TERMS STARTING WITH
Mental Plane ::: Also Briah. One of the Four Worlds as part of the Kabbalistic map of reality. A realm of reality between the Astral Plane and the Causal that serves as the abode of the roots of dualistic expression and the foundation upon which individual forms and archetypes can start to be created: those seeds of intent that drive reality through the lower two worlds. See also Mental Projection.
mental plane ::: a world of mental existence in which neither life, nor matter, but mind is the first determinant; mind there is not determined by material conditions or by the life-force, but itself determines and uses them for its own satisfaction.
Mental plane; mental world: The plane of existence after the astral plane; the plane where man is believed by occultists to live in the mental body after “death” on the astral plane.
TERMS ANYWHERE
akasa (akasha) ::: any subtle ether (sūks.ma akasa) belonging to the mental plane, such as the cittakasa; the mental ether of the material plane, the highest akasa of the triloka in bhū.
Akashic Records ::: A form of collective memory that can be tapped into via symbolic resonance and is associated mainly with archetypes on the Mental Plane and their Astral counterparts (the visualizations through which they are accessed).
Amal: “‘The deathless Rose’ is one side of the highest mental plane. The other side is the deathless Flame. They seem to represent, respectively, the aspect of Beauty and the aspect of Power.”
Amal: “There are two realities on the way from mind to Supermind. One is: ‘The lovely Kingdoms of the deathless Rose’ and the other, ‘The mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame’. They represent the Beauty and the Power above the mental plane.”
anandabuddha ::: (van.i) expressing ananda on the mental plane. anandabuddha
ananda manas ::: the principle of ananda reflected in the mental plane ananda
ananda ::: the form of ananda corresponding to the mental plane (same as ahaituka ananda).
an.i ::: mental voice; a communication from a spirit belonging to the mental plane.
antariks.a (antariksha) ::: the mid-region between earth and heaven; the "intermediate dynamic, vital or nervous consciousness" connecting the physical and mental planes, the world of the life-force, same as bhuvar.
apati ::: Manu as the first Prajapati, "a part of Mahavishnu Himself descended into the mental plane in order to conduct the destinies of the human race".
ASCENT AND RETURN. ::: Once the being or its different parts begin to ascend to the planes above, any part of the being may do it, frontal or other. The samskāra that one cannot come back must be got rid of. One can have the experience of Nirvana at the summit of the mind or anywhere in those planes that are now superconscient to the mind; the mind spiritualised by the ascent into Self has the sense of laya, dissolution of itself, its thoughts, movements, samskāras into a superconscient Silence and Infinity which it is unable to grasp, - the Unknowable. But this would bring or lead to some form of Nirvana only if one makes Nirvana the goal, if one is tied to the mind and accepts its dissolution into the Infinite as one’s own dissolution or if one has not the capacity to reorganise experience on a higher than the mental plane. But otherwise what was superconscient becomes conscient, one begins to possess or else to be the instrument of the dynamis of the higher planes and there is a movement, not of liberation into Nirvana but of liberation and transformation. However high one goes one can always return, unless one has the will not to do so.
Astral Plane ::: Also Yetzirah. One of the Four Worlds as part of the Kabbalistic map of reality. A realm of reality situated between the Physical and Mental Planes that serves as the abode of the imagination. This is the foundation upon which the capacity to visualize exists and is where the ability to express many emotional archetypes originates. The most "real" aspects of experiences of astral projection, visionary journeys, and dreams tend to be found in this layer. See also Astral Projection.
Bala2 ::: the name of a daitya or Titan, regarded by Sri Aurobindo as a force from the mahat, the plane of the vastness of vijñana, descended into the mental plane and there "disturbing evolution by a premature effort towards perfection".
ble and even manifest themselves without being sought for. They can be acquired and fixed by processes which the science gives, and their use then becomes subject to the will ; or they can be allowed to develop of themselves and used only when they come, or when the Divine within moves us to use them ; or else,. even though thus naturally developing and acting, they may be rejected in a siogle-minded devotion to the one supreme goal of the Yoga. Secondly, there are fuller, • greater powers belonging to the supramental planes which are the very powers of the
blue lotus of the Idea. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane.” Visions of Champaklal
Mental Plane ::: Also Briah. One of the Four Worlds as part of the Kabbalistic map of reality. A realm of reality between the Astral Plane and the Causal that serves as the abode of the roots of dualistic expression and the foundation upon which individual forms and archetypes can start to be created: those seeds of intent that drive reality through the lower two worlds. See also Mental Projection.
Briah ::: Also Bria. See Mental Plane. The World of Creation in Kabbalistic terminology as per the Four Worlds model.
buddha ::: mental; the mental plane, the plane of buddhi.
By Saraadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of with- drawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consdousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consdousness and posses thence to the higher supra- mental planes on which the indiWdual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and conrentrated energising of consdousness on its object which our phiJos^hy asserts as the priraa/j' cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the
Chesed ::: Translated as "Mercy" in Hebrew. The fourth Sephirah of the Kabbalah. It is representative of the first emanation of dualistic force: the expansive, vivifying, yang energy that characterizes phenomenal reality and which fills and enriches the lower Sephiroth on the Pillar of Mercy. Along with Geburah and Tiphereth, Chesed is associated with the Ethical Triad and the Mental Plane (i.e the Second World) and is the raw joy and vivacity of dualistic reality that emerged from the Causal. Associated with the sphere of Jupiter in the planetary magic paradigm.
Chit ::: Chit, the divine Consciousness, is not our mental selfawareness; that we shall find to be only a form, a lower and limited mode or movement. As we progress and awaken to the soul in us and things, we shall realise that there is a consciousness also in the plant, in the metal, in the atom, in electricity, in everything that belongs to physical nature; we shall find even that it is not really in all respects a lower or more limited mode than the mental, on the contrary it is in many "inanimate" forms more intense, rapid, poignant, though less evolved towards the surface. But this also, this consciousness of vital and physical Nature is, compared with Chit, a lower and th
refore a limited form, mode and movement. These lower modes of consciousness are the conscious-stuff of inferior planes in one indivisible existence. In ourselves also there is in our subconscious being an action which is precisely that of the "inanimate" physical Nature whence has been constituted the basis of our physical being, another which is that of plantlife, and another which is that of the lower animal creation around us. All these are so much dominated and conditioned by the thinking and reasoning conscious-being in us that we have no real awareness of these lower planes; we are unable to perceive in their own terms what these parts of us are doing, and receive it very imperfectly in the terms and values of the thinking and reasoning mind. Still we know well enough that there is an animal in us as well as that which is characteristically human,—something which is a creature of conscious instinct and impulse, not
reflective or rational, as well as that which turns back in thought and will on its experience, meets it from above with the light and force of a higher plane and to some degree controls, uses and modifies it. But the animal in man is only the head of our subhuman being; below it there is much that is also sub-animal and merely vital, much that acts by an instinct and impulse of which the constituting consciousness is withdrawn behind the surface. Below this sub-animal being, there is at a further depth the subvital. When we advance in that ultra-normal self-knowledge and experience which Yoga brings with it, we become aware that the body too has a consciousness of its own; it has habits, impulses, instincts, an inert yet effective will which differs from that of the rest of our being and can resist it and condition its effectiveness. Much of the struggle in our being is due to this composite existence and the interaction of these varied and heterogeneous planes on each other. For man here is the result of an evolution and contains in himself the whole of that evolution up from the merely physical and subvital conscious being to the mental creature which at the top he is. But this evolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal selves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being supernormal and superhuman planes. There Chit as the universal conscious-stuff of existence takes other poises, moves out in other modes, on other principles and by other faculties of action. There is above the mind, as the old Vedic sages discovered, a Truth-plane, a plane of self-luminous, self-effective Idea, which can be turned in light and force upon our mind, reason, sentiments, impulses, sensations and use and control them in the sense of the real Truth of things just as we turn our mental reason and will upon our sense-experience and animal nature to use and control them in the sense of our rational and moral perceptions. There is no seeking, but rather natural possession; no conflict or separation between will and reason, instinct and impulse, desire and experience, idea and reality, but all are in harmony, concomitant, mutually effective, unified in their origin, in their development and in their effectuation. But beyond this plane and attainable through it are others in which the very Chit itself becomes revealed, Chit the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience. There will and knowledge and sensation and all the rest of our faculties, powers, modes of experience are not merely harmonious, concomitant, unified, but are one being of consciousness and power of consciousness. It is this Chit 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. All is Chit because all is Sat; all is various movement of the original Consciousness because all is various movement of the original Being. When we find, see or know Chit, we find also that its essence is Ananda or delight of self-existence. To possess self is to possess self-bliss; not to possess self is to be in more or less obscure search of the delight of existence. Chit eternally possesses its self-bliss; and since Chit is the universal conscious-stuff of being, conscious universal being is also in possession of conscious self-bliss, master of the universal delight of existence. The Divine whether it manifests itself in All-Quality or in No-Quality, in Personality or Impersonality, in the One absorbing the Many or in the One manifesting its essential multiplicity, is always in possession of self-bliss and all-bliss because it is always Sachchidananda. For us also to know and possess our true Self in the essential and the universal is to discover the essential and the universal delight of existence, self-bliss and all-bliss. For the universal is only the pouring out of the essential existence, consciousness and delight; and wherever and in whatever form that manifests as existence, there the essential consciousness must be and th
refore there must be an essential delight.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 387 - 88 - 89
cidakasa (chidakasha; chidakash) ::: the ether of pure consciousness cidakasa (cit); a subtle ether (sūks.ma akasa) or "inner space" behind the cittakasa; its accessibility to the mind in antardarsi jagrat and svapnasamadhi and its mention in connection with the cittakasa suggest that the cidakasa referred to by Sri Aurobindo is the ether of cit on the mental plane, not on its own highest plane.
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".
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
Current ::: A thread of symbolic resonance. By attuning to a current, one's reality is both sculpted by that current and the energy of that current can be used to influence and change reality. Currents are typically built upon more fundamental archetypes and hence are an emergent structure that usually exist starting around the lower Mental Plane and extending into the Astral Plane where visualization can access and work with them more easily.
Dreams of physical mind and yogic dreams ; The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind-faculties disconnected from the will and reason, the bttddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the bram-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co-ordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, wnlh brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear pos- session of itself, though not of the physical world, works cohe- rently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelli- gence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of communication with material things ; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflec- tion, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the distractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have their after-consequences on the waking state subsequent to the cessa- tion of the trance.
Earthquakes Physical phenomena such as earthquakes are generally the end-products of a chain of causation operating not only on the physical plane but also on other cosmic planes. A study of the geology of the earth’s crust as regards the lie of the rocks, the position of faults, the presence of volcanic activities, etc., may indicate the places most likely to be affected, and the relation between earthquakes and the positions of the heavenly bodies is now receiving some consideration from scientists; but they still do not recognize any connection between the cause of earthquakes and events on the mental plane of the earth. “But when they understand that there is no such thing as accident in the universe, that every event which appears to us as accident, is the effect of a force on the mental plane, then they will be able to understand why the superstitious Hindus look upon earthquakes as the effect of accumulated sins committed by men.” (Theos 6:285, "Earthquakes" by K. D. M.)
Ethical Triad ::: Also "Ethical Triangle". The three Sephiroth of the Kabbalah that make up the fulcrum that is Briatic consciousness (i.e. the Mental Plane).
Formless Realms ::: Areas of reality, likely corresponding to the upper reaches of the Mental Plane in the Four Worlds model, where consciousness sheds a discrete form and exists simply as formless awareness, awareness of space, awareness of awareness, etc. The Formless Realms proper correspond to the higher states of the samatha jhanas.
Four Worlds ::: A model of the stages of reality described by the Kabbalah in which the Kabbalistic map is partitioned into four rows where each row contains a number of Sephiroth. These illustrate, from the top down, the evolution of Consciousness from the Non-Dual realm of the Causal Plane through the dualistic beginnings of archetypes in the Mental Plane through the visionary capacity of collective and individual imagination in the Astral Plane into the physical expressions of forms in the Physical Plane.
Geburah ::: Translated as "Strength" in Hebrew. The fifth Sephirah of the Kabbalah. It is representative of the first emanation of dualistic form: the constraining, tempering, yin energy that characterizes phenomenal reality and which forges and disciplines the lower Sephiroth on the Pillar of Severity. Along with Chesed and Tiphereth, Geburah is associated with the Ethical Triad and the Mental Plane (i.e the Second World) and is associated with the harsher lessons and laws of dualistic reality that emerged from the Causal; it is representative of those experiences that are necessary to forge a greater complexity of consciousness and a greater understanding of condition and causality. Associated with the sphere of Mars in the planetary magic paradigm.
Gros Bon Ang ::: Also "Gros Bon Ange". The Big Guardian Angel. Refers in Vodou belief to the part of the soul transcendent to the individual, lunar personality. This roughly corresponds to the sheaths of the Mental Plane and to the Higher Self in Western occult practice.
Heaven-world: The designation used by certain schools of occultism for the mental plane of existence.
Higher Self ::: An aspect of self linked to Mental Plane archetypes and Solar Consciousness and which transcends individual lives (essentially it imparts some of the meaning that drives "lower" levels of self to manifest, including the need for a physical form). Higher Self tends to guide the soul to its optimal evolution and seeks to help one take control of their fate and learn to work Will. The HGA is often considered an aspect of Higher Self.
hyperfocus: is an intense form of mental concentration or visualisation that focuses consciousness on a narrow subject, or beyond objective reality and onto subjective mental planes, daydreams, concepts, fiction, the imagination, and other objects of the mind.
Information Plane ::: In the Seven Planes Model this is the fifth plane (up from and including the Physical) and is roughly delineated as the area of reality where information on (and transcending) individual forms starts to coalesce and can be accessed and worked with by the attuned mind. Roughly corresponds with the lower Mental Plane in the Four Worlds model.
“In the popular belief, semi-divine beings, shades of saints, inconsumable by fire, impervious to water, who dwell in Tapo-loka with the hope of being translated into Satya-loka — a more purified state which answers to Nirvana. The term is explained as the aerial bodies or astral shades of ‘ascetics, mendicants, anchorites, and penitents, who have completed their course of rigorous austerities.’ [Vishnu-Purana, Wilson, 2:229] Now in esoteric philosophy they are called Nirmanakayas, Tapo-loka being on the sixth plane (upward) but in direct communication with the mental plane. The Vairajas are referred to as the first gods because the Manasaputras and the Kumaras are the oldest in theogony, as it is said that even the gods worshipped them (Matsya Purana); those whom Brahma ‘with the eye of Yoga beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the gods of gods’ (Vayu Purana)” (TG 358).
It is here, when this foundation has been secured, that the practice of Asana and Pranayama come in and can then bear their perfect fruits. By itself the control of the mind and moral being only puts our normal consciousness into the right preliminary condition; it cannot bring about that evolution or manifestation of the higher psychic being which is necessary for the greater aims of Yoga. In order to bring about this manifestation the present nodus of the vital and physical body with the mental being has to be loosened and the way made clear for the ascent through the greater psychic being to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Pranayama. Asana is used by the Rajayoga only in its easiest and most natural position, that naturally taken by the body when seated and gathered together, but with the back and head strictly erect and in a straight line, so that there may be no deflection of the spinal cord. The object of the latter rule is obviously connected with the theory of the six chakras and the circulation of the vital energy between the muladhara and the brahmarandhra. The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears the nervous system; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will according to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being; it gives us control of all the five habitual operations of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality are possible to the normal life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings into the waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Purusha on each of the ascending planes. Coupled with the use of the mantra it brings the divine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadhi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method. Rajayogic concentration is divided into four stages; it commences with the drawing both of the mind and senses from outward things, proceeds to the holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of all other ideas and mental activities, then to the prolonged absorption of the mind in this object, finally, to the complete ingoing of the consciousness by which it is lost to all outward mental activity in the oneness of Samadhi. The real object of this mental discipline is to draw away the mind from the outward and the mental world into union with the divine Being. Th
refore in the first three stages use has to be made of some mental means or support by which the mind, accustomed to run about from object to object, shall fix on one alone, and that one must be something which represents the idea of the Divine. It is usually a name or a form or a mantra by which the thought can be fixed in the sole knowledge or adoration of the Lord. By this concentration on the idea the mind enters from the idea into its reality, into which it sinks silent, absorbed, unified. This is the traditional method. There are, however, others which are equally of a Rajayogic character, since they use the mental and psychical being as key. Some of them are directed rather to the quiescence of the mind than to its immediate absorption, as the discipline by which the mind is simply watched and allowed to exhaust its habit of vagrant thought in a purposeless running from which it feels all sanction, purpose and interest withdrawn, and that, more strenuous and rapidly effective, by which all outward-going thought is excluded and the mind forced to sink into itself where in its absolute quietude it can only
reflect the pure Being or pass away into its superconscient existence. The method differs, the object and the result are the same. Here, it might be supposed, the whole action and aim of Rajayoga must end. For its action is the stilling of the waves of consciousness, its manifold activities, cittavrtti, first, through a habitual replacing of the turbid rajasic activities by the quiet and luminous sattwic, then, by the stilling of all activities; and its object is to enter into silent communion of soul and unity with the Divine. As a matter of fact we find that the system of Rajayoga includes other objects,—such as the practice and use of occult powers,—some of which seem to be unconnected with and even inconsistent with its main purpose. These powers or siddhis are indeed frequently condemned as dangers and distractions which draw away the Yogin from his sole legitimate aim of divine union. On the way, th
refore, it would naturally seem as if they ought to be avoided; and once the goal is reached, it would seem that they are then frivolous and superfluous. But Rajayoga is a psychic science and it includes the attainment of all the higher states of consciousness and their powers by which the mental being rises towards the superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the Highest. Moreover, the Yogin, while in the body, is not always mentally inactive and sunk in Samadhi, and an account of the powers and states which are possible to him on the higher planes of his being is necessary to the completeness of the science. These powers and experiences belong, first, to the vital and mental planes above this physical in which we live, and are natural to the soul in the subtle body; as the dependence on the physical body decreases, these abnormal activities become possible and even manifest themselves without being sought for. They can be acquired and fixed by processes which the science gives, and their use then becomes subject to the will; or they can be allowed to develop of themselves and used only when they come, or when the Divine within moves us to use them; or else, even though thus naturally developing and acting, they may be rejected in a single-minded devotion to the one supreme goal of the Yoga. Secondly, there are fuller, greater powers belonging to the supramental planes which are the very powers of the Divine in his spiritual and supramentally ideative being. These cannot be acquired at all securely or integrally by personal effort, but can only come from above, or else can become natural to the man if and when he ascends beyond mind and lives in the spiritual being, power, consciousness and ideation. They then become, not abnormal and laboriously acquired siddhis, but simply the very nature and method of his action, if he still continues to be active in the world-existence.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 539-40-41-42
Jhumur: “It is the little sense mind which thinks itself to be very great. It is just a small point of consciousness, it is a small world and yet it thinks itself to be the whole world. The physical mind really thinks itself to be a very huge field of experience. It is the first mental plane after the physical.”
manasa ::: mental; pertaining to manas, having the nature of mind in manasa general or of the sensational mind; mentality; subtle sense-perception (vis.ayadr.s.t.i) on the mental plane by means of the inner manas. m manasa anasa abhy abhyasa
Manodhatu (Sanskrit) Manodhātu [from manas mind + dhātu world, sphere] The sphere or world of the mind or intellect; a generalizing name not only for one of the divisions of the mental plane, but also for the sum total of each person’s mental faculties.
manomaya ::: mental; mental activity; the mental being; the mental plane.
Mental body: The “body” in which, according to occult philosophy, the conscious personality of man lives on the mental plane of existence, after “death” on the astral plane. Marc Edmund Jones calls it “the agency by which an individual functions in transcendental realms of idea, or through self-sufficient consciousness.”
mental plane ::: a world of mental existence in which neither life, nor matter, but mind is the first determinant; mind there is not determined by material conditions or by the life-force, but itself determines and uses them for its own satisfaction.
Mental plane; mental world: The plane of existence after the astral plane; the plane where man is believed by occultists to live in the mental body after “death” on the astral plane.
Mental Projection ::: The ability to firmly focus one's awareness at the level of the Mental Plane and to slip between and amongst the forms that characterize this level. Through practice this allows for exploring the realm of symbolic archetypes and raw information to the extent that the human mind can lucidly and persistently form structures around such ideas. See also Mental Plane.
“Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes,—towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” The Life Divine
PLANES. ::: If we regard the gmdatton of worlds or planes as a whole, we see them as a great connected complex move- ment ; the higher precipitate their influences on the lower, the lotver react to the higher and develop or manifest in themselves within their own formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedica^ to a pressure from the supra- mental plane. In more detail, particular forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher world can throw themselves on the lower to establish appropriate and corresponding forms which will connect them with the material domain and, as it were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has, supporting it, subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make it subsist and connect it with forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the s’eil in direct connection with suprapbysical planes of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings. What takes place in life has always behind it pie-existeni movements and forms in the occult vital planes ; what takes place in mind presupposes prc-cxistcnt movements and forms in the occult mental planes. That is an aspect of things which becomes more and more evident, insistent and important, the more we progress in a dynamic yoga.
Planes of existence: All schools of occultism teach that the conscious personality of man lives on after the death of the physical body, and that life in the physical world, in the physical body is merely a plane of existence, after which there follows life on the astral plane and then on the mental plane.
Platonic Forms ::: These are viewed as constructs of the higher Mental Plane that sculpt the raw foundations of dualistic, experiential reality. See Archetype.
quote :::As in the physical being of an individual many small germs are born and nourished which are also living beings, so in his mental plane there are many beings, termed Muwakkals, or elementals. These are still finer entities born of man's own thoughts, and as the germs live in his physical body so the elementals dwell in his mental sphere. Man often imagines that thoughts are without life; he does not see that they are more alive than the physical germs and that they have a birth, childhood, youth, age and death. They work for man's advantage or disadvantage according to their nature. The Sufi creates, fashions and controls them.
rajas ::: (etymologically) "the shining"; (in the Veda) the antariks.a,"the middle world, the vital or dynamic plane" between heaven (the mental plane) and earth (the physical); "luminous power" established in this intermediate realm; (post-Vedic) the second of the three modes (trigun.a) of the energy of the lower prakr.ti, the gun.a that is "the seed of force and action" and "creates the workings of energy"; it is a deformation of tapas or pravr.tti, the corresponding quality in the higher prakr.ti, and is converted back into pure tapas or pravr.tti in the process of traigun.yasiddhi. This kinetic force "has its strongest hold on the vital nature", where it "turns always to action and desire", but "finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; therefore its whole action takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering".
Raja yoga ::: This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts th
refore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalinı, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi. By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. For the ancient system of Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 36-37
rocana (rochana) ::: (in the Veda) the three "shining realms" of svar, forming the luminous summit of the mental plane, where "a divine Light radiates out towards our mentality" from "the vast regions of the Truth".
Samadhi and norma! sleep, between the dream*state of Yoga and the physical state of dream. The latter belongs to the physical mind ; in the former the mind proper and subtle is at work liberated from the immixture of the physical mentality. The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind*faculttes disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain>memory, partly of refieclions from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflec- tions which arc, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co- ordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the Yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear possession of itself, though not of the physical world, works coherently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelligence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of conununicatinn with maJerJal things ; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflection, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the dis- tractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have
Sandpiling ::: A technique, the name of which was put forward by the sorceror Jason Miller, for breaking through mundane states of consciousness through a piling of awareness of self upon a single point of focus. This is a technique that can be used to attune to the Mental Plane.
savikalpa ::: admitting of variety or distinctions; (samadhi) with variety of experience on the mental plane; same as savikalpa samadhi.
Seven Planes Model ::: An additional model to describe the layers of conscious experience and the subtleties thereof. The primary difference between this and the Four Worlds model is that the Four Worlds model encompasses a broader swathe of reality while the Seven Planes Model drills down into those four and further partitions them. The Seven Planes Model consists of the Physical Plane, the Etheric Plane (which is more of a boundary in the Four Worlds model), the Astral Plane, the Soul Plane (the Higher Astral in the Four Worlds model), the Information Plane (the Lower Mental in the Four Worlds model), the Mental Plane, and the Causal Plane.
Shamanism ::: Belief systems that tend to be either polytheistic or animistic in their approach to reality and consciousness. Contrasted with Paganism in that Shamanism is still widely practiced in certain cultures and that in shamanism there is a person – the shaman – who is seen as a mediator between the world of spirit (the Causal and Mental Planes), the Physical world, and the Underworld. Typically shamanism encompasses entheogenic journeying as a means of healing, interacting with spirits, and altering reality.
Sleep-state ::: The sleep-state is a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us, its faculties not active, and th
refore we are in relation to that plane in a condition of dreamless sleep.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 520
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".
Spiritual Realisation ::: By divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realization of Self, Bhagavan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual or else the overmental plane.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 282
Sri Aurobindo: “It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane.” Visions of Champaklal
Sub-Plane ::: A manner of classifying reality and stages of consciousness by further dividing up a plane. On this site, sub-planes will either have specific functions within a plane (e.g. the Information Plane as the Lower Mental Plane) or can be assigned based on the qualities of that plane (e.g. the elemental sub-planes of each of the Four Worlds, such as Air of Water which is the Mental aspects of the Astral Plane).
