classes ::: Sanskrit,
children :::
branches ::: Prakriti

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object:Prakriti
language class:Sanskrit

--- QUOTES & DEFS

prakrti (Prakriti) ::: "working out"; Nature; Nature-Force; Nature-Soul; executive or working force. ::: prakrtayah [plural], natural powers. ~ Sri Aurobindo?

Prakriti is the action of the All-conscient.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance

Prakriti is the power of the All-Soul, the power of the Eternal and Infinite self-moved to action and creation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action

Prakriti has to reveal itself as shakti of the Purusha.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection

Prakriti is the field of law and process, but the soul, the Purusha, is the giver of the sanction.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality

The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti.
Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Soul and Nature

prakriti; prakruti. ::: "nature"; causal matter; primordial substance out of which all things are created; the cause of illusive creation, the delusion; the primal nature without an "I"-sense; primordial unmanifest essence; that state in which the three gunas exist in equilibrium; when this equilibrium is disturbed, creation begins and the body, senses and mind are formed. The man who is deluded by egoism identifies the Self with the body, mind, the life-force and the senses, and ascribes to the Self all the attributes of the body and the senses. In fact, the gunas of nature perform all actions.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems

According to the status of the soul is the status of the Prakriti.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis

--- FOOTER
see also ::: Purusha, Ishwara, Shakti, Maya, Brahman, Guna, Nature, Chit, Consciousness-Force,

see also ::: Brahman, Chit, Consciousness-Force, Guna, Ishwara, Maya, Nature, Purusha, Shakti

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO

Brahman
Chit
Consciousness-Force
Guna
Ishwara
Maya
Nature
Purusha
Shakti

AUTH

BOOKS
Letters_On_Yoga
Letters_On_Yoga_I
Letters_On_Yoga_III
old_bookshelf
Questions_And_Answers_1954
Questions_And_Answers_1955
The_Life_Divine
The_Study_and_Practice_of_Yoga

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1954-04-28_-_Aspiration_and_receptivity_-_Resistance_-_Purusha_and_Prakriti,_not_masculine_and_feminine
1955-06-15_-_Dynamic_realisation,_transformation_-_The_negative_and_positive_side_of_experience_-_The_image_of_the_dry_coconut_fruit_-_Purusha,_Prakriti,_the_Divine_Mother_-_The_Truth-Creation_-_Pralaya_-_We_are_in_a_transitional_period
2.02_-_Brahman,_Purusha,_Ishwara_-_Maya,_Prakriti,_Shakti

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
00.03_-_Upanishadic_Symbolism
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
0.04_-_The_Systems_of_Yoga
0.05_-_The_Synthesis_of_the_Systems
0.08_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Captain
01.02_-_Natures_Own_Yoga
01.02_-_The_Creative_Soul
01.04_-_Sri_Aurobindos_Gita
0.10_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Captain
01.10_-_Nicholas_Berdyaev:_God_Made_Human
0_1958-05-30
0_1961-12-23
0_1965-06-26
0_1967-07-29
0_1967-12-30
02.06_-_The_Integral_Yoga_and_Other_Yogas
03.05_-_Some_Conceptions_and_Misconceptions
03.13_-_Dynamic_Fatalism
03.14_-_Mater_Dolorosa
05.03_-_Bypaths_of_Souls_Journey
05.07_-_The_Observer_and_the_Observed
05.10_-_Knowledge_by_Identity
05.14_-_The_Sanctity_of_the_Individual
05.26_-_The_Soul_in_Anguish
06.34_-_Selfless_Worker
10.02_-_Beyond_Vedanta
10.03_-_Life_in_and_Through_Death
1.00c_-_DIVISION_C_-_THE_ETHERIC_BODY_AND_PRANA
1.00e_-_DIVISION_E_-_MOTION_ON_THE_PHYSICAL_AND_ASTRAL_PLANES
10.11_-_Beyond_Love_and_Hate
1.01_-_Adam_Kadmon_and_the_Evolution
1.01_-_Maitreya_inquires_of_his_teacher_(Parashara)
1.01_-_Our_Demand_and_Need_from_the_Gita
1.01_-_SAMADHI_PADA
1.01_-_The_Cycle_of_Society
1.02.2.1_-_Brahman_-_Oneness_of_God_and_the_World
1.02.2.2_-_Self-Realisation
1.02.3.1_-_The_Lord
1.02.3.2_-_Knowledge_and_Ignorance
1.02_-_Karma_Yoga
1.02_-_Prayer_of_Parashara_to_Vishnu
1.02_-_The_Two_Negations_1_-_The_Materialist_Denial
10.32_-_The_Mystery_of_the_Five_Elements
1.03_-_Meeting_the_Master_-_Meeting_with_others
1.03_-_Self-Surrender_in_Works_-_The_Way_of_The_Gita
1.03_-_The_Human_Disciple
1.03_-_The_Sephiros
1.03_-_YIBHOOTI_PADA
1.045_-_Piercing_the_Structure_of_the_Object
1.04_-_ADVICE_TO_HOUSEHOLDERS
1.04_-_KAI_VALYA_PADA
1.04_-_The_Core_of_the_Teaching
1.04_-_The_Divine_Mother_-_This_Is_She
1.04_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda
1.04_-_The_Sacrifice_the_Triune_Path_and_the_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice
1.05_-_Yoga_and_Hypnotism
1.06_-_Man_in_the_Universe
1.06_-_The_Four_Powers_of_the_Mother
1.07_-_Bridge_across_the_Afterlife
1.07_-_Production_of_the_mind-born_sons_of_Brahma
1.07_-_Standards_of_Conduct_and_Spiritual_Freedom
1.07_-_The_Ego_and_the_Dualities
1.07_-_The_Process_of_Evolution
1.089_-_The_Levels_of_Concentration
1.08_-_Adhyatma_Yoga
1.08_-_The_Supreme_Will
1.094_-_Understanding_the_Structure_of_Things
1.096_-_Powers_that_Accrue_in_the_Practice
1.097_-_Sublimation_of_Object-Consciousness
1.099_-_The_Entry_of_the_Eternal_into_the_Individual
1.09_-_Concentration_-_Its_Spiritual_Uses
1.09_-_Equality_and_the_Annihilation_of_Ego
1.09_-_Legend_of_Lakshmi
1.09_-_Saraswati_and_Her_Consorts
1.09_-_The_Pure_Existent
1.1.01_-_The_Divine_and_Its_Aspects
1.1.02_-_Sachchidananda
11.03_-_Cosmonautics
1.1.04_-_The_Self_or_Atman
11.04_-_The_Triple_Cord
1.10_-_Conscious_Force
1.10_-_Fate_and_Free-Will
1.10_-_The_Methods_and_the_Means
1.10_-_Theodicy_-_Nature_Makes_No_Mistakes
1.10_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.10_-_The_Three_Modes_of_Nature
1.10_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Intelligent_Will
1.11_-_Powers
1.11_-_The_Kalki_Avatar
1.11_-_The_Master_of_the_Work
1.11_-_The_Seven_Rivers
1.11_-_The_Three_Purushas
1.11_-_Works_and_Sacrifice
1.1.2_-_Commentary
1.12_-_Delight_of_Existence_-_The_Solution
1.12_-_THE_FESTIVAL_AT_PNIHTI
1.12_-_The_Significance_of_Sacrifice
1.12_-_The_Strength_of_Stillness
1.13_-_The_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice
1.14_-_Descendants_of_Prithu
1.14_-_The_Principle_of_Divine_Works
1.15_-_LAST_VISIT_TO_KESHAB
1.15_-_The_Possibility_and_Purpose_of_Avatarhood
1.15_-_The_Supreme_Truth-Consciousness
1.1.5_-_Thought_and_Knowledge
1.16_-_The_Process_of_Avatarhood
1.16_-_WITH_THE_DEVOTEES_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.18_-_M._AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.18_-_Mind_and_Supermind
1.18_-_The_Divine_Worker
1.19_-_Equality
1.19_-_Life
12.02_-_The_Stress_of_the_Spirit
1.2.03_-_Purity
1.2.1_-_Mental_Development_and_Sadhana
1.240_-_1.300_Talks
1.240_-_Talks_2
1.28_-_Supermind,_Mind_and_the_Overmind_Maya
1.2_-_Katha_Upanishads
1.300_-_1.400_Talks
13.01_-_A_Centurys_Salutation_to_Sri_Aurobindo_The_Greatness_of_the_Great
1.3.04_-_Peace
1.3.05_-_Silence
1.400_-_1.450_Talks
14.07_-_A_Review_of_Our_Ashram_Life
1.439
15.07_-_Souls_Freedom
1954-04-28_-_Aspiration_and_receptivity_-_Resistance_-_Purusha_and_Prakriti,_not_masculine_and_feminine
1954-05-12_-_The_Purusha_-_Surrender_-_Distinguishing_between_influences_-_Perfect_sincerity
1954-08-11_-_Division_and_creation_-_The_gods_and_human_formations_-_People_carry_their_desires_around_them
1955-06-15_-_Dynamic_realisation,_transformation_-_The_negative_and_positive_side_of_experience_-_The_image_of_the_dry_coconut_fruit_-_Purusha,_Prakriti,_the_Divine_Mother_-_The_Truth-Creation_-_Pralaya_-_We_are_in_a_transitional_period
1956-02-15_-_Nature_and_the_Master_of_Nature_-_Conscious_intelligence_-_Theory_of_the_Gita,_not_the_whole_truth_-_Surrender_to_the_Lord_-_Change_of_nature
20.01_-_Charyapada_-_Old_Bengali_Mystic_Poems
2.01_-_Indeterminates,_Cosmic_Determinations_and_the_Indeterminable
2.01_-_On_Books
2.01_-_The_Object_of_Knowledge
2.01_-_The_Two_Natures
2.01_-_The_Yoga_and_Its_Objects
2.02_-_Brahman,_Purusha,_Ishwara_-_Maya,_Prakriti,_Shakti
2.02_-_On_Letters
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English
2.02_-_The_Synthesis_of_Devotion_and_Knowledge
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.03_-_On_Medicine
2.03_-_THE_MASTER_IN_VARIOUS_MOODS
2.03_-_The_Supreme_Divine
2.04_-_ADVICE_TO_ISHAN
2.04_-_On_Art
2.04_-_The_Divine_and_the_Undivine
2.06_-_Reality_and_the_Cosmic_Illusion
2.06_-_The_Synthesis_of_the_Disciplines_of_Knowledge
2.06_-_Works_Devotion_and_Knowledge
2.07_-_BANKIM_CHANDRA
2.07_-_On_Congress_and_Politics
2.07_-_The_Release_from_Subjection_to_the_Body
2.07_-_The_Supreme_Word_of_the_Gita
2.07_-_The_Upanishad_in_Aphorism
2.08_-_AT_THE_STAR_THEATRE_(II)
2.08_-_The_Release_from_the_Heart_and_the_Mind
2.09_-_On_Sadhana
2.09_-_The_Release_from_the_Ego
2.1.01_-_The_Central_Process_of_the_Sadhana
2.1.02_-_Classification_of_the_Parts_of_the_Being
2.1.02_-_Combining_Work,_Meditation_and_Bhakti
2.1.02_-_Nature_The_World-Manifestation
2.10_-_THE_MASTER_AND_NARENDRA
2.11_-_The_Boundaries_of_the_Ignorance
2.11_-_The_Modes_of_the_Self
2.12_-_THE_MASTERS_REMINISCENCES
2.13_-_Exclusive_Concentration_of_Consciousness-Force_and_the_Ignorance
2.13_-_On_Psychology
2.14_-_AT_RAMS_HOUSE
2.14_-_The_Passive_and_the_Active_Brahman
2.15_-_On_the_Gods_and_Asuras
2.15_-_Reality_and_the_Integral_Knowledge
2.15_-_The_Cosmic_Consciousness
2.16_-_Oneness
2.16_-_The_15th_of_August
2.17_-_December_1938
2.17_-_THE_MASTER_ON_HIMSELF_AND_HIS_EXPERIENCES
2.17_-_The_Soul_and_Nature
2.18_-_January_1939
2.18_-_SRI_RAMAKRISHNA_AT_SYAMPUKUR
2.18_-_The_Evolutionary_Process_-_Ascent_and_Integration
2.18_-_The_Soul_and_Its_Liberation
2.19_-_THE_MASTER_AND_DR._SARKAR
2.19_-_The_Planes_of_Our_Existence
2.2.01_-_The_Problem_of_Consciousness
2.2.01_-_Work_and_Yoga
2.2.02_-_Becoming_Conscious_in_Work
2.2.02_-_Consciousness_and_the_Inconscient
2.2.02_-_The_True_Being_and_the_True_Consciousness
2.2.03_-_The_Psychic_Being
2.20_-_Nov-Dec_1939
2.20_-_The_Lower_Triple_Purusha
2.20_-_THE_MASTERS_TRAINING_OF_HIS_DISCIPLES
2.21_-_1940
2.21_-_IN_THE_COMPANY_OF_DEVOTEES_AT_SYAMPUKUR
2.21_-_The_Ladder_of_Self-transcendence
2.21_-_The_Order_of_the_Worlds
2.21_-_Towards_the_Supreme_Secret
2.22_-_Rebirth_and_Other_Worlds;_Karma,_the_Soul_and_Immortality
2.22_-_The_Supreme_Secret
2.22_-_Vijnana_or_Gnosis
2.2.3_-_Depression_and_Despondency
2.23_-_Man_and_the_Evolution
2.23_-_The_Conditions_of_Attainment_to_the_Gnosis
2.23_-_THE_MASTER_AND_BUDDHA
2.24_-_Gnosis_and_Ananda
2.24_-_The_Message_of_the_Gita
2.25_-_List_of_Topics_in_Each_Talk
2.25_-_The_Higher_and_the_Lower_Knowledge
2.25_-_The_Triple_Transformation
2.26_-_The_Ascent_towards_Supermind
2.27_-_The_Gnostic_Being
2.2.9.02_-_Plato
2.2.9.04_-_Plotinus
2.3.01_-_Concentration_and_Meditation
2.3.02_-_Opening,_Sincerity_and_the_Mother's_Grace
2.3.02_-_The_Supermind_or_Supramental
2.3.04_-_The_Mother's_Force
2.3.05_-_Sadhana_through_Work_for_the_Mother
2.3.07_-_The_Vital_Being_and_Vital_Consciousness
2.3.1_-_Ego_and_Its_Forms
2.3.2_-_Desire
28.01_-_Observations
30.09_-_Lines_of_Tantra_(Charyapada)
3.1.01_-_Distinctive_Features_of_the_Integral_Yoga
3.1.02_-_Spiritual_Evolution_and_the_Supramental
31.02_-_The_Mother-_Worship_of_the_Bengalis
3.1.04_-_Transformation_in_the_Integral_Yoga
3.1.3_-_Difficulties_of_the_Physical_Being
3.2.01_-_On_Ideals
3.2.02_-_The_Veda_and_the_Upanishads
3.2.04_-_Sankhya_and_Yoga
3.2.05_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Bhagavad_Gita
3.2.06_-_The_Adwaita_of_Shankaracharya
3.2.09_-_The_Teachings_of_Some_Modern_Indian_Yogis
3.2.3_-_Dreams
3.2.4_-_Sex
33.08_-_I_Tried_Sannyas
34.07_-_The_Bride_of_Brahman
3.4.1_-_The_Subconscient_and_the_Integral_Yoga
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus
36.08_-_A_Commentary_on_the_First_Six_Suktas_of_Rigveda
3.7.1.02_-_The_Reincarnating_Soul
3.7.1.05_-_The_Significance_of_Rebirth
3.7.1.07_-_Involution_and_Evolution
3.7.1.09_-_Karma_and_Freedom
3.7.2.01_-_The_Foundation
3.7.2.06_-_Appendix_II_-_A_Clarification
38.05_-_Living_Matter
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.03_-_The_Psychology_of_Self-Perfection
4.07_-_Purification-Intelligence_and_Will
4.1.01_-_The_Intellect_and_Yoga
4.10_-_The_Elements_of_Perfection
4.1.1.05_-_The_Central_Process_of_the_Yoga
4.14_-_The_Power_of_the_Instruments
4.15_-_Soul-Force_and_the_Fourfold_Personality
4.16_-_The_Divine_Shakti
4.17_-_The_Action_of_the_Divine_Shakti
4.19_-_The_Nature_of_the_supermind
4.2.1.04_-_The_Psychic_and_the_Mental,_Vital_and_Physical_Nature
4.2.5_-_Dealing_with_Depression_and_Despondency
4.25_-_Towards_the_supramental_Time_Vision
4.3.1.01_-_Peace,_Calm,_Silence_and_the_Self
4.3.1.04_-_The_Disappearance_of_the_I_Sense
4.3.1.09_-_The_Self_and_Life
4.3.1_-_The_Hostile_Forces_and_the_Difficulties_of_Yoga
4.4.2.02_-_Ascension_or_Rising_above_the_Head
5.03_-_The_Divine_Body
5.1.01_-_Terminology
5.1.02_-_The_Gods
5.1.03_-_The_Hostile_Forces_and_Hostile_Beings
5.4.01_-_Occult_Knowledge
9.99_-_Glossary
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
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The_Coming_Race_Contents
The_Riddle_of_this_World

PRIMARY CLASS

SIMILAR TITLES
Prakriti
Purusha and Prakriti

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

Prakriti: Causal matter; Sakti; name of Pradhana of the Sankhyas.

Prakritilaya: He who is submerged in Prakriti.

Prakriti; prakrti: Sanskrit for Substance (as opposed to or contrasted with Spirit). The cosmic substance which is the primary source of all things, uncaused cause of phenomenal existence, eternal, all-pervasive, indestructible, emanated from the Absolute.

Prakriti (S) All of creation, the material, that which is subject to change (see also: Purusha)

Prakriti(Sanskrit) ::: A compound consisting of the prepositional prefix pra, meaning "forwards" or "progression,"and kriti, a noun-form from the verbal root kri, "to make" or "to do." Therefore prakriti means literally"production" or "bringing forth," "originating," and by an extension of meaning it also signifies theprimordial or original state or condition or form of anything: primary, original substance. The root orparent of prakriti is mula-prakriti or root of prakriti. Prakriti is to be considered with vikriti -- vikritisignifying change or an alteration of some kind, or a production or evolution from the prakriti whichprecedes it.As an illustration, the chemical elements hydrogen and oxygen combine in the proportion H2O,producing thus a substance known in its most common form as water; but this same H2O can appear asice as well as vapor-gas; hence the vapor, the water, and the ice may be called the vikritis of the originalprakriti which is the originating hydrogen and oxygen. The illustration is perhaps not a very good one butis suggestive.In common usage prakriti may be called nature in general, as the great producer of entities or things, andthrough this nature acts the ever-active Brahma or Purusha. Purusha, therefore, is spirit, and prakriti is itsproductive veil or sheath. Essentially or fundamentally the two are one, and whatever prakriti throughand by the influence of Purusha produces is the multitudinous and multiform vikritis which make theimmense variety and diversity in the universe around us.In one or more of the Hindu philosophies, prakriti is the same as sakti, and therefore prakriti and sakti arevirtually interchangeable with maya or maha-maya or so-called illusion. Prakriti is often spoken of asmatter, but this is inexact although a very common usage; matter is rather the "productions" or phasesthat prakriti brings about, the vikritis. In the Indian Sankhya philosophy pradhana is virtually identicalwith prakriti, and both are often used to signify the producing element from and out of which all illusorymaterial manifestations or appearances are evolved.

Prakriti ::: see prakrti

Prakriti ::: What is meant by Prakriti or Nature is the outer or executive side of the Shakti or Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. This outer side appears here to be mechanical, a play of the forces, Gunas, etc. Behind it is the living Consciousness and Force of the Divine, the divine Shakti. The Prakriti itself is divided into the lower and higher,—the lower is the Prakriti of the Ignorance, the Prakriti of mind, life and Matter separated in consciousness from the Divine; the higher is the Divine Prakriti of Sachchidananda with its manifesting power of supermind, always aware of the Divine and free from Ignorance and its consequences. Man so long as he is in the ignorance is subject to the lower Prakriti, but by spiritual evolution he becomes aware of the higher Nature and seeks to come into contact with it. He can ascend into it and it can descend into him—such an ascent and descent can transform the lower nature of mind, life and Matter.
   Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 287


prakriti-angsha) ::: a portion of universal Nature expressing the Mahakali-Mahasarasvati combination of the aspects of the divine sakti.

prakritic ::: a. --> Pertaining to Prakrit.

prakritilaya. ::: absorbed or merged in prakriti

prakritim apannah) ::: possessed of the Asuric and Rakshasic nature.[Cf. Gita 9.12, 16.20]

prakriti; prakruti. ::: "nature"; causal matter; primordial substance out of which all things are created; the cause of illusive creation, the delusion; the primal nature without an "I"-sense; primordial unmanifest essence; that state in which the three gunas exist in equilibrium; when this equilibrium is disturbed, creation begins and the body, senses and mind are formed. The man who is deluded by egoism identifies the Self with the body, mind, the life-force and the senses, and ascribes to the Self all the attributes of the body and the senses. In fact, the gunas of nature perform all actions

PRAKRITI (Skt) Matter


TERMS ANYWHERE

According to the Sankhya philosophy, prakriti is considered to possess three basic qualities or qualitative bases (triguna), namely sattva (substantial reality), rajas (inherent activity), and tamas (inertia), popularly rendered goodness, passion, and darkness; or virtue, foulness, and ignorance.

Adhishthana (Sanskrit) Adhiṣṭhāna [from adhi over, upon + the verbal root sthā to stand upon] A basis, seat, or focus of action (cf BG 3:40, 18:14). Often applied to a principle or element which inheres in another principle; i.e., the active agent working in prakriti would be adhishthana. Also, precedent, rule, as when used as a name for one of the ten paramitas (rules of conduct).

Adisakti (Sanskrit) Ādiśakti [from ādi first + śakti power, energy] Primeval power; the divine force or direct energic emanation from mulaprakriti, hence the feminine aspect or clothing of any spiritually formative potency. Personified in the Hindu pantheon as the consort of a divinity, every divinity having its own sakti or formative power-substance. Also a name for maya, significant because illusion begins with manifestation (SD 1:10).

Adi-tattva: The first principle; Brahman; Mula Prakriti; the first element (of matter) next but one above Akasa in the gradation of subtlety.

Aditi-prakriti (Sanskrit) Aditi-prakṛti [from aditi unbounded + prakṛti nature from pra forth + the verbal root kṛ to do, make] Spiritual-physical nature; Father-Mother within before it appeared in space, the universal matrix of kosmos personified in the dual character of the universe or of man. Aditi signifies infinity personified as a goddess; prakriti, nature considered as the evolver or producer in its original condition.

Aditi (Sanskrit) Aditi [from a not + diti bound from the verbal root da to bind] Unbounded, free; as a noun, infinite and shoreless expanse. In the Vedas, Aditi is devamatri (mother of the gods) as from and in her cosmic matrix all the heavenly bodies were born. As the celestial virgin and mother of every existing form and being, the synthesis of all things, she is highest akasa. Aditi is identified in the Rig-Veda with Vach (mystic speech) and also with the mulaprakriti of the Vedanta. As the womb of space, she is a feminized form of Brahma. The line in the Rig-Veda: “Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha” has reference to “the eternal cyclic re-birth of the same divine Essence” (SD 2:247n). In one of its most mystic aspects Aditi is divine wisdom.

Adyasakti: Primordial power; Avyaktam or Mula Prakriti.

Ahamkara (Sanskrit) Ahaṃkāra [from aham ego, I + kāra maker, doer from the verbal root kṛ to do] I-maker; conception of egoity or I-am-I-ness. In its lower aspect, the egoistical and mayavi principle, born of avidya (ignorance), which produces the notion of the personal ego as being different from the universal self. In Sankhya philosophy ahamkara is the third emanation: from prakriti (primal nature or substance) issues mahat (the great), standing for universal mind, which in turn produces ahamkara, selfhood, individuality; from ahamkara come forth the five tanmatras, the subtle forms of the elements or principles and “the two series of sense organs” (Samkhya-Sutra 1:61).

Ahammana (Sanskrit) Ahaṃmāna [from aham ego + māna from the verbal root man to think, reflect upon] Egoism, self-illusion; hence spiritual ignorance, the maya produced by reflecting upon or imagining one’s “I” as of primary importance. “When soul is associated with prakriti, it is vitiated by egotism [ahammana] and the rest, and assumes the qualities of grosser nature, although essentially distinct from them, and incorruptible [avyaya]” (VP 6:7).

Akasa is the noumenon and spiritual substratum of differentiated prakriti, otherwise the seven or ten prakritis, the root or roots of all in the universe. These prakritis are not merely in akasa, but are the manifestations of akasa in its various grades or degrees of evolutionary development. All the ancient nations mythologically deified akasa in one or another of its aspects and powers (cf IU 1:125 for a descriptive listing of the many names anciently used for akasa). It is the indispensable agent in all religious or profane magic: occult electricity, the universal solvent, in another aspect kundalini. “Akasa is the mysterious fluid termed by scholastic science, ‘the all-pervading ether’; it enters into all the magical operations of nature, and produces mesmeric, magnetic, and spiritual phenomena. As, in Syria, Palestine, and India, meant the sky, life, and the sun at the same time; the sun being considered by the ancient sages as the great magnetic well of our universe” (IU 1:140n).

Akasa-sakti (Sanskrit) Ākāśa-śākti [from ākāśa ether, space + śakti power, energy, from the verbal root śak to be strong, able] Used by Blavatsky for the soul or energy of prakriti: “The Tibetan esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that Prakriti is cosmic matter, out of which all visible forms are produced; and Akasa that same cosmic matter — but still more imponderable, its spirit, as it were, ‘Prakriti’ being the body or substance, and Akasa-Sakti its soul or energy” (BCW 3:405n). Each divinity is supposed to have his sakti (active energy), mythologically referred to as his consort or feminine counterpart. Thus akasa-sakti is used as the akasa-power in the all-various differentiations of prakriti.

Akasa (Sanskrit) Ākāśa [from ā + the verbal root kāś to be visible, appear, shine, be brilliant] The shining; ether, cosmic space, the fifth cosmic element. The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all space. It is not the ether of science, but the aether of the ancients, such as the Stoics, which is to ether what spirit is to matter. In the Brahmanical scriptures, akasa is used for what the Northern Buddhists call svabhavat, more mystically adi-buddhi (primeval buddhi); it is also mulaprakriti, cosmic spirit-substance, the reservoir of being and of beings. Genesis refers to it as the waters of the deep. It is universal substantial space, and mystically in its highest elements is alaya.

Akasa(Sanskrit) ::: The word means "brilliant," "shining," "luminous." The fifth kosmic element, the fifth essenceor "quintessence," called Aether by the ancient Stoics; but it is not the ether of science. The ether ofscience is merely one of its lower elements. In the Brahmanical scriptures akasa is used for what thenorthern Buddhists call svabhavat, more mystically Adi-buddhi -- "primeval buddhi''; it is alsomulaprakriti, the kosmical spirit-substance, the reservoir of Being and of beings. The Hebrew OldTestament refers to it as the kosmic "waters." It is universal substantial space; also mystically Alaya.(See also Mulaprakriti, Alaya)

Akasa-tattva (Sanskrit) Ākāśa-tattva [from ākāśa ether, space + tattva thatness, reality from tat that] The brilliant, shining, spiritually luminous, evolving substratum of nature; the third in the descending scale of the seven tattvas. According to one manner of enumerating the cosmic procession of consciousnesses, this tattva corresponds to the feminine aspect of the creative or Third Logos; but as nature repeats itself constantly in its processes of evolutionary unfolding, it is likewise proper to derive the subordinate First Logos from akasa when it is considered as virtually identical with mulaprakriti. In view of this repetitive functioning in nature, it is important not to allow the mind to crystallize around any one definition of a stage in any series of “descents” as being the only stage properly so described. This is seen with the First Logos: adi-tattva, first of the five or seven tattvas, may be called the First Logos; from another aspect the First Logos is born from akasa-tattva as the formative or creative mental impulse.

“Akshara, the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being, Witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works.” Essays on the Gita

Alaya(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word: a, "not"; laya, from the verb-root li, "to dissolve"; hence "theindissoluble." The universal soul; the basis or root or fountain of all beings and things -- the universe,gods, monads, atoms, etc. Mystically identical with akasa in the latter's highest elements, and withmulaprakriti in the latter's essence as "root-producer" or "root-nature." (See also Akasa, Buddhi,Mulaprakriti)[NOTE: The Secret Doctrine (1:49) mentions Alaya in the Yogachara system, most probably referring toalaya-vijnana, but adds that with the "Esoteric 'Buddhists' . . . 'Alaya' has a double and even a triplemeaning." -- PUBLISHER]

Alaya (Sanskrit) Alaya [from a not + laya dissolution from the verbal root lī to dissolve] Nondissolution; the indissoluble; used in Buddhism for the universal soul or higher portions of anima mundi, the source of all beings and things. Mystically identical with akasa in the latter’s highest elements and with mahabuddhi; also with mulaprakriti as root-producer or root-nature (OG 5).

All things in existence or non-existence are symbols of the Absolute created in self-consciousness (Chid-Atman); by Its symbols the Absolute can be known so far as the symbols reveal or hint at it, but even the knowledge of the whole sum of symbols does not amount to real knowledge of the Absolute. You can become Parabrahman; you cannot know Parabrahman. Becoming Parabrahman means going back through self-consciousness into Parabrahman, for you already are That, only you have projected yourself forward in self-consciousness into its terms or symbols, Purusha & Prakriti through which you uphold the universe. Th
   refore, to become Parabrahman void of terms or symbols you must cease out of the universe. By becoming Parabrahman void of Its self-symbols you do not become anything you are not already, nor does the universe cease to operate. It only means that God throws back out of the ocean of manifest consciousness one stream or movement of Himself into that from which all consciousness proceeded.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, Page: 103


— (also called Kali-Kr.s.n.a bhava) the realisation of Kr.s.n.akali, a state of simultaneous Kr.s.n.abhava and Kalibhava, in which the individual soul (jiva) experiences "at once its oneness with the Ishwara [Kr.s.n.a] and its oneness with the Prakriti [Kali]" and can "enjoy all relations with Infinite and finite, with God and the universe and beings in the universe in the highest terms of the union of the universal Purusha and Prakriti"; a state of perception (bhava) of brahmadarsana in which Kr.s.n.a and Kali are seen everywhere.Kr.s.n.akali darsana (Krishnakali darshana; Krishnakali-darshana;Krsnakali

Amsa, Amsu (Sanskrit) Aṃśa, Aṃśu Fragment, particle, part; name of one of the adityas in the Mahabharata; also of Surya (the sun) whose solar energy was so tremendous that the divine architect Visvakarman cut off an eighth part of his glory. From the luminous fragments (amsa) which fell to earth, Visvakarman made a number of implements for the gods, including Vishnu’s discus and Siva’s trident. In the Bhagavad-Gita (15:7), Krishna emanates an amsa of himself which, becoming a jiva (monad) in the world of living beings, draws to itself manas (mind) and the five senses which originate in prakriti (nature).

Amula-mula (Sanskrit) Amūla-mūla [from a not + mūla root, basis] The Rootless Root; used by Blavatsky for mulaprakriti (TG 20), the spiritual root or essence of nature, the spiritually substantial originant of all, because the veil or garment of parabrahman, the boundless.

Anatum or Antum (Chaldean) Consort of the god of heaven, Anu, supreme god of the Assyro-Babylonian pantheon. Whereas Anu represented heaven and height, Anatum represented the earth and depth. She was regarded as the mother of the gods, as well as being the mother of the god Ea or Hea. “Astronomically she is Ishtar, Venus, the Ashtoreth of the Jews” (TG 21). Anu and Anatum correspond to Ouranos and Gaia in Hesiod, and therefore in one of her mystical significances Anatum corresponds with the Hindu prakriti.

Androgyne [from Greek androgynos man-woman] Hermaphrodite; applied to a dual principle containing both the active and passive powers of nature, as the androgyne ray, the Second Logos, Purusha-prakriti, spirit-matter; to a race, such as the second root-race, whose members are physiologically of both sexes; and in biology to certain animals which have dual sex. Bipolarity, the contrast and interaction between the energic and formative sides of nature, is universally prevalent. Sex is merely a particular and, evolutionally speaking, passing phase of this universal law, and its terms are often used in a purely symbolic sense to define these two sides of nature. We should be careful not to take the symbols literally and ascribe physiological attributes to higher powers.

Androgyne Ray An expression for the second stage of manifestation — the Second Logos in the system of emanations of the logoi; the Father-Mother in the cosmic conception adopted by Blavatsky; and the Sanskrit Brahma-prakriti or Purusha-prakriti. Each is the producing cause of manifestation through its son, the manifested Third Logos, which in a planetary chain is designated as the primordial or originate in Manu Svayambhuva. “These two, Brahma and Prakriti, are really one, yet they are also the two aspects of the one Life-ray acting and reacting upon itself” (OG 97).

Anima Mundi (Latin) World-soul, world-mother; the divine-spiritual-astral-physical source of emanations, the cosmic generative and animating principle of all beings, the creative Third Logos in its female aspect. In its highest and intermediate portions, it corresponds to the alaya of Northern Buddhism and hence to akasa. Identified variously with Isis, Sephira, Sophia, the Holy Ghost, mahat, mulaprakriti, etc., but used in a hazy and often materializing sense, so that it cannot be accurately regarded as a synonym for any one of these. “It is in a sense the ‘seven-skinned mother’ of the stanzas in the Secret Doctrine, the essence of seven planes of sentience, consciousness and differentiation, moral and physical. In its highest aspect it is Nirvana, in its lowest Astral Light. It was feminine with the Gnostics, the early Christians and the Nazarenes; bisexual with other sects, who considered it only in its four lower planes. Of igneous, ethereal nature in the objective world of form (and then ether), and divine and spiritual in its three higher planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching itself form the Anima Mundi, it means, esoterically, that our higher Egos are of an essence identical with It, which is a radiation of the ever unknown Universal Absolute” (TG 22-3).

Apara-prakriti: The lower cosmic energy through which God projects all forms in nature, gross and subtle.

apara prakrti (Apara Prakriti) ::: the lower Nature, the external objective and superficial subjective apparent Nature which manifests all minds, lives and bodies.

Aparinamin (Sanskrit) Apariṇāmin [from a not + pari around, about + the verbal root nam to bend, turn, change] Unchanging; used in connection with Purusha and prakriti or pradhana, when regarded in their fundamental essence of continuous spiritual substance. In the Puranas, for example, Purusha (spirit per se) is called both avyaya (imperishable, undecaying) and aparinamin (immutable, unchanging); while prahana or prakriti (matter in its elemental state) is vyaya (perishable) and parinamin (subject to change) (cf VP 1:2; SD 1:582). However, when Purusha and prakriti are regarded from the standpoint of the periods of manifestation, their aspects become mayavi (illusory), and hence in their interblending actions subject to the modifications of manvantaric evolution.

. a (prakriti purusha) ::: same as purus.a-prakr.ti.

Arets, Aretz (Hebrew) ’Erets With the definite article, ha-’arets. The earth, globe, ground, land, country; particularly dry land in contradistinction to water. In cosmogony the original veil or garment surroundings, as wrap or vehicle of expression, a cosmic monad within it; just as in India pradhana surrounds and manifests Brahman, or mulaprakriti with parabrahman.

arogyaprakr.ti (arogyaprakriti) ::: healthy nature. arogyaprakrti arogya sadhana arogya

asamaya tapas (prakashamaya tapas) ::: luminous force. prakritic d dasya

Asat (Sanskrit) Asat [from a not + sat being from the verbal root as to be] Not being, non-being; used in the Indian philosophies with two meanings almost diametrically opposed: firstly, as the false, the unreal, or the manifested universe, in contrast with sat, the real; secondly, in a profoundly mystical sense, as all that is beyond or higher than sat. “Sat is born from Asat, and Asat is begotten by Sat: the perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can be squared only at the supreme Initiation, at the threshold of Paranirvana” (SD 2:449-50). In its lower sense, asat signifies the realms of objective nature built out of and from the various prakritis, and therefore regarded as illusory in contrast to the enduring Be-ness or sat. In its higher sense asat is that boundless and eternal metaphysical essence of space out of which, in which, and from which even sat or Be-ness itself is and endures. Asat here is parabrahman-mulaprakriti in its most abstract meaning.

As concerns the 24 tattvas, all derivative from the spiritual originant Purusha, they are divided into eight original prakritis (producers), and 16 derivatives of these eight prakritis called vikaras (productions). The eight prakritis themselves spring forth from mulprakriti (original nature or root-substance). In and through these 24 tattvas Purusha manifests itself during the manvantaric period. This system of tattvas therefore is applicable either to the universe or to any entity as a component part of the universe, since the fundamental law of things repeats itself in the great and the small.

"As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.” The Life Divine

“As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.” The Life Divine

As there is a poise of the relations of Purusha with Prakriti in which Matter is the first determinant, a world of material existence, so there is another just above it in which Matter is not supreme, but rather Life-force takes its place as the first determinant. In this world forms do not determine the conditions of the life, but it is life which determines the form, and th
   refore forms are there much more free, fluid, largely and to our conceptions strangely variable than in the material world. This life-force is not inconscient material force, not even, except in its lowest movements, an elemental subconscient energy, but a conscious force of being which makes for formation, but much more essentially for enjoyment, possession, satisfaction of its own dynamic impulse. Desire and the satisfaction of impulse are th
   refore the first law of this world of sheer vital existence, this poise of relations between the soul and its nature in which the life-power plays with so much greater a freedom and capacity than in our physical living; it may be called the desire-world, for that is its principal characteristic.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 452


asya ::: an intermediate form of dasya, also called double / prakritic dasya, "in which the Prakriti uses the instrument and itself obeys the Ishwara, but guided as if from behind a veil".

asya (dasya; dasyam) ::: (in January 1913) the third of four degrees of dasya, "the dasya of the yantra [instrument], which cannot disobey, but is worked mechanically through an intermediate impulsion of Prakriti", this indirectness being what distinguishes it from quaternary dasya; (from September 1913 onwards, corresponding to the earlier triple dasya) the highest of three forms of dasya, "a complete subjection" to the isvara, with prakr.ti "only as a channel", a state resulting from the loss of the illusory "relative freedom which by us is ignorantly called free-will", in which "at each moment and in each movement the absolute freedom of the Supreme handles the perfect plasticity of our conscious and liberated nature"; it has three stages, one in which volition is "dominant in the consciousness not as free, but as accompanying & approving the movement", a second in which the control of prakr.ti is "dominant though as a compelled & compulsory agent of a remote or veiled Ishwara" and a third in which prakr.ti is purely a channel and "the compulsion from the Ishwara direct, omnipresent and immanent".

asya (dasyam) ::: an intermediate form of dasya, also called secondary / prakritic dasya, in which, unlike simple dasya, "there is no active & constant freedom, but only a general & ultimate freedom which is used little", for "we do not determine what is God"s will and act thereby or order Prakriti to act thereby, but leave everything to God to determine; the whole responsibility is His & a given impulse of Prakriti fulfils itself or not as He chooses without our interference". double sam samadhi

asya ::: same as double / secondary dasya, an intermediate form of dasya in which "we perceive that Prakriti is the only doer of all our actions voluntary or involuntary from the most deliberately concerted endeavour even to the simplest trifle", though we remain "aware of ourselves as . . . the individual ruling & sanctioning authority" and "have the power of refusing our sanction to any particular impulse of Prakriti if we choose".

asya ::: same as primary / simple dasya, also called personal dasya, the form of dasya in which "between the various impulses of Prakriti, we have the sense of choosing, of an active & constant freedom, & although we choose what we understand to be God"s will, it is still our choice that determines the action in the adhara & not His direct and imperative Will".

Atala (Sanskrit) Atala [from a not + tala place] No place, no material locality; the first and most spiritual of the seven talas, so nearly one with satyaloka, its corresponding loka or pole, that the two nearly conjoin into one — hence it is called “no place.” Atala bears somewhat the same relation to satyaloka that prakriti bears to Brahma; hence it is the first quasi-spiritual, quasi-material plane in the solar universe. “In satyaloka-atala, the highest loka combines into or rejoins the monadic essence of the planetary chain. The differentiation so marked on the lower planes ceases here and, because of this, the two blend into or become one” (FSO 264). Cosmically atala emanates directly from the solar logos and contains with satyaloka the substantial seeds of all that was, is, and will be, from the beginning to the end of the solar mahamanvantara. Atala, with satyaloka, may be considered from one standpoint the sphere of the hierarchies of the dhyanis, who are, when completely in this condition, in a state of parasamadhi, and hence clothed in the dharmakaya.

Atmamatra (Sanskrit) Ātmamātra, Ātmamātrā [from ātman self + mātra or mātrā element, particle] A primordial spiritual particle or monad, a particle or elementary portion of original prakriti or elemental material; “atmamatra is therefore the spiritual atom as opposed to the elementary, not reflective ‘elements of himself’ ” (SD 1:334). See also ATMAMATRASU

Attention is drawn to the philosophic need of making a sharp distinction between what Blavatsky has called primary creation and secondary creation, the former referring to the one divine unity in which all later manifesting hierarchies primordially inhere as One; whereas the secondary creation or stage in cosmic evolution begins with the fourth stage or fourth cosmic plane beneath the former, where polarity, duality, and the consequent emanational elaboration of the universe into its hierarchical structures begins. Thus through emanational cosmic evolution the One breaks through its two aspects of parabrahman and mulaprakriti into the cosmically androgyne and phenomenal finite manifested universe.

Aum (Sanskrit) Aum The ancient Indians held that Om, when considered as a single letter was the symbol of the Supreme; when written with three letters — Aum — it stood among other things for the three Vedas, the three gunas or qualities of nature, the three divisions of the universe, and the deities of the Hindu Trimurti — Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva — concerned in the creation, preservation, and destruction of the universe or the beings composing it. “The mystic formula, résumé of every science, contained in the three mysterious letters, AUM which signify creation, conservation, and transformation” (IU 2:31). These three letters are supposed by some Hindus to have correspondences as follows: “The letter A is the Sattva Guna, U is the Rajas, and M is the Tamas; these three qualities are termed Nature (Prakriti). . . . A is Bhurloka, U is Bhuvarloka, and M is Svarloka; by these three letters the spirit exhibits itself” (Laheri in Lucifer 10:147). This word is said to have a morally spiritualizing effect if pronounced during meditation and when the mind is at peace and cleansed of all impurities. See also OM

Avakokitesvara is the seventh principle in the microcosm, and therefore the atman or atma-buddhi; and analogically the seventh or highest principle in the universe, and hence the kosmic Logos in its macrocosmic position. There are in consequence two Avalokitesvaras: the First and Second Logos whether of the macrocosm or of the microcosm, because the First Logos reflects itself in the Second Logos, in the macrocosm, just as atman reflects itself in and works through its mirroring veil buddhi. There is an analogy with parabrahman and mulaprakriti, but Avalokitesvara is essentially the kosmic monad or First Logos on the one hand, and the human-divine monad or human logos, atma-buddhi, on the other hand. Avalokitesvara thus opens manifestation or differentiation in either case. See also Chenrezi; Kwan-shai-yin; Logos

Avyaktanugrahana (Sanskrit) Avyaktānugrahaṇa [from avyakta unmanifested + anugrahaṇa the fifth or eighth creation of the Puranas] The unmanifested period of formative development, applied to parabrahman and mulaprakriti conjointly (SD 1:521-2).

Avyakta (Sanskrit) Avyakta [from a not + vyakta manifested from vy-añj to anoint, adorn, cause to appear, manifest] Unmanifested; applied to Vishnu and Siva, and in the Bhagavad-Gita to Krishna. Hence Avyakta is the unmanifest or the undifferentiated, as opposed to vyakta, the manifest or differentiated. In the Sankhya philosophy, it is mulaprikriti (root- or primordial nature), the veil of parabrahman, or parabrahman manifested in mulaprakriti. Mulaprakriti is the unmanifested side of differentiated nature, and hence avyakta; but the term is equally applicable to the consciousness side of the universe, during those immensely long time periods when cosmic consciousness is sunken in its own essence and not manifesting. Similarly, the higher or divine-spiritual parts of cosmic consciousness may be said to be avyakta even during periods of cosmic manifestation. To the Sankhyas, avyakta is the one cosmic principle which is the root of all essential selfhood and which during cosmic manvantara is in its lower parts differentiated in and through the innumerable hierarchical organisms. It therefore subsists in every kind of upadhi and is the real spiritual entity which a person has to reach in his progress towards spirit.

Bandhakarana (Sanskrit) Bandhakaraṇa [from bandha bondage + karaṇa from the verbal root kṛ to make, do] Making or causing bondage; binding, fettering, or a holding back. Subba Row (Notes on BG 71) assumes that mulaprakriti is the real or principal bandhakarana as the originating cause of karmic activity, but this has reference only to the most abstract and spiritual side of things, as in the last analysis even karma itself may be traced backwards and inwards to mulaprakriti as the field of all possible activity.

Being and Nonbeing; Be-ness Equivalent to the Sanskrit sat, asat, and tat. Asat is “a philosophical term meaning ‘non-being,’ or rather non-be-ness. The ‘incomprehensible nothingness.’ Sat, the immutable, eternal, ever-present, and the one real ‘Be-ness’ (not Being) is spoken of as being born of Asat, and Asat begotten by ‘Sat.’ The unreal, or Prakriti, objective nature regarded as an illusion. Nature, or the illusive shadow of its one true essence” (TG 33). So asat or nonbeing is used both to denote that which precedes Being, and out of which Being is born — or vice versa; and to denote the illusory world in contrast with the essential or fundamental cosmic self. Sat (or asat) corresponds very largely with the Absolute of ordinary European philosophy, whereas Be-ness or nonbeing corresponds with the extremely metaphysical Vedic and Vedantic tat and parabrahman.

bhūh.-prakr.ti (bhuh-prakriti) ::: physical nature. bhuh-prakrti

bhūtaprakr.ti (bhutaprakriti) ::: material Nature. bhutaprakrti

Bhutas are also rudimentary substances or elements. The Vendantists and Sankhyas, when speaking of the six original producers or elements of nature, called them bhutas or prakritis. These are the bases of objective nature, the vehicular or substantial side of the tattvas (the principles of nature) and therefore inseparable from them. The ancients always reckoned four elements, and sometimes five, and called them aether, fire, air, water, and earth. But esoterically there are seven: adi-bhuta (the primordial), anupapadaka-bhuta (the unevolved or parentless), akasa-bhuta (aether), taijasa-bhuta (fire), vayu-bhuta (air), apas-bhuta (water), and prithivi-bhuta (earth). These cosmic elements are not the familiar things which we know under these names, for the familiar physical substances were taken as symbols, through certain appropriate qualities which they possess, of the actual elements of cosmic being. These familiar physical substances of earth, water, air, and fire are the correspondences on earth, in a mystic sense, of the true cosmic elements.

Blavatsky explains various meanings of daiviprakriti:

Boundless, The The infinitude of living space and unconditioned time, termed parabrahman, parabrahman-mulaprakriti, tat, or Aditi in Sanskrit; in the Chaldean Qabbalah, ’eyn soph; and with the Greeks, to apeyron. The non-existent, because nonmanifested, and therefore the concealed unity; sometimes called darkness in a mystic sense, no-number because not subject to computation, also the rootless root. Having no relation to the bounded and conditioned which are contained within it, it is the unknown and unknowable cosmic motion, absolute consciousness, and absolute motion, and therefore to our limited minds unconsciousness and immobility. Its symbol is the circle or zero, denoting the absence of everything that can be predicated as imbodying limitation.

Prakriti: Causal matter; Sakti; name of Pradhana of the Sankhyas.

Prakritilaya: He who is submerged in Prakriti.

Prakriti; prakrti: Sanskrit for Substance (as opposed to or contrasted with Spirit). The cosmic substance which is the primary source of all things, uncaused cause of phenomenal existence, eternal, all-pervasive, indestructible, emanated from the Absolute.

Prakriti (S) All of creation, the material, that which is subject to change (see also: Purusha)

Prakriti(Sanskrit) ::: A compound consisting of the prepositional prefix pra, meaning "forwards" or "progression,"and kriti, a noun-form from the verbal root kri, "to make" or "to do." Therefore prakriti means literally"production" or "bringing forth," "originating," and by an extension of meaning it also signifies theprimordial or original state or condition or form of anything: primary, original substance. The root orparent of prakriti is mula-prakriti or root of prakriti. Prakriti is to be considered with vikriti -- vikritisignifying change or an alteration of some kind, or a production or evolution from the prakriti whichprecedes it.As an illustration, the chemical elements hydrogen and oxygen combine in the proportion H2O,producing thus a substance known in its most common form as water; but this same H2O can appear asice as well as vapor-gas; hence the vapor, the water, and the ice may be called the vikritis of the originalprakriti which is the originating hydrogen and oxygen. The illustration is perhaps not a very good one butis suggestive.In common usage prakriti may be called nature in general, as the great producer of entities or things, andthrough this nature acts the ever-active Brahma or Purusha. Purusha, therefore, is spirit, and prakriti is itsproductive veil or sheath. Essentially or fundamentally the two are one, and whatever prakriti throughand by the influence of Purusha produces is the multitudinous and multiform vikritis which make theimmense variety and diversity in the universe around us.In one or more of the Hindu philosophies, prakriti is the same as sakti, and therefore prakriti and sakti arevirtually interchangeable with maya or maha-maya or so-called illusion. Prakriti is often spoken of asmatter, but this is inexact although a very common usage; matter is rather the "productions" or phasesthat prakriti brings about, the vikritis. In the Indian Sankhya philosophy pradhana is virtually identicalwith prakriti, and both are often used to signify the producing element from and out of which all illusorymaterial manifestations or appearances are evolved.

Prakriti ::: see prakrti

Prakriti ::: What is meant by Prakriti or Nature is the outer or executive side of the Shakti or Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. This outer side appears here to be mechanical, a play of the forces, Gunas, etc. Behind it is the living Consciousness and Force of the Divine, the divine Shakti. The Prakriti itself is divided into the lower and higher,—the lower is the Prakriti of the Ignorance, the Prakriti of mind, life and Matter separated in consciousness from the Divine; the higher is the Divine Prakriti of Sachchidananda with its manifesting power of supermind, always aware of the Divine and free from Ignorance and its consequences. Man so long as he is in the ignorance is subject to the lower Prakriti, but by spiritual evolution he becomes aware of the higher Nature and seeks to come into contact with it. He can ascend into it and it can descend into him—such an ascent and descent can transform the lower nature of mind, life and Matter.
   Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 287


Brahma-Prakriti (Sanskrit) Brahmā-prakṛti [brahmā as prakṛti] The material or vehicular aspect of Brahma’s nature in contradistinction to Brahma-Purusha, his spiritual aspect.

Brahman is both masculine and neuter, and therefore has two meanings. In the masculine (Brahma) it is the evolving energy of the cosmic egg, as distinguished from the neuter (Brahman). Brahma is the vehicle or sheath of Brahman. The Vishnu-Purana says that Brahma in its totality has essentially the aspect of prakriti, both evolved and unevolved (mulaprakriti), and also the aspects of spirit and of time. “Brahma, as ‘the germ of unknown Darkness,’ is the material from which all evolves and develops ‘as the web from the spider, as foam from the water,’ etc. This is only graphic and true, if Brahma the ‘Creator’ is, as a term, derived from the root brih, to increase or expand. Brahma ‘expands’ and becomes the Universe woven out of his own substance” (SD 1:83). Again,

Brahma Pralaya, Brahma Manvantara (Sanskrit) Brahmā-pralaya, -manvantara The death (or life) of Brahma, which takes place at the close of the Life or Age of Brahma, a period of 311,040,000,000,000 years; also called a mahapralaya or prakritika pralaya. One must ascertain whether the Brahma refers to a solar system or a smaller period of time, such as the life of a planetary chain.

Brahma-Purusha (Sanskrit) Brahmā-puruṣa [brahmā as puruṣa] The spiritual aspect of Brahma’s nature in contradistinction to Brahma-prakriti, the material aspect.

Bride is used in the Qabbalah as the terms sheath, veil, or garment are used in other mystical systems, the meaning being that spirit always has its lining or expression in manifestation. Thus the veil of Purusha is prakriti, that of Brahman is pradhana, that of parabrahman is mulaprakriti.

CHANGE OF NATURE. ::: The first step is to become cons- cious and separate from the old surface nature. For this rajasic vital nature Prakriti, it is not the true being ; however persistent; it seems, it is only a temporary combination of vital movements. Behind is the true mental and vital being supported by the psychic. The true being is calm, wide, peaceful. By drawing back and becoming separate one creates the possibility of living in the peace of this inner Purusha and no longer identified with the surface Prakriti. Afterwards it will be much easier to change by the force of the psychic perception and the Peace and Power and Light from above the surface being.

Chaos(Greek) ::: A word usually thought to mean a sort of helter-skelter treasury of original principles and seedsof beings. Well, so it verily is, in one profound sense; but it is most decidedly and emphatically nothelter-skelter. It is properly the kosmic storehouse of all the latent or resting seeds of beings and thingsfrom former manvantaras. Of course it is this, simply because it contains everything. It means space, notthe highest mystical or actual space, not the parabrahma-mulaprakriti, the Boundless -- not that. But thespace of any particular hierarchy descending into manifestation, what space for it is at that particularperiod of its beginning of development. The directive principles in chaos are the gods when they awakenfrom their pralayic sleep. Chaos in one sense may very truly be called the condition of the space of asolar system or even of a planetary chain during its pralaya. When awakening to planetary action begins,chaos pari passu ceases.

Chaos (Greek) [from chaino to gape, yawn open] “The earth was without form and void,” says Genesis in describing the first stages of cosmogony. In Greek mythology contains the same idea of the primordial emptiness and formlessness which precedes the rebirth of a universe after pralaya. It was the vacant and spiritual space which existed before the creation of the universe or of the world; from it proceeded Darkness and Night. Chaos is “chaotic” only in the sense that its constituents are unformed and unorganized; it is the kosmic storehouse of all the latent or resting seeds from former manvantaras. It means space — not the Boundless, parabrahman-mulaprakriti, but the space of any particular hierarchy descending into manifestation. In one sense it is the condition of a solar system or planetary chain during its pralaya, containing all the elements in an undifferentiated state. Aether and chaos are the two principles immediately posterior to the first principle.

Chinmatra (Sanskrit) Cinmātra [from cit thought + mātra elementary thought, intelligence] Essential thought, mind per se; used in Vedanta philosophy, particularly the Advaita, for the germ of cosmic ideation existing at every geometrical point of the infinite chidakasa (field of cosmic ideation). Not to be confused with collateral Vedantic terms mulaprakriti (undifferentiated elemental cosmic matter) or chidakasa. These three are considered from a subjective standpoint as aspects of parabrahman. In the human constitution it is the seventh principle or atman.

Corresponding to the three Logoi in the Hindu scheme are Brahman, Brahma, and Isvara emanating originally from parabrahman-mulaprakriti. In the highly philosophical visioning of Mahayana Buddhism is adi-buddha, mahabuddhi, and the celestial buddha, occasionally indirectly called dharmakaya. On a scale of less magnitude, Hindu thought has developed the triad Brahma, the emanator or original emanation; Vishnu, the supporter or sustainer, a feminine characteristic nevertheless; and Siva at once the regenerator and producer in the sense of destroying but to regenerate. Still a third Hindu scheme is found in the series of paramatman, mahabuddhi or alaya, and mahat or cosmic creative mind.

Cosmically sakti or the saktis originate in the summit of the astral light or akasa, which in one sense may be considered as not only the womb of the cosmic saktis, but as their playground and in another sense as the saktis collectively themselves. In man, sakti is the buddhi in its higher aspect, and the activities of the various pranas in the human constitution in its lower aspect. There is no essential distinction between any divinity and its consort, between Brahman and pradhana, Brahma and prakriti, or between parabrahman and mulaprakriti. Furthermore, all the saktis are either conscious entities in nature, or vital effluxes or emanations, cosmic fluids, with which nature is infused throughout.

Cosmogenesis [from Greek kosmos world + genesis birth] The genesis of worlds, as distinguished from anthropogensis or the genesis of mankind; as defined by Blavatsky: “At the commencement of a great Manvantara, Parabrahm manifests as Mulaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is equivalent to the ‘Unconscious Universal Mind,’ etc., of Western Pantheists. It constitutes the Basis of the subject-side of manifested Being, and is the source of all manifestations of individual consciousness. Mulaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the object-side of things — the basis of all objective evolution and Cosmogenesis” (SD 2:24). The word is not restricted to earth, but includes innumerable globes; nor is it confined to those worlds which happen to be visible to our eye, but includes worlds on all the various planes of manifested substance. It does not mean that the worlds were created ex nihilo by divine fiat, nor that they were merely the productions from dead, unconscious, albeit eternal and uncreate matter. Again, cosmogenesis is not a process which has occurred only once and for all, but a process which is repeated indefinitely during manvantaras and after great pralayas. Thus worlds are evolved from the state of latency or pralaya into which they passed at the close of the preceding manvantