of ourselves lies within and not on the surface.
10:Again this triple vibration of pleasure, pain, indifference, being superficial, being an arrangement and result of our imperfect evolution, can have in it no absoluteness, no necessity. There is no real obligation on us to return to a particular contact a particular response of pleasure, pain or neutral reaction, there is only an obligation of habit. We feel pleasure or pain in a particular contact because that is the habit our nature has formed, because that is the constant relation the recipient has established with the contact. It is within our competence to return quite the opposite response, pleasure where we used to have pain, pain where we used to have pleasure. It is equally within our competence to accustom the superficial being to return instead of the mechanical reactions of pleasure, pain and indifference that free reply of inalienable delight which is the constant experience of the true and vast Bliss-Self within us. And this is a greater conquest, a still deeper and more complete self-possession than a glad and detached reception in the depths of the habitual reactions on the surface. For it is no longer a mere acceptance without subjection, a free acquiescence in imperfect values of experience, but enables us to convert imperfect into perfect, false into true values, - the constant but veritable delight of the Spirit in things taking the place of the dualities experienced by the mental being.
--
15:Since the nature of suffering is a failure of the consciousforce in us to meet the shocks of existence and a consequent shrinking and contraction and its root is an inequality of that receptive and possessing force due to our self-limitation by egoism consequent on the ignorance of our true Self, of Sachchid Ananda, the elimination of suffering must first proceed by the substitution of titiks.a, the facing, enduring and conquest of all shocks of existence for jugupsa, the shrinking and contraction: by this endurance and conquest we proceed to an equality which may be either an equal indifference to all contacts or an equal gladness in all contacts; and this equality again must find a firm foundation in the substitution of the Sachchid Ananda consciousness which is All-Bliss for the ego-consciousness which enjoys and suffers. The Sachchid Ananda consciousness may be transcendent of the universe and aloof from it, and to this state of distant Bliss the path is equal indifference; it is the path of the ascetic. Or the Sachchid Ananda consciousness may be at once transcendent and universal; and to this state of present and all-embracing Bliss the path is surrender and loss of the ego in the universal and possession of an all-pervading equal delight; it is the path of the ancient Vedic sages. But neutrality to the imperfect touches of pleasure and the perverse touches of pain is the first direct and natural result of the soul's self-discipline and the conversion to equal delight can, usually, come only afterwards. The direct transformation of the triple vibration into Ananda is possible, but less easy to the human being.
16:Such then is the view of the universe which arises out of the integral Vedantic affirmation. An infinite, indivisible existence all-blissful in its pure self-consciousness moves out of its fundamental purity into the varied play of Force that is consciousness, into the movement of Prakriti which is the play of Maya. The delight of its existence is at first self-gathered, absorbed, subconscious in the basis of the physical universe; then emergent in a great mass of neutral movement which is not yet what we call sensation; then further emergent with the growth of mind and ego in the triple vibration of pain, pleasure and indifference originating from the limitation of the force of consciousness in the form and from its exposure to shocks of the universal Force which it finds alien to it and out of harmony with its own measure and standard; finally, the conscious emergence of the full Sachchid Ananda in its creations by universality, by equality, by self-possession and conquest of Nature. This is the course and movement of the world.
1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Light, a glad Impulse that is a force from the supreme Ananda.
* *
1.12 - The Herds of the Dawn, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Truths are won out of the Nights. This is the rising of the Sun which was lost in the obscurity - the familiar figure of the lost sun recovered by the Gods and the Angiras Rishis - the sun of Truth, and it now shoots out its tongue of fire towards the golden Light: - for hiran.ya, gold is the concrete symbol of the higher light, the gold of the Truth, and it is this treasure not golden coin for which the Vedic Rishis pray to the Gods. This great change from the inner obscuration to the illumination is effected by the Ashwins, lords of the joyous upward action of the mind and the vital powers, through the immortal wine of the Ananda poured into mind and body and there drunk by them. They mentalise the expressive Word, they lead us into the heaven of pure mind beyond this darkness and there by the
Thought they set the powers of the Delight to work. But even over the heavenly waters they cross, for the power of the Soma helps them to dissolve all mental constructions, and they cast aside even this veil; they go beyond Mind and the last attaining is described as the crossing of the rivers, the passage through the heaven of the pure mind, the journey by the path of the Truth to the other side. Not till we reach the highest supreme, parama paravat, do we rest at last from the great human journey.
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
But the God who comes so terribly as Time also exists timelessly as the Godhead, as Brahman, whose essence is Sat, Chit, Ananda, Being, Awareness, Bliss; and within and beyond mans time-tortured psyche is his spirit, uncreated and uncreatable, as Eckhart says, the Atman which is akin to or even identical with Brahman. The Gita, like all other formulations of the Perennial Philosophy, justifies Gods ways to man by affirming and the affirmation is based upon observation and immediate experience that man can, if he so desires, die to his separate temporal selfness and so come to union with timeless Spirit. It affirms, too, that the Avatar becomes incarnate in order to assist human beings to achieve this union. This he does in three waysby teaching the true doctrine in a world blinded by voluntary ignorance; by inviting souls to a carnal love of his humanity, not indeed as an end in itself, but as the means to spiritual love-knowledge of Spirit; and finally by serving as a channel of grace.
God who is Spirit can only be worshipped in spirit and for his own sake; but God in time is normally worshipped by material means with a view to achieving temporal ends. God in time is manifestly the destroyer as well as the creator; and because this is so, it has seemed proper to worship him by methods which are as terrible as the destructions he himself inflicts. Hence, in India, the blood sacrifices to Kali, in her aspect as Nature-the-Destroyer; hence those offerings of children to the Molochs, denounced by the Hebrew prophets; hence the human sacrifices practised, for example, by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Druids, the Aztecs. In all such cases the divinity addressed was a god in time, or a personification of Nature, which is nothing else but Time itself, the devourer of its own offspring; and in all cases the purpose of the rite was to obtain a future benefit or to avoid one of the enormous evils which Time and Nature for ever hold in store. For this it was thought to be worth while to pay a high price in that currency of suffering, which the Destroyer so evidently valued. The importance of the temporal end justified the use of means that were intrinsically terrible, because intrinsically time-like. Sublimated traces of these ancient patterns of thought and behaviour are still to be found in certain theories of the Atonement, and in the conception of the Mass as a perpetually repeated sacrifice of the God-Man.
1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Therefore, Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, shall not look for refuge to anyone beside themselves it is they who shall reach the very topmost Height. But they must be anxious to learn.
What follows is a passage freely translated from the Chandogya Upanishad. The truth which this little myth is meant to illustrate is that there are as many conceptions of salvation as there are degrees of spiritual knowledge and that the kind of liberation (or enslavement) actually achieved by any individual soul depends upon the extent to which that soul chooses to dissipate its essentially voluntary ignorance.
1.1.4 - The Physical Mind and Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One is either conscious of the power or peace or other force (light, Ananda, knowledge, movements of the divine working) or, if not conscious of that, is aware of the resultsei ther of these things is sufficient to show that one is open. To feel the grace descending and yet doubt whether it is not a vital imagination is a folly of the physical mind; a spiritual experience must be accepted as it is; if one questions at every moment whether an experience is an experience or Grace is grace or peace is peace or light is light, one will spend all the time in these useless and fantastic doubts instead of making a quiet and natural progress.
***
--
To get rid of the random thoughts of the surface physical mind is not easy. It is sometimes done by a sudden miracle, as in my own case, but that is rare. Some get it done by a slow process of concentration, but that may take a very long time. It is easier to have a quiet mind with things that come in passing on the surface, as people pass in the street, and one is free to attend to them or not that is to say, there develops a sort of double mind, one inner silent and concentrated when it pleases to be so, a quiet witness when it chooses to see thoughts and things,the other meant for surface dynamism. It is probable in your case that this will come as soon as these descents of peace, intensity or Ananda get strong enough to occupy the whole system.
***
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
And finally, there is joy Ananda. It is at the beginning of things and at the end and everywhere, if we dig deep enough. It is "the well of honey covered by the rock." (Rig Veda II.24.4)
254 - This ancient tradition, known also to the Hebrews, seems to have been revived, quite literally, by Christianity and the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary.
1.14 - The Suprarational Beauty, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But again this is true only in restricted bounds or, if anywhere entirely true, then only on a middle plane of our aesthetic seeking and activity. Where the greatest and most powerful creation of beauty is accomplished and its appreciation and enjoyment rise to the highest pitch, the rational is always surpassed and left behind. The creation of beauty in poetry and art does not fall within the sovereignty or even within the sphere of the reason. The intellect is not the poet, the artist, the creator within us; creation comes by a suprarational influx of light and power which must work always, if it is to do its best, by vision and inspiration. It may use the intellect for certain of its operations, but in proportion as it subjects itself to the intellect, it loses in power and force of vision and diminishes the splendour and truth of the beauty it creates. The intellect may take hold of the influx, moderate and repress the divine enthusiasm of creation and force it to obey the prudence of its dictates, but in doing so it brings down the work to its own inferior level, and the lowering is in proportion to the intellectual interference. For by itself the intelligence can only achieve talent, though it may be a high and even, if sufficiently helped from above, a surpassing talent. Genius, the true creator, is always suprarational in its nature and its instrumentation even when it seems to be doing the work of the reason; it is most itself, most exalted in its work, most sustained in the power, depth, height and beauty of its achievement when it is least touched by, least mixed with any control of the mere intellectuality and least often drops from its heights of vision and inspiration into reliance upon the always mechanical process of intellectual construction. Art-creation which accepts the canons of the reason and works within the limits laid down by it, may be great, beautiful and powerful; for genius can preserve its power even when it labours in shackles and refuses to put forth all its resources: but when it proceeds by means of the intellect, it constructs, but does not create. It may construct well and with a good and faultless workmanship, but its success is formal and not of the spirit, a success of technique and not the embodiment of the imperishable truth of beauty seized in its inner reality, its divine delight, its appeal to a supreme source of ecstasy, Ananda.
There have been periods of artistic creation, ages of reason, in which the rational and intellectual tendency has prevailed in poetry and art; there have even been nations which in their great formative periods of art and literature have set up reason and a meticulous taste as the sovereign powers of their aesthetic activity. At their best these periods have achieved work of a certain greatness, but predominantly of an intellectual greatness and perfection of technique rather than achievements of a supreme inspired and revealing beauty; indeed their very aim has been not the discovery of the deeper truth of beauty, but truth of ideas and truth of reason, a critical rather than a true creative aim. Their leading object has been an intellectual criticism of life and nature elevated by a consummate poetical rhythm and diction rather than a revelation of God and man and life and nature in inspired forms of artistic beauty. But great art is not satisfied with representing the intellectual truth of things, which is always their superficial or exterior truth; it seeks for a deeper and original truth which escapes the eye of the mere sense or the mere reason, the soul in them, the unseen reality which is not that of their form and process but of their spirit. This it seizes and expresses by form and idea, but a significant form, which is not merely a faithful and just or a harmonious reproduction of outward Nature, and a revelatory idea, not the idea which is merely correct, elegantly right or fully satisfying to the reason and taste. Always the truth it seeks is first and foremost the truth of beauty,not, again, the formal beauty alone or the beauty of proportion and right process which is what the sense and the reason seek, but the soul of beauty which is hidden from the ordinary eye and the ordinary mind and revealed in its fullness only to the unsealed vision of the poet and artist in man who can seize the secret significances of the universal poet and artist, the divine creator who dwells as their soul and spirit in the forms he has created.
1.15 - The Supramental Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The goal of evolution is none other than to recover in the very depths the totality from above, and to discover here on earth, in the very midst of dualities and the most poignant supreme Joy Ananda. It is in order to find this secret that we have been drawn downward each time we took a step upward.
The Supramental Power The spiritualists dismiss power as a weapon unworthy of the seeker of truth, but this is not Sri Aurobindo's view. On the contrary, the concept of Power, Shakti, is one of the keys to his yoga, because without power nothing can be transformed. I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream! exclaims Savitri.273
1.15 - The Suprarational Good, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Neither is its law the pursuit of pleasure high or base, nor self-satisfaction of any kind, however subtle or even spiritual. It is true, here too, that the highest good is both in its nature and inner effect the highest bliss. Ananda, delight of being, is the spring of all existence and that to which it tends and for which it seeks openly or covertly in all its activities. It is true too that in virtue growing, in good accomplished there is great pleasure and that the seeking for it may well be always there as a subconscient motive to the pursuit of virtue. But for practical purposes this is a side aspect of the matter; it does not constitute pleasure into a test or standard of virtue. On the contrary, virtue comes to the natural man by a struggle with his pleasure-seeking nature and is often a deliberate embracing of pain, an edification of strength by suffering. We do not embrace that pain and struggle for the pleasure of the pain and the pleasure of the struggle; for that higher strenuous delight, though it is felt by the secret spirit in us, is not usually or not at first conscious in the conscient normal part of our being which is the field of the struggle. The action of the ethical man is not motived by even an inner pleasure, but by a call of his being, the necessity of an ideal, the figure of an absolute standard, a law of the Divine.
In the outward history of our ascent this does not at first appear clearly, does not appear perhaps at all: there the evolution of man in society may seem to be the determining cause of his ethical evolution. For ethics only begins by the demand upon him of something other than his personal preference, vital pleasure or material self-interest; and this demand seems at first to work on him through the necessity of his relations with others, by the exigencies of his social existence. But that this is not the core of the matter, is shown by the fact that the ethical demand does not always square with the social demand, nor the ethical standard always coincide with the social standard. On the contrary, the ethical man is often called upon to reject and do battle with the social demand, to break, to move away from, to reverse the social standard. His relations with others and his relations with himself are both of them the occasions of his ethical growth; but that which determines his ethical being is his relations with God, the urge of the Divine upon him whether concealed in his nature or conscious in his higher self or inner genius. He obeys an inner ideal, not an outer standard; he answers to a divine law in his being, not to a social claim or a collective necessity. The ethical imperative comes not from around, but from within him and above him.
1.1.5 - Thought and Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Thought is not the giver of Knowledge but the mediator between the Inconscient and the Superconscient. It compels the world born from the Inconscient to reach for a Knowledge other than the instinctive vital or merely empirical, for the Knowledge that itself exceeds thought; it calls for that superconscient Knowledge and prepares the consciousness here to receive it. It rises itself into the higher realms and even in disappearing into the supramental and Ananda levels is transformed into something that will bring down their powers into the silent Self which its cessation leaves behind it.
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One must be conscious of all ones states and movements and the causes and influences that bring them about and conscious too of the Divine the nearness, presence, power, peace, light, knowledge, love, Ananda of the Divine.
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1.16 - Man, A Transitional Being, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
(III.22.3) Then we will know the joy of both worlds and of all the worlds, Ananda, of the earth and heaven as if they were one: "O
Flame, thou foundest the mortal in a supreme immortality . . . for the seer who has thirst for the dual birth, thou createst divine bliss and human joy." (I.31.7) For joy is the ultimate goal of our evolution.
1.16 - The Triple Status of Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
12:Obviously, these three poises would be only different ways of dealing with the same Truth; the Truth of existence enjoyed would be the same, the way of enjoying it or rather the poise of the soul in enjoying it would be different. The delight, the Ananda would vary, but would abide always within the status of the Truth-consciousness and involve no lapse into the Falsehood and the Ignorance. For the secondary and tertiary Supermind would only develop and apply in the terms of the divine multiplicity what the primary Supermind had held in the terms of the divine unity. We cannot stamp any of these three poises with the stigma of falsehood and illusion. The language of the Upanishads, the supreme ancient authority for these truths of a higher experience, when they speak of the Divine existence which is manifesting itself, implies the validity of all these experiences. We can only assert the priority of the oneness to the multiplicity, a priority not in time but in relation of consciousness, and no statement of supreme spiritual experience, no Vedantic philosophy denies this priority or the eternal dependence of the Many on the One. It is because in Time the Many seem not to be eternal but to manifest out of the One and return into it as their essence that their reality is denied; but it might equally be reasoned that the eternal persistence or, if you will, the eternal recurrence of the manifestation in Time is a proof that the divine multiplicity is an eternal fact of the Supreme beyond Time no less than the divine unity; otherwise it could not have this characteristic of inevitable eternal recurrence in Time.
13:It is indeed only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our all-dividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises. Thus, emphasising the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness, we observe the play of the divine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of real difference, but, not satisfied with correcting this error of the mind by the truth of a higher principle, we assert that the play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the One in the Many, we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual soul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would assert the eternity of this qualified existence and deny altogether the experience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness. Or, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the Supreme and the human soul are eternally different and reject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish that difference. But the position that we have now firmly taken absolves us from the necessity of these negations and exclusions: we see that there is a truth behind all these affirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation. Affirming, as we have done, the absolute absoluteness of That, not limited by our ideas of unity, not limited by our ideas of multiplicity, affirming the unity as a basis for the manifestation of the multiplicity and the multiplicity as the basis for the return to oneness and the enjoyment of unity in the divine manifestation, we need not burden our present statement with these discussions or undertake the vain labour of enslaving to our mental distinctions and definitions the absolute freedom of the Divine Infinite.
1.17 - The Divine Soul, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:All the relations of the divine soul with God or its supreme Self and with its other selves in other forms will be determined by this comprehensive self-knowledge. These relations will be relations of being, of consciousness and knowledge, of will and force, of love and delight. Infinite in their potentiality of variation, they need exclude no possible relation of soul with soul that is compatible with the preservation of the inalienable sense of unity in spite of every phenomenon of difference. Thus in its relations of enjoyment the divine soul will have the delight of all its own experience in itself; it will have the delight of all its experience of relation with others as a communion with other selves in other forms created for a varied play in the universe; it will have too the delight of the experiences of its other selves as if they were its own - as indeed they really are. And all this capacity it will have because it will be aware of its own experiences, of its relations with others and of the experiences of others and their relations with itself as all the joy or Ananda of the One, the supreme Self, its own self, differentiated by its separate habitation of all these forms comprehended in its own being but still one in difference. Because this unity is the basis of all its experience, it will be free from the discords of our divided consciousness, divided by ignorance and a separatist egoism; all these selves and their relations will play consciously into each other's hands; they will part and melt into each other as the numberless notes of an eternal harmony.
11:And the same rule will apply to the relations of its being, knowledge, will with the being, knowledge and will of others. For all its experience and delight will be the play of a self-blissful conscious force of being in which, by obedience to this truth of unity, will cannot be at strife with knowledge nor either of them with delight. Nor will the knowledge, will and delight of one soul clash with the knowledge, will and delight of another, because by their awareness of their unity what is clash and strife and discord in our divided being will be there the meeting, entwining and mutual interplay of the different notes of one infinite harmony.
1.17 - The Seven-Headed Thought, Swar and the Dashagwas, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In this hymn Brihaspati is described driving up the cows, breaking Vala by the divine word, brahman.a, concealing the darkness and making Swar visible. The first result is the breaking open by force of the well which has the rock for its face and whose streams are of the honey, madhu, the Soma sweetness, asmasyam avatam madhudharam. This well of honey covered by the rock must be the Ananda or divine beatitude of the supreme threefold world of bliss, the Satya, Tapas and Jana worlds of the
Puranic system based upon the three supreme principles, Sat,
Chit-Tapas and Ananda; their base is Swar of the Veda, Mahar of the Upanishads and Puranas, the world of Truth.4 These four together make the fourfold fourth world and are described in the Rig Veda as the four supreme and secret seats, the source of the "four upper rivers". Sometimes, however, this upper world seems to be divided into two, Swar the base, Mayas or the divine beatitude the summit, so that there are five worlds or births of the ascending soul. The three other rivers are the three lower powers of being and supply the principles of the three lower worlds.
This secret well of honey is drunk by all those who are able to see Swar and they pour out its billowing fountain of sweetness in manifold streams together, tam eva visve papire svardr.so bahu sakam sisicur utsam udrin.am. These many streams poured out together are the seven rivers poured down the hill by Indra after slaying Vritra, the rivers or streams of the Truth, r.tasya dharah.; and they represent, according to our theory, the seven principles of conscious being in their divine fulfilment in the Truth and
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
And yet, outwardly, the conditions are the same, and apparently nothing has changed. There is a sort of locked struggle, wrote Sri Aurobindo, in which neither side can make a very appreciable advance (somewhat like the trench warfare in Europe), the spiritual force insisting against the resistance of the physical world, that resistance disputing every inch and making more or less effective counter-attacks. . . . And if there were not the strength and Ananda within, it would be harassing and disgusting work. 375 The battle seems 375
On Himself, 26:425
1.18 - The Divine Worker, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Brahman in them through all their differences, brahmayogayuktatma, sarvabhutatma-bhutatma. It does not rejoice in the touches of the pleasant or feel anguish in the touches of the unpleasant; neither the wounds of things, nor the wounds of friends, nor the wounds of enemies can disturb the firmness of its outgazing mind or bewilder its receiving heart; this soul is in its nature, as the Upanishad puts it, avran.am, without wound or scar. In all things it has the same imperishable Ananda, sukham aks.ayam asnute.
That equality, impersonality, peace, joy, freedom do not depend on so outward a thing as doing or not doing works. The
1.2.01 - The Call and the Capacity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Knowledge, the Divine Power and the Divine Ananda.
He can succeed in that only if he makes it the supreme object of his life and is prepared to subordinate everything else to this one aim. Otherwise all that can be done is only to make some preparation in this life - a first contact and some preliminary spiritual change in part of the nature.
1.2.01 - The Upanishadic and Purancic Systems, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5. Jana - Ananda world
Sachchid Ananda worlds
12.01 - This Great Earth Our Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Earth gives her material body, her substance for the incarnation and establishment of the supreme state of the Transcendent the Self or Sachchid Anandahere below. And for the manifestation and expression through life and the senses she offers her secret conscious-force, the light-energy to incorporate the supreme Chit-tapas; but the Ananda of the Supreme she realises in a strange and piquant way. The delight that earth offers or embodies is of a special nature. It is the delight of taste.
Tasting, drinking, eating are properties said to be fundamental to the body, and they are no less applicable in the case of the soul. The Gods are memorable eaters and drinkers and a whole family of Rishis has been called Atris, that is to say, 'eaters'. It is said that these physical properites are only metaphorical or symbolical; when used in respect of the spiritual principles and realities they are used as mere tokens or indices because of the deficiencies of language, language being built out of material symbols. It is not quite so, for, as I have said, earth itself is not a mere symbol but a special concentration of Sat and it includes also concentrated Chit and Ananda.
The soul that is imbedded in earth or wedded to it acquires and enjoys these gifts of the earth and carries them forward and offers to the Supreme. The soul is the efflorescence of the earth and in that way it adds a new quality of fulfilment to the fulfilment of the Supreme, the Sachchid Ananda.
12.04 - Love and Death, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As I have said, love depicted here in these plays of Sri Aurobindo is of earth, earthly, even earthy: it is not, one might say, the Divine Loveembodiment of the Supreme Ananda or Sachchid Ananda. And yet Love is one and indivisible, it is always and everywhere the same, essentially the Divine Lovein various moulds. And the mould in which Sri Aurobindo has cast even earthly human love is divinely noble and beautiful. Love has been uttered, as it were, by a Divine tongue and it has been transmuted, irised and is full of the redolence of heaven's delight: if it cannot claim to be the very delight of Brahman (Brahm Ananda) yet it is as the ancients declared, brahmnandasahodaroconsanguineous, of one blood, with Divine Delight.
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1.2.05 - Aspiration, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Him, feel the Light, the Presence, the Love, the Ananda is what matters. So it is always for the spiritual aspiration - it is the law of the spiritual life.
Don't waste time any longer in these ideas of the mind or in any starts of the vital - blow these clouds away. Keep fixed on the one thing indispensable.
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Consciousness, Peace, Ananda, Knowledge, descent of Divine
Force or whatever else is the aim of one's endeavour.
12.05 - Beauty, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Beauty is as much an expression of the Divine as Knowledge, Power or Ananda.
Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital. Supramental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifestating in Matter.
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Beauty is Ananda taking form - but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifesation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.
There is a certain state of Yogic consciousness in which all things become beautiful to the eye of the seer, simply because they spiritually are - because they are a rendering in line and form of the quality and force of existence, of the consciousness, of the Ananda that rules the worlds, - of the hidden Divine. What a thing is to the exterior sense may not be, often is not beautiful for the ordinary aesthetic vision, but the Yogin sees in it the something More which the external does not see, he sees the soul behind, the self and spirit, he sees to the lines, hues, harmonies and expressive dispositions which are not to the first surface sight visible or something that is in himself, transmutes it by adding out of his own being to it - as the artist too does something of the same kind but in another way. It is not quite that however, - what the Yogin sees, what the artist sees, is there - his is a transmuting vision because it is a revealing vision; he discovers behind what the object appears to be the something More that it is. And so from this point of view of a realised supreme harmony all is or can be subject-matter for the artist because in all he can discover and reveal the Beauty that is everywhere. Again we land ourselves in a devastating catholicity; for here too one cannot pull up short at any given line. It may be a hard saying that one must or may discover and reveal beauty in a pig or its poke or in a parish pump or an advertisement of somebody's pills, and yet something like that seems to be what modern Art and literature are trying with vigour and a conscientious labour to do. By extension one ought to be able to extract beauty equally well out of morality or social reform or a political caucus or allow at least that all these things can, if he wills, become legitimate subjects for the artist. Here too one cannot say that it is on condition he thinks of beauty only and does not make moralising or social reform or a political idea his main object. For if with that idea foremost in his mind he still produces a great work of art, discovering Beauty as he moves to his aim, proving himself in spite of his unaesthetic preoccupations a great artist, it is all we can justly ask from him - whatever his starting point - to be a creator of Beauty. Art is discovery and revelation of Beauty and we can say nothing more by way of prohibition or limiting rule.
But there is one thing more that can be said, and it makes a big difference. In the Yogin's vision of universal beauty all becomes beautiful, but all is not reduced to a single level. There are gradations, there is a hierarchy in this All-Beauty and we see that it depends on the ascending power (vibhuti) of consciousness and Ananda that expresses itself in the object. All is the Divine, but some things are more divine than others. In the artist's vision too there are or can be gradations, a hierarchy of values.
1.2.07 - Surrender, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine. For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda.
Surrender is giving oneself to the Divine - to give everything one is or has to the Divine and regard nothing as one's own, to obey only the Divine will and no other, to live for the Divine and not for the ego.
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Surrender everything, reject all other desires or interests, call on the divine Shakti to open the vital nature and bring down calm, peace, light, Ananda into all the centres. Aspire, await with faith and patience the result. All depends on a complete sincerity and an integral consecration and aspiration.
The world will trouble you so long as any part of you belongs to the world. It is only if you belong entirely to the Divine that you can become free.
--
To be enjoyed by the Divine is to be entirely surrendered so that one feels the Divine Presence, Power, Light, Ananda possessing the whole being rather than oneself possessing these things for one's own satisfaction. It is a much greater ecstasy to be thus surrendered and possessed by the Divine than oneself to be the possessor. At the same time by this surrender there comes also a calm and happy mastery of self and nature.
No surrender to the psychic being is demanded, the surrender is to the Divine. One approaches the Divine through faith; concrete experience comes as a result of sadhana. One cannot demand a direct experience without doing anything to prepare the consciousness for it. If one feels the call, one follows it - if there is no call, then there is no need to seek the Divine. Faith is sufficient to start with - the idea that one must first understand and realise before one can seek is a mental error and if it were true would make all sadhana impossible - realisation can come
1.20 - Death, Desire and Incapacity, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
12:As this mask of Death which Life assumes results from the movement of the finite seeking to affirm its immortality, so Desire is the impulse of the Force of Being individualised in Life to affirm progressively in the terms of succession in Time and of self-extension in Space, in the framework of the finite, its infinite Bliss, the Ananda of Sachchid Ananda. The mask of Desire which that impulse assumes comes directly from the third phenomenon of Life, its law of incapacity. Life is an infinite Force working in the terms of the finite; inevitably, throughout its overt individualised action in the finite its omnipotence must appear and act as a limited capacity and a partial impotence, although behind every act of the individual, however weak, however futile, however stumbling, there must be the whole superconscious and subconscious presence of infinite omnipotent Force; without that presence behind it no least single movement in the cosmos can happen; into its sum of universal action each single act and movement falls by the fiat of the omnipotent omniscience which works as the Supermind inherent in things. But the individualised life-force is to its own consciousness limited and full of incapacity; for it has to work not only against the mass of other environing individualised life-forces, but also subject to control and denial by the infinite Life itself with whose total will and trend its own will and trend may not immediately agree. Therefore limitation of force, phenomenon of incapacity is the third of the three characteristics of individualised and divided Life. On the other hand, the impulse of self-enlargement and allpossession remains and it does not and is not meant to measure or limit itself by the limit of its present force or capacity. Hence from the gulf between the impulse to possess and the force of possession desire arises; for if there were no such discrepancy, if the force could always take possession of its object, always attain securely its end, desire would not come into existence but only a calm and self-possessed Will without craving such as is the Will of the Divine.
13:If the individualised force were the energy of a mind free from ignorance, no such limitation, no such necessity of desire would intervene. For a mind not separated from supermind, a mind of divine knowledge would know the intention, scope and inevitable result of its every act and would not crave or struggle but put forth an assured force self-limited to the immediate object in view. It would, even in stretching beyond the present, even in undertaking movements not intended to succeed immediately, yet not be subject to desire or limitation. For the failures also of the Divine are acts of its omniscient omnipotence which knows the right time and circumstance for the incipience, the vicissitudes, the immediate and the final results of all its cosmic undertakings. The mind of knowledge, being in unison with the divine Supermind, would participate in this science and this all-determining power. But, as we have seen, individualised life-force here is an energy of individualising and ignorant Mind, Mind that has fallen from the knowledge of its own Supermind. Therefore incapacity is necessary to its relations in Life and inevitable in the nature of things; for the practical omnipotence of an ignorant force even in a limited sphere is unthinkable, since in that sphere such a force would set itself against the working of the divine and omniscient omnipotence and unfix the fixed purpose of things, - an impossible cosmic situation. The struggle of limited forces increasing their capacity by that struggle under the driving impetus of instinctive or conscious desire is therefore the first law of Life. As with desire, so with this strife; it must rise into a mutually helpful trial of strength, a conscious wrestling of brother forces in which the victor and vanquished or rather that which influences by action from above and that which influences by retort of action from below must equally gain and increase. And this again has eventually to become the happy shock of divine interchange, the strenuous clasp of Love replacing the convulsive clasp of strife. Still, strife is the necessary and salutary beginning. Death, Desire and Strife are the trinity of divided living, the triple mask of the divine Life-principle in its first essay of cosmic self-affirmation.
1.2.10 - Opening, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The object of the self-opening is to allow the force of the Divine to flow in bringing light, peace, Ananda etc. and to do the work of transformation. When the being so receives the Divine Shakti and it works in him, produces its results (whether he is entirely conscious of the process or not), then he is said to be open.
Opening to the Divine
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Influence. It is there above you and, if you can once become conscious of it, you have then to call it down into you. It descends into the mind and into the body as Peace, as a Light, as a Force that works, as the Presence of the Divine with or without form, as Ananda. Before one has this consciousness, one has to have faith and aspire for the opening. Aspiration, call, prayer are forms of one and the same thing and are all effective; you can take the form that comes to you or is easiest to you. The other way is concentration; you concentrate your consciousness in the heart (some do it in the head or above the head) and meditate on the Mother in the heart and call her in there. One can do either and both at different times - whatever comes naturally to you or you are moved to do at the moment.
Especially in the beginning the one great necessity is to get the mind quiet, reject at the time of meditation all thoughts and movements that are foreign to the sadhana. In the quiet mind there will be a progressive preparation for the experience. But you must not become impatient if all is not done at once; it takes time to bring entire quiet into the mind; you have to go on till the consciousness is ready.
1.23 - The Double Soul in Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
14:In the fulfilment of our psychic being as in the consummation of our parts of mind and life, it is the relating of it to its divine source, to its correspondent truth in the Supreme Reality, that is the indispensable movement; and, here too as there, it is by the power of the Supermind that it can be done with an integral completeness, an intimacy that becomes an au thentic identity; for it is the Supermind which links the higher and the lower hemispheres of the One Existence. In Supermind is the integrating Light, the consummating Force, the wide entry into the supreme Ananda: the psychic being uplifted by that Light and Force can unite itself with the original Delight of existence from which it came: overcoming the dualities of pain and pleasure, delivering from all fear and shrinking the mind, life and body, it can recast the contacts of existence in the world into terms of the Divine Ananda.
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
There is no change in the Reality. Reality is always Bliss - Ananda.
D.: Bliss is the outcome of practice. What is that practice?
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
There is no change in the Reality. Reality is always Bliss - Ananda.
D.: Bliss is the outcome of practice. What is that practice?
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M.: We call it Mayakarana as opposed to the antahkarana to which we are accustomed in our other states. The same instruments are called differently in the different states, even as the Anandatman of sleep is termed the vijnanatman of the wakeful state.
D.: Please furnish me with an illustration for the mayakarana experiencing the Ananda.
M.: How can you say I slept happily? The experience is there to prove your happiness. There cannot be the remembrance in the wakeful state in the absence of the experience in the sleep state.
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Yourself being Ananda (Bliss), why should you enjoy it saying,
Ah! How blissful! This is rasasvada.
--
D.: Jivanmukti (liberated while alive) itself being Ananda . . . .
Sri Bhagavan interrupted: Do not look for sastras. What is jivanmukti? What is Ananda? Liberation itself is in doubt. What are all these words? Can they be independent of the Self.
D.: Only we have no experience of all this.
--
M.: Rasa, Ananda, Peace are all names for the same Bliss.
The Professor was shown Mr. Grant Duffs speech in the Philosophical
--
M.: Sat denotes being beyond sat and asat; Chit beyond chit and achit; Ananda beyond bliss and non-bliss.
What is it then? Even if not sat nor asat, It must be admitted to be sat only. Compare the term jnana. It is the state beyond knowledge and ignorance. Yet jnana is not ignorance but knowledge. So also with Sat-chit- Ananda.
1.25 - The Knot of Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
11:This progressive development, this growing manifestation of the divine Consciousness and Force, Knowledge and Will that had lost itself in the ignorance and inertia of Matter, might well be a happy efflorescence proceeding from joy to greater and at last to infinite joy if it were not for the principle of rigid division from which Matter has started. The shutting up of the individual in his own personal consciousness of separate and limited mind, life and body prevents what would otherwise be the natural law of our development. It brings into the body the law of attraction and repulsion, of defence and attack, of discord and pain. For each body being a limited conscious-force feels itself exposed to the attack, impact, forceful contact of other such limited conscious-forces or of universal forces and, where it feels itself broken in upon or unable to harmonise the contacting and the recipient consciousness, it suffers discomfort and pain, is attracted or repelled, has to defend itself or to assail; it is constantly called upon to undergo what it is unwilling or unable to suffer. Into the emotional and the sense-mind the law of division brings the same reactions with the higher values of grief and joy, love and hatred, oppression and depression, all cast into terms of desire, and by desire into straining and effort, and by the straining into excess and defect of force, incapacity, the rhythm of attainment and disappointment, possession and recoil, a constant strife and trouble and unease. Into the mind as a whole, instead of a divine law of narrower truth flowing into greater truth, lesser light taken up into wider light, lower will surrendered to higher transforming will, pettier satisfaction progressing towards nobler and more complete satisfaction, it brings similar dualities of truth pursued by error, light by darkness, power by incapacity, pleasure of pursuit and attainment by pain of repulse and of dissatisfaction with what is attained; mind takes up its own affliction along with the affliction of life and body and becomes aware of the triple defect and insufficiency of our natural being. All this means the denial of Ananda, the negation of the trinity of Sachchid Ananda and therefore, if the negation be insuperable, the futility of existence; for existence in throwing itself out in the play of consciousness and force must seek that movement not merely for itself, but for satisfaction in the play, and if in the play no real satisfaction can be found, it must obviously be abandoned in the end as a vain attempt, a colossal mistake, a delirium of the self-embodying spirit.
12:This is the whole basis of the pessimist theory of the world, - optimist, it may be, as to worlds and states beyond, but pessimist as to the earthly life and the destiny of the mental being in his dealings with the material universe. For it affirms that since the very nature of material existence is division and the very seed of embodied mind is self-limitation, ignorance and egoism, to seek satisfaction of the spirit upon earth or to seek an issue and divine purpose and culmination for the world-play is a vanity and delusion; only in a heaven of the Spirit and not in the world, or only in the Spirit's true quietude and not in its phenomenal activities can we reunite existence and consciousness with the divine self-delight. The Infinite can only recover itself by rejecting as an error and a false step its attempt to find itself in the finite. Nor can the emergence of mental consciousness in the material universe bring with it any promise of a divine fulfilment. For the principle of division is not proper to Matter, but to Mind; Matter is only an illusion of Mind into which Mind brings its own rule of division and ignorance. Therefore within this illusion Mind can only find itself; it can only travel between the three terms of the divided existence it has created: it cannot find there the unity of the Spirit or the truth of the spiritual existence.
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Sivananda ::: Born: September 8, 1887; Died: July 14, 1963; Occupation: Author;
Swami Vivekananda ::: Born: January 12, 1863; Died: July 4, 1902; Occupation: Author;
Paramahansa Yogananda ::: Born: January 5, 1893; Died: March 7, 1952; Occupation: Guru;
Swami Satchidananda ::: Born: December 22, 1914; Died: August 19, 2002; Occupation: Author;
Goswami Kriyananda ::: Born: May 19, 1926; Died: April 21, 2013; Occupation: Author;
Vishnudevananda Saraswati ::: Born: December 31, 1927; Died: November 9, 1993; Occupation: Author;
Swami Brahmananda ::: Born: January 21, 1863; Died: April 10, 1922;
Satyananda Saraswati ::: Born: December 25, 1923; Died: December 5, 2009;
Mata Amritanandamayi ::: Born: September 27, 1953; Occupation: Spiritual leader;
Bhagawan Nityananda ::: Born: 1897; Died: August 8, 1961;
Chinmayananda Saraswati ::: Born: May 8, 1916; Died: August 3, 1993; Occupation: Spiritual leader;
Sivananda Radha Saraswati ::: Born: March 20, 1911; Died: November 30, 1995;
Swami Nithyananda ::: Born: January 1, 1978;
Tejomayananda ::: Born: June 30, 1950;
Swami Paramananda ::: Born: February 5, 1884; Died: June 21, 1940; Occupation: Poet;
Chidananda Saraswati ::: Born: September 24, 1916; Died: August 28, 2008;
Venkatesananda Saraswati ::: Born: December 29, 1921; Died: 1982;
Anandamayi Ma ::: Born: April 30, 1896; Died: August 27, 1982; Occupation: Saint;
Swami Abhedananda ::: Born: October 2, 1866; Died: September 8, 1939; Occupation: Author;
Ananda Coomaraswamy ::: Born: August 22, 1877; Died: September 9, 1947; Occupation: Philosopher;
Krishnananda Saraswati ::: Born: April 25, 1922; Died: November 23, 2001; Occupation: Author;
Nirmalananda ::: Born: December 23, 1863; Died: 1938;
Swami Prabhavananda ::: Born: December 26, 1893; Died: July 4, 1976;
Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha ::: Born: May 13, 1933;
Brahmananda Saraswati ::: Born: December 21, 1870; Died: May 20, 1953;
Shankarananda ::: Born: March 14, 1942; Occupation: Shiva Yoga;
Narayanananda Swami. ::: Born: April 12, 1902; Died: February 26, 1988;
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16007710.Avadhoota_Nadananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1662245.K_Sadananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16850169.Swami_Prabhavananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16873833.Swami_Paramananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17177624.Ananda_Finnikin
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17522764.Sanmatrananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17806778.Svamini_Hamsananda_Giri
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17892858.Ananda_Karunesh
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18217172.Manini_J_Anandani
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18313729.Kaviyogi_Maharishi_Shuddhananda_Bharatiar
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1844361.Swami_Mangalananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19558515.Neha_J_Hiranandani
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2071596.Satyananda_Saraswati
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/215068.Sivananda_Saraswati
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22352.Swami_Kriyananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2609179.Swami_Chidananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2775949.Paramahamsa_Nithyananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/307623.Rishi_Vivekananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/307624.Swami_Hikhilananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/309655.Swami_Abhayananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3105905.Veera_Hiranandani
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3195612.Swami_Jagadananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/349493.Swami_Niranjanananda_Saraswati
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/353100.Paramahamsa_Hariharananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/358195.Swami_Shraddhananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/394814.Bhante_Walpola_Piyananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4035756._Sachchidananda_Hirananda_Vatsyayana_Agyeya_
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4070803.Ananda_Braxton_Smith
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4140785.Sunirmalananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4253556.Swami_Nirvedananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4347738.Swami_Purushottamananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/446239.Ananda_Devi
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/488254.Swami_Satchidananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5022656.Swami_Saradananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5323453.Nima_Sanandaji
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5338547.Dayananda_Saraswati
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5582528.Dayananda_Sarasvati
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/584445.Swami_Ranganathananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/638250.Jibanananda_Das
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/653170.Swami_Amritaswarupananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6537009.Swami_Venkatesananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/656200.Abhishiktananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/668262.Swami_Harshananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/68603.Prabhavananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/68603.Swami_Prabhavananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6936904.Sri_Mata_Amritanandamayi_Devi
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/69658.Swami_Nikhilananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/706673.Swami_Vireswarananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7073964.Sumitranandan_Pant
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7196215.Swami_Yogananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7320164.Sri_Swami_Sivananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/73275.Ananda_K_Coomaraswamy
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7389594.nikhilananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7582093.Swami_Satyananda_Saraswati
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7609419.Sivananda_Yoga_Vedanta_Centre
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7779152.Swami_Bodhasarananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/80592.Swami_Vivekananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/807319.K_Sri_Dhammananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8079742.Sri_G_Ananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8171860.Anandajit_Goswami
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/837815.Paramananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/838118.Sukhabodhananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8424258.Aravindh_Sachidanandam
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8428059.Shuddhaanandaa_Brahmachari
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/851418.Swami_Saradananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/91763.Gurumayi_Chidvilasananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/936645.Anandamayi_Ma
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/98144.Swami_Gambhirananda
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9816706.Krishnananda
Goodreads author - Rudrananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Chetanananda
Goodreads author - Muktananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Muktibodhananda
Goodreads author - Chinmayananda_Saraswati
Goodreads author - Swami_Abhedananda
Goodreads author - Niranjananda_Swami_Saraswati
Goodreads author - Paramhansa_Yogananda
Goodreads author - Paramahansa_Yogananda
Goodreads author - Sri_Shantananda_Sarasvati
Goodreads author - Satyananda_Saraswati
Goodreads author - Sivananda_Saraswati
Goodreads author - Swami_Kriyananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Chidananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Jnanamritananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Abhayananda
Goodreads author - Veera_Hiranandani
Goodreads author - Vishnu_Devananda
Goodreads author - Paramahamsa_Hariharananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Shraddhananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Niranjananda
Goodreads author - _Sachchidananda_Hirananda_Vatsyayana_Agyeya_
Goodreads author - Ananda_Braxton_Smith
Goodreads author - Swami_Nirvedananda
Goodreads author - Ananda_Devi
Goodreads author - Swami_Dayananda_Sarasvati
Goodreads author - Swami_Satchidananda
Goodreads author - Ananda_W_P_Guruge
Goodreads author - Jibanananda_Das
Goodreads author - Swami_Amritaswarupananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Venkatesananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Harshananda
Goodreads author - Prabhavananda
Goodreads author - Sri_Mata_Amritanandamayi_Devi
Goodreads author - Swami_Nikhilananda
Goodreads author - Sumitranandan_Pant
Goodreads author - Swami_Chinmayananda
Goodreads author - Sri_Swami_Sivananda
Goodreads author - Ananda_K_Coomaraswamy
Goodreads author - Swamy_Asutoshananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Vivekananda
Goodreads author - K_Sri_Dhammananda
Goodreads author - Sri_G_Ananda
Goodreads author - Nityananda_Giri
Goodreads author - Sukhabodhananda
Goodreads author - Swami_Saradananda
Goodreads author - Anandamayi_Ma
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ananda
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ananda_Sutram
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Balangoda_Ananda_Maitreya
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Brahmacharya#Swami_Vivekananda_on_Brahmacharya
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dhammananda_Bhikkhuni
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Inspiration_as_musician_by_Ven._Dhammananda
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Kiribathgoda_Gnanananda_Thero
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/K._Sri_Dhammananda
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/integral/ananda.html -- 0
Kheper - Sachchidananda -- 26
Kheper - Muktananda -- 12
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/gurus/Vivekananda.html -- 0
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/gurus/Yogananda.html -- 0
auromere - anandamayi-ma-as-the-guru
auromere - emma-calves-interaction-with-swami-vivekananda
auromere - 200px-emma_calve_001
auromere - san_francisco-1900-seated-4
auromere - anandamayi-ma-as-the-guru
auromere - sri-aurobindo-and-the-mother-on-anandamayi-ma
Integral World - The Skeptical Yogi, Yogananda's Autobiography Under a Critical Microscope, Introduction, David Lane
Integral World - The Enchanted Land, The Yogi: Yogananda, David Lane
selforum - swami vivekananda spoke of involution
selforum - vivekananda modifies classical vedanta
selforum - raja rammohan roy vivekananda tagore
selforum - prof indrani sanyal dr sampadananda
selforum - sri ramakrishna and swami vivekananda
selforum - sri aurobindo ananda coomaraswamy
selforum - vivekanandas doctored picture of
selforum - devdutt pattanaik bijayananda kar and
selforum - ananda k coomaraswamy ak ramanujan and
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/12/sivananda-radha.html
dedroidify.blogspot - yogananda-quotes
https://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2011/02/sri-aurobindo-vivekananda-and-voices-of.html
https://circumsolatious.blogspot.com/2011/02/vivekananda-patrizia-norelli-bachelet.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2013/06/anandavala_7.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2014/01/ananda-marg-and-cosmology.html
wiki.auroville - Ajay_Nityananda's_"Living_house"
wiki.auroville - Ananda
wiki.auroville - Ananda_Reddy
wiki.auroville - Kaliananda
wiki.auroville - Lama_Gompananda
wiki.auroville - Lama_Govindananda
wiki.auroville - Medhananda
wiki.auroville - On_the_threshold_of_a_new_age_with_Medhananda
wiki.auroville - Paramahansa_Yogananda
wiki.auroville - Sat-Chit-Ananda
wiki.auroville - Satchitananda
wiki.auroville - Satchitananda_Raw_Food_Restaurant
wiki.auroville - Swami_Brahmananda
wiki.auroville - Swami_Vivekananda
wiki.auroville - V._Chidanandam
Dharmapedia - Agehananda_Bharati
Dharmapedia - Ananda_Coomaraswamy
Dharmapedia - Ananda_Marga
Dharmapedia - Anandamayi_Ma
Dharmapedia - Balangoda_Ananda_Maitreya_Thero
Dharmapedia - Chinmayananda_Saraswati
Dharmapedia - Dayananda_Saraswati
Dharmapedia - Dayananda_Saraswati_(Arsha_Vidya
Dharmapedia - File:Swami_Vivekananda-1893-09-signed.jpg
Dharmapedia - File:Swami_Vivekananda_1896.jpg
Dharmapedia - Katukurunde_Nyanananda_Thera
Dharmapedia - Krishnananda_Saraswati
Dharmapedia - K._Satchidanandan
Dharmapedia - Lakshmanananda_Saraswati
Dharmapedia - Murder_of_Swami_Lakshmanananda
Dharmapedia - Paramahansa_Yogananda
Dharmapedia - Pragyananda_Mahasthavir
Dharmapedia - Q:Swami_Vivekananda
Dharmapedia - Sathyananda_Saraswathi
Dharmapedia - Sivananda_Saraswati
Dharmapedia - Swami_Dayananda_Saraswati
Dharmapedia - Swami_Lakshmanananda
Dharmapedia - Swami_Prabhavananda
Dharmapedia - Swami_Shraddhananda
Dharmapedia - Swami_Sivananda
Dharmapedia - Swami_Vipulananda
Dharmapedia - Swami_Vivekananda
Dharmapedia - Swami_Vivekananda:_A_Historical_Review
Dharmapedia - Vivekananda
Dharmapedia - Yogananda
Psychology Wiki - File:Vivekananda.png
Psychology Wiki - Hinduism#CITEREFBhaskarananda1994
Psychology Wiki - Hinduism#CITEREFChidbhavananda1997
Psychology Wiki - Hinduism#CITEREFNikhilananda1990
Psychology Wiki - Hinduism#CITEREFNikhilananda1992
Psychology Wiki - Hinduism#CITEREFVivekananda1987
Psychology Wiki - Satyananda_Yoga
Psychology Wiki - Sivananda_Yoga
Psychology Wiki - Swami_Satyananda
Psychology Wiki - Swami_Sivananda
Psychology Wiki - Swami_Vivekananda
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/StarWarsObiWanAndAnakin
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/AGemAHumanAndABaby
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/AManAndAWoman
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ThePelicanAndAfter
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GentlemanAndAScholar
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IrishmanAndAJew
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/FlammanAndAbraxas
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/JourneyInSatchidananda
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ananda_Coomaraswamy
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ananda_Ranga_Pillai
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bhagawan_Nityananda
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chinmayananda_Saraswati
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Damodar_Dharmananda_Kosambi
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Anandabodhi.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Dayananda_Saraswati.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ganapathy_Sachchidananda_Swamiji
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hariharananda_Giri
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jibanananda_Das
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/K._Sri_Dhammananda_Maha_Thera
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mata_Amritanandamayi
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Muktananda
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niranjanananda_Saraswati
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paramahansa_Yogananda
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Satchidananda_Saraswati
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Satyananda_Saraswati
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shantananda_Saraswati
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sri_Anandamoyi_Ma
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Swami_Adbhutananda
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Swami_Narayanananda
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Swami_Sivananda
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Swami_Vivekananda
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vivekananda
https://allpoetry.com/Jibanananda-Das
https://allpoetry.com/Paramahansa-Yogananda
https://allpoetry.com/Swami-Vivekananda
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/A/AnandamurtiS/index.html
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/M/MuktanandaSw/index.html
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/R/Ramananda/index.html
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/V/Vivekananda/index.html
https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/Y/YoganandaPar/index.html
https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Aealacreatrananda
https://fingerlakes.fandom.com/wiki/Canandaigua
https://fumetsunoanatae.fandom.com/wiki/Jananda
https://fumetsunoanatae.fandom.com/wiki/Jananda_Island_Arc
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/ABP_Ananda
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Anandabazar_Patrika
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Anandalok
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Anandamela
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Ananda_Publishers
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Sananda
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Sananda_TV
https://phansud.fandom.com/wiki/ANANDA
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Aaraanandal_slime_beast
https://urban-rivals.fandom.com/wiki/Pravanandah
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Swami_Tathagatananda
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Swami_Vivekananda
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vishnudevananda_Saraswati
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acarya_Shraddhananda_Avadhuta_01b.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acarya_Shraddhananda_Avadhuta_01.jpg
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alakananda_Ghosh_Performing_Opening_Song_-_Biswatosh_Sengupta_Solo_Exhibition_Inauguration_-_Kolkata_2015-07-28_3151.JPG
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ananda_2b.gif
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cenotaph_of_Vivekananda.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dayananda_Saraswati.ogg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paramahamsa_Antarmukhananda.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Satyananda_lotus_position.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shaktiananda.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sri_Swami_satyananda_ji.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SwamiJanakananda_AixLeBains.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swami_Nigamananda.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swami_sandeepanandagiri1.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swami_Veetamohananda-Zinal_2011_(1).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swami_Veetamohananda-Zinal_2011_(4).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Swami_Vivekananda
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere&target=Category:Swami+Vivekananda
150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda
Aalohari Anandam
Aanandam
Aanandan
Abhayananda
Abhishiktananda
A Bouquet of Swami Vivekananda's Writings
ABP Ananda
Achalananda
Achuthanandan ministry
Achyutananda
Adbhutananda
Advaitananda
Adyar Ananda Bhavan
Agehananda Bharati
Akananda and Bakananda
Akhandananda
Aliabad, Sanandaj
Alokananda Roy
Amara Asavananda
Ambalavaner Sivanandan
Anam Vivekananda Reddy
Ananda (album)
Anandabazar Patrika
Anandabhadram
Anandabhairavi
Anandabhairavi (2007 film)
Ananda Bhairavi (film)
Anandabodhi
Ananda Central College
Ananda Chandra Barua
Anandacharlu
Ananda College
Ananda Coomaraswamy
Ananda Dassanayake
Ananda Gopal Mukherjee
Ananda Gotrika
Ananda in the Himalayas
Ananda, Ivory Coast
Ananda Krishnan
Ananda Krishnan (director)
Anandalahari
Ananda Lal
Ananda Lewis
Anandalok Award for Best Actress (Hindi)
Anandalok Puraskar
Ananda Mahidol
Ananda Marchildon
Ananda Marga
Anandamath
Anandamayi Ma
Anandamela
Anandamide
Ananda Millangoda
Anandamohan Bose
Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty
Anandanagar
AnandaNalanda
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Anandapala
Ananda Prasad
Anandapuram mandal
Ananda Puraskar
Anandapur (Odisha Vidhan Sabha constituency)
Ananda Pyissi
Anandaraj
Ananda Rao
Ananda Rao Samuel
Ananda Ratna Maurya
Ananda Samarakoon
Ananda Sastralaya, Kotte
Ananda Sastralaya, Matugama
Ananda Shipyard & Slipways Limited
Anandashram, Kanhangad
Anandasramam, Changanacherry
Ananda Temple
Ananda Thandavam
Ananda Thandavam (film)
Anandathandavapuram
Anandatissa de Alwis
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Anandavally
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Ananda Vikatan
Ananda Vikatan Cinema Awards
Ananda Wedisinghe
Ananda W. P. Guruge
Ananda Yoga
Anathalavattom Anandan
Anita Hassanandani
Assad Sheikholeslami Sanandaji
Atmananda Krishna Menon
Atmaprajnananda Saraswati
Atmasthananda
Awake: The Life of Yogananda
Baburam Maharaj (Swami Premananda)
Bachu Sathyanandam Devamani
Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Thero
Battle of Aanandapuram
Beerendra Keshava Tarakananda Puri
Bhagawan Nityananda
Bhavan's Vivekananda College
Bhuteshananda
Bibliography of Swami Vivekananda
Bikalananda Kar
Bireswar Vivekananda
Bodhamayananda
Bodhananda
Bodhananda Saraswati
Book:Swami Vivekananda
Brahmanandam
Canandaigua Academy
Canandaigua Lake
Canandaigua, New York
Canandaigua (town), New York
Chidananda Dasgupta
Chidananda Saraswati
Chidawan Anandamrongchai
Chinmayananda Saraswati
Cnemaspis anandani
C. V. Ananda Bose
Dada Maheshvarananda
Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi
Daniel Sadananda
Darvishan, Sanandaj
Dayananda de Silva
Dayananda Pai
Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering
Dayananda Sagar University
Dayananda Saraswati
Dayananda Saraswati (Arsha Vidya)
Debanandapur
Devananda Bharali
Dhammananda
Dhammananda Bhikkhuni
Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi
D. M. Ananda
Douglas Devananda
Doveyseh, Sanandaj
Dowlatabad, Sanandaj
Draft:Swami Vivekananda University, West Bengal
Dr. L. H. Hiranandani College of Pharmacy
Dr. Nalli Kuppuswami Vivekananda Vidyalaya Junior College
Durgananda Jha
D. V. Sadananda Gowda
Edwin Krishnanandarajah
Film News Anandan
Gahanananda
Gambhirananda
Gananda, New York
Ganapathi Sachchidananda
Gandoman, Sanandaj
Geetha Anandan
Gezar Darreh, Sanandaj
Girijananda Chowdhury Institute of Management and Technology
Girijananda Chowdhury Institute of Management and Technology, Tezpur
Gnanananda Giri
Gokulananda Mahapatra
Grahanandan Singh
Gratien Ananda
Gunananda Himi Migettuwatte
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
Hariharananda Giri
Hemananda Biswal
Hiranandani Gardens, Mumbai
Hiranandani Group
Hiranandani Parks, Chennai
Influence and legacy of Swami Vivekananda
Integral Yoga (Satchidananda)
Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj Branch
Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajasthan Sanskrit University
Janakananda Saraswati
Jayananda Dasa
Jayananda Singh
Jibanananda Das
Jnanananda Bharati
John Sadananda
Jyo Achyutananda
Kalati, Sanandaj
Kalikananda Abadhut
Kalkan, Sanandaj
Kalyanananda
K. Ananda Rau
Kasu Brahmananda Reddy
Kasu Brahmananda Reddy National Park
Katukurunde Nyanananda Thera
Kesavananda Bharati
Khananda
Khanandabil-e Gharbi Rural District
Khanandabil-e Sharqi Rural District
Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero
Kirtanananda Swami
K. Murugesan Anandan
Kosalananda Kavya
Kotha Satchidananda Murthy
K. P. Brahmanandan
KP Vivekananda
Krananda
Krananda oliveomarginata
Krananda semihyalina
Kripalvananda
Krishnananda Saraswati
Kriyananda
Krtin Nithiyanandam
K. Satchidanandan
K. Sri Dhammananda
Life and Philosophy of Swami Vivekananda
List of Ananda College alumni
Madushika Methtananda
Mahadevananda Mahavidyalaya
Mahananda
Mahananda Dasgupta
Mamidipudi Anandam
Mata Amritanandamayi
Mata Amritanandamayi Math
Maud MacCarthy (Omananda Puri)
Methanandamide
Migettuwatte Gunananda Thera
Moinabad, Sanandaj
Muktananda
Mukundananda
Murder of Lakshmanananda Saraswati
Nagananda Kodituwakku
Natuk Vivekananda Bidyamandir
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