Subtler planes: The planes of existence after and above the physical worldly existence (astral plane, mental plane, etc.).
susupti (Sushupti) ::: deep sleep; the Sleep-State, a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us, its faculties not active, and therefore we are in relation to that plane in a state of dreamless sleep.
svar-tapas (swar-tapas; swar tapas) ::: the power that belongs to the mental plane; manifesting through this medium, the Will "fastens more often on general than on particular effectualities".
The Heavens ::: The subtle planes of reality that resonate more deeply with archetypes of bliss, acceptance, and liberation. Generally these are in the upper Astral Plane or in the Mental Plane and certain religious systems and spiritual traditions view these planes as areas of rebirth for good karmic accumulations or as zones of reprieve before rebirth.
"The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul"s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds.” Letters on Yoga
“The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds.” Letters on Yoga
The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces. Left to itself, it Is skeptical of the existence of supra-physical things of which it has no direct experience and to which it can find no due ; even when it has spiritual experi- ences, it forgets them easily, loses (he impression and result and finds it difficult to believe. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and Supramental planes is one object of this yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human self-development, civilisation and culture.
There is a vital plane (self-existent) above the material uni- verse which we see ; there is a mental plane (self-existent) above the vital and material. These three together, — mental, vital, physical — arc called the triple universe of the lower hemisphere.
These powers and e.xperiences belong first, to the vital and mental planes above this physical in which we live, and are natural to the soul in the subtle body ; as the dependence on the phj’sical body decreases, these abnormal activities become possi-
Tiphereth ::: Translated as "Beauty" in Hebrew. The sixth Sephirah of the Kabbalah. It is representative of the first stable stage of dualistic consciousness as emanated from the Causal and Non-Dual. Existing along the Middle Pillar, Tiphereth is the first dualistic echo of Kether (as a stage of stable consciousness). Along with Chesed and Geburah, Tiphereth is associated with the Ethical Triad and the Mental Plane (i.e the Second World) and is the fulcrum of the force-form dynamics of Chesed-Geburah as they stabilized to form Solar Consciousness. Associated with the sphere of Sol (the Sun) in the planetary magic paradigm.
Trita Aptya ::: the Third or Triple, apparently the purusa of the mental plane; in the tradition he is a rsi, in the Veda he seems rather to be a god.
Trita ::: "the Third or Triple, apparently the Purusha of the mental plane", the companion of Eka2 and Dvita: "the god or Rishi of the third plane, full of luminous mental kingdoms unknown to the physical mind". trsvi tr . g Veda 4.4.1]
Vibration, in all its myriad manifestations, is the consequence of inner hidden causal agencies. The vibrations ensuing from such inner movements expressing themselves through bodies or veils, are always in accordance with the causal rhythms and mathematics involving quantities such as rate, intensity, and quality, there being vibrations of as many kinds as there are different causal agents. Thus there are vibrations as effects on our gross physical plane, other vibrations which manifest themselves on the astral, emotional, and psychological or lower mental planes. There are again vibrations of higher type which originate in the intellectual and spiritual monads of the human constitution.
What for Instance would be the utility of a supramental creation on earth if it were just the same thing as a supramental creation on the supramental plane? It is that, in principle, but yet some- thing else, a triumphant new self-discovery of the Divine in conditions that arc not elsewhere.
WORLDS. ::: The physical is not the only world ; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, Intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds ; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds ; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home ; others above with which we have littfe contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as w’cll as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the cons- ciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into conoeciion with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a sub- conscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds. In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happen- ings, come across formations, influences, suggestions which belong to these planes. Even when we are awake, part of us moves in these planes, but their activity goes on behind the veil ; our waking minds are not aware of it. Dreams are often only incoherent constructions of our subcooscient, but others are records (often much mixed and distorted) or transcripts of experiences in these supraphystcal planes. When we do sadbana, this kind of dream becomes very common ; then subconscious dreams cease to predominate.
KEYS (10k)
6 Sri Aurobindo
1 The Mother
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
6 Sri Aurobindo
1:On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#KEYS
2:From the morning there has been a feeling of nearness to the Mother, almost as if there were no difference between us. But how can that be possible, as there is such a great gulf between her and me? I am on the mental plane and she is on the highest Supramental.
But the Mother is there not only on the Supramental but on all the planes. And especially she is close to everyone in the psychic part (the inner heart), so when that opens, the feeling of nearness naturally comes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T4],#KEYS
3:The visions you describe are those which come in the earliest stages of sadhana. At this stage most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes important for the sadhana, but at first one has to go on without attaching excessive importance to the details - until the consciousness develops more. The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Visions and Symbols,#KEYS
4:Disciple: If the Asuras represent the dark side of God on the vital plane - does this dark side exist on every plane? If so, are there beings on the mental plane which correspond to the dark side?
Sri Aurobindo: The Asura is really the dark side of God on the mental plane. Mind is the very field of the Asura. His characteristic is egoistic strength, which refuses the Higher Law. The Asura has got Self-control, Tapas, intelligence, only, all that is for his ego.
On the vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshashas which represent violent passions and impulses. There are other beings on the vital plane which we call pramatta and piśacha and these; manifest, more or less, on the physico-vital plane.
Distiple: What is the corresponding being on the higher plane?
Sri Aurobindo: On the higher plane there are no Asuras - there the Truth prevails. There are "Asuras" there in the Vedic sense,- "beings with divine powers". The mental Asura is only a deviation of that power.
The work of the Asura has all the characteristics of mind in it. It is mind refusing to submit to the Higher Law; it is the mind in revolt. It works on the basis of ego and ignorance.
Disciple: What are the forces that correspond to the dark side of God on the physical plane?
Sri Aurobindo: They are what may be called the "elemental beings", or rather, obscure elemental forces - they are more "forces" than "beings". It is these that the Theosophists call the "Elementals". They are not individualised beings like the Asura and the Rakshasas, they are ignorant forces working oh the subtle physical plane.
Disciple: What is the word for them in Sanskrit;?
Sri Aurobindo: What are called bhūtas seem most nearly to correspond to them.
Disciple: The term "Elemental" means that these work through the elements.
Sri Aurobindo: There are two kinds of "elementals": one mischievous and the other innocent. What the Europeans call the gnomes come under this category. ~ A B Purani, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, 15-06-1926,#KEYS
5:The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit.
2:In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, 2.01 - The Object of Knowledge,#KEYS
6:If the Divine that is all love is the source of the creation, whence have come all the evils abounding upon earth?"
"All is from the Divine; but the One Consciousness, the Supreme has not created the world directly out of itself; a Power has gone out of it and has descended through many gradations of its workings and passed through many agents. There are many creators or rather 'formateurs', form-makers, who have presided over the creation of the world. They are intermediary agents and I prefer to call them 'Formateurs' and not 'Creators'; for what they have done is to give the form and turn and nature to matter. There have been many, and some have formed things harmonious and benignant and some have shaped things mischievous and evil. And some too have been distorters rather than builders, for they have interfered and spoiled what was begun well by others." - Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (30 June 1929)
You say, "Many creators or rather 'formateurs', formmakers, have presided over the creation of the world." Who are these 'formateurs'?
That depends. They have been given many names. All has been done by gradations and through individual beings of all kinds. Each state of being is inhabited by entities, individualities and personalities and each one has created a world around him or has contributed to the formation of certain beings upon earth. The last creators are those of the vital world, but there are beings of the Overmind (Sri Aurobindo calls this plane the Overmind), who have created, given forms, sent out emanations, and these emanations again had their emanations and so on. What I meant is that it is not the Divine Will that acted directly on Matter to give to the world the required form, it is by passing through layers, so to say, planes of the world, as for example, the mental plane - there are so many beings on the mental plane who are form-makers, who have taken part in the formation of some beings who have incarnated upon earth. On the vital plane also the same thing happens.
For example, there is a tradition which says that the whole world of insects is the outcome of the form-makers of the vital world, and that this is why they take such absolutely diabolical shapes when they are magnified under the microscope. You saw the other day, when you were shown the microbes in water? Naturally the pictures were made to amuse, to strike the imagination, but they are based on real forms, so magnified, however, that they look like monsters. Almost the whole world of insects is a world of microscopic monsters which, had they been larger in size, would have been quite terrifying. So it is said these are entities of the vital world, beings of the vital who created that for fun and amused themselves forming all these impossible beasts which make human life altogether unpleasant.
Did these intermediaries also come out of the Divine Power?
Through intermediaries, yes, not directly. These beings are not in direct contact with the Divine (there are exceptions, I mean as a general rule), they are beings who are in relation with other beings, who are again in relation with others, and these with still others, and so on, in a hierarchy, up to the Supreme.(to be continued....) ~ The Mother, Question and Answers,#KEYS
7:
Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?
Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi.
But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.
If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder.
Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter.
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.
Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together.
When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?
The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 93?
,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Man’s only possible escape from the pain of the mental plane is through the channel of spiritual unfoldment— the growth of consciousness along spiritual lines— the turning of the light of consciousness into the heretofore unexplored field of the spiritual faculties. Here alone is peace. ~ william-walker-atkinson, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III,#NFDB
2:The sky is always some mental plane. The stars indicate beginnings or promises of Light—the various lights indicating various powers of the consciousness: gold = Truth, blue = higher spiritualised mind, violet = sympathy, unity or universal compassion. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
3:Complete nudity in itself is not erotic. It becomes so only when preceeded by or contrasted to a state of dress. In this limited context then, all clothes become somewhat immoral, if we define immorality as inciting sexual interest. Habitual nakedness may indeed be capable of elevating man to a higher mental plane ~ Lucy Irvine, #NFDB
4:Art lives on the mental plane (the real painting is not the set of dry pigments on the canvas nor is a symphony the sequence of sound waves that convey it to our ear) but, as the post-modernists insist, is reinterpreted in new contexts by each appreciator. As for gossip, which includes the vast majority of our thoughts, its essence is its relation to a unique local part of time and space. ~ David Mumford, #NFDB
5:yasyāsti bhaktir bhagavaty akiñcanā sarvair guṇais tatra samāsate surāḥ harāv abhaktasya kuto mahad-guṇā mano-rathenāsati dhāvato bahiḥ “One who has unflinching devotion for the Personality of Godhead has all the good qualities of the demigods. But one who is not a devotee of the Lord has only material qualifications that are of little value. This is because he is hovering on the mental plane and is certain to be attracted by the glaring material energy.” (Bhāg. 5.18.12) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
6:From the morning there has been a feeling of nearness to the Mother, almost as if there were no difference between us. But how can that be possible, as there is such a great gulf between her and me? I am on the mental plane and she is on the highest Supramental.
But the Mother is there not only on the Supramental but on all the planes. And especially she is close to everyone in the psychic part (the inner heart), so when that opens, the feeling of nearness naturally comes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [T4],#NFDB
7:The visions you describe are those which come in the earliest stages of sadhana. At this stage most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes important for the sadhana, but at first one has to go on without attaching excessive importance to the details - until the consciousness develops more. The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Visions and Symbols,#NFDB
8:Disciple: If the Asuras represent the dark side of God on the vital plane - does this dark side exist on every plane? If so, are there beings on the mental plane which correspond to the dark side?
Sri Aurobindo: The Asura is really the dark side of God on the mental plane. Mind is the very field of the Asura. His characteristic is egoistic strength, which refuses the Higher Law. The Asura has got Self-control, Tapas, intelligence, only, all that is for his ego.
On the vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshashas which represent violent passions and impulses. There are other beings on the vital plane which we call pramatta and piśacha and these; manifest, more or less, on the physico-vital plane.
Distiple: What is the corresponding being on the higher plane?
Sri Aurobindo: On the higher plane there are no Asuras - there the Truth prevails. There are "Asuras" there in the Vedic sense,- "beings with divine powers". The mental Asura is only a deviation of that power.
The work of the Asura has all the characteristics of mind in it. It is mind refusing to submit to the Higher Law; it is the mind in revolt. It works on the basis of ego and ignorance.
Disciple: What are the forces that correspond to the dark side of God on the physical plane?
Sri Aurobindo: They are what may be called the "elemental beings", or rather, obscure elemental forces - they are more "forces" than "beings". It is these that the Theosophists call the "Elementals". They are not individualised beings like the Asura and the Rakshasas, they are ignorant forces working oh the subtle physical plane.
Disciple: What is the word for them in Sanskrit;?
Sri Aurobindo: What are called bhūtas seem most nearly to correspond to them.
Disciple: The term "Elemental" means that these work through the elements.
Sri Aurobindo: There are two kinds of "elementals": one mischievous and the other innocent. What the Europeans call the gnomes come under this category. ~ A B Purani, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, 15-06-1926,#NFDB
9:The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit.
2:In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, 2.01 - The Object of Knowledge,#NFDB
10:"If the Divine that is all love is the source of the creation, whence have come all the evils abounding upon earth?"
"All is from the Divine; but the One Consciousness, the Supreme has not created the world directly out of itself; a Power has gone out of it and has descended through many gradations of its workings and passed through many agents. There are many creators or rather 'formateurs', form-makers, who have presided over the creation of the world. They are intermediary agents and I prefer to call them 'Formateurs' and not 'Creators'; for what they have done is to give the form and turn and nature to matter. There have been many, and some have formed things harmonious and benignant and some have shaped things mischievous and evil. And some too have been distorters rather than builders, for they have interfered and spoiled what was begun well by others." - Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (30 June 1929)
You say, "Many creators or rather 'formateurs', formmakers, have presided over the creation of the world." Who are these 'formateurs'?
That depends. They have been given many names. All has been done by gradations and through individual beings of all kinds. Each state of being is inhabited by entities, individualities and personalities and each one has created a world around him or has contributed to the formation of certain beings upon earth. The last creators are those of the vital world, but there are beings of the Overmind (Sri Aurobindo calls this plane the Overmind), who have created, given forms, sent out emanations, and these emanations again had their emanations and so on. What I meant is that it is not the Divine Will that acted directly on Matter to give to the world the required form, it is by passing through layers, so to say, planes of the world, as for example, the mental plane - there are so many beings on the mental plane who are form-makers, who have taken part in the formation of some beings who have incarnated upon earth. On the vital plane also the same thing happens.
For example, there is a tradition which says that the whole world of insects is the outcome of the form-makers of the vital world, and that this is why they take such absolutely diabolical shapes when they are magnified under the microscope. You saw the other day, when you were shown the microbes in water? Naturally the pictures were made to amuse, to strike the imagination, but they are based on real forms, so magnified, however, that they look like monsters. Almost the whole world of insects is a world of microscopic monsters which, had they been larger in size, would have been quite terrifying. So it is said these are entities of the vital world, beings of the vital who created that for fun and amused themselves forming all these impossible beasts which make human life altogether unpleasant.
Did these intermediaries also come out of the Divine Power?
Through intermediaries, yes, not directly. These beings are not in direct contact with the Divine (there are exceptions, I mean as a general rule), they are beings who are in relation with other beings, who are again in relation with others, and these with still others, and so on, in a hierarchy, up to the Supreme.(to be continued....) ~ The Mother, Question and Answers,#NFDB
11:
Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?
Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi.
But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.
If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder.
Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter.
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.
Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together.
When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?
The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 93?
,#NFDB
69 Integral Yoga
9 Occultism
5 Theosophy
76 Sri Aurobindo
28 The Mother
16 Satprem
11 A B Purani
10 Nolini Kanta Gupta
5 Alice Bailey
4 Franz Bardon
27 The Synthesis Of Yoga
11 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
10 Letters On Yoga I
5 The Life Divine
5 Record of Yoga
5 Letters On Yoga IV
5 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
5 Agenda Vol 02
5 Agenda Vol 01
4 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
3 The Practice of Magical Evocation
3 Questions And Answers 1953
3 Letters On Yoga III
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
2 The Integral Yoga
2 The Human Cycle
2 Talks
2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
2 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
2 On the Way to Supermanhood
2 Letters On Yoga II
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Yes, certainly had there been any receptivity when She came down and had She been able to manifest with the power with which She came But I can tell you one thing: even before Her coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the Mental Plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the Mental Plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time I didnt seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month of this yoga, I looked exactly like an 18 year old! And someone who knew me and had stayed with me in Japan5 came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, But my god, is it you? I said, Of course!
Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went awaybecause on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Asuras: the demons or dark forces of the Mental Plane.
The experience of Nature's collaboration (November 8, 1957).
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the Mental Plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender1). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forwardoh, not even a real step, just a little step!everything starts grating; its like stepping on an anthill And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for themthey have only to let it be done.
The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. Its like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You! It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. Give me the time!
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Actually, it was very different at that time because I was not even aware of any resistance or any difficulty in the outer being; it was automatic, the work was done automatically. Later on, when I had to do both thingswhat he had been doing as well as what I was doingit became rather complicated and I realized there were many what we could call gapsthings which had to be worked out, transformed, set right before the total work could be done without hindrance. So then I began. And several times I thought how unfortunate it was that I had never studied or pursued certain ancient Indian disciplines. Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental forces, a descent from the Mental Plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we meditated together, when we worked)all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactionswas absolutely tantric, as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed.
Later on, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, I said to myself, If only I knew what he had known, it would be easier! So when Swami and later X came, I thought, I am going to take advantage of this opportunity. I had written to Swami that I was working on transforming the cells of the body and that I had noticed the work was going faster with Xs influence. So it was understood that X would help when he came thats how things began, and this idea has remained with X. But I have raced on I dont wait. Ive raced on, Ive gone like wildfire. And now the situation is reversed. What I wanted to find out, I found out. I experienced what I wanted to experience, but he is still He is very kind, actually, he wants really to help me. So, when I identified with him the other day during our meditation, I realized that he wanted to give silence, control and perfect peace to the physical mind. My own trick, if you will, is to have as little relationship with the physical mind as possible, to go up above and stay therethis (Mother indicates her forehead), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That (gesture above the head) sees, acts, knows, decidesall is done from there. Only there can you feel at ease.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Asuras: demons of the Mental Plane.
***
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Asura: demon of the Mental Plane embodying the forces of division and darkness.
Tlemcen: a town in northern Algeria.
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, on the Mental Plane (the physical-mind, the material mind) I saw an individual. I am not entirely certain of his identity (when I saw him last night I didnt associate him with anyone in particular) but from his outer appearance he is evidently a sannyasi. He was pursuing me, blocking my way and trying to stop me from doing my work (it was a long, long affair). But I was very conscious and could foresee everything he was about to do, so it had no effect. After a long while I emerged from this I had something else to do and I leftand on my way home he was everywhere, hiding and trying to catch me; but he didnt succeed in doing anything. And I knew he had been acting in this manner for a long time.
Then I woke up (I always wake up three or four times during the night) and when I went back to bed I had an attack of what the doctor and I have taken to be filariasis but a strange type of filariasis, for as soon as I master it in one spot it appears in another, and when I master it there it reappears somewhere else. Last night it was in the arms (it lasted quite a while, between 2:30 and 4 a.m.); but I was fully conscious, and each time the attack came, I went like this (gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material subtle physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in my room there (an immense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didnt pay attention, presuming it was one of the people usually around me. Then suddenly I had such an unpleasant sensation in my body that I raised my head and looked, and I saw someone there. Do you know how the magicians in Europe dress, in short satin breeches and a shirt? He was wearing something like that. He was Indian, tall and rather dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young man. He seemed to have been drawn1 there becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the moment I saw him, there was the same sensation in all my cells as I have with what Ive been calling filariasis (its a special, minute kind of pain) and simultaneously all the cells felt disgusta tremendous will of rejection. Then I sat up straight (I didnt stand up) and said to him as forcefully as possible, How do you dare to come in here! I said it so loudly that the noise woke me up! I dont know what happened then, but things went much better afterwards.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On other occasions (as I have told you) I had difficulties with X on the Mental Plane; now all that has cleared up, cleared up very well. But this present situation is on another plane, so lets wait. Perhaps probably it will clear up.
(silence)
0 1961-08-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have seen you there several times. You were wearing something similar to what you are wearing now [dhoti]: not European they wear the costume of no particular country. Its usually white, but not made of cloth. Its all on a VERY luminous, very orderly, very clear Mental Plane-no objects lying around, only things like sheets of paper, which seem to be ideas or compositions of ideas, but no clutter. Its vast, vast, so vast you can see no end to it! And up above its wide open, and a light is constantly descending. What you walk on is a little more solid, but not much more. Its an interesting place.
I go there almost every night for half or three-quarters of an hour, and Sri Aurobindo shows it all to me. Some people are waiting for himin certain corners everything is ready and waiting and when he comes they show him what they have done. Then he explains: a word, a gesture, not much, and then, ah! It takes a form. Its an interesting place. I am putting you in touch with it all the time, all the time, every dayit doesnt matter if you dont remember, its not important.
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After reading your letter, I had a very strong feeling that you put the problem like that because you were considering it from a Mental Plane, which is the only plane where it exists; if you go beyond, there are no more oppositions or problems. These things are subtle, you know, and as soon as you try to formulate them, they elude youformulation deforms.
What I mean is that its not necessarily in trance, in another world, that one gets the supramental consciousness.
0 1962-01-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Asura: demon of the Mental Plane embodying the forces of division and darkness.
The reader will remember the formation of the Kuo-min-tang and the troubles in the Yangtze Valley which took place in October 1911 and led to the fall of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912. Thus it was in October 1906, at Tlemcen, that Mother had the encounter she relates here. It was also in 1906 that Mao Tse-tung, at the age of fourteen, came into conflict with his father, a prelude to his revolutionary career.
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If we look at it from a psychological standpoint On the Mental Plane, its very easy; on the vital plane, its not too difficult; on the physical plane, its a little heavier, because desires are passed off as needs. But there too, there has been a field of experience these last few days: the study of medical and scientific conceptions on the bodys makeup, its needs, and whats good or bad for it. And all this, in its essence, again boils down to the same question of vibrations. It was quite interesting: there was an appearance (because all things as the ordinary consciousness sees them are nothing but appearances), there was an appearance of food poisoning (mushrooms that are thought to have been bad). It was the object of a particular study to find out whether there was something absolute about the poisoning, or whether it was relative, that is, based on ignorance, a wrong reaction and the absence of the true Vibration. And the conclusion was as follows: its a question of proportion between the amount, the sum of the vibrations that belong to the Supreme, and the sum of the vibrations that still belong to darkness. Depending on the proportion, the poisoning appears as something concrete, real, or else as something that can be eliminated, in other words, that doesnt resist the influence of the Vibration of Truth. And it was very interesting, because, immediately, as soon as the consciousness became aware of the cause of the trouble in the bodys functioning (the consciousness perceived where it came from and what it was), immediately the observation began, with the idea: Lets see what happens. First set the body perfectly at rest with the certainty (which is always there) that nothing happens except by the Lords Will and that the effect too is the Lords Will, all the consequences are the Lords Will, and consequently one should be very still. So the body is very still: untroubled, not agitated, it doesnt vibrate, nothingvery still. Once this is achieved, to what extent are the effects unavoidable? Because a certain quantity of matter that contained an element unfavorable to the bodys elements and life was absorbed, what is the proportion between the favorable and the unfavorable elements, or between the favorable and the unfavorable vibrations? And I saw very clearly: the proportion varies according to the amount of cells in the body that are under the direct Influence, that respond to the supreme Vibration alone, and the amount of other cells that still belong to the ordinary way of vibrating. It was very clear, because I could see all the possibilities, from the ordinary mass [of cells], which is completely upset by that intrusion and where you have to fight with all the ordinary methods to get rid of the undesirable element, to the totality of the cellular response to the supreme Force, which renders the intrusion perfectly innocuous. But this is still a dream for tomorrowwere on the way. But the proportion has become rather favorable (I cant say all-powerful, far from it, but rather favorable), so that the consequences of the ill-being didnt last very long and the damage was, so to say, minimal.
But all the experiences nowadays, one after the otherall the PHYSICAL experiences, of the bodypoint to the same conclusion: everything depends on the proportion between the elements that respond exclusively to the Supremes Influence, the half-and-half elements, on the road to transformation, and the elements that still follow Matters old vibratory process. The latter appear to be decreasing in number, to a great extent, but there are still enough of them to bring about unpleasant effects or unpleasant reactionsthings that are untransformed, that still belong to ordinary life. But all problems, whether psychological or purely material or chemical, all problems boil down to this: they are nothing but questions of vibrations. And there is the perception of that totality of vibrations and of what we could call (in a very rough and approximative way) the difference between the constructive and the destructive vibrations. We can say (to put it very simply) that all the vibrations that come from the One and express Oneness are constructive, while all the complications of the ordinary, separative consciousness lead to destruction.
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not that spiritual men have not served and worked for the welfare of the world; but their work could not be wholly effective, it was mixed, maimed, temporary in effect. This could not be otherwise, for their activity proceeded from inferior and feebler sources of inspiration and consciousness other than those that are purely spiritual. Firstly, little more was possible for them than to exercise an indirect influence; their spiritual realisation could bring into the life of the world only a reminiscence, an echo, just a touch and a ray from another world. Or, secondly, when they did take part in worldly affairs, their activity could not rise much beyond the worldly standard; it remained enclosed within the sphere of the moral and the conventional, took such forms as, for example, charity and service and philanthropy. Nothing higher than ideas and ideals confined to the moral, that is to say, the Mental Plane, could be brought into play in the world and its practical lifeeven the moral and mental idea itself has often been mistaken for true spirituality. Thus the very ideal of governing or moulding our worldly preoccupations according to a truly spiritual or a supramental or transcendental consciousness was a rare phenomenon and even where the ideal was found, it is doubtful whether the right means and methods were discovered. Yet the sole secret of changing man's destiny and transmuting the world lies in the discovery and application of a supreme spiritual Conscious-Power.
Humanists once affirmed that nothing that concerned man was alien to them, all came within their domain. The spiritual man too can make the affirmation with the same or even a greater emphasis. Indeed the spiritual consciousness in the highest degree and greatest compass must needs govern and fashion man in his entire being, in all his members and functions. The ideal, as we have said, has seldom been accepted; generally it has been considered as a chimera and an impossibility. That is why, we repeat, even to this day the world has its cup of misery full to the brimaniryam asukham.
02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(even that of the highest spiritual on the Mental Plane, which is the highest that has yet manifested) are either partial or relative or otherwise deficient and unable to transform the earthly life, they can only at most modify and influence it. The supermind is the last Truth-consciousness of which the ancient seers spoke; there have been glimpses of it till now, sometimes an indirect influence or pressure, but it has not been brought down into the consciousness of the earth and fixed there. To bring it down is the aim of our Yoga.
The Vedic Rishis never attained to the supermind for the earth or perhaps did not even make the attempt. They tried to rise individually to the supra Mental Plane, but they did not bring it down and make it a permanent part of the earthconsciousness. Even there are verses of the Upanishad in which it is hinted that it is impossible to pass through the gates of the Sun (the symbol of the supermind) and yet retain an earthly body. It was because of this failure that the spiritual effort of
03.02 - The Gradations of Consciousness The Gradation of Planes, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If we regard the gradation of worlds or planes as a whole, we see them as a great connected complex movement; the higher precipitate their influences on the lower, the lower react to the higher and develop or manifest in themselves within their own formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the Mental Plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supra Mental Plane. In more detail, particular forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher world can throw themselves on the lower to establish appropriate and corresponding forms which will connect them with the material domain and, as it were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has, supporting it, subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make it subsist and connect it with forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the veil in direct connection with supraphysical planes of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings. What takes place in life has always behind it preexistent movements and forms in the occult vital planes; what takes place in mind presupposes preexistent movements and forms in the occult Mental Planes. That is an aspect of things which becomes more and more evident, insistent and important, the more we progress in a dynamic Yoga.
But all this must not be taken in too rigid and mechanical a sense. It is an immense plastic movement full of the play of possibilities and must be seized by a flexible and subtle tact or sense in the seeing consciousness. It cannot be reduced to a too rigorous logical or mathematical formula.
The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a Mental Plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane.
The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Needless to say that these tests and ordeals are mere externals; at any rate, they have no place in our sadhana. Such or similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the Mental Plane,keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane,mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity with the Upanishadic standard, one may not be an unworthy son or an unworthy disciple, one may be strong, courageous, patient, calm, self-possessed, one may even be a consummate master of the senses and be endowed with other great virtues. Yet all this is no assurance of one's success in spiritual sadhana. Even one may be, after Shankara, a mumuksu, that is to say, have an ardent yearning for liberation. Still it is doubtful if that alone can give him liberation into the divine life.
What then is the indispensable and unfailing requisite? What is it that gives you the right of entrance into the divine life? What is the element, the factor in you that acts as the open sesame, as a magic solvent?
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the conception of duty too has its limitations. Even apart from the misuses of the ideal to which we have already referred, the ideal itself, is of the Mental Plane; it is more or less an act of mental will that seeks to impose a rule of co-operation upon the mutually excluding and conflicting entities. The result is bound to be imperfect and precarious. For mind force, although it can exercise some kind of control over the life forces, cannot altogether master them, and eradicate even the very seeds of conflict that breed naturally in that field. The sense of duty raises the consciousness to the mode of sattwa; sattwa holds rajas in check, but is unable to eliminate wholly the propensities and impulses of aberration ingrained in rajas, cannot radically purify or transfigure it.
We have to rise above rajas and sattwa to enter a domain where one meets the source of inevitable harmony, where the units without losing their true self and nature and returning to the undifferentiated primordial mass, fulfil themselves and are yet held together in a rich and faultless symphony. This is Dharma, that which holds together. Dharma means the law of one's soul. And when each soul follows its own law and line of life, there cannot be any conflict; for the essence and substance of the soul is made of unity and harmony. The souls move like the planetary bodies, each in its own orbit, and, because they do not collide or clash, all together creating the silent music of the spheres.
06.11 - The Steps of the Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The complexity arises not only in extension, but also in depth. Man does not live on a single plane but on many planes at the same time. There is a scale of gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or Mental Plane or on any particular section of these planes or on planes above and beyond, there will be accordingly differences in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of the individual personality. The higher one stands the richer the personality, because it lives not only on its own normal level, but also on all that are below and which it has transcended. The complete or integral man, some occultists say, possesses 365 personalities; indeed it may be much more. (The Vedas speak of the three and thirty-three and thirty-three hundred and thirty-three thousand gods that may be housed in the human vehicle the basic three being evidently the triple status or world of Body, Life and Mind).
What is the meaning of this self-contradiction, this division in man? To understand that we must know and remember that each person represents a certain quality or capacity, a particular achievement to be embodied. How best can it be done? What is the way by which one can acquire a quality at its purest, and highest and most perfect? It is by setting an opposition to it. That is how a power is increased and streng thenedby fighting against and overcoming all that weakens and contradicts it. The deficiencies in respect of a particular quality show you where you are to mend and reinforce and in what way to improve in order to make it perfectly perfect. It is the hammer that beats the weak and soft iron to transform it into hard steel. The preliminary discord is useful and necessary to be utilised for a higher harmony. This is the secret of self-conflict in man. You are weakest precisely in that element which is destined to be your greatest asset.
07.11 - The Problem of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
God has created the world, the material world as it is? Yes and No, more No than Yes. For he has not created it directly. There have been many creators, rather formateurs, form-makers, in between the world and God, who joined in the work of creation. Who are they? They have been given various names. Creation generally follows a principle of gradation. It is done step by step, world rising out of world successively. Each world is a particular state of being, a particular mode of consciousness. Each state is inhabited by entities, individualities, personalities and each one has created a world around him or assisted in the creation of certain types or species upon earth. The last of these creators or fashioners are those of the vital. At the top are those of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. It was these that created, that is to say, gave the first forms to earthly beings and things. They sent out their emanations and these again theirs in their turn and so on. Thus it was not the Divine Will which acted directly upon Matter and gave the world the form it could or should have had. There are layers and planes, graded intermediaries through which the Will has had to act. I spoke of the over-mental and the vital plane. There is also the Mental Plane between them. There are mental beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings that have taken body upon earth.
Thus, there is a tradition which says that the world of insects is the outcome of the creators of the vital world. That is why when you see the insects under a microscope they take on appearances that are absolutely diabolical. Enlarged on a screen they look like veritable monsters, so terrifying they are. Microscopic monsters they are. So it is said, beings of the vital world thought of amusing themselves and created these impossible beasts making human existence uncomfortable.
08.28 - Prayer and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Above the vital plane lies the Mental Plane. The Mental Plane too has its own determinism in which all mental things are chained together in a rigorous sequence.
Each of these planes has what may be called a horizontal determinism.
1.00a - DIVISION A - THE INTERNAL FIRES OF THE SHEATHS., #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The blending of the three fires, the merging of the three Rays, and the co-operation of the three Logoi have in view (at this time and within this solar system) the development of the Essence of the cosmic Lord of Love, the second Person in the logoic trinity. Earlier it was not so, later it will not be, but now it is. When viewed from the cosmic Mental Plane these Three constitute the PERSONALITY OF THE LOGOS, and are seen functioning as one. Hence the secret (well recognised as fact, though not understood) of the excessive heat, occultly expressed, of the astral or central body of the triple personality. It animates and controls the physical body, and its desires hold sway in the majority of cases; it demonstrates in time and space the correspondence of the temporary union of spirit and matter, the fires of cosmic love and the fires of matter blended. A similar analogy is found in the heat apparent in this second solar system.
d. The Atom. The inner fires of the atom can likewise be seen functioning along similar lines, their demonstration being already somewhat recognised by science. This being so there exists no necessity for further elaboration. [xxi]21
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Fifth. The Deva Lords of the four planes of Buddhi, or the plane of spiritual Intuition, Manas, or the Mental Plane, Desire, and the Physical, who are likewise allied to the human evolution in a closer sense than the higher three.
A further interesting correspondence is found in the following facts that are even now in process of development:
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When man begins in a small sense to co-ordinate the buddhic vehicle or, to express it otherwise, when he has developed the power to contact ever so slightly the buddhic plane, then he begins simultaneously and consciously to achieve the ability to escape from the etheric web on the physical plane. Later he escapes from its correspondence on the astral plane, and finally from the correspondence on the fourth subplane of the Mental Plane this time via the mental unit. This leads eventually to causal functioning, or to the ability to dwell, and to be active in, the vehicle of the Ego, who is the embodiment of the love and wisdom aspect of the Monad. Note here the correspondence to that proved fact, that many can even now escape from the etheric body, and function in their [114] astral sheath, which is the personality reflection of that same second aspect.
When a man takes the fourth Initiation, he functions in the fourth plane vehicle, the buddhic, and has escaped permanently from the personality ring-pass-not, on the fourth subplane of the mental. There is naught to hold him to the three worlds. At the first Initiation he escapes from the ring-pass-not in a more temporary sense, but he has yet to escape from the three higher mental levels, which are the mental correspondences to the higher ethers, and to develop full consciousness on these three higher subplanes. We have here a correspondence to the work to be done by the initiate after he has achieved the fourth solar plane, the buddhic. There yet remains the development of full consciousness on the three higher planes of spirit before he can escape from the solar ring-pass-not, which is achieved at the seventh Initiation, taken somewhere in the system, or in its cosmic correspondence reached by the cosmic sutratma, or cosmic thread of life [liii]51
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A further chain of ideas may be followed up in the remembrance that the fourth ether is even now being studied and developed by the average scientist, and is already somewhat harnessed to the service of man; that the fourth subplane of the astral plane is the normal functioning ground of the average man and that in this round escape from the etheric vehicle is being achieved; that the fourth subplane of the Mental Plane is the present goal of endeavor of one-fourth of the human family; that the fourth manvantara will see the solar ring-pass-not offering avenues of escape to those who have reached the necessary point; that the four planetary Logoi will perfect Their escape from Their planetary environment, and will function with greater ease on the cosmic astral plane, paralleling on cosmic levels the achievement of the human units who are the cells in Their bodies.
Our solar Logos, being a Logos of the fourth order, will begin to co-ordinate His cosmic buddhic body, and as He develops cosmic mind He will gradually achieve, by the aid of that mind, the ability to touch the cosmic buddhic plane.
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The fourth subplane of mind, the correspondence on the Mental Plane of the physical etheric, is likewise a point of transition from out of a lower into a higher, and is the transferring locality into a higher body.
The fourth subplane of the monadic plane is in a very real sense the place of transition from off the egoic ray (whichever that ray may be) on to the monadic ray; these three major rays are organised on the three higher subplanes of the monadic plane in the same way that the three abstract subplanes of the mental are the group of transference from off the personality ray on to the egoic.
The four lesser rays blend with the third major ray of active intelligence on the Mental Plane and on the atmic plane. The four Logoi or planetary Spirits work as one, on the atmic plane.
i. Another synthesis takes place on the synthetic second ray on the second subplane of the buddhic plane and the monadic plane, while the comparatively few Monads of will or power are synthesised on the atomic subplane of the atmic. All three groups of Monads work in triple form on the Mental Plane under the Mahachohan, the Manu, and the Bodhisattva, or the Christ; on the second or monadic plane they work as a unit, only demonstrating [120] their dual work on the atmic plane, and their essential triplicity on the buddhic plane. [lvii]55
The fourth etheric plane holds the key to the dominance of matter, and it might be noted that:
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On the fourth subplane of the Mental Plane, man begins to control his causal or egoic body, and to polarise his consciousness therein until the polarisation is complete. He functions then consciously on it when he has mastered the correspondences to the ethers on the Mental Plane.
On the buddhic plane (the fourth cosmic ether) the Heavenly Men (or the grouped consciousness of the human and deva Monads) begin to function, and to escape eventually from the cosmic etheric planes. When these three cosmic ethers are mastered, the functioning is perfected, polarisation is centred in the monadic vehicles, and the seven Heavenly Men have achieved Their goal.
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The kundalini fire is consciously directed and controlled by the mind or will aspect from the Mental Plane. The two fires of matter by the power of the mind of man are blended first with each other, and, secondly, with the fire of mind.
The united result of this blending is the destruction (under rule and order), of the etheric web, and the consequent production of continuity of consciousness and the admission into the personal life of man of "Life more abundant," or the third fire of Spirit.
The downrush of Spirit, and the uprising of the inner fires of matter (controlled and directed by the conscious action of the fire of mind) produce corresponding results on the same levels on the astral and Mental Planes, so that a paralleling contact is brought about, and the great work of liberation proceeds in an ordered manner.
The three first initiations see these results perfected, [126] and lead to the fourth, where the intensity of the united fires results in the complete burning away of all barriers, and the liberation of the Spirit by conscious directed effort from out its threefold lower sheath. Man has consciously to bring about his own liberation. These results are self-induced by the man himself, as he is emancipated from the three worlds, and has broken the wheel of rebirth himself instead of being broken upon it.
1.00d - DIVISION D - KUNDALINI AND THE SPINE, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The other fire of matter (the dual fire) is attracted upward, and merges with the fire of mind through a junction effected at the alta major centre. This centre is situated at the base of the skull, and there is a slight gap between this centre and the point at which the fires of matter issue from the spinal channel. Part of the work the man who is developing thought power has to do, is to build a temporary channel in etheric matter to bridge the gap. This channel is the reflection in physical matter of the antaskarana [lxv]63 that the Ego has to build in order to bridge the gap between the lower and higher mental, between the causal vehicle on the third subplane of the Mental Plane, and the manasic permanent atom on the first subplane. This is the work that all advanced thinkers are unconsciously doing now. When the gap is completely [138] bridged, man's body becomes co-ordinated with the mental body and the fires of mind and of matter are blended. It completes the perfecting of the personality life, and as earlier said, this perfecting brings a man to the portal of initiationinitiation being the seal set upon accomplished work; it marks the end of one lesser cycle of development, and the beginning of the transference of the whole work to a still higher spiral.
We must always bear in mind that the fires from the base of the spine and the splenic triangle are fires of matter. We must not lose this recollection nor get confused. They have no spiritual effect, and concern themselves solely with the matter in which the centres of force are located. These centres of force are always directed by manas or mind, or by the conscious effort of the indwelling entity; but that entity is held back in the effects he seeks to achieve until the vehicles through which he is seeking expression, and their directing, energising centres, make adequate response. Hence it is only in due course of evolution, and when the matter of these vehicles is energised sufficiently by its own latent fires that he can accomplish his long-held purpose. Hence again the need of the ascension of the fire of matter to its own place, and its resurrection from its long burial and seeming prostitution before it can be united with its Father in Heaven, the third Logos, Who is the Intelligence of matter itself. The correspondence, again, holds good. Even the atom of the physical plane has its goal, its initiations and its ultimate triumph.
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No more can be imparted concerning this subject. He who directs his efforts to the control of the fires of matter, is (with a dangerous certainty) playing with a fire that may literally destroy him. He should not cast his eyes backwards, but should lift them to the plane where dwells his immortal Spirit, and then by self-discipline, mind-control and a definite refining of his material bodies, whether subtle or physical, fit himself to be a vehicle for the divine birth, and participate in the first Initiation. When the Christ-child (as the Christian so beautifully expresses it) has been born in the cave of the heart, then that divine guest can consciously control the lower material bodies by means of consecrated mind. Only when buddhi has assumed an ever-increasing control [140] of the personality, via the Mental Plane (hence the need of building the antaskarana), will the personality respond to that which is above, and the lower fires mount and blend with the two higher. Only when Spirit, by the power of thought, controls the material vehicles, does the subjective life assume its rightful place, does the God within shine and blaze forth till the form is lost from sight, and "The path of the just shine ever more and more until the day be with us."
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
4. The Circle divided into four. This is the true circle of matter, the equal armed cross of the Holy Spirit, Who is the personification of active intelligent matter. This shows the fourth dimensional quality of matter and the penetration of the fire in four directions, its threefold radiation being symbolised by the triangles formed by the fourfold cross. This portrays the fourfold revolution of any atom. By this is not meant the ability of any atom to make four revolutions, but the fourth dimensional quality of the revolution which is the goal aimed at, and which is even now becoming known in matter during this [161] fourth round, and in this fourth chain. As the fifth spirilla or fifth stream of force in an atom becomes developed, and man can conceive of a fourth-dimensional rotary movement, the accuracy of this symbol will be recognised. It will then be seen that all sheaths in their progress from inertia to rhythm, via mobility, pass through all stages, whether they are logoic sheaths, the rays in which the Heavenly Men veil Themselves, the planes which form the bodies of certain solar entities, the causal body (or the sheath of the Ego on the Mental Plane), the human physical body in its etheric constitution, or a cell in that body etheric. All these material forms (existent in etheric matter which is the true matter of all forms) are primarily undifferentiated ovoids; they then become actively rotating or manifest latent heat; next they manifest duality or latent and radiatory fire; the expression of these two results in fourth dimensional action or the wheel or rotary form turning upon itself.
5. The swastika, or the fire extending not only from the periphery to the centre in four directions, but gradually circulating and radiating from and around the entire periphery. This signifies completed activity in every department of matter until finally we have a blazing, fiery wheel, turning every way, with radiant channels of fire from the centre to the ring-pass-not,fire within, without and around until the wheel is consumed and there is naught remaining but perfected fire.
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3. The Mental Plane,
4. The intuitional, or the buddhic plane,
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3. That found at the throat, the most important from the standpoint of the Mental Plane.
4. That in the region of the heart, which has an occult link with the buddhic plane.
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Here again we can trace the microcosmic correspondence: In the human being the centres are found on the Mental Plane from which originates the impulse for physical plane existence, or the will to incarnate; from thence they can be traced to the astral level, and eventually to the etheric levels, to the fourth ether, where they practically go through the same evolution that the planetary centres went through, and are instrumental in bringing about objectivity,being the force centres.
The centres are formed entirely of streams of force, pouring down from the Ego, who transmits it from the Monad. In this we have the secret of the gradual vibratory quickening of the centres as the Ego first comes into control, or activity, and later (after initiation) the Monad, thus bringing about changes and increased vitality within these spheres of fire or of pure life force.
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The other two centres have to do primarily with the etheric body and with the astral plane. The throat centre synthesises the entire personality life, and is definitely connected with the Mental Plane,the three planes, and the two higher planes, and the three centres with the two other centres, the heart and head. Yet, we must not forget that the centre at the base of the spine is also a synthesiser, as would normally be expected, if it is recognised that the lowest plane of all manifestation is the point of deepest reflection. This lowest centre, by synthesising the fire of kundalini and the pranic fires, eventually blends and merges with the fire of mind, and later with the fire of Spirit, producing thus consummation.
We must disabuse our minds of the idea that these centres are physical things. They are whirlpools of force that swirl etheric, astral and mental matter into activity of some kind. Because the action is rotary, the result produced in matter is a circular effect that can be seen by the clairvoyant as fiery wheels situated:
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3. Man controlled from the Mental Plane.
a. The base of the spine.
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In the two lower planes in the three worlds the astral and the physical the five subplanes of human endeavour are the five highest. The two lowest subplanes, the sixth and seventh, are what we might express as "below the threshold," and concern forms of life beneath the human altogether. We have a corroborating analogy in the fact that the two earliest root-races in this round are not definitely human, and that it is the third root-race which is really human for the first time. Counting, therefore, from the bottom upwards it is only the third subplane on the physical and the astral planes which mark the commencement of human effort, leaving five subplanes to be subdued. On the Mental Plane the five lower subplanes have to be subjugated during purely human evolution. When the consciousness is centred on the fifth subplane (counting from below upwards) then the planes of abstractionfrom the standpoint of man in the three worldssupervene the two subplanes of synthesis, demonstrating through the synthesis of the five senses. In the evolution of the Heavenly Man we have exactly the same thing: the five planes of endeavour, the five lower planes of the solar system, and the two higher planes of abstraction, the spiritual or monadic and the divine, or logoic.
[188]
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c. On the Mental Plane he begins to find his group note.
d. On the buddhic plane, or the plane of wisdom, he begins to find the note of his planetary Logos.
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Hearing on the Mental Plane is simply an extension of the faculty of differentiating sound. The hearing dealt with on all these planes is the hearing that has to do with the form, that concerns the vibration of matter, and that is occupied with the not-self. It has not to do with the psyche, or the telepathic communication that proceeds from mind to mind, but with the sound of the form or that power whereby one separated unit of consciousness is aware of another unit who is not himself. Bear this carefully in mind. When the extension of hearing becomes such that it concerns the psyche, then we call it telepathy or that wordless communication that is the synthesis of hearing on all the three lower planes and which is known by the Ego in the causal body on the formless levels of the Mental Plane.
On the buddhic plane, hearing (now of the synthetic quality called telepathy) demonstrates as complete comprehension, for it has involved two things:
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c. That as the higher triangle comes into play and the polarisation steps up to the higher centres, the senses begin to make themselves felt on the mental level and [203] man becomes aware on that plane. We have in the human body an interesting reflection of the transference of the polarisation from the Personality to the Ego, or into the causal body, in the division that exists between the higher and the lower Mental Planes, and the dividing line of the diaphragm between the higher and the lower portions of the body. Below the diaphragm we have the four lower centres:
1. The solar plexus.
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Third. The awakening upon the Mental Plane, and the gradually increasing activity of the centres and the senses. The effect in both cases tends to identification of the Self with its own essence in all groups and the rejection of the sheaths and the forms.
This development is paralleled on the two higher planes simultaneously as in the lower, and as the astral senses come into perfected activity, the corresponding centres of force on the buddhic plane begin to function until the vibratory interplay between the two is consummated, and the force of the Triad can be felt definitely in the Personality via the astral.
1.00 - INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
2. Solar Fire, or cosmic mental fire. This is that portion of the cosmic Mental Plane which goes to the animation of the mental body of the Logos. This fire may be regarded as the sumtotal of the sparks of mind, the fires of the mental bodies and the animating principle of the evolving units of the human race in the three worlds.
3. Electric Fire, or the logoic Flame Divine. This flame is the distinguishing mark of our Logos, and it is that which differentiates Him from all other Logoi; it is His dominant characteristic, and the sign of His place in cosmic evolution.
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First, we have the animating fires of the solar system, which are the fires of the primordial ray of active intelligent matter; these constitute the energy of Brahma, the third aspect of the Logos. Next are to be found the fires of the divine Ray of Love-Wisdom, the ray of intelligent love, which constitutes the energy of the Vishnu aspect, the second aspect logoic. [iv] 4 Finally are to be found [39] the fires of the cosmic Mental Plane, which are the fires of the cosmic ray of will. They might be described as the rays of intelligent will and are the manifestation of the first aspect logoic, the Mahadeva aspect. [v]5 Therefore we have three cosmic rays manifesting:
The Ray of intelligent activity. This is a ray of a very demonstrable glory, and of a higher point of development than the other two, being the product of an earlier mahakalpa, or a previous solar system.: [vi]6 It embodies [40] the basic vibration of this solar system, and is its great internal fire, animating and vitalising the whole, and penetrating from the centre to the periphery. It is the cause of rotary motion, and therefore of the spheroidal form of all that exists.
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The fires of the Mental Plane also demonstrate in a twofold manner:
First, as the Fire of Mind, the basis of all expression and in one peculiar occult sense the sumtotal of existence. It provides the relation between the life and the form, between spirit and matter, and is the basis of consciousness itself.
--
It likewise demonstrates, as yet imperfectly, as the vitalising factor in the thought forms fabricated by the thinker. As yet but few thought forms, comparatively, can be said to be constructed by the center of consciousness, the thinker, the Ego. Few people as yet are in such close touch with their higher self, or Ego, that they can build the matter of the Mental Plane into a form which can be truly said to be an expression of the thoughts, purpose or desire of their Ego, functioning through the physical brain. Most of the thought forms at present in circulation may be said to be aggregations of matter, built into form with the aid of kama-manas (or of desire faintly tinged with mind producing thus an admixture of astral and mental matter, mostly astral), and largely due to reflex elemental action.
These dualities of expression are:
--
The second fire, that from the cosmic Mental Plane, deals with:
a. The expression of the evolution of mind or manas.
1.01 - The Divine and The Universe, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the Mental Plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love.
When we rise high enough, we discover that these four aspects unite with each other in a single consciousness, full of love, luminous, powerful, beautiful, containing all, pervading all.
1.02 - The Great Process, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The secrets are simple, as we have said. Unfortunately the mind has seized this one, as it seizes everything, and has pressed it into the service of its mental, vital or spiritual ego. It has discovered certain powers of meditation or concentration, more refined energies, higher Mental Planes that were like the divine source of our existence, lights that were not from the moon or stars, more direct and almost superhuman faculties it has climbed the ladder of consciousness but all that only served to sublimate and rarefy a rare human elite; sublimate it so much, in fact, that there did not seem to be any other issue to this climb than an ultimate leap out of the dualities and into the changeless peace of eternal truths. A few souls were saved, possibly, while the earth went on its dark course, increasingly dark. And what should have been the earth's secret became heaven's. The most frightful schism of all time was accomplished, the bleakest duality was imprinted on the heart of the earth. And the very ones who should have been humankind's supreme unifiers became its dividers, the Founding Fathers of atheism, materialism and all the other isms that struggle for our world. The earth, duped, had no other recourse but to believe exclusively in herself and her own strength.
But the damage does not stop there. Nothing is stickier than falsehood. It sticks to the soles of our shoes even though we have turned away from the wrong path. Others had indeed seen the earthly relevance of the Great Process the Zen Buddhists, the Tantric initiates, the Sufis and others and, more and more, disconcerted minds are turning to it and to themselves: never have so many more or less esoteric schools flourished. But the old error is holding fast (to tell the truth, we don't know whether error is ever an appropriate term, for the so-called error always turns out to be a roundabout route of the same Truth leading to a wider view of itself). It took so much effort out of the Sages of those days, and out of the lesser sages of these days, so many indispensable conditions of peace, austerity, silence and purity for them to achieve their more or less illumined goal, that our subconscious mind was as if branded by a red-hot iron with the idea that, without special conditions and special masters and somewhat special or mystical or innate gifts, it was not really possible to set out on that path, or at best the results would be meager and proportionate to the effort expended. And it was still, of course, an individual undertaking, a lofty extension of book learning. But this new dichotomy threatens to be more serious than the other one, more potentially harmful, between an unredeemed mass and an enlightened elite juggling lights about which anything can be said since there is no microscope to check it. Drugs, too, are a cheap ticket to dizzying glimpses of dazzling lights.
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: Generally, these are men who want to escape into the Universal that is, into the Infinite, the Sachchidananda, on the Mental Plane. The Universal, as I told you, is full of all kinds of things, good and bad. The sadhaks, who enter into it and look upon it as their goal, accept whatever comes from it and, sometimes, behave in life with supreme indifference to morality. But their being is not transformed. Among our known sadhaks, K opened himself to the Universal, could not distinguish, or rather refused to distinguish and at the end went mad. Or take the case of L, an outsider, who was trying to remain in the Universal consciousness with the vital being full of all kinds of impurities. That is not perfection.
When the Divine Power the Supramental Shakti works, She establishes harmony between the various instruments of nature and also harmony in the whole of our life. R and people like him feel that such a harmonisation of the being is a limitation. But it is not a limitation because that action is in keeping with the truth of our being and our becoming.
--
But ordinarily, we have not to do philanthropic work from the same motives. Philanthropy has an egoistic motive, however high it may be. We have to look beyond. For instance, we need not start schools for the Depressed Classes in order to serve humanity. We have to work as a sacrifice to God and we have therefore to go beyond mental ideals and constructions. When men begin work with these mental or ethical motives, they find them to be true and therefore they are not willing to leave them behind and go beyond. We have to take up the work from the yogic point of view. For example, it is necessary to spread our literature because it spreads the new thought. Some men may receive it correctly and some incorrectly. A movement is set up on the universal Mental Plane. So also in social work the whole frame is shaken by the new thought and in-as-much as it moves men out of the old groove it is useful. But we have to act from the inner motives.
9 AUGUST 1923
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V: At first the Power was working on the Mental Plane. Now it is working on the vital and even below the vital plane.
Sri Aurobindo: How do you know that it is working on the vital plane?
1.04 - The Fork in the Road, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
From this point on, the road forks, and taking one path rather than the other entails far-reaching consequences that can extend over an entire lifetime. Not that one path is true and the other false, for we tend to believe that everything is ultimately true, since it exists, but this is a truth that grows, and falsehood is merely dawdling or persisting in a truth that has outlived its time and usefulness. From the moment we have broken loose from the machine, the outer as well as the inner one (the former is really a reflection or expression of the latter, and once we change inside, we will necessarily change outside; if we cease to mentalize life, it will cease being a mental round and become another life), from that moment on, we literally begin to have a certain latitude. No longer bound to the shadowy little person like a tethered goat, we can choose to move in two distinct directions. We can take the ascending path, that is, subtilize ourselves more and more, cast off the earthly burden, soar off in the enchanted little rocket of light we are beginning to sense, and come upon freer realms of consciousness, explore airy ranges, discover higher Mental Planes that are like the pure source of everything that takes place, distorted and approximate here, the angel face of what is looking more and more like a caricature.7 It is very tempting, so tempting in fact that all the sages and rather hasty seekers, or even simply those we would today call advanced minds or geniuses, have taken it it has lasted for thousands of years. But, unfortunately, once we reach those higher strata, it is very difficult to come back down; and even if we wish to come down, moved by some charitable or humanitarian urge, we notice that the ways above are fairly ineffective here. There seems to be an unbridgeable gulf between that light and this darkness, and what we want (or are able) to bring down from up there reaches here diminished, diluted, disfigured, leaden, finally to be lost in the Machine's great morasses.
But too bright were our heavens, too far away,
1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Altruism, philanthropy, humanitarianism, service are flowers of the mental consciousness and are at best the mind's cold and pale imitation of the spiritual flame of universal Divine Love. Not truly liberative from ego-sense, they widen it at most and give it higher and larger satisfaction; impotent in practice to change mall's vital life and nature, they only modify and palliate its action and daub over its unchanged egoistic essence. Or if they are intensely followed with an entire sincerity of the will, it is by an exaggerated amplification of one side of our nature; in that exaggeration there can be no clue for the full and perfect divine evolution of the many sides of our individualised being towards the universal and transcendent Eternal. Nor can the religio-ethical ideal be a sufficient guide, -- for this is a compromise or compact of mutual concessions for mutual support between a religious urge which seeks to get a closer hold on earth by taking into itself the higher turns of ordinary human nature and an ethical urge which hopes to elevate itself out of its own mental hardness and dryness by some touch of a religious fervour. In making this compact religion lowers itself to the mental level and inherits the inherent imperfections of mind and its inability to convert and transform life. The mind is the sphere of the dualities and, just as it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute Truth but only truths relative or mixed with error, so it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute good; for moral good exists as a counterpart and corrective to evil and has evil always for its shadow, complement, almost its reason for existence. But the spiritual consciousness belongs to a higher than the Mental Plane and there the dualities cease; for there falsehood confronted with the truth by which it profited through a usurping falsification of it and evil faced by the good of which it was a perversion or a lurid substitute, are obliged to perish for want of sustenance and to cease. The integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes -- the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and supra Mental Plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance.
It is the very nature of the soul or the psychic being to turn towards the Divine Truth as the sunflower to the sun; it accepts and clings to all that is divine or progressing towards divinity and draws back from all that is a perversion or a denial of it, from all that is false and undivine. Yet the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being, able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being -- "no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers -- and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity and ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature. This soul is obliged to accept the human mental, emotive, sensational life as it is, its relations, its activities, its cherished forms and figures; it has to labour to disengage and increase the divine element in all this relative truth mixed with continual falsifying error, this love turned to the uses of the animal body or the satisfaction of the vital ego, this life of an average manhood shot with rare and pale glimpses of Godhead and the darker luridities of the demon and the brute. Unerring in the essence of its will, it is obliged often under the pressure of its instruments to submit to mistakes of action, wrong placement of feeling, wrong choice of person, errors in the exact form of its will, in the circumstances of its expression of the infallible inner ideal. Yet is there a divination within it which makes it a surer guide than the reason or than even the highest desire, and through apparent errors and stumblings its voice can still lead better than the precise intellect and the considering mental judgment. This voice of the soul is not what we call conscience -- for that is only a mental and often conventional erring substitute; it is a deeper and more seldom heard call; yet to follow it when heard is wisest : even, it is better to wander at the call of one's soul than to go apparently straight with the reason and the outward moral mentor. But It is only when the life turns towards the Divine that the soul can truly come forward and impose its power on the outer members; for, itself a spark of the Divine, to grow in flame towards the Divine is its true life and its very reason of existence.
1.07 - The Magic Wand, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
2. The other way to charge the wand with elements is as follows: The magician draws the element which he wants to use for his work directly from the universe, that is, its particular Iphere, by force of the imagination, and dynamically accumulates it in the wand. When working with this kind of loaded wand, the results wanted are not caused by the beings of the elements, but directly by the magician himself. The advantage of this way of charging a wand is that it will give the magician a strong feeling of latisfaction, because he is the immediate cause of the magical effect. It is necessary, however, that a separate rod be manufactured for each of the elements and the wands must be stored apart from each other. To prevent the magician from mixing them up, he must be sure that he can easily differentiate between them by their outside appearance. Each wand may, for this purpose, have the colour of the relevant element. At the beginning the results will only occur on the Mental Plane, but prolonged use and repeated charging will make it work also on the astral plane, and eventually also on the physical world. This kind of wand will enable its owner to influence all manners of spirits, men, animals, even inanimate nature, by the element, similar to the influence of the electromagnetic fluid. Good magicians are able to cause, by the force of such a wand, marvelous natural phenomena, for in Itance, change of weather, acceleration of the growth of plants, and many other things of that nature.
Regarding Point 5: Charge with the Akasha-principle:
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Not only will the magician be able to work, with the help of the wand, in the physical world; he will also be in position to transfer, with his mental or astral hand, or with both, the mental and astral sphape of the wand into the relevant plane and will have his influence work in these planes without having to hold the wand in his physical hand. In case of the exteriorisation of his 54 whole mental body, he can take with him not only the mental shape of his magic wand with all its qualities into the Mental Plane but also the mental shape of all magic implements and aids, and there he is able to operate as if he were present with his whole physical body to carry out the operations. Never should the magician forget that the wand represents his true will in its completeness, absoluteness and power, which may well be compared with a magical oath, and therefore many magicians have their magic wand symbolize not only their will-power, but also the magical oath, which, from the hermetic point of view, may never and can never be broken. Many magicians carve into their wand the symbols appropriate to their will-power and the charge of the wand. Universal symbols, signs, seals of intelligences, divine names, and the like, may serve this purpose as far as they represent the true will-power of the magician. The details of this particular matter are left entirely to the magician's individuality.
The magician will know from these instructions how he has to go about reaching his aim, and it is up to him to provide, if he likes, his wand with a secret name standing for his will-power. It will also be clear to the practising magician that such a name must be kept a secret and must never, under any circumstance, be spoken.
1.08 - The Magic Sword, Dagger and Trident, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The magician may, by practising mental wandering, transfer the spiritual form of the sword into the Mental Plane and visit the planetary spheres taking his magic sword as well as his magic wand with him. There, according to his wish, he can make use of his magic power with the help of his magic implements. That every being will have to obey him in these spheres is clearly evident by what has been said before. The magician is able, during his magical operations and evocations, to transfer his mental sword with his mental hand into the relevant sphere by force of imagination, and there he can make the being carry out his wishes. Such a force, however, can only be exerted without danger by a magician who has a clean heart and a noble soul. If a sorcerer tried to do the like he would only make the being hate him and would soon become a victim of them and their influence.
The history of occult science has given many examples of the tragic fate and even more tragic end of such sorcerers. It would exeed the extension of this book to talk about certain events in detail.
1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1:IN THE light of this progressive manifestation of the Spirit, first apparently bound in the Ignorance, then free in the power and wisdom of the Infinite, we can better understand the great and crowning injunction of the Gita to the Karmayogin, "Abandoning all dharmas, all principles and laws and rules of conduct, take refuge in me alone." All standards and rules are temporary constructions founded upon the needs of the ego in its transition from Matter to Spirit. These makeshifts have a relative imperativeness so long as we rest satisfied in the stages of transition, content with the physical and vital life, attached to the mental movement, or even fixed in the ranges of the Mental Plane that are touched by the spiritual lustres. But beyond is the unwalled wideness of a supramental infinite consciousness and there all temporary structures cease. It is not possible to enter utterly into the spiritual truth of the Eternal and Infinite if we have not the faith and courage to trust ourselves into the hands of the Lord of all things and the Friend of all creatures and leave utterly behind us our mental limits and measures. At one moment we must plunge without hesitation, reserve, fear or scruple into the ocean of the free, the infinite, the Absolute. After the Law, Liberty; after the personal, after the general, after the universal standards there is something greater, the impersonal plasticity, the divine freedom, the transcendent force and the supernal impulse. After the strait path of the ascent the wide plateaus on the summit.
2:There are three stages of the ascent, - at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are halflights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
1.1.01 - The Divine and Its Aspects, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One can become one with the Divine on the Mental Plane. The Supermind is necessary for manifesting the Divine on earth.
*
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.
1.10 - The Revolutionary Yogi, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
with going into another state, but with the quality or poise of our consciousness within a given state. Hence, Nirvana is not the top of the ladder, any more than sleep or death are. It can be experienced at any level of our consciousness through concentration in the mind, in the vital, and even in the physical consciousness. The hatha yogi bent over his navel, or the Basuto dancing around his totem, can suddenly pass elsewhere, if such is their destiny, into another, transcendental dimension where all this world is reduced to nothingness. The same can happen to the mystic concentrated in his heart, or to the yogi concentrated in his mind. For one does not actually go higher as one enters Nirvana; one merely opens a passageway and goes out. Sri Aurobindo had not gone beyond the Mental Plane when he experienced Nirvana: I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes.119 It is after ascending to higher,
superconscious planes that he had experiences superior to Nirvana,
11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Standing on the Mental Plane, immured within the dimensions of Reason and mental intelligence, it is not easy to contemplate the type of consciousness that will be; even as it was difficult for the ape to envisage the advent of his successor, man. But certain characteristic signs, rudimentary or fragmentary movements of the higher status are visible in the mental consciousness even as it is: the ape likewise was not without a glimmer of Reason and logic, even the faculty of ratiocination that seems to be the exclusive property of man. There is, for example, a movement we call Intuition, so different from Reason to which even Scientists and Mathematicians acknowledge their debt of gratitude for so many of their discoveries and inventions. There is also the other analogous movement called Inspiration that rules the poet and the artist disclosing to them a world of beauty and reality that is not available to the normal human consciousness. Again, there is yet another group of human beings at the top of the ladder of evolutionmystics and sageswho see the truth, possess the truth direct through a luminous immediacy of perception, called Revelation. Now, all these functionings of consciousness that happen frequently enough within the domain of normal humanity are still expressions of a higher mode of consciousness: they are not the product or play of Reason or logical intelligence which marks the character, the differentia of human consciousness.
But, as at present, these are mere glimmers and glimpses from elsewhere and man has no comm and or control over them. They are beyond the habitual conscious will, they come and go as they like, happy visitations from another world, they do not abide our question and are not at our beck and call. The Supermind, on the contrary, is in full possession of that consciousness of which these are faint beginnings and distant echoes. The Superman will be born when man has risen above his mind and emerged into the supramental consciousness.
1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In a Yoga lived entirely on the spiritualised Mental Plane it is possible and even usual for these three fundamental aspects of the divine -- the Individual or Immanent, the Cosmic and the Transcendent -- to stand out as separate realisations. Each by itself then appears sufficient to satisfy the yearning of the seeker. Alone with the personal Divine in the inner heart's illumined secret chamber, he can build his being into the Beloved's image and ascend out of fallen Nature to dwell with him in some heaven of the Spirit. Absolved in the cosmic wideness, released from ego, his personality reduced to a point of working of the universal Force, himself calm, liberated, deathless in universality, motionless in the Witness Self even while outspread without limit in unending Space and Time, he can enjoy in the world the freedom of the Timeless. One-pointed towards some ineffable Transcendence, casting away his personality, shedding from him the labour and trouble of the universal Dynamis, he can escape into an inexpressible Nirvana, annul all things in an intolerant exaltation of flight into the Incommunicable.
But none of these achievements is enough for one who seeks the wide completeness of an integral Yoga. An individual salvation is not enough for him; for he finds himself opening to a cosmic consciousness which far exceeds by its breadth and vastness the narrower intensity of a limited individual fulfilment, and its call is imperative; driven by that immense compulsion, he must break through all separative boundaries, spread himself in world-Nature, contain the universe. Above too, there is urgent upon him a dynamic realisation pressing from the Supreme upon this world of beings, and only some encompassing and exceeding of the cosmic consciousness can release into manifestation here that yet unlavished splendour. But the cosmic consciousness too is not sufficient; for it is not all the Divine Reality, not integral. There is a divine secret behind personality that he must discover; there, waiting in it to be delivered here into Time, stands the mystery of the embodiment of the Transcendence. In the cosmic consciousness there remains at the end a hiatus, an unequal equation of a highest Knowledge that can liberate but not effectuate with a Power seeming to use a limited Knowledge or masking itself with a surface Ignorance that can create but creates imperfection or a perfection transient, limited and in fetters. On one side there is a free undynamic Witness and on the other side a bound Executrix of action who has not been given all the means of action. The reconciliation of these companions and opposites seems to be reserved, postponed, held back in an Unmanifest still beyond us. But, again, a mere escape into some absolute Transcendence leaves personality unfulfilled and the universal action inconclusive and cannot satisfy the integral seeker. He feels that the Truth that is for ever is a Power that creates as well as a stable Existence; it is not a Power solely of illusory or ignorant manifestation. The eternal Truth can manifest its truths in Time; it can create in Knowledge and not only in Inconscience and Ignorance. A divine Descent no less than an ascent to the Divine is possible; there is a prospect of the bringing down of a future perfection and a present deliverance. As his knowledge widens, it becomes for him more and more evident that it was this for which the Master of Works cast down the soul within him here as a spark of his fire into the darkness, that it might grow there into a centre of the Light that is for ever.
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
enters into it. We must suppose a Mental Plane of existence
36
1.1.2 - Intellect and the Intellectual, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is the ordinary unenlightened activity of the intellect that is an obstacle to spiritual experience, just as the ordinary unregenerated activity of the vital or the obscure stupidly obstructive consciousness of the body is an obstacle. What the sadhak has to be specially warned against in the wrong processes of the intellect is, first, any mistaking of mental ideas and impressions or intellectual conclusions for realisation; secondly, the restless activity of the mere mind, cacala mana, which disturbs the spontaneous accuracy of psychic and spiritual experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illuminating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches or even before it fully touches the human Mental Plane. There are also of course the usual vices of the intellect,its leaning towards sterile doubt instead of luminous reception and calm enlightened discrimination; its arrogance claiming to judge things that are beyond it, unknown to it, too deep for it by standards drawn from its own limited experience; its attempts to explain the supraphysical by the physical or its demand for the proof of higher and occult things by the criterions proper to Matter and to mind in Matter; others also too many to enumerate here. Always it is substituting its own representations and constructions and opinions for the true knowledge. But if the intellect is surrendered, open, quiet, receptive, there is no reason why it should not be a means of reception of the light or an aid to the experience of spiritual states and to the fullness of an inner change.
***
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
It is a cosmic consciousness, but with no loss of the individual. Instead of rejecting everything to soar to celestial heights, the seeker has patiently ascended each step of his being, so that the bottom remains linked to the top without any break. The overmind is the world of the gods, the source of inspiration of the great founders of religions. This is where all the religions we know were born; they all derive from an overmental experience in one of its countless aspects. For a religion or revelation, a spiritual experience, belongs to a certain plane; it does not come from God's thunders or from nowhere; those who incarnate the particular revelation have not conceived it from nothing: the overmind is their source. It is also the source of the higher artistic creations. But we must remember that, although it is the summit, it is still a Mental Plane.
When consciousness rises to that plane, it no longer sees "point by point," but calmly in great masses.198 There is no longer the diffused light of the illumined mind or the isolated flashes of the intuitive mind, but, to quote the wonderful Vedic phrase, "an ocean of stable lightnings." The consciousness is no longer limited to the brief present moment or the narrow range of its visual field; it is unsealed, seeing in a single glance large extensions of space and time.199 The essential difference with other planes lies in the evenness, the almost complete uniformity of the light. In a particularly receptive illumined mind one would see, for example, a bluish background with sudden jets of light, intuitive flashes, or moving luminous eruptions, sometimes even great overmental downpours, but it would be a fluctuating play of light, nothing stable. This is the usual condition of the greatest poets we know; they attain a certain level of rhythm, a particular poetic luminousness, and from time to time they touch upon higher regions and return with those rare dazzling lines (or musical phrases) that are repeated generation after generation like an open sesame. The illumined mind is generally the base (an already very high base), and the overmind a divine kingdom one gains access to in moments of grace.
1.14 - The Mental Plane, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
object:1.14 - The Mental Plane
class:chapter
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14.The Mental Plane ~
As the body ahs its earthly plane, and the astral body or the soul owns the astral plane, the spirit too has its own plane, the so-called Mental Plane or mental sphere. This is the mental sphere with all its virtues.
Both these spheres, the material as well as the astral one have been born from the akasa or original principle of the respective sphere, through the four elements, and also the mental sphe re is built upon the same foundation, and therefore likewise a product of the akasa principle of the spirit. Similar to the spirit, developing in a fourpole magnet by corresponding work and showing an electromagnetic fluid analogous to the astral body, on account of the effect of the elements, as a secondary phenomenon of the polarity on the outside, the mental body develops in the mental or spiritual sphere. Just in the same way as the astral body, through the electromagnetic fluid of the astral world, fo rms an astral matrix, the so-called astral od, the electromagnetic fluid of the mental world forms a mental matrix linking the mental body to the astral body. This mental matrix or the mental od, the so-called mental substance, is the subtlest form of akasa which controls and preserves the spiritual activity in the astral body.
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Simultaneously, the mental sphere is the sphere of thoughts which have their origin in the world of ideas, consequently in the spiritual akasa. Each thought is preceded by a basic idea which, according to its property, accepts a definite form, and arrives to the consciousness of the ego through the etheric principle, consequently the mental matrix, as expression of the thought in the shape of a plastic picture. Therefore Man himself is not the founder of the thoughts, but the origin of each thought is to be sought in the supreme akasa sphere or the Mental Plane. Mans spirit, as it were, is the receiver, the antenna of thoughts from the world of ideas, according to the situation in which Man happens to be. The world of ideas being all in all, each new idea, new invention -- in short, all Man believes to have created by himself -- has been brought out of this world of ideas. This production of new ideas depends on the maturity and attitude of the spirit. Each thought involves an absolutely pure element, especially if the thought implies abstract ideas. If the thought is based on several combinations of the ideal world, different elements are effective in their form as well as in their mutual emanation. Only abstract ideas have pure elements and pure polar emanations, as they descend directly from the causal world of an idea.
From this cognition we may draw the conclusion that there are pure electric, pure magnetic, indifferent and neutral ideas from the standpoint of their effect. According to the idea, each thought in the mental sphere has its own form, colour and vibration.
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The material plane is bound to time and space. The astral plane, sphere of the perishable or mutable spirit, is bound to space, the Mental Plane being timeless and spaceless. The very same thing happens with all the mental properties. The reception of a thought in the mental body, through the link of the astral and mental matrix bound to space and time in the total form, needs a certain amount of time to become fully conscious of this thought. According to the mental maturity, the train of thoughts is different in each individual. The more advanced, the more cultured man is, the faster thoughts will develop in mind.
Likewise as the astral plane is inhabited, so too is the Mental Plane. Besides the ideal forms, there are principally the deceased ones whose astral bodies have been dissolved by the elements in the course of their ripening, and allotted, according to the degree of perfection, to regions corresponding to their mental sphere.
Besides the mental sphere is the sphere of the so-called elementals, beings created consciously or unconsciously by man as a result of repeated and intense thinking. An elemental being is not yet so condensed to form or to assume any astral shape for itself. Its influence is therefore limited to the mental sphere. The difference between an ideal form and an elemental lies in the fact that the ideal form is based on one or several ideas. On the other hand, the elemental is equipped with a certain quantity of consciousness and therefore with the instinct of preservation, but otherwise it does not much distinguish from other mental living beings, and it can even take the same shape as the ideal form. The adept often resorts to these elemental beings. The problem of how to create such an elemental, how to preserve it and how to utilize it for certain purposes, will be approached in the practical section of this book.
There would still be quite a lot to be said about the particular, specific properties of some beings. But all that we have pointed out previously should be sufficient to stimulate the work and contri bute to a succinct enlightenment about the Mental Plane.
1.16 - Advantages and Disadvantages of Evocational Magic, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The magician is able to call any being from the astral world without any danger, without becoming dependent on it and without becoming a victim of necromancy. A necromancer is a person with a low degree of spiritual and magical development, whose main object is to get into contact with astral beings of the earth-zone, preferably with dead people. The necromancer will in most cases try to make use of a being from the astral sphere, that is he will either require of such a being certain magical duties in the physical, astral or Mental Plane or merely try to satisfy his curiosity. For this purpose the necromancer will choose a human being after his physical death who during his life on earth busied himself with any of the secret sciences and who possibly has reached a certain degree of perfection in this. If such a person happens to be a true magician who has followed the true path of initiation and has learned all its laws here on earth, having thus acquired a certain degree of perfection, who noble-minded strove for positive aims and controlled the negative powers, he will, if he thinks it beneficial, appear to the necromancer and point out to him the advantages or disadvantages of his projects and intentions. A true magician will, however, never keep up a constant connection with a necromancer, nor will he try to influence the necromancer in such a manner that he becomes dependent on him. He will always be prepared to warn the necromancer and will give him permission to call him in case of emergency. Furthermore, he will give good advice to the necromancer and initiate him into the laws of the astral sphere, but he will never be prepared to serve the necromancer, or to do whatever he wants, or to fulfill his material desires. Only bad magicians with little experience and an affection for negative powers or mere sorcery will try to maintain a contact with a necromancer or assist him in realizing his desires and to satisfying his curiosity. If the necromancer gets into the sphere and under the control of such a being, he will acquire the same kind of vibration as that being has in the earth-zone and thus becomes a fellow-sufferer. The astral being will then prevent the necromancer from making any progress in his spiritual and magical development and will see that he is never enlightened or blessed with personal advance. The being will then be full of malicious pleasure because it has succeeded in being troublesome to a human being on earth. It remembers the days of its own life on earth, its difficulties and troubles there, the temptations it could not resist, the powers it misused and the lack of chances for its true initiation, and it will also try to hinder the necromancer in his development. The danger that arises for the necromancer in such a case need not be analysed. I will, however, mention the fact that the necromancer may easily be vampirised by such a being and that the being will try to realize in the astral world its own egocentric plans by help of the vampirised powers of the necromancer.
Therefore every scholar is warned not to take up any such contacts and not to make himself dependent on any being. The manner in which a necromancer calls a being from the astral plane rests on two methods. One method is spiritistic: the being is asked to reveal itself by help of mediums; that is by mediumistic writing or by mediums put into a state of trance. This method requires great perseverance until the being is able to take up a direct contact and to appear to the necromancer. The other method is that of evocation: the necromancer takes up contact with the being by help of a picture of the spirit's previous incarnation or by enlivening such a picture until finally the being steps out of it like an elementary, taking on its previous shape. A necromancer does not usually succeed at once, but if he goes on with his work persistently he might, depending on his maturity, development, willpower and imagination, force the being to appear to him visibly.
1.2.1 - Mental Development and Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Reading good books can be of help in the early mental stagethey prepare the mind, put it in the right atmospherecan even if one is very sensitive bring some glimpses of realisation on the Mental Plane. Afterwards the utility diminishesyou have to find the right knowledge and experience in yourself.
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1.22 - The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The secret of the transformation lies in the transference of our centre of living to a higher consciousness and in a change of our main power of living. This will be a leap or an ascent even more momentous than that which Nature must at one time have made from the vital mind of the animal to the thinking mind still imperfect in our human intelligence. The central will implicit in life must be no longer the vital will in the life and the body, but the spiritual will of which we have now only rare and dim intimations and glimpses. For now it comes to us hardly disclosed, weakened, disguised in the mental Idea; but it is in its own nature supramental and it is its supramental power and truth that we have somehow to discover. The main power of our living must be no longer the inferior vital urge of Nature which is already accomplished in us and can only whirl upon its rounds about the ego-centre, but that spiritual force of which we sometimes hear and speak but have not yet its inmost secret. For that is still retired in our depths and waits for our transcendence of the ego and the discovery of the true individual in whose universality we shall be united with all others. To transfer from the vital being, the instrumental reality in us, to the spirit, the central reality, to elevate to that height our will to be and our power of living is the secret which our nature is seeking to discover. All that we have done hitherto is some half-successful effort to transfer this will and power to the Mental Plane; our highest endeavour and labour has been to become the mental being and to live in the strength of the idea. But the mental idea in us is always intermediary and instrumental; always it depends on something other than it for its ground of action and therefore although it can follow for a time after its own separate satisfaction, it cannot rest for ever satisfied with that alone. It must either gravitate downwards and outwards towards the vital and physical life or it must elevate itself inwards and upwards towards the spirit.
And that must be why in thought, in art, in conduct, in life we are always divided between two tendencies, one idealistic, the other realistic. The latter very easily seems to us more real, more solidly founded, more in touch with actualities because it relies upon a reality which is patent, sensible and already accomplished; the idealistic easily seems to us something unreal, fantastic, unsubstantial, nebulous, a thing more of thoughts and words than of live actualities, because it is trying to embody a reality not yet accomplished. To a certain extent we are perhaps right; for the ideal, a stranger among the actualities of our physical existence, is in fact a thing unreal until it has either in some way reconciled itself to the imperfections of our outer life or else has found the greater and purer reality for which it is seeking and imposed it on our outer activities; till then it hangs between two worlds and has conquered neither the upper light nor the nether darkness. Submission to the actual by a compromise is easy; discovery of the spiritual truth and the transformation of our actual way of living is difficult: but it is precisely this difficult thing that has to be done, if man is to find and fulfil his true nature. Our idealism is always the most rightly human thing in us, but as a mental idealism it is a thing ineffective. To be effective it has to convert itself into a spiritual realism which shall lay its hands on the higher reality of the spirit and take up for it this lower reality of our sensational, vital and physical nature.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: Such manifestations are as real as your own reality. In other words, when you identify yourself with the body as in jagrat you see gross objects; when in subtle body or in Mental Plane as in svapna, you see objects equally subtle; in the absence of identification as in sushupti you see nothing. The objects seen bear a relation to the state of the seer. The same applies to visions of God.
By long practice the figure of God, as meditated upon, appears in dream and may later appear in jagrat also.
1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4:But when we look more closely, we perceive that this normality is deceptive and that in fact there are several directions in which human mind reaches beyond itself, tends towards selfexceeding; these are precisely the necessary lines of contact or veiled or half-veiled passages which connect it with higher grades of consciousness of the self-manifesting Spirit. First, we have noted the place Intuition occupies in the human means of knowledge, and Intuition is in its very nature a projection of the characteristic action of these higher grades into the mind of Ignorance. It is true that in human mind its action is largely hidden by the interventions of our normal intelligence; a pure intuition is a rare occurrence in our mental activity: for what we call by the name is usually a point of direct knowledge which is immediately caught and coated over with mental stuff, so that it serves only as an invisible or a very tiny nucleus of a crystallisation which is in its mass intellectual or otherwise mental in character; or else the flash of intuition is quickly replaced or intercepted, before it has a chance of manifesting itself, by a rapid imitative mental movement, insight or quick perception or some swift-leaping process of thought which owes its appearance to the stimulus of the coming intuition but obstructs its entry or covers it with a substituted mental suggestion true or erroneous but in either case not the au thentic intuitive movement. Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or au thentic perception of things there is a veiled, a halfveiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spiritranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher Mental Planes, - towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process. Again, there is not an entire absence of penetration from above into our mental limits. The phenomena of genius are really the result of such a penetration, - veiled no doubt, because the light of the superior consciousness not only acts within narrow limits, usually in a special field, without any regulated separate organisation of its characteristic energies, often indeed quite fitfully, erratically and with a supernormal or abnormal irresponsible governance, but also in entering the mind it subdues and adapts itself to mind substance so that it is only a modified or diminished dynamis that reaches us, not all the original divine luminosity of what might be called the overhead consciousness beyond us.
Still the phenomena of inspiration, of revelatory vision or of intuitive perception and intuitive discernment, surpassing our less illumined or less powerful normal mind-action, are there and their origin is unmistakable. Finally, there is the vast and multitudinous field of mystic and spiritual experience, and here the gates already lie wide open to the possibility of extending our consciousness beyond its present limits, - unless, indeed, by an obscurantism that refuses to inquire or an attachment to our boundaries of mental normality we shut them or turn away from the vistas they open before us. But in our present investigation we cannot afford to neglect the possibilities which these domains of mankind's endeavour bring near to us, or the added knowledge of oneself and of the veiled Reality which is their gift to human mind, the greater light which arms them with the right to act upon us and is the innate power of their existence.
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: Such manifestations are as real as your own reality. In other words, when you identify yourself with the body as in jagrat you see gross objects; when in subtle body or in Mental Plane as in svapna, you see objects equally subtle; in the absence of identification as in sushupti you see nothing. The objects seen bear a relation to the state of the seer. The same applies to visions of God.
By long practice the figure of God, as meditated upon, appears in dream and may later appear in jagrat also.
1929-05-19 - Mind and its workings, thought-forms - Adverse conditions and Yoga - Mental constructions - Illness and Yoga, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to the Buddhist teachings, every human being lives and moves in a world of his own, quite independent of the world in which another lives; it is only when a certain harmony is created between these different worlds that they interpenetrate and men can meet and understand one another. This is true of the mind; for everybody moves in a mental world of his own, created by his own thoughts. And it is so true that always, when something has been said, each understands it in a different way; for what he catches is not the thing that has been spoken but something he has in his own head. But it is a truth that belongs to the movement of the Mental Plane and holds good only there.
For the mind is an instrument of action and formation and not an instrument of knowledge; at each moment it is creating forms. Thoughts are forms and have an individual life, independent of their author: sent out from him into the world, they move in it towards the realisation of their own purpose of existence. When you think of anyone, your thought takes a form and goes out to find him; and, if your thinking is associated with some will that is behind it, the thought-form that has gone out from you makes an attempt to realise itself. Let us say, for instance, that you have a keen desire for a certain person to come and that, along with this vital impulse of desire, a strong imagination accompanies the mental form you have made; you imagine, If he came, it would be like this or it would be like that. After a time you drop the idea altogether, and you do not know that even after you have forgotten it, your thought continues to exist. For it does still exist and is in action, independent of you, and it would need a great power to bring it back from its work. It is working in the atmosphere of the person touched by it and creates in him the desire to come. And if there is a sufficient power of will in your thought-form, if it is a well-built formation, it will arrive at its own realisation. But between the formation and the realisation there is a certain lapse of time, and if in this interval your mind has been occupied with quite other things, then when there happens this fulfilment of your forgotten thought, you may not even remember that you once harboured it; you do not know that you were the instigator of its action and the cause of what has come about. And it happens very often too that when the result does come, you have ceased to desire or care for it. There are some men who have a very strong formative power of this kind and always they see their formations realised; but because they have not a well-disciplined mental and vital being, they want now one thing and now another and these different or opposite formations and their results collide and clash with one another. And these people wonder how it is that they are living in so great a confusion and disharmony! They do not realise that it is their own thoughts and desires that have built the circumstances around them which seem to them so incoherent and contradictory and make their life almost unbearable.
1929-05-26 - Individual, illusion of separateness - Hostile forces and the mental plane - Psychic world, psychic being - Spiritual and psychic - Words, understanding speech and reading - Hostile forces, their utility - Illusion of action, true action, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1929-05-26 - Individual, illusion of separateness - Hostile forces and the Mental Plane - Psychic world, psychic being - Spiritual and psychic - Words, understanding speech and reading - Hostile forces, their utility - Illusion of action, true action
class:chapter
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Do hostile forces attack one on the Mental Plane as they do in the vital world?
It is difficult to give a precise answer without going into a number of explanations into which we cannot now enter.
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Now, there are Mental Planes that stand high above the vital world and escape its influence; there are no hostile forces or beings there. But there are othersand they are many that can be touched or penetrated by the vital forces. The mind-plane that belongs to the physical world, the physical mind, as we usually call it, is more material in its structure and movement than the true mind and it is very much under the sway of the vital world and the hostile forces. This physical mind is usually in a kind of alliance with the lower vital consciousness and its movements; when the lower vital manifests certain desires and impulses, this more material mind comes to its aid and justifies and supports them with specious explanations and reasonings and excuses. It is this layer of mind that is most open to suggestions from the vital world and most often invaded by its forces. But there is in us a higher mind which moves in the region of disinterested ideas and luminous speculations and is the originator of forms, and there is a mind of pure ideas that have not yet been put into form; these greater mind-levels are free from the vital movements and the adverse forces, because they stand far above them. There may be contradictory movements there; there may be movements and formations that come into clash with the Truth or are in conflict with one another; but there is no vital disturbance, nothing that can be called hostile. The true philosopher mind, the mind that is the thinker, discoverer, maker of forms, and the mind of pure ideas that are not yet put into form, are beyond this inferior invasion and influence. But this does not mean that their motions cannot be imitated or their creations misused by perverse or hostile beings of a greater make and higher origin than those of whom I have till now spoken.
What are the conditions in the psychic world? How is it situated with regard to the hostile forces?
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We spoke once of individual minds as worlds that are distinct and separate from one another; each is shut up in itself and has almost no direct point of contact with any other. But that is in the region of the inferior mind; there your own formations close you in; you cannot get out of them or out of yourself; you can understand only yourself and your own reflection in things. But here in this higher region of the unexpressed mind and its purer altitudes you are free; when you enter there, you go out of yourself and penetrate into a universal Mental Plane in which each individual mental world is dipping as if into a huge sea. There you can understand entirely what is going on in another and read his mind as if it were your own, because there no separation divides mind from mind. It is only when you unite in that region with others that you can understand them; otherwise you are not attuned, you do not touch, you have no means of knowing precisely what is happening in another mind than yours. Most often when you are in the presence of another you are quite ignorant of what he thinks or feels; but if you are able to go beyond and above this external plane of expression, if you can enter into a plane where a silent communion is possible, then you can read in that other as you would in yourself. Then the words you use for your expression are of very little importance, because the full comprehension lies beyond them in something else and a minimum of words is sufficient for your purpose. Long explanations are not necessary there; you do not need that a thought should be brought out into full expression, for the direct vision of what is meant is with you.
Will a time come when the hostile forces will be there no longer?
1929-06-23 - Knowledge of the Yogi - Knowledge and the Supermind - Methods of changing the condition of the body - Meditation, aspiration, sincerity, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the Mental Plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher Mental Plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supra Mental Plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earths memory.
1951-03-19 - Mental worlds and their beings - Understanding in silence - Psychic world- its characteristics - True experiences and mental formations - twelve senses, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mind is one movement, but there are many varieties of the movement, many strata, that touch and even press into each other. At the same time the movement we call mind penetrates into other planes Now, there are Mental Planes that stand high above the vital world and escape its influence; there are no hostile forces or beings there. But there are othersand they are many that can be touched or penetrated by the vital forces.
Questions and Answers 1929 (26 May)
Which Mental Plane are you speaking of?
Of the physical mind. Certainly not of the higher mind, for there are no adverse forces there. The reference is to the mind that deals with material things.
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Many mental formations try to realise themselves upon earth, but these are generally created by human beings; they then continue to work in the mental world with the intention of influencing the mind of human beings. But the beings of the Mental Plane proper are generally creators, and because they are creators of form, they are not much concerned with influencing other formsthey are satisfied with expressing themselves through the forms they have made.
Is there any difference between the spiritual and the psychic? Are they two different planes?
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But here in this higher region of the unexpressed mind and its purer altitudes you are free; when you enter there, you go out of yourself and penetrate into a universal Mental Plane in which each individual mental world is dipping as if into a huge sea. There you can understand entirely what is going on in another and read his mind as if it were your own, because there no separation divides mind from mind. It is only when you unite in that region with others that you can understand them; otherwise you are not attuned, you do not touch.
Questions and Answers 1929 (26 May)
1951-05-11 - Mahakali and Kali - Avatar and Vibhuti - Sachchidananda behind all states of being - The power of will - receiving the Divine Will, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will.1 Is there a plane of will, as there is a Mental Plane, a vital plane, etc.?
I have explained that to you in connection with Sachchidananda. Sachchidananda exists at the very origin of the worlds, but there is a Sachchidananda behind all the other states of being. You could make a diagram (though that does not explain much, it is quite an erroneous idea, but it makes things more easily understandable), you arrange the states of being according to a scale. Then, you have the earth below and the Supreme above (it is not at all like that, I hasten to tell you! But anyway, it is easy to understand), you put the earth at the bottom and the Supreme at the top, and you divide that into lots of little parts each of which represents a state of being; that makes a kind of ladder. And then, you have as though behind it, behind your ladder, something which supports it, against which it leans. It is not a wall but it is something which supports your ladder. And that is precisely the first principle of the universal form. In Hindu terminology it is called Sachchidananda. It is there, everything leans upon that; without that nothing could exist. It is that which upholds and allows existence. Then, if you enter a certain state of consciousness and find yourself, for instance, in the higher mind (for generally it is more easily there that this happens; you have started from the physical and climbed slowly, rung by rung, as far as the higher mind), but instead of continuing your ascent on the ladder you enter into a kind of interiorisation and try to go out of the form, you pass into a kind of silence outside the form. You pass in between the bars of your ladder and enter straight into Sachchidananda which supports everything from behind. And then you can have mentally the experience of Sachchidananda. I have known people who had it and thought they had reached the heights of the Supreme. For there is a similarity in the experience, a very great likeness, only it is limited to the mind, the mind alone participates in it. Well, for the will it is the same thing. Instead of being the support of the ladder it is a kind of force, a very powerful current which passes through all these states, starting from aboveit is the supreme Willand coming down into the physical manifestation. Hence, if you get into affinity with this vibration or this force, you can enter the state of will; that is, whatever state of being you may find yourself inphysical, vital, mental, etc.if you enter a certain state of consciousness and force, you come into contact with this power of will: it penetrates into you and you can use it for any purpose. If your reception is free from all egoism, if you are pure, completely surrendered and accept only what comes from the Divine, and if you dont mix anything with it, egoism or desires or limitations well, it is a state a bit difficult to attain, but if you attain it, you receive this force of will in its original state, pure (for it comes down pure, it is only in its reception that it gets deformed), then, instead of being your will it becomes an expression of the divine Will. And this happens without your leaving the physical bodyyou can receive the force of the divine Will without leaving the physical. Only, you see, you must not change it and deform it, spoil it in the receiving. When you feel within you a kind of indomitable energy to realise something, when you tell yourself, I shall do this whatever the cost, I shall go to the end and shall use all my will (for you always say my will), well, you cannot be in that state unless you have come into contact with this current of will-force. Only, with your little personal reaction, naturally you deform it and use it all wrongly, and then you come into conflict with other elements. But if you are truly a yogi, you receive the current and nothing can stop the lan of your action, even physically.
1953-06-03, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have already spoken to you of the different planes of consciousness. Well, on the material plane, purely material (when separated from the vital plane), it is an absolute mechanism where consequently all things are linked together; and as I was saying the other day, if you want to find the cause of one thing or what is the result of a thing, you will find another and yet another and you will make an entire tour round the universe. And it is like that, everything is absolutely mechanised. Only, in this purely material plane, there can intervene the vital plane, and it already does intervene in the vegetable kingdom. The vital plane has an altogether different determinism, its own particular determinism. But when you introduce the vital determinism into the determinism of the physical, that produces a kind of combination that changes everything. And above the vital plane there is the Mental Plane. The Mental Plane also has its own determinism where all things are linked together rigorously.
But that is the movement which could be called horizontal. If you take a vertical movement, the mind descending into the vital and the vital descending into the physical, you have there three determinisms that intervene and naturally produce something altogether different. And where the mind has intervened the determinism will necessarily be different from the one where it does not intervene; that is, in the higher animal life there is already a mental determinism which intervenes that is altogether different from the determinism of the vegetable plane.
1953-08-05, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah! Inspirations come from very many different places. There are inspirations that may be very material, there are inspirations that may be vital, there are inspirations that come from all kinds of Mental Planes, and there are very, very rare inspirations that come from the higher mind or from a still higher region. All inspirations do not come from the same place. Hence, to be inspired does not necessarily mean that one is a higher being. One may be inspired also to do and say many stupid things!
What does inspired mean?
1953-10-14, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That depends. They have been given many names. All has been done by gradations and through individual beings of all kinds. Each state of being is inhabited by entities, individualities and personalities and each one has created a world around him or has contri buted to the formation of certain beings upon earth. The last creators are those of the vital world, but there are beings of the Overmind (Sri Aurobindo calls this plane the Overmind), who have created, given forms, sent out emanations, and these emanations again had their emanations and so on. What I meant is that it is not the Divine Will that acted directly on Matter to give to the world the required form, it is by passing through layers, so to say, planes of the world, as for example, the Mental Planethere are so many beings on the Mental Plane who are form-makers, who have taken part in the formation of some beings who have incarnated upon earth. On the vital plane also the same thing happens.
For example, there is a tradition which says that the whole world of insects is the outcome of the form-makers of the vital world, and that this is why they take such absolutely diabolical shapes when they are magnified under the microscope. You saw the other day, when you were shown the microbes in water? Naturally the pictures were made to amuse, to strike the imagination, but they are based on real forms, so magnified, however, that they look like monsters. Almost the whole world of insects is a world of microscopic monsters which, had they been larger in size, would have been quite terrifying. So it is said these are entities of the vital world, beings of the vital who created that for fun and amused themselves forming all these impossible beasts which make human life altogether unpleasant.
1954-10-06 - What happens is for the best - Blaming oneself -Experiences - The vital desire-soul -Creating a spiritual atmosphere -Thought and Truth, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At present your experiences are on the Mental Plane
This is in reply to someone, I dont know to whom. Someone who wrote a letter and to whom Sri Aurobindo has replied: At present your experiences are on the Mental Plane. I dont know what letter it was nor this person.
But what does only on the Mental Plane means?
What does it mean? Well, these are experiences concerning thought, mental activity, the understanding of things, the observation of things, thought, deduction, reasoning, the contact with teaching, knowledge, the result of this knowledge on your understandingall these things which are purely mental. And in fact one should always begin with that.
1955-06-29 - The true vital and true physical - Time and Space - The psychics memory of former lives - The psychic organises ones life - The psychics knowledge and direction, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the Mental Plane the notion of Time disappears almost totally. For example, you are in your mental consciousness, you think of someone or something or of a place, and immediately you are there. There is no need of any time between the thought and the realisation. It is only when the mind is mingled with the vital that the notion of time is introduced; and if they go down into the physical, before a mental conception can be realised a whole process is necessary. You do not have a direct mental action on matter. For instance, if you think of someone who lives in Calcutta, well, physically you have to take a plane and some hours must pass before you can be there; while mentally if you are here and think of someone in Calcutta, instantaneously you are there with him. Instantaneously, you see. But if you go out in the vital from your body and want to go somewhere, well, you have the feeling of moving, and of the time it takes you to reach the place you are going to. But it is incomparably fast in relation to the physical, to the time necessary to do things physically.
Only right at the top of the ladder, when one reaches what could be called the centre of the universe, the centre and origin of the universe, everything is instantaneous. The past, present and future are all contained in a total and simultaneous consciousness, that is, what has always been and what will be are as though united in a single instant, a single beat of the universe, and it is only there that one goes out of Time and Space.
1955-10-05 - Science and Ignorance - Knowledge, science and the Buddha - Knowing by identification - Discipline in science and in Buddhism - Progress in the mental field and beyond it, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But thats the only way; there are no others. It is an absolute fact that one knows only what one is, and if one wants to know something, one must become that. So you see, there are many people who say, It is impossible, but thats because they remain on a certain plane. It is obvious that if you remain only on the material plane or even on the Mental Plane, you cannot know the universe, because the mind is not universal; it is only a means of expression of the universe; and it is only by an essential identification that you can then know things, not from outside inwards but from inside outwards. This is not impossible. It is altogether possible. It has been done. But it cant be done with instruments, however perfected they may be. Here one must once again make something else intervene, other regions, other realities than purely material ones, including the mind which belongs to the physical life, the terrestrial life.
One can know everything, but one must know the way. And the way is not learnt through books, it cannot be written in numbers. It is only by practising And here then, it demands an abnegation, a consecration, a perseverance and an obstinacystill more considerable than what the sincerest, most honest, most unselfish scientists have ever shown. But I must say that the scientific method of work is a marvellous discipline; and what is curious is that the method recommended by the Buddha for getting rid of desires and the illusion of the world is also one of the most marvellous disciplines ever known on the earth. They are at the two ends, they are both excellent; those who follow one or the other in all sincerity truly prepare themselves for yoga. A small click, somewhere, is enough to make them leave their fairly narrow point of view on one side or the other so as to be able to enter into an integrality which will lead them to the supreme Truth and mastery.
1956-06-06 - Sign or indication from books of revelation - Spiritualised mind - Stages of sadhana - Reversal of consciousness - Organisation around central Presence - Boredom, most common human malady, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And what is still more remarkable is that only human beings can do it, for only human beings have at their centre the divine Presence in the psychic being. For example, this work of self-development and organisation and being aware of all the elements is not within the reach of the beings of the vital and Mental Planes, nor even of the beings who are usually called gods; and when they want to do it, when they really want to organise themselves and become completely conscious, they have to take a body.
And yet, human beings come into a physical body without knowing why, most of them go through life without knowing why, they leave their body without knowing why, and they have to begin the same thing all over again, indefinitely, until one day, someone comes along and tells them, Be careful! you know, there is a purpose to this. You are here for this work, dont miss your opportunity!
1957-06-05 - Questions and silence - Methods of meditation, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So, unless a question immediately gives rise to an experience which can be expressed as a new formula, in my opinion it is always better to keep silent. Only when the question is living can it give rise to an experience which will be the occasion of a living teaching. And for a question to be alive, it must answer an inner need for progress, a spontaneous need to progress on some plane or otheron the Mental Plane is the most usual way, but if by chance it answers an inner aspiration, a problem one is tackling and wants to solve, then the question becomes interesting and living and truly useful, and it can give rise to a vision, a perception on a higher plane, an experience in the consciousness which can make the formula new so that it carries a new power for realisation.
Apart from such cases I always feel that it is much better not to say anything and that a few minutes of meditation are always more useful.
1960 08 27, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thus, on the Mental Plane the absolute Truth is divided into innumerable fragmentary and contradictory truths which, in their entirety, strive to reproduce, insofar as possible, the original Truth.
If one element of this totality is taken separately and affirmed as the only true one, however central or comprehensive it may be, it necessarily becomes a falsehood, since it denies all the rest of the Total Truth.
1963 11 04, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If we consider it from the psychological point of view on the Mental Plane, it is very easy; on the vital plane it is not very difficult; on the physical plane it is a little heavier, for it takes the form of needs; but here too there has been a field of experience these last few days: the study of medical and scientific conceptions of the structure of the body, its needs, what is good or bad for it; and that, reduced to its essence, comes down to the same question of vibrations. It was rather interesting: there was an appearance for all things as they are seen by the ordinary consciousness are pure appearances there was an appearance of food-poisoning and it became the object of a special study in order to find out whether there was anything absolute in it or whether the poisoning was relative, that is, based on ignorance and a bad reaction, and on the absence of the true vibration. The conclusion was that it is a question of proportion between the amount, the sum of vibrations that belong to the Lord, and the vibrations that still belong to obscurity; and, depending on the proportion, it takes the form of something concrete and real or of something that can be eliminated, that is, which does not resist the influence of the vibration of Truth. And it was very interesting, for as soon as the consciousness was informed of the cause of the disturbance in the functioning of the body the consciousness saw where it came from, what it wasimmediately, the observation began with the idea, Let us see what is happening. First, put the body in a state of perfect rest with the certitudewhich is always there that nothing happens except by the will of the Lord, that the result is also the will of the Lord, and that therefore one should be completely quiet; so the body is completely quiet, untroubled, it is not restless, not vibrating, nothingcompletely quiet. And then, to what extent are the effects inevitable? As a certain amount of matter containing an element unfavourable to the elements of the body and to the life of the body has been absorbed, what is the proportion of favourable and unfavourable elements, or of favourable and unfavourable vibrations? Then I saw very clearly that the proportion varies according to the number of body cells under the direct influence, which respond only to the supreme vibration, and the others which still belong to the ordinary way of vibrating. It was very clear, because one could see all the possibilities, from the ordinary mass which is completely upset by this intrusion and in which one has to fight with all the ordinary methods to get rid of the undesirable element, to the total response of the cells to the supreme Force, which means that the intrusion can have no effect. But this is still the dream of tomorrowwe are on the way. And the proportion has become quite favourable I cannot say all-powerful, far from itquite favourable, which means that the consequences of the disturbance did not last very long and the damage was, so to say, minimal.
But all the experiences at the moment, one after the otherall the physical experiences of the bodylead to the same conclusion: everything depends on the proportion of elements responding exclusively to the influence of the Supreme, the elements that are half and half, on the way to transformation, and the elements that are still in the old process of vibration of Matter. Their number seems to be diminishing; it seems to be diminishing greatly, but there are still enough of them to produce unpleasant effects or reactionsthings that are not transformed, that still belong to ordinary life. But every problemwhe ther psychological or purely material or chemical the whole problem comes down to this: they are nothing but vibrations. And there is the perception of this totality of vibrations and the perception of what one might call, very crudely and approximately, the difference between constructive and destructive vibrations. We could sayit is simply a way of putting it that all vibrations that come from the One and express Oneness are constructive and that all the complications of the ordinary separative consciousness lead to destruction.
2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
What Bucke and some of the other people get is some sense of the Infinite on the Mental Plane and they begin to think that it is everything.
His whole book is a generalisation from one experience which lasted only a few seconds. One ought not to rush into print with so little.
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But it is very dangerous to accept everything as the working of the Divine, saying, "All is the working of God," like K who says evil and good are both equal. Everything is, in the last analysis, the working of the Divine, but you have not therefore to accept everything. It may not matter very much so long as you are on the Mental Plane, but on the vital plane if you accept everything as the working of the Divine you are sure to fall. It is a very dangerous movement because the sadhak may justify the play of lower impulses in him on the ground that they have a purpose to serve.
When one knows the hostile forces also as the working of the Divine, the left hand of God, then the movement of exhaustion of these forces is very quick.
2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
I know some people make such constructions as the Yogapitha and so on. One can always find these things, because many things from the Mental Plane are always trying to realise themselves here. These constructions are generally on the Mental Plane and they may even have some truth behind them not in the forms and constructions themselves. But even where there is some truth behind them it gets mixed up with many other things which sometimes falsifies the truth behind it.
Disciple: Perhaps all sorts of vital forces come and take advantage of it.
2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean by 'true'? On the vital plane there is nothing that you cannot see: you can recast the whole history of the world. It is not the Mental Plane really speaking it is the mental-vital. I was in that condition for ten days and any number of things came at that time.
Disciple: You could have written them down.
2.04 - On Art, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: Does not poetry like that of Tagore come from the Mental Plane?
Sri Aurobindo: No. It does not come from the Mental Plane; at best it is from the vital mind, or vital-mental, that it comes.
31 DECEMBER 1938
2.07 - The Mother Relations with Others, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am with you, that signifies a world of things, because I am with you on all levels, on all planes, from the supreme consciousness down to my most physical consciousness. Here, in Pondicherry, you cannot brea the without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical, and extends to the Lake, ten kilometres from here. Farther, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, then on the Mental Plane and the other higher planes, everywhere. When I came here for the first time, I felt the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, felt it materially at a distance of ten miles, ten nautical miles, not kilometres. It was very sudden, very concrete, an atmosphere pure, luminous, light, light that lifts you up.
It is now long since Sri Aurobindo has put up everywhere in the Ashram this reminder that you all know: Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you, because she is, indeed, always present.
2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
act of knowledge by identity belong to the higher hemisphere of existence: this knowledge by direct contact is the main character of the highest supraphysical Mental Planes of consciousness, those to which our surface being is closed in by a wall of ignorance; in a diminished and more separative form it is a property of the lesser supraphysical planes of mind; it is or can be an element in all that is supraphysical. It is the main instrumentation of our subliminal self, its central means of awareness; for the subliminal self or inner being is a projection from these higher planes to meet the subconscience and it inherits the character of consciousness of its planes of origin with which it is intimately associated and in touch by kinship. In our outer being we are children of the Inconscience; our inner being makes us inheritors of the higher heights of mind and life and spirit: the more we open inwards, go inwards, live inwards, receive from within, the more we draw away from subjection to our inconscient origin and move towards all which is now superconscient to our ignorance.
Ignorance becomes complete with the entire separation of being from being: the direct contact of consciousness with consciousness is then entirely veiled or heavily overlaid, even though it still goes on within our subliminal parts, just as there is also, though wholly concealed and not directly operative, the underlying secret identity and oneness. There is on the surface a complete separateness, a division into self and not-self; there is the necessity of dealing with the not-self, but no direct means of knowing it or mastering it. Nature then creates indirect means, a contact by physical organs of sense, a penetration of outside impacts through the nerve currents, a reaction of mind and its co-ordinations acting as an aid and supplement to the activity of the physical organs, - all of them methods of an indirect knowledge; for the consciousness is forced to rely on these instruments and cannot act directly on the object. To these means is added a reason, intelligence and intuition which seize on the communications thus indirectly brought to them, put all in order and utilise their data to get as much knowledge and mastery and possession of the not-self or as much partial unity
2.10 - On Vedic Interpretation, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: It might have been already found on the Mental Plane by somebody or might have come into my mind by some force. I did not pursue its meaning; it indicated to me the Supermind and I was satisfied.
A triangle on its base indicates the world formed by the three lower powers. A triangle placed on its apex indicates the three higher planes of being. When these two triangles are superimposed upon each other then a new symbol is found. The ancients indulged in such speculations.
2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
There is a doubt somewhere in the mental being, some uncertainty. The whole thing is ready behind. If there had been the certainty on the Mental Plane the work would have been done.
It was not done till now because probably the hostile forces were very strong. You do not know how strong they are, I alone know it; you have only a glimpse of it.
2.12 - The Realisation of Sachchidananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But this evolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal selves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being supernormal and superhuman planes. There Chit as the universal conscious-stuff of existence takes other poises, moves out in other modes, on other principles and by other faculties of action. There is above the mind, as the old Vedic sages discovered, a Truth-plane, a plane of self-luminous, self-effective Idea, which can be turned in light and force upon our mind, reason, sentiments, impulses, sensations and use and control them in the sense of the real Truth of things just as we turn our mental reason and will upon our sense-experience and animal nature to use and control them in the sense of our rational and moral perceptions. There is no seeking, but rather natural possession; no conflict or separation between will and reason, instinct and impulse, desire and experience, idea and reality, but all are in harmony, concomitant, mutually effective, unified in their origin; in their development and in their effectuation. But beyond this plane and attainable through it are others in which the very Chit itself becomes revealed. Chit the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience. There will and knowledge and sensation and all the rest of our faculties, powers, modes of experience are not merely harmonious, concomitant, unified, but are one being of consciousness and power of consciousness. It is this Chit which modifies itself so as to become on the Truth-plane 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. All is Chit because all is Sat; all is various movement of the original Consciousness because all is various movement of the original Being.
When we find, see or know Chit, we find also that its essence is Ananda or delight of self-existence. To possess self is to possess self-bliss; not to possess self is to be in more or less obscure search of the delight of existence. Chit eternally possesses its self-bliss; and since Chit is the universal conscious-stuff of being, conscious universal being is also in possession of conscious self-bliss, master of the universal delight of existence. The Divine whether it manifests itself in All-Quality or in No-Quality, in Personality or Impersonality, in the One absorbing the Many or in the One manifesting its essential multiplicity, is always in possession of self-bliss and all-bliss because it is always Sachchidananda. For us also to know and possess our true Self in the essential and the universal is to discover the essential and the universal delight of existence, self-bliss and all-bliss. For the universal is only the pouring out of the essential existence, consciousness and delight; and wherever and in whatever form that manifests as existence, there the essential consciousness must be and therefore there must be an essential delight.
2.1.2 - The Vital and Other Levels of Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
At present your experiences are on the Mental Plane, but that is the right movement. Many sadhaks are unable to advance because they open the vital plane before the mental and psychic are ready. After some beginning of true spiritual experiences on the Mental Plane there is a premature descent into the vital and great confusion and disturbance. This has to be guarded against. It is still worse if the vital desire-soul opens to experience before the mind has been touched by the things of the spirit.
Aspire always for the mind and psychic being to be filled with the true consciousness and experience and made ready. You must aspire especially for quietness, peace, a calm faith, an increasing steady wideness, for more and more knowledge, for a deep and intense but quiet devotion.
2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Now, when a man dies his physical body dissolves; the vital body dissolves after some time, and the mental body also dissolves. Take the case of an insect. In the insect there is only the physical consciousness and nothing else. Other formations in the universe are too low to be considered. The insect gathers certain experiences on the physical plane. My own view is that it goes on developing from plane to plane with a supporting Self. The soul skma deh living on the physical plane returns to the Jiva which was all along supporting the insect in the physical consciousness. When the soul is ready, it is taken up into the vital plane and there it gathers experiences till the Mental Plane is reached in man. There is the Supra Mental Plane also.
What we do in our Yoga is to bring down the Supra Mental Plane so that the soul may return with the full experience to the higher plane. The question is how far we can supramentalise. If we can supramentalise the mind and the vital being we can return with the memory of that experience and also with that ready formation in another manifestation. One can preserve, if he so chooses, his vital body after death and produce effects on the vital plane.
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Sri Aurobindo: That is not quite correct, because your body is material and yet it has got life and mind. In the physical itself you have got life and mind; only, they are involved. But if you can grow conscious on the physical plane you will find that there is life and even mind in the cells of the body. Of course, the life and mind we find in the physical world are not the same as we find on the vital or the Mental Plane. But you can't deny that there is mind in it. It is that which performs the mechanical operations of the body with such precision. The physical mind is the mind which sees only the physical and material aspect of things and refuses to see any other aspect.
Disciple: That is the ordinary mind.
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Sri Aurobindo: The Purusha looks at the world as Prakriti represents it to be. On the Mental Plane Prakriti represents thoughts, ideas in short, all mental movements. On the vital plane Prakriti represents itself as desires in short, as action of the vital force. On the physical plane it represents itself as the unchangeable law of physical life.
Disciple: When the Purusha separates itself from Prakriti, how is it possible for it to aspire for something higher?
2.15 - On the Gods and Asuras, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean? Do you refer to the mental in men or to beings who have no bodies but are living on the Mental Plane? If you say that a plane is supramentalised then all the beings on that plane also must be supramentalised. Then by that dme the Pushwala[1] also may have his mind transformed. You can't expect the Universal Law to change like that. These planes and the beings on them change in relation to you or in so far as they come in contact with you. But they cannot change by your doing Sadhana.
Disciple: How do the beings on the Mental Plane come in contact with us and how do they undergo change or do Sadhana?
Sri Aurobindo: These distinctions between the various grades of being are bound to remain; otherwise there would be only a Supramental universe. For the Lila to go on these distinctions are necessary. Besides, among these beings, each has his own destiny to fulfil. They must go by their own way.
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Disciple: If the Asuras represent the dark side of God on the vital plane, does this dark side exist on every plane? If so, are there beings on the Mental Plane who correspond to the dark side?
Sri Aurobindo: The Asura is really the dark side of God on the Mental Plane. Mind is the very field of the Asura. His characteristic is egoistic strength which refuses the Higher Law. The Asura has got self-control, Tapas, intelligence only, all that is for his ego.
On the vital plane the corresponding forces are called the Rakshasas who represent violent passions and impulses. There are other beings on the vital plane whom we call pramatta and pica and they manifest, more or less, on the physico-vital plane.
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Sri Aurobindo: No; they are worshipped in the vital way, but their conception is much larger than that and they generally go up to the higher Mental Plane.
When the European mind leaves materialism, it takes the vital gods as the true gods.
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Sri Aurobindo: Beauty is not an abstraction. It is a power of the Supreme on the plane above the Mind. On the Mental Plane you have abstractions. It is the mind's way of representing realities of planes higher than its own, but behind these abstractions there is a reality. On the plane above the mind there are no abstractions; there are realities and powers. For instance, you form an abstract idea in the mind about the Supermind. When you get to the Supermind you find it is not an abstraction at all. It is more intensely concrete than Matter, something quite overwhelming in its concreteness. That is why I called it the Real-Idea and not an abstract idea. In that sense there is nothing more concrete than God. If we were on the pure Mental Plane we would find Mind quite concrete and real. But as we are on the physical plane we always think that mind is abstract.
Before the Supermind Matter dwindles into a shadow!
2.15 - The Cosmic Consciousness, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is when the mental being takes its station in its own spiritual planes, in the Mental Planes of Sat, Chit, Ananda, and casts down their light and delight upon the lower existence. But it is possible to attempt to arrive at a kind of cosmic consciousness by dwelling on the lower planes themselves, breaking their limitation laterally, as we have said, and calling down into them the light and largeness of the higher existence. Not only Spirit is one, but Mind, Life, Matter are one. There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down, by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness. And if we can by the mind and heart get at the touch of the Spirit, receive the powerful inrush of the Divine into this lower humanity and change our nature into a reflection of the divine nature by love, by universal joy, by oneness of mind with all Nature and all beings, we can break down the walls. Even our bodies are not really separate entities and therefore our very physical consciousness is capable of oneness with the physical consciousness of others and of the cosmos. The Yogin is able to feel his body one with all bodies, to be aware of and even to participate in their affections; he can feel constantly the unity of all Matter and be aware of his physical being as only a movement in its movement398. Still more is it possible for him to feel constantly and normally the whole sea of the infinite life as his true vital existence and his own life as only a wave of that boundless surge. And more easily yet is it possible for him to unite himself in mind and heart with all existences, be aware of their desires, struggles, joys, sorrows, thoughts, impulses, in a sense as if they were his own, at least as occurring in his larger self hardly less intimately or quite as intimately as the movements of his own heart and mind. This too is a realisation of cosmic consciousness.
It may even seem as if it were the greatest oneness, since it accepts all that we can be sensible of in the mind-created world as our own. Sometimes one sees it spoken of as the highest achievement. Certainly, it is a great realisation and the path to a greater. It is that which the Gita speaks of as the accepting of all existences as if oneself whether in grief or in joy; it is the way of sympathetic oneness and infinite compassion by which the Buddhist arrives at his Nirvana. Still there are gradations and degrees. In the first stage the soul is still subject to the reactions of the duality, still subject therefore to the lower prakriti; it is depressed or hurt by the cosmic suffering, elated by the cosmic joy. We suffer the joys of others, suffer their griefs, and this oneness can be carried even into the body, as in the story of the Indian saint who, seeing a bullock tortured in the field by its cruel owner, cried out with the creature's pain and the weal of the lash was found reproduced on his own flesh. But there must be a oneness in the freedom of Sachchidananda as well as with the subjection of the lower being to the reactions of prakriti. This is achieved when the soul is free and superior to the cosmic reactions which are then felt in the life, mind and body as an inferior movement; the soul understands, accepts, sympathises, but is not overpowered or affected, so that even the mind and body learn also to accept without being overpowered or even affected except on their surface. And the consummation of this movement is when the two spheres of existence are no longer divided and the mind, life and body grow into the spirit's freedom from the lower or ignorant response to the cosmic touches and the subjection to the duality ceases. This does not mean insensibility to the struggles and sufferings of others, but it does mean a spiritual supremacy and freedom which enables one to understand perfectly, put the right values on things and heal from above instead of struggling from below. It does not inhibit the divine compassion and helpfulness, but it does inhibit the human and animal sorrow and suffering.
2.16 - Power of Imagination, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The imagination is really the power of mental formation. When this power is put at the service of the Divine, it is not only formative but also creative. There is, however, no such thing as an unreal formation, because every image is a reality on the Mental Plane. The plot of a novel, for instance, is all there on the Mental Plane existing independently of the physical. Each of us is a novelist to a certain extent and possesses the capacity to make forms on that plane; and, in fact, a good deal of our life embodies the products of our imagination. Every time you indulge your imagination in an unhealthy way, giving a form to your fears and anticipating accidents and misfortunes, you are undermining your own future. On the other hand, the more optimistic your imagination, the greater the chance of your realising your aim. Monsieur Cou got hold of this potent truth and cured hundreds of people by simply teaching them to imagine themselves out of misery. He once related the case of a lady whose hair was falling off. She began to suggest to herself that she was improving every day and that her hair was surely growing. By constantly imagining it her hair really began to grow and even reached an enviable length owing to still further auto-suggestion. The power of mental formation is most useful in Yoga also; when the mind is put in communication with the Divine Will, the supramental Truth begins to descend through the layers intervening between the mind and the highest Light and if, on reaching the mind, it finds there the power of making forms it easily becomes embodied and stays as a creative force in you. Therefore I say to you never be dejected and disappointed but let your imagination be always hopeful and joyously plastic to the stress of the higher Truth, so that the latter may find you full of the necessary formations to hold its creative light.
The imagination is like a knife which may be used for good or evil purposes. If you always dwell in the idea and feeling that you are going to be transformed, then you will help the process of the Yoga. If, on the contrary, you give in to dejection and bewail that you are not fit or that you are incapable of realisation, you poison your own being. It is just on account of this very important truth that I am so tirelessly insistent in telling you to let anything happen but, for heavens sake, not to get depressed. Live rather in the constant hope and conviction that what we are doing will prove a success. In other words, let your imagination be moulded by your faith in Sri Aurobindo; for, is not such faith the very hope and conviction that the will of Sri Aurobindo is bound to be done, that his work of transformation cannot but end in a supreme victory and that what he calls the supramental world will be brought down on earth and realised by us here and now?
2.16 - The 15th of August, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
There are three layers of the Supermind corresponding to the three activities of the Intuitive Mind. First is what I call the Interpretative Supermind. I call it interpretative because what is a possibility on the Mental Plane becomes a potentiality on the Supra Mental Plane. The Interpretative Supermind puts all the potentialities before you. It shows the root cause of events that may come true on the physical plane. When Intuition is changed into its Supramental value, it becomes Interpretative Supermind.
Next comes what I call the Representative Supermind. It represents the actual movements of the potentialities and shows what is in operation. When Inspiration is changed into its Supramental value then it becomes this Representative Supermind. This is not the highest Supermind. You know certain potentialities are working and in many cases you can say what would happen, or how a certain thing happened or can happen. But there may be no certainty. Finally there is the Imperative Supermind which corresponds to Revelation. It is always true as nothing can stand against it. It is Knowledge fulfilling itself by its own inherent power.
2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
If you go above the vital and Mental Planes you come to a point where the Gita's Sarva dharmn parityajya becomes the principle. But there if you leave out the last portion, mmekam araam vraja take refuge in Me alone then you follow your ego and you fall, and become either an Asura or a lunatic or an animal. But even the animals have a sense of right and wrong. That is very well shown in Kipling's Jungle Book. Have you read it?
Disciple: No.
2.19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the superconscience beyond our present level of awareness are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being. The first indispensable step in an upward evolution would be to elevate our force of consciousness into those higher parts of Mind from which we already receive, but without knowing the source, much of our larger mental movements, those, especially, that come with a greater power and light, the revelatory, the inspirational, the intuitive. On these mental heights, in these largenesses, if the consciousness could succeed in reaching them or maintain and centre itself there, something of the direct presence and power of the spirit, something even - however secondary or indirect - of the supermind could receive a first expression, could make itself initially manifest, could intervene in the government of our lower being and help to remould it. Afterwards, by the force of that remoulded consciousness, the course of our evolution could rise by a sublimer ascent and get beyond the mental into the supramental and the supreme spiritual nature. It is possible without an actual ascent into these at present superconscient Mental Planes or without a constant or permanent living in them, by openness to them, by reception of their knowledge and influences, to get rid to a certain extent of our constitutional and psychological ignorance; it is possible to be aware of ourselves as spiritual beings and to spiritualise, though imperfectly, our normal human life and consciousness. There could be a conscious communication and guidance from this greater more luminous mentality and a reception of its enlightening and transforming forces. That is within the reach of the highly developed or the spiritually awakened human being; but it would not be more than a preliminary stage. To reach an integral self-knowledge, an entire consciousness and power of being, there is necessary an ascent beyond the plane of our normal mind. Such an ascent is at present possible in an absorbed superconscience; but that could lead only to an entry into the higher levels in a state of immobile or ecstatic trance. If the control of that highest spiritual being is to be brought into our waking life, there must be a conscious heightening and widening into immense ranges of new being, new consciousness, new potentialities of action, a taking up - as integral as possible - of our present being, consciousness, activities and a transmutation of them into divine values which would effect a transfiguration of our human existence. For wherever a radical transition has to be made, there is always this triple movement - ascent, widening of field and base, integration - in Nature's method of self-transcendence.
Any such evolutionary change must necessarily be associated with a rejection of our present narrowing temporal ignorance. For not only do we now live from moment to moment of time, but our whole view is limited to our life in the present body between a single birth and death. As our regard does not go farther back in the past, so it does not extend farther out into the future; thus we are limited by our physical memory and awareness of the present life in a transient corporeal formation.
2.19 - The Planes of Our Existence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised Mental Plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence. It knows that this is not the whole truth of our existence, which is much more complex; it knows there are many planes, but it disregards them or pays little attention to them because they are not essential to this liberation. They indeed rather hamper it, because to live on them brings new attractive psychical experiences, psychical enjoyments, psychical powers, a new world of phenomenal knowledge the pursuit of which creates stumbling-blocks in the way of its one object, immergence in Brahman, and brings a succession of innumerable way-side snares on the road which leads to God. But since we accept world-existence, and for us all world-existence is Brahman and full of the presence of God, these things can have no terrors for us; whatever dangers of distraction there may be, we have to face and overcome them. If the world and our own existence are so complex, we must know and embrace their complexities in order that our self-knowledge and our knowledge of the dealings of Purusha with its prakriti may be complete. If there are many planes, we have to possess them all for the Divine, even as we seek to possess spiritually and transform our ordinary poise of mind, life and body.
3:The ancient knowledge in all countries was full of the search after the hidden truths of our being and it created that large field of practice and inquiry which goes in Europe by the name of occultism, -- we do not use any corresponding word in the East, because these things do not seem to us so remote, mysterious and abnormal as to the occidental mentality; they are nearer to us arid the veil between our normal material life and this larger life is much thinner. In India,428a Egypt, Chaldea, China, Greece, the Celtic countries they have formed part of various Yogic systems and disciplines which had once a great hold everywhere, but to the modern mind have seemed mere superstition and mysticism, although the facts and experiences on which they are founded are quite as real in their own field and as much governed by intelligible laws of their own as the facts and experiences of the material world. It is not our intention here to plunge into this vast and difficult field of psychical knowledge.428b But it becomes necessary now to deal with certain broad facts and principles which form its framework, for without them our Yoga of knowledge cannot be complete. We find that in the various systems the facts dealt with are always the same, but there are considerable differences of theoretic and practical arrangement, as is natural and inevitable in dealing with a subject so large and difficult. Certain things are here omitted, there made all-important, here understressed, there over-emphasised; certain fields of experience which are in one system held to be merely subordinate provinces, are in others treated as separate kingdoms. But I shall follow here consistently the Vedic and Vedantic arrangement of which we find the great lines in the Upanishads, first because it seems to me at once the simplest and most philosophical and more especially because it was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation. It takes as its basis the three principles of our ordinary being, mind, life and matter, the triune spiritual principle of Sachchidananda and the link principle of vijnana, supermind, the free or spiritual intelligence, and thus arranges all the large possible poises of our being in a tier of seven planes, -- sometimes regarded as five only, because, only the lower five are wholly accessible to us, -- through which the developing being can rise to its perfection.
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10:What has been said of the life-world applies with the necessary differences to still higher planes of the cosmic existence. For beyond that is a Mental Plane, a world of mental existence in which neither life, nor matter, but mind is the first determinant. Mind there is not determined by material conditions or by the life-force, but itself determines and uses them for its own satisfaction. There mind, that is to say, the psychical and the intellectual being, is free in a certain sense, free at least to satisfy and fulfil itself in a way hardly conceivable to our body-bound and life-bound mentality; for the Purusha there is the pure mental being and his relations with prakriti are determined by that purer mentality. Nature there is mental rather than vital and physical. Both the life-world and indirectly the material are a projection from that, the result of certain tendencies of the mental Being which have sought a field, conditions, an arrangement of harmonies proper to themselves; and the phenomena of mind in this world may be said to be a result of the pressure of that plane first on the life-world and then on life in the material existence. By its modification in the life-world it creates in us the desiremind, in its own right it awakes in us the purer powers of our psychical and intellectual existence. But our surface mentality is only a secondary result of a larger subliminal mentality whose proper seat is the Mental Plane. This world of mental existence also is constantly acting upon us and our world, has its powers and its beings, is related to us through our mental body. There we find the psychical and mental heavens to which the Purusha can ascend when it drops this physical body and can there sojourn till the impulse to terrestrial existence again draws it downward. Here too are many planes, the lowest converging upon and melting into the worlds below, the highest at the heights of the mind-power into the worlds of a more spiritual existence.
11:These highest worlds are therefore supramental; they belong to the principle of supermind, the free, spiritual or divine intelligences436 or gnosis and to the triple spiritual principle of Sachchidananda. From them the lower worlds derive by a sort of fall of the Purusha into certain specific or narrow conditions of the play of the soul with its nature. But these also are divided from us by no unbridgeable gulf; they affect us through what are called the knowledge-sheath and the bliss-sheath, through the causal or spiritual body, and less directly through the mental body, nor are their secret powers absent from the workings of the vital and material existence. Our conscious spiritual being and our intuitive mind awaken in us as a result of the pressure of these highest worlds on the mental being in life and body. But this causal body is, as we say, little developed in the majority of men and to live in it or to ascend to the supra Mental Planes, as distinguished from corresponding sub-planes in the mental being, or still more to dwell consciously upon them is the most difficult thing of all for the human being. It can be done in the trance of Samadhi, but otherwise only by a new evolution of the capacities of the individual Purusha of which few are even willing to conceive. Yet is that the condition of the perfect self-consciousness by which alone the Purusha can possess the full conscious control of prakriti; for there not even the mind determines, but the Spirit freely uses the lower differentiating principles as minor terms of its existence governed by the higher and reaching by them their own perfect capacity. That alone would be the perfect evolution of the involved and development of the undeveloped for which the Purusha has sought in the material universe, as if in a wager with itself, the conditions of the greatest difficulty.
2.20 - The Lower Triple Purusha, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A more developed humanity allows us to make a better and freer use of all the capacities and experiences that we derive from the vital and Mental Planes of being, to lean more for support upon these hidden planes, be less absorbed by the physical and to govern and modify the original nature of the physical being by greater vital forces and powers from the desire-world and greater and subtler mental forces and powers from the psychical and intellectual planes. By this development we are able to rise to higher altitudes of the intermediary existence between death and rebirth and to make a better and more rapid use of rebirth itself for a yet higher mental and spiritual development. But even so, in the physical being which still determines the greater part of our waking self, we act without definite consciousness of the worlds or planes which are the sources of our action. We are aware indeed of the life-plane and mind-plane of the physical being, but not of the life-plane and mind-plane proper or of the superior and larger vital and mental being which we are behind the veil of our ordinary consciousness. It is only at a high stage of development that we become aware of them and even then, ordinarily, only at the back of the action of our mentalised physical nature; we do not actually live on those planes, for if we did we could very soon arrive at the conscious control of the body by the life-power and of both by the sovereign mind; we should then be able to determine our physical and mental life to a very large extent by our will and knowledge as masters of our being and with a direct action of the mind on the life and body. By Yoga this power of transcending the physical self and taking possession of the higher selves may to a greater or less degree be acquired through a heightened and widened self-consciousness and self-mastery.
This may be done, on the side of Purusha, by drawing back from the physical self and its preoccupation with physical nature and through concentration of thought and will raising oneself into the vital and then into the mental self. By doing so we can become the vital being and draw up the physical self into that new consciousness, so that we are only aware of the body, its nature and its actions as secondary circumstances of the Life-soul which we now are, used by it for its relations with the material world. A certain remoteness from physical being and then a superiority to it; a vivid sense of the body being a mere instrument or shell and easily detachable; an extraordinary effectivity of our desires on our physical being and life-environment; a great sense of power and ease in manipulating and directing the vital energy of which we now become vividly conscious, for its action is felt by us concretely, subtly physical in relation to the body, sensible in a sort of subtle density as an energy used by the mind; all awareness of the life-plane in us above the physical and knowledge and contact with the beings of the desire-world; a coming into action of new powers, -- what are usually called occult-powers or Siddhis; a close sense of and sympathy with the Life-soul in the world and a knowledge or sensation of the emotions, desires, vital impulses of others, these are some of the signs of this new consciousness gained by Yoga.
But all this belongs to the inferior grades of spiritual experience and indeed is hardly more spiritual than the physical existence. We have in the same way to go yet higher and raise ourselves into the mental self. By doing so we call become the mental self and draw up the physical and vital being into it, so that life and body and their operations become to us minor circumstances of our being used by tile Mind-soul which we now are for the execution of its lower purposes that belong to the material existence. Here too we acquire at first a certain remoteness from the life and the body and our real life seems to be on quite another plane than material man's, in contact with a subtler existence, a greater light of knowledge than the terrestrial, a far rarer and yet more sovereign energy; we are ill touch in fact with the Mental Plane, aware of the mental worlds, can be in communication with its beings and powers. From that plane we behold the desire-world and the material existence as if below us, things that we can cast away from us if we will and in fact easily reject when we relinquish the body, so as to dwell in the mental or psychical heavens. But we can also, instead of being thus remote and detached, become rather superior to the life and body and the vital and material planes and act upon them with mastery from our new height of being. Another sort of dynamis than physical or vital energy, something that we may call pure mind-power and soul-force, which the developed human being uses indeed but derivatively and imperfectly, but which we can now use freely and with knowledge, becomes the ordinary process of our action, while desire-force and physical action fall into a secondary place and are only used with this new energy behind them and as its occasional channels. We are in touch and sympathy also with the Mind in cosmos, conscious of it, aware of the intentions, directions, thought-forces, struggle of subtle powers behind all happenings, which the ordinary marl is ignorant of or can only obscurely infer from the physical happening, but which we can now see and feel directly before there is any physical sign or even vital intimation of their working. We acquire too the knowledge and sense of the mind-action of other beings whether on the physical plane or on those above it; and the higher capacities of the mental being, -- occult powers or Siddhis, but of a much rarer or subtler kind than those proper to the vital plane, -- naturally awake in our consciousness.
All these however are circumstances of the lower triple world of our being, the trailokya of the ancient sages. Living on these we are, whatever the enlargement of our powers and our consciousness, still living within the limits of the cosmic gods and subject, though with a much subtler, easier and modified subjection, to the reign of prakriti over Purusha. To achieve real freedom and mastery we have to ascend to a yet higher level of the many-plateaued mountain of our being.
2.21 - The Ladder of Self-transcendence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Man is a spirit, but a spirit that lives as a mental being in physical Nature; he is to his own self-consciousness a mind in a physical body. But at first he is this mental being materialised and he takes the materialised soul, pranamaya purusa, for his real self. He is obliged to accept, as the Upanishad expresses it, Matter for the Brahman because his vision here sees Matter as that from which all is born, by which all lives and to which all return in their passing. His natural highest concept of Spirit is an Infinite, preferably an inconscient Infinite, inhabiting or pervading the material universe (which alone it really knows), and manifesting by the power of its presence all these forms around him. His natural highest conception of himself is a vaguely conceived soul or spirit, a soul manifested only by the physical life's experiences, bound up with physical phenomena and forced on its dissolution to return by an automatic necessity to the vast indeterminateness of the Infinite. But because he has the power of self-development, he can rise beyond these natural conceptions of the materialised soul; he call supplement them with a certain derivative experience drawn from supraphysical planes and worlds. He can concentrate in mind and develop the mental part of his being, usually at the expense of the fullness of his vital and physical life and in the end the mind predominates and can open to the Beyond. He can concentrate this self-liberating mind on the Spirit. Here too usually in the process he turns away more and more from his full mental and physical life; he limits or he discourages their possibilities as much as his material foundation in nature will allow him. In the end his spiritual life predominates, destroys his earthward tendency and breaks its ties and limitations. spiritualised, he places his real existence beyond in other worlds, in the heavens of the vital or Mental Plane; he begins to regard life on earth as a painful or troublesome incident or passage in which he can never arrive at any full enjoyment of his inner ideal self, his spiritual essence. Moreover, his highest conception of the Self or Spirit is apt to be more or less quietistic; for, as we have seen, it is its static infinity alone that he can entirely experience, the still freedom of Purusha unlimited by prakriti, the Soul standing back from Nature. There may come indeed some divine dynamic manifestation in him, but it cannot rise entirely above the heavy limitations of physical Nature. The peace of the silent and passive Self is more easily attainable and he can more easily and fully hold it; too difficult for him is the bliss of all infinite activity, the dynamis of an immeasurable Power.
But the Spirit can be poised in the principle of Life, not in Matter. The Spirit so founded becomes the vital self of a vital world, the Life-soul of a Life-energy in the reign of a consciously dynamic Nature. Absorbed in the experiences of the power and play of a conscious Life, it is dominated by the desire, activity and passion of the rajasic principle proper to vital existence. In the individual this spirit becomes a vital soul, pranamaya purusa, in whose nature the life-energies tyrannise over the mental and physical principles. The physical element in a vital world readily shapes its activities and formations in response to desire and its imaginations, it serves and obeys the passion and power of life and their formations and does not thwart or limit them as it does here on earth where life is a precarious incident in inanimate Matter. The mental element too is moulded and limited by the life-power, obeys it and helps only to enrich and fulfil the urge of its desires and the energy of its impulses. This vital soul lives in a vital body composed of a substance much subtler than physical matter, it is a substance surcharged with conscious energy, capable of much more powerful perceptions, capacities, sense-activities than any that the gross atomic elements of earth-matter can offer. Man, too, has in himself behind his physical being, subliminal to it, unseen and unknown but very close to it and forming with it the most naturally active part of his existence, this vital soul, this vital nature and this vital body; a whole vital plane connected with the life-world or desire-world is hidden in us, a secret consciousness in which life and desire find their untrammelled play arid their easy self-expression and from there throw their influences and formations on our outer life.
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Man too has in himself, subliminal, unknown and unseen concealed behind his waking consciousness and visible organism this mental soul, mental nature, mental body and a Mental Plane, not materialised, in which the principle of Mind is at home and not as here at strife with a world which is alien to it, obstructive to its freedom and corruptive of its purity and clearness. All the higher faculties of man, his intellectual and psycho-mental being and powers, his higher emotional life awaken and increase in proportion as this Mental Plane in him presses upon him. For the more it manifests, the more it influences the physical parts, the more it enriches and elevates the corresponding Mental Plane of the embodied nature. At a certain pitch of its increasing sovereignty it can make man truly man and not merely a reasoning animal; for it gives then its characteristic force to the mental being within us which our humanity is in the inwardly governing but still too hampered essence of its psychological structure.
It is possible for man to awaken to this higher mental consciousness, to become this mental being,452 put on, this mental nature and live not only in the vital and physical sheaths, but in this mental body. If there were a sufficient completeness in this transformation he would become capable of a life and a being at least half divine. For he would enjoy powers and a vision and perceptions beyond the scope of this ordinary life and body; he would govern all by the clarities of pure knowledge; he would be united to other beings by a sympathy of love and happiness; his emotions would be lifted to the perfection of the psycho Mental Plane, his sensations rescued from grossness, his intellect subtle, pure and flexible, delivered from the deviations of the impure pranic energy and the obstructions of matter. And he would develop too the reflection of a wisdom and bliss higher than any mental joy and knowledge; for he could receive more fully and without our incompetent mind's deforming and falsifying mixture the inspirations and intuitions that are the arrows of the supramental Light and form his perfected mental existence in the mould and power of that vaster splendour. He could then realise too the self or Spirit in a much larger and more luminous and more intimate intensity than is now possible and with a greater play of its active power and bliss in the satisfied harmony of his existence.
2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Where then would the temporary dwelling in the supraphysical take place? what would be the soul's other habitat? It might seem that it ought to be on a Mental Plane, in mental worlds, both because on man the mental being the attraction of that plane, already active in life, must prevail when there is not the obstacle of the attachment to the body, and because the Mental Plane should be, evidently, the native and proper habitat of a mental being. But this does not automatically follow, because of the complexity of man's being; he has a vital as well as a mental existence, - his vital part often more powerful and prominent than the mental, - and behind the mental being is a soul of which it is the representative. There are, besides, many planes or levels of world-existence and the soul has to pass through them to reach its natural home. In the physical plane itself or close to it there are believed to be layers of greater and greater subtlety which may be regarded as sub-planes of the physical with a vital and a mental character; these are at once surrounding and penetrating strata through which the interchange between the higher worlds and the physical world takes place. It might then be possible for the mental being, so long as its mentality is not sufficiently developed, so long as it is restricted mainly to the more physical forms of mind and life activity, to be caught and delayed in these media. It might even be obliged to rest there entirely between birth and birth; but this is not probable and could only happen if and in so far as its attachment to the earth-forms of its activity was so great as to preclude or hamper the completion of the natural upward movement. For the postmortal state of the soul must correspond in some way to the development of the being on earth, since this after-life is not a free upward return from a temporary downward deviation into mortality, but a normal recurrent circumstance which intervenes to help out the process of a difficult spiritual evolution in the physical existence. There is a relation which the human being in his evolution on earth develops with higher planes of existence, and that must have a predominant effect on his internatal dwelling in these planes; it must determine his direction after death and determine too the place, period and character of his self-experience there.
It may be also that he may linger for a time in one of those annexes of the other worlds created by his habitual beliefs or by the type of his aspirations in the mortal body. We know that he creates images of these superior planes, which are often mental translations of certain elements in them, and erects his images into a system, a form of actual worlds; he builds up also desire worlds of many kinds to which he attaches a strong sense of inner reality: it is possible that these constructions may be so strong as to create for him an artificial post-mortal environment in which he may linger. For the image-making power of the human mind, its imagination, which is in his physical life only an indispensable aid to his acquisition of knowledge and his life-creation, may in a higher scale become a creative force which would enable the mental being to live for a while amid its own images until they were dissolved by the soul's pressure. All these buildings are of the nature of larger life constructions; in them his mind translates some of the real conditions of the greater mental and vital worlds into terms of his physical experience magnified, prolonged, extended to a condition beyond physicality: he carries by this translation the vital joy and vital suffering of the physical being into supraphysical conditions in which they have a greater scope, fullness and endurance. These constructive environments must therefore be considered, so far as they have any supraphysical habitat, as annexes of the vital or of the lower Mental Planes of existence.
But there are also the true vital worlds, - original constructions, organised developments, native habitats of the universal life-principle, the cosmic vital Anima, acting in its own field and in its own nature. On his internatal journey he may be held there for a period by force of the predominantly vital character of the influences which have shaped his earthly existence, - for these influences are native to the vital world and their hold on him would detain him for a while in their proper province: he may be kept in the grasp of that which held him in its grasp even in the physical being. Any residence of the soul in annexes or in its own constructions could be only a transitional stage of the consciousness in its passage from the physical to the supraphysical state; it must pass from these structures into the true worlds of supraphysical Nature. It may enter at once into the worlds of other-life, or it may remain first, as a transitional stage, in some region of subtle-physical experience whose surroundings may seem to it a prolongation of the circumstances of physical life, but in freer conditions proper to a subtler medium and in some kind of happy perfection of mind or life or a finer bodily existence. Beyond these subtle-physical planes of experience and the life-worlds there are also mental or spiritual- Mental Planes to which the soul seems to have an internatal access and into which it may pursue its internatal journey; but it is not likely to live consciously there if there has not been a sufficient mental or soul development in this life. For these levels must normally be the highest the evolving being can internatally inhabit, since one who has not gone beyond the mental rung in the ladder of being would not be able to ascend to any supramental or overmental state; or if he had so developed as to overleap the mental level and could attain so far, it might not be possible for him to return so long as the physical evolution has not developed here an organisation of an overmental or supramental life in Matter.
2.26 - Samadhi, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the dream-state itself there are an infinite series of depths, from the lighter recall is easy and the world of the physical senses is at the doors, though for the moment shut out; in the deeper it becomes remote and less able to break in upon the inner absorption, the mind has entered into secure depths of trance. There is a complete difference between Samadhi and normal sleep, between the dream-state of Yoga and the physical state of dream. The latter belongs to the physical mind; in the former the mind proper and subtle is at work liberated from the immixture of the physical mentality. The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind-faculties disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the Mental Plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or coordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the Yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear possession of itself, though not of the physical world, works coherently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelligence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of communication with material things; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflection, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the distractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have their after-consequences on the waking state subsequent to the cessation of the trance.
To arrive at full possession of the powers of the dream-state, it is necessary first to exclude the attack of the sights, sounds, etc, of the outer world upon the physical organs. It is quite possible indeed to be aware in the dream-trance of the outer physical world through the subtle senses which belong to the subtle body; one may be aware of them just so far as one chooses and on a much wider scale than in the waking condition: for the subtle senses have a far more powerful range than the gross physical organs, a range which may be made practically unlimited. But this awareness of the physical world through the subtle senses is something quite different from our normal awareness of it through the physical organs; the latter is incompatible with the settled state of trance, for the pressure of the physical senses breaks the Samadhi and calls back the mind to live in their normal field where alone they have power. But the subtle senses have power both upon their own planes and upon the physical world, though this is to them more remote than their own world of being. In Yoga various devices are used to seal up the doors of the physical sense, some of them physical devices; but the one all-sufficient means is a force of concentration by which the mind is drawn inward to depths where the call of physical things can no longer easily attain to it. A second necessity is to get rid of the intervention of physical sleep. The ordinary habit of the mind when it goes in away from contact with physical things is to fall into the torpor of sleep or its dreams, and therefore when called in for the purposes of Samadhi, it gives or tends to give, at the first chance, by sheer force of habit, not the response demanded, but its usual response of physical slumber. This habit of the mind has to be got rid of; the mind has to learn to be awake in the dream-state, in possession of itself, not with the outgoing, but with an ingathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its powers.
2.27 - The Gnostic Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This realisation, the key to the perfection of life, difficult to arrive at on the Mental Plane, difficult even when realised to dynamise or organise, would be naturally dynamic, spontaneously self-organised in all gnostic creation and gnostic life.
This much is easily understandable if we regard the gnostic beings as living their own life without any contact with a life of the Ignorance. But by the very fact of the evolution here the gnostic manifestation would be a circumstance, though a decisive circumstance, in the whole: there would be a continuance of the lower degrees of the consciousness and life, some maintaining the manifestation in the Ignorance, some mediating between it and the manifestation in the gnosis; these two forms of being and life would either exist side by side or interpenetrate.
2.28 - Rajayoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
These powers and experiences belong, first, to the vital and Mental Planes above this physical in which we live, and are natural to the soul in the subtle body; as the dependence on the physical body decreases, these abnormal activities become possible and even manifest themselves without being sought for. They can be acquired and fixed by processes which the science gives, and their use then becomes subject to the will; or they can be allowed to develop of themselves and used only when they come, or when the Divine within moves us to use them; or else, even though thus naturally developing and acting, they may be rejected in a single-minded devotion to the one supreme goal of the Yoga. Secondly, there are fuller, greater powers belonging to the supra Mental Planes which are the very powers of the Divine in his spiritual and supramentally ideative being. These cannot be acquired at all securely or integrally by personal effort, but can only come from above, or else can become natural to the man if and when he ascends beyond mind arid lives in the spiritual being, power, consciousness and ideation. They then become, not abnormal and laboriously acquired Siddhis, but simply the very nature and method of his action, if he still continues to be active in the world-existence.
On the whole, for all integral Yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. It is true that 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 psycho-physical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. We shall have occasion to touch upon this question later when we come to the final principle of synthesis in method to which our examination of the different Yogas is intended to lead.
2.3.01 - The Planes or Worlds of Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a Mental Plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane.
The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general
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If we regard the gradation of worlds or planes as a whole, we see them as a great connected complex movement; the higher precipitate their influences on the lower, the lower react to the higher and develop or manifest in themselves within their own formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the Mental Plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supra Mental Plane. In more detail, particular forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher world can throw themselves on the lower to establish appropriate and corresponding forms which will connect them with the material domain and, as it were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has, supporting it,
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subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make it subsist and connect it with forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the veil in direct connection with supraphysical planes of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings. What takes place in life has always behind it preexistent movements and forms in the occult vital planes; what takes place in mind presupposes preexistent movements and forms in the occult Mental Planes. That is an aspect of things which becomes more and more evident, insistent and important, the more we progress in a dynamic Yoga.
But all this must not be taken in too rigid and mechanical a sense. It is an immense plastic movement full of the play of possibilities and must be seized by a flexible and subtle tact or sense in the seeing consciousness. It cannot be reduced to a too rigorous logical or mathematical formula. Two or three points must be pressed in order that this plasticity may not be lost to our view.
2.3.04 - The Higher Planes of Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As for intuition - well! One has to make a distinction - if one can - between a pure intuition and a mixed one. A pure intuition carries in it a truth, even if it is only a fragment or point of truth, and can be trusted. A mixed one carries in it some suggestion of truth which gets coated with mental matter - here one has to use discrimination and separate the true suggestion from the less reliable mental matter. Intuition and discrimination must always go together so long as one mixes in the Mental Plane
- and for some time after.
2.3.05 - The Lower Nature or Lower Hemisphere, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is a vital plane (self-existent) above the material universe which we see; there is a Mental Plane (self-existent) above the vital and material. These three together, - mental, vital, physical,
- are called the triple universe of the lower hemisphere. They have been established in the earth-consciousness by evolution
2.3.06 - The Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When the mind is turned towards the Divine and the Truth and feels and responds to that only or mainly, it can be called a psychic mind - it is something formed by the influence of the psychic being on the Mental Plane.
Psychic mind and mental psychic are the same thing practically.
3.1.01 - Distinctive Features of the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I meant by it [the phrase a far greater Truth] the descent of the supramental Consciousness upon earth; all truths below the supramental (even that of the highest spiritual on the Mental Plane, which is the highest that has yet manifested) are either partial or relative or otherwise deficient and unable to transform the earthly life, they can only at most modify and influence it. The supermind is the vast Truth-consciousness of which the ancient seers spoke; there have been glimpses of it till now, sometimes an indirect influence or pressure, but it has not been brought down into the consciousness of the earth and fixed there. To so bring it down is the aim of our Yoga.
But it is better not to enter into sterile intellectual discussions. The intellectual mind cannot even realise what the supermind is; what use, then, can there be in allowing it to discuss what it does not know? It is not by reasoning, but by constant experience, growth of consciousness and widening into the Light that one can reach those higher levels of consciousness above the intellect from which one can begin to look up to the Divine Gnosis. Those levels are not yet the supermind, but they can receive something of its knowledge.
3.1.02 - Spiritual Evolution and the Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Everything here that belongs strictly to the earth plane is evolved out of the Inconscient, out of Matter - but the essential mental being exists already, not involved on the Mental Plane. It is only the personal mental that is evolved here by something rising out of the Inconscient and developing under a pressure from above.
What is meant here2 is the Divine in its essential manifestation which reveals itself to us as Light and Consciousness, Power,
31.03 - The Trinity of Bengal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thus, in Rammohan is visible the primal stage of the consciousness of Bengal. It is he who may be called in this sense the psychic being or the causal being of modern Bengal. He alone before all others has brought forward the consciousness of Bengal to the free air and light of the modern era from the antiquity, the mediaevalism of the past. He has initiated the country into the religion of the new era. In him sprouted the first seeds of all future creations. Each flash of consciousness, intense with a deep and pregnant meaning, that sprung in his intuition gradually blossomed into a lush of foliage and flowers and fruits. He brought a new birth, a new life and a new' creation everywhere in all the fields of the collective life of state, society, religion, culture, literature and language. He made the fundamental scheme, the blue-print for the future fulfilment of the country. It is he who laid down the first principles. The future architects have made a new and solid structure on these as their basis. Rammohan was indeed the soul in the heart. The Upanishad says that the nerves of the body-vessel are assembled in this heart-centre and from here they go out everywhere in all directions. Likewise in Rammohan too a new orientation in the mind and life of the nation, the modern consciousness in all its branches of culture has centred and from him all flow out into activities and enterprises of a new achievement. When the truth takes birth and grows considerably in the soul then only it can reveal itself in the Mental Plane. Reason and intelligence seize on h and apprehend it to know its meaning and endeavour to bring it to the fore of the critical perception of an enlightened intelligence.
We have already said that the mental being (Manomaya Purusha) of the country awoke in Bankimchandra. It is he who gave a fluent expression, in thought and in an outer attractive language, to her hopes, aspirations and inner feelings. And it is in him that the first revelation of a new curiosity, inquisitiveness and sensitiveness is to be found. His was the inspiration and channel for an unceasing quest, a many-sided research through mental seeking and logic and argument which inundated the entire country like a flood. Many are the lines of investigation and imaginative display that bear testimony to the mind's manifold inquisitiveness. A deep longing, a luminous perception of the Soul developed and expanded in hundred branches. The mind's business is to manifest and apply a soul-intuition in as many fields and forms, in as many directions as possible and one form through which mind finds expression is literature.
31.08 - The Unity of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The unity of India lies in her soul-power. The unity that we see in the education, culture, behaviour, conduct and the mould of her character are the outer manifestation of an inalienable unity which is derived from a still profounder living being. Behind India stands the 'One Being', purusam ekam.That is the person who alone brings about harmony, unity and oneness in the diverse, innumerable and variegated life of India. The unity of India does not lie in the Mental Plane alone, gradually it is taking shape in the vital and is going to get embodied even in the physical.
It is the descent of the soul-power of India that is pressing to fuse India into a single nation. The political unity of India is not only possible but inevitable, and the secret of that consummation is to be found in this mystic fact. Indeed, if we compare India with Europe from this point of view, the difference of the two will stand out in bold relief. The political unity of Europe appears to be a very difficult and even an impossible problem. The union of Europe is an armed peace. One kind of union was attempted at times in the past, but the union which Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon wanted to bring about was but the sole supremacy of a particular country and nation; that means the union of the devourer and the devoured. Another type of union too is at present visible in Europe - that is the formation of groups in their self-interest, each group combining to pool its resources against others. None of these unions is real unity. The compromise, the compact arrived at among different interests are not the infallible unity of the soul; the undivided personality of the collective being has not emerged there.
3.2.01 - The Newness of the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Certainly, the realisation of the Spirit comes long before the development of Overmind or Supermind; hundreds of sadhaks in all times have had the realisation of the Atman on the higher Mental Plane, buddhe parata, but the supramental realisation was not theirs. One can get partial realisations of the Self or Spirit or the Divine on any plane, mental, vital, physical even, and when one rises above the ordinary Mental Plane of man into a higher and larger mind, the Self begins to appear in all its conscious wideness. It is by full entry into this wideness of the Self that cessation of mental activity becomes possible; one gets the inner Silence. After that this inner Silence can remain even when there is activity of any kind; the being remains silent within, the action goes on in the instruments and one receives all the necessary indications and execution of action whether mental, vital or physical from a higher source without the fundamental peace and calm of the Spirit being troubled.
The Overmind and Supermind states are something yet higher than this; but before one can understand them, one must first have the self-realisation, the full action of the spiritualised mind and heart, the psychic awakening, the liberation of the imprisoned consciousness, the purification and entire opening of the dhra. Do not think now of those ultimate things (Overmind, Supermind), but get first these foundations in the liberated nature.
3.2.3 - Dreams, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All dreams of this kind [indicating future events] are very obviously formations such as one often meets on the vital, more rarely on the Mental Plane. Sometimes they are the formations of your own mind or vital; sometimes they are the formations of other minds with an exact or a modified transcription in yours; sometimes formations come that are made by the non-human forces or beings of these other planes. These things are not true and need not become true in the physical world, but they may still have effects in the physical if they are framed with that purpose or that tendency and, if they are allowed, they may realise their events or their meaning for they are most often symbolical or schematicin the inner or the outer life. The proper course with them is simply to observe and understand and, if they are from a hostile source, reject or destroy them.
There are other dreams that have not the same character but are a representation or transcription of things that actually happen on other planes, in other worlds under other conditions than ours. There are, again, some dreams that are purely symbolic and some that indicate existing movements and propensities in us, whether familiar or undetected by the waking mind, or exploit old memories or else raise up things either passively stored or still active in the subconscient, a mass of various stuff which has to be changed or got rid of as one rises into a higher consciousness. If one learns how to interpret, one can get from dreams much knowledge of the secrets of our nature and of other-nature.
4.04 - The Perfection of the Mental Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The difficulty of the ascent is due to a natural ignorance. He is the Purusha, witness of mental and physical Nature, saksi, but not a complete knower of self and Nature, jnatr. Knowledge in the mentality is enlightened by his consciousness; he is the mental knower; but he finds that this is not a real knowledge, but only a partial seeking and partial finding, a derivative uncertain reflection and narrow utilisation for action from a greater light beyond which is the real knowledge. This light is the self-awareness and all-awareness of Spirit. The essential self-awareness he can arrive at even on the Mental Plane of being, by reflection in the soul of mind or by its absorption in spirit, as indeed it can be arrived at by another kind of reflection or absorption in soul of life and soul of body. But for participation in an effective all-awareness with this essential self-awareness as the soul of its action he must rise to supermind. To be lord of his being, he must be knower of self and Nature, jnata isvarah. Partially this may be done on a higher level of mind where it responds directly to supermind, but really and completely this perfection belongs not to the mental being, but to the ideal or knowledge Soul, vijnanamaya purusa. To draw up the mental into the greater knowledge being and that into the Bliss-Self of the spirit, anandamaya purusa, is the uttermost way of this perfection.
But no perfection, much less this perfection can be attained without a very radical dealing with the present nature and the abrogation of much that seems to be the fixed law of its complex nexus of mental, vital and physical being. The law of this nexus has been created for a definite and limited end, the temporary maintenance, preservation, possession, aggrandisement, enjoyment, experience, need, action of the mental ego in the living body. Other resultant uses are served, but this is the immediate and fundamentally determining object and utility. To arrive at a higher utility and freer instrumentation this nexus must be partly broken up, exceeded, transformed into a larger harmony of action. The Purusha sees that the law created is that of a partly stable, partly unstable selective determination of habitual, yet developing experiences out of a first confused consciousness of self and not-self, subjective being and external universe. This determination is managed by mind, life and body acting upon each other, in harmony and correspondence, but also in discord and divergence, mutual interference and limitation. There is a similar mixed harmony and discord between various activities of the mind in itself, as also between activities of the life in itself and of the physical being. The whole is a sort of disorderly order, an order evolved and contrived out of a constantly surrounding and invading confusion.
4.16 - The Divine Shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What we shall do with this relative freedom depends on our aspiration, our idea of the relation we must have with our highest self, with God and Nature. It is possible for the Purusha to use it on the Mental Plane itself for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification, to sanction, reject, alter, bring out new formulations of the nature and establish a calm and disinterested action, a high and pure sattwic balance and rhythm of its energy, a personality perfected in the sattwic principle. This may amount only to a highly mentalised perfection of our present intelligence and the ethical and the psychic being or else, aware of the greater self in us it may impersonalise, universalise, spiritualise its self-conscious existence and the action of its nature and arrive either at a large quietude or a large perfection of the spiritualised mental energy of its being. It is possible again for the Purusha to stand back entirely and by a refusal of sanction allow the whole normal action of the mind to exhaust itself, run down, spend its remaining impetus of habitual action and fall into silence. Or else this silence may be imposed on the mental energy by rejection of its action and a constant comm and to quietude. The soul may through the confirmation of this quietude and mental silence pass into some ineffable tranquillity of the spirit and vast cessation of the activities of Nature. But it is also possible to make this silence of the mind and ability to suspend the habits of the lower nature a first step towards the discovery of a superior formulation, a higher grade of the status and energy of our being and pass by an ascent and transformation into the supramental power of the spirit. And this may even, though with more difficulty, be done without resorting to the complete state of quietude of the normal mind by a persistent and progressive transformation of all the mental into their greater corresponding supramental powers and activities. For everything in the mind derives from and is a limited, inferior, groping, partial or perverse translation into mentality of something in the supermind. But neither of these movements can be successfully executed by the sole individual unaided power of the mental Purusha in us, but needs the help, intervention and guidance of the divine Self, the Ishwara, the Purushottama. For the supermind is the divine mind and it is on the supra Mental Plane that the individual arrives at his right, integral, luminous and perfect relation with the supreme and universal Purusha and the supreme and universal Para prakriti.
As the mind progresses in purity, capacity of stillness or freedom from absorption in its own limited action, it becomes aware of and is able to reflect, bring into itself or enter into the conscious presence of the Self, the supreme and universal Spirit, and it becomes aware too of grades and powers of the spirit higher than its own highest ranges. It becomes aware of an infinite of the consciousness of being, an infinite ocean of all the power and energy of illimitable consciousness, an infinite ocean of Ananda, of the self-moved delight of existence. It may be aware of one or other only of these things, for the mind can separate and feel exclusively as distinct original principles what in a higher experience are inseparable powers of the One, or it may feel them in a trinity or fusion which reveals or arrives at their oneness. It may become aware of it on the side of Purusha or on the side of prakriti. On the side of Pursha it reveals itself as Self or Spirit, as Being or as the one sole existent Being, the divine Purushottama, and the individual Jiva soul can enter into entire oneness with it in its timeless self or in its universality, or enjoy nearness, immanence, difference without any gulf of separation and enjoy too inseparably and at one and the same time oneness of being and delight-giving difference of relation in active experiencing nature. On the side of prakriti the power and Ananda of the Spirit come into the front to manifest this Infinite in the beings and personalities and ideas and forms and forces of the universe and there is then present to us the divine Mahashakti, original Power, supreme Nature, holding in herself infinite existence and creating the wonders of the cosmos. The mind grows conscious of this illimitable ocean of shakti or else of her presence high above the mind and pouring something of herself into us to constitute all that we are and think and will and do and feel and experience, or it is conscious of her all around us and our personality a wave of the ocean of power of spirit, or of her presence in us and of her action there based on our present form of natural existence but originated from above and raising us towards the higher spiritual status. The mind too can rise towards and touch her infinity or merge itself in it in trance of Samadhi or can lose itself in her universality, and then our individuality disappears, our centre of action is then no longer in us, but either outside our bodied selves or nowhere; our mental activities are then no longer our own, but come into this frame of mind, life and body from the universal, work themselves out and pass leaving no impression on us, and this frame of ourselves too is only an insignificant circumstance in her cosmic vastness. But the perfection sought in the integral Yoga is not only to be one with her in her highest spiritual power and one with her in her universal action, but to realise and possess the fullness of this shakti in our individual being and nature. For the supreme Spirit is one as Purusha or as prakriti, conscious being or power of conscious being, and as the Jiva in essence of self arid spirit is one with the supreme Purusha, so on the side of Nature, in power of self and spirit it is one with shakti, para prakrtir jivabhuta. To realise this double oneness is the condition of the integral self-perfection. The Jiva is then the meeting-place of the play of oneness of the supreme Soul and Nature.
4.2.1 - The Right Attitude towards Difficulties, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All these things are common to every path of Yoga; they are the normal difficulties, fluctuations and struggles which come across the path of spiritual effort. But in this Yoga there is an order or succession of the workings of the secret Force which may vary greatly in its circumstances in each sadhak, but still maintains its general line. Our evolution has brought the being up out of inconscient Matter into the Ignorance of mind, life and body tempered by an imperfect knowledge and is trying to lead us into the light of the Spirit, to lift us into that light and to bring the light down into us, into body and life as well as mind and heart and to fill with it all that we are. This and its consequences, of which the greatest is the union with the Divine and life in the divine consciousness, is the meaning of the integral transformation. Mind is our present topmost faculty; it is through the thinking mind and the heart with the soul, the psychic being behind them that we have to grow into the Spirit, for what the Force first tries to bring about is to fix the mind in the right central idea, faith or mental attitude and the right aspiration and poise of the heart and to make these sufficiently strong and firm to last in spite of other things in the mind and heart which are other than or in conflict with them. Along with this it brings whatever experiences, realisations or descent or growth of knowledge the mind of the individual is ready for at the time or as much of it, however small, as is necessary for its further progress: sometimes these realisations and experiences are very great and abundant, sometimes few and small or negligible; in some there seems to be in this first stage nothing much of these things or nothing decisive the Force seems to concentrate on a preparation of the mind only. In many cases the sadhana seems to begin and proceed with experiences in the vital; but in reality this can hardly take place without some mental preparation, even if it is nothing more than a turning of the mind or some kind of opening which makes the vital experiences possible. In any case, to begin with the vital is a hazardous affair; the difficulties there are more numerous and more violent than on the Mental Plane and the pitfalls are innumerable. The access to the soul, the psychic being, is less easy because it is covered up with a thick veil of ego, passion and desire. One is apt to be swallowed up in a maze of vital experiences, not always reliable, the temptation of small siddhis, the appeal of the powers of darkness to the ego. One has to struggle through these densities to the psychic being behind and bring it forward; then only can the sadhana on the vital plane be safe.
However that may be, the descent of the sadhana, of the action of the Force into the vital plane of our being becomes after some time necessary. The Force does not make a wholesale change of the mental being and nature, still less an integral transformation before it takes this step: if that could be done, the rest of the sadhana would be comparatively secure and easy. But the vital is there and always pressing on the mind and heart, disturbing and endangering the sadhana and it cannot be left to itself for too long. The ego and desires of the vital, its disturbances and upheavals have to be dealt with and if not at once expelled, at least dominated and prepared for a gradual if not a rapid modification, change, illumination. This can only be done on the vital plane itself by descending to that level. The vital ego itself must become conscious of its own defects and willing to get rid of them; it must decide to throw away its vanities, ambitions, lusts and longings, its rancours and revolts and all the rest of the impure stuff and unclean movements within it. This is the time of the greatest difficulties, revolts and dangers. The vital ego hates being opposed in its desires, resents disappointment, is furious against wounds to its pride and vanity; it does not like the process of purification and it may very well declare Satyagraha against it, refuse to cooperate, justify its own demands and inclinations, offer passive resistance of many kinds, withdraw the vital support which is necessary both to the life and the sadhana and try to withdraw the being from the path of spiritual endeavour. All this has to be faced and overcome, for the temple of the being has to be swept clean if the Lord of our being is to take his place and receive our worship there.
4.23 - The supramental Instruments -- Thought-process, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A second grade of the thinking activity is the pragmatic idea mind that lifts itself above life and acts creatively as a mediator between the idea and the life-power, between truth of life and truth of the idea not yet manifested in life. It draws material from life and builds out of it and upon it creative ideas that become dynamic for farther life development: on the other side it receives new thought and mental experience from the Mental Plane or more fundamentally from the idea power of the Infinite and immediately turns it into mental idea force and a power for actual being and living. The whole turn of this pragmatic idea mind is towards action and experience, inward as well as outward, the inward casting itself outward for the sake of a completer satisfaction of reality, the outward taken into the inward and returning upon it assimilated and changed for fresh formations. The thought is only or mainly interesting to the soul on this mental level as a means for a large range of action and experience.
A third gradation of thinking opens in us the pure ideative mind which lives disinterestedly in truth of the idea apart from any necessary dependence on its value for action and experience. It views the data of the senses and the superficial inner experiences, but only to find the idea, the truth to which they bear witness and to reduce them into terms of knowledge. It observes the creative action of mind in life in the same way and for the same purpose. Its preoccupation is with knowledge, its whole object is to have the delight of ideation, the search for truth, the effort to know itself and the world and all that may lie behind its own action and the world action. This ideative mind is the highest reach of the intellect acting for itself, characteristically, in its own power and for its own purpose.
4.24 - The supramental Sense, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
First, the phenomena of the psychical sense and mind lose the fragmentariness and incoherence or else difficult regulation and often quite artificial order which pursues them even more than it pursues our more normal mental activities of the surface, and they become the harmonious play of the universal inner mind and soul in us, assume their true law and right forms and relations and reveal their just significances. Even on the Mental Plane one can get by the spiritualising of the mind at some realisation of soul oneness, but it is never really complete, at least in its application, and does not acquire this real and entire law, form, relation, complete and unfailing truth and accuracy of its significances. And, secondly, the activity of the psychical consciousness loses all character of abnormality, of an exceptional, irregular and even a perilously supernormal action, often bringing a loss of hold upon life and a disturbance or an injury to other parts of the being. It not only acquires its own right order within itself but its right relation with the physical life on one side and with the spiritual truth of being on the other and the whole becomes a harmonious manifestation of the embodied spirit. It is always the originating supermind that contains within itself the true values, significances and relations of the other parts of our being and its unfolding is the condition of the integral possession of our self and nature.
The complete transformation comes on us by a certain change, not merely of the poise or level of our regarding conscious self or even of its law and character, but also of the whole substance of our conscious being. Till that is done, the supramental consciousness manifests above the mental and psychical atmosphere of being, -- in which the physical has already become a subordinate and to a large extent a dependent method of our self's expression, -- and it sends down its power, light, and influence into it to illumine it and transfigure. But only when the substance of the lower consciousness has been changed, filled potently, wonderfully transformed, swallowed up as it were into the greater energy and sense of being, mahan, brhat, of which it is a derivation and projection, do we have the perfected, entire and constant supramental consciousness. The substance, the conscious ether of being in which the mental or psychic consciousness and sense live and see and feel and experience is something subtler, freer, more plastic than that of the physical mind and sense. As long as we are dominated by the latter, psychical phenomena may seem to us less real, hallucinatory even, but the more we acclimatise ourselves to the psychical and to the ether of being which it inhabits, the more we begin to see the greater truth and to sense the more spiritually concrete substance of all to which its larger and freer mode of experience bears witness. Even, the physical may come to seem to itself unreal and hallucinatory -- but this is an exaggeration and new misleading exclusiveness due to a shifting of the centre and a change of action of the mind and sense -- or else may seem at any rate less powerfully real. When, however, the psychical and physical experiences are well combined in their true balance, we live at once in two complementary worlds of our being each with its own reality, but the psychical revealing all that is behind the physical, the soul view and experience taking precedence and enlightening and explaining the physical view and experience. The supramental transformation again changes the whole substance of our consciousness; it brings in an ether of greater being, consciousness, sense, life, which convicts the psychical also of insufficiency and makes it appear by itself an incomplete reality and only a partial truth of all that we are and become and witness.
4.3.2.09 - Overmind Experiences and the Supermind, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
mind opening to the higher Mental Planes and trying to bring
down something from them and their powers into the mind, life
4.4.2.01 - Contact with the Above, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes one feels an ascension above the head. I think he has had that, but that is the mind going up (when it is not simply a going out of the body) into the higher Mental Planes. To be above the mind one must first realise the self above the mind and live there.
Do you realise it [the higher being] as wide and infinite? When you are there do you feel it spread through infinity? Do you feel all the universe within you, yourself one with the self of all beings? Do you feel the one cosmic Force acting everywhere?
4.4.2.04 - Ascent and Dissolution, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Infinite as one's own dissolution or if one has not the capacity to reorganise experience on a higher than the Mental Plane.
But otherwise what was superconscient becomes conscient, one begins to possess or else be the instrument of the dynamis of the higher planes and there is a movement, not of liberation into
5.1.02 - The Gods, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are no planes of manifestation without forms - for without form creation or manifestation cannot be complete. But the supraphysical planes are not bound to the forms like the physical. The forms there are expressive, not determinative. What is important on the vital plane is the force or feeling and the form expresses it. A vital being has a characteristic form but he can vary it or mask his true form under others. What is primary on the Mental Plane is the perception, the idea, the mental significance and the form expresses that and these mental forms too can vary - there can be many forms expressing an idea in different ways or on different sides of the idea. Form exists but it is more plastic and variable than in physical nature.
As to the Gods, man can build forms which they will accept; but these forms too are inspired into man's mind from the planes to which the God belongs. All creation has the two sides, the formed and the formless; the Gods too are formless and yet have forms, but a Godhead can take many forms, here
5.1.03 - The Hostile Forces and Hostile Beings, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1 One may have the experiences on the Mental Plane without this knowledge coming
- for there Mind and Idea predominate and one does not feel the play of Forces -
5.4.02 - Occult Powers or Siddhis, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But she distinctly speaks of it as a greater "me" standing behind a blue diamond force. We must fall back then on the idea of a greater consciousness very high up with a feeling of divinity, a sense of considerable light and spiritual authority - perhaps in one of those higher spiritual Mental Planes of which I speak in The Life Divine and the letters. The diamond light could well be native to these planes; it is usually white, but there it might well be blue: it is a light that dispels or drives away all impure things, especially a demoniac possession or the influence of some evil force. Evidently, the use of a power like this should be carefully guarded from the intrusion of any wrong element such as personal love of power, but that need not cause any apprehension as a keen inlook into oneself would be sufficient to reject it or keep it aloof. I think that is all I can say upon the data given in her letter.
It is difficult to say [why Christ healed people] - it looks from the Bible account as if he did it as a sign that he was one sent by the Divine with power.
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
is also the Mental Plane between them. There are mental
beings who are also creators, giving form to some beings
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
correlations of the seven senses (seven on the physical and seven on the Mental Planes) are clearly
explained and defined in the Vedas, and especially in the Upanishad called Anugita: "The
Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
It is still a mental image, and all mental images have the same character. Only it may come from the higher Mental Plane. Once you open to them you receive knowledge of things you do not know in the ordinary mind.
The image of a road is a very common image of the higher mental; its meaning is that of the path that has to be travelled on.
--
I suppose it is a movement on the Mental Plane, but we have to see.
As I said I am conscious of the dissolving power of the force coming from above. It goes down to the navel centre and works from there. I cannot say yet how it works. But, at times, a sense of vital power rises.
Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
represent an invasion of the Mental Plane by sensory or moral
impressions.
r1914 07 14, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Anima Agni is now manifesting in all the seven planes of consciousness of the physical being with a reference back to the Mental Plane.
Persist in the will for perfection; give no consent to an imperfect fullness.
r1918 02 18, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Tapas on the Mental Plane is being abandoned; trikaldrishti also must be abandoned. It is finally seen even by the intelligence that there can be here no absolute certainty of foresight or result, since it is the play of partial, conflicting and mutually self-adjusting tendencies, forces, ideas, impulses. The telepathy of these things and the understanding of them is becoming wider, subtler, more accurate, though far yet from being perfect and complete. Meanwhile T is suspended. T is postponed.
The hostile powers are attempting, as they are no longer able to prevent directly the continuity of the a. k. [ahaituka kamananda], to turn it into a neutral vishaya with extremities of acuteness turning to discomfort, so that this may be a cause for its discontinuance. But the effect has been only temporary.
r1918 05 10, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1) The largest element to be dealt with is the old telepathic intellectual perceptions. These now are unable to insist on themselves and are no longer false trikaldrishtis, but perceptions of thought, tendency, intention, impulse, either belonging to the object or working on it from the environmental physical Virat or from the pranic and Mental Planes. Yesterday the inspirational thought was busy observing them and giving them their right place and scope. They have to be replaced by the intuitional telepathies.
2) The next largest element is the intuitional perceptions which are real[ly] telepathic, but which the intellect tried to represent by overstress as definite trikaldrishti of future action. These are now putting on their ritam and have begun to figure as accurate intuitions of present tendency etc and immediate or closely subsequent future action. This telepathic trikaldrishti of the future, however, can only be definitive if approved by the higher revelatory or inspirational ideality. Moreover they are vague about time and not quite full in circumstance.
r1919 07 21, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Immense development of the samadhi. Only towards the end some lapse into nidra. Inexhaustible abundance of rupa, especially of the Mental Plane, but also of the pranic and chhayamaya, scenes of all kinds, figures, action, lipi, dialogue etc: for the most part a high ideal level. The chhayamaya scenes now attain to an absolute stability, frequent though not invariable; the others have only a first stability. There is also stability of successive action, but there were only one or two unsuccessful attempts at combination with stability of scene. Only once a fugitive touch of the incoherent dream consciousness attempting to bring in a terrestrial association of memory and confuse with it the accuracy of the recorded impressions. A little more development will securely found the whole base of swapna samadhi.K.A in samadhi, interrupted occasionally by an intervening cloud of nidra power between the physical and the higher mental consciousness, but afterwards more persistently by a deepening towards nidra; but after the brief sleep there was an immediate recovery of the Ananda. It is now noticeable that when the Ananda occupies the brain there is no oblivion; when it pervades the rest of the body, but not the head, oblivion becomes possible.
Work in the afternoon.
r1920 03 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Ananda-darshana is also passing through the same phase, but has not yet altogether got rid of the recurrence of mental vijnana and Ananda on the Mental Plane. These are associated with certain forms, the latter Ananda being inspirational in its idiom, persist repeatedly in attaching themselves to them, and can as yet only be rejected by second thought or effort of Tapas.
An attempt to accept and transform inspirational-interpretative overstress led to the outside mind breaking through and getting in some of its movements. It cannot hold, but brought the recurrent Asamata which is accustomed to attend failure of Satya and Tapas.
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
From the Mental Plane, when one rises and realises the Spirit, it is generally the mental sense of ego that goes, not the entire ego sense. The dynamic
nature retains ego, especially the vital ego. When the psychic attitude of humility comes in and joins with it, it helps in getting rid of the vital ego.
--
with the realisation in the Mental Plane, the psychic element not being necessary for it. But for complete transformation, both things are needed.
PURANI: In case of a weakening of the nervous envelope, can one replenish it
--
It you go above the vital and Mental Planes, you come to a point where
the Gita's "Sarvadharman parityajya", "Abandon all dharmas", becomes the
--
many experiences on the Mental Plane but his vital revolted when it was
touched.
--
Sharira and he identifies it with the Mental Plane.
SRI AUROBINDO: What he and others mean is that it belongs to the Higher
--
SRI AUROBINDO: That is done by going to the Mental Plane.
NIRODBARAN: When asked if he remembered the circumstances in his
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
situation which is bisociated with both Mental Planes; lastly, define
the character of the emotive charge and make a guess regarding the
The Riddle of this World, #unknown, #Unknown, #unset
spiritual on the Mental Plane, which is the highest that has yet
manifested) are either partial or relative or otherwise deficient and
--
obedience to a pressure from the Mental Plane. It is now trying to
evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supramental
--
movements and forms in the occult Mental Planes. That is an aspect of
things which becomes more and more evident, insistent and important,
Wikipedia - Mental plane
Wikipedia - NASA X-57 Maxwell -- experimental plane being developed by NASA
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Fundamental plane
Mental plane
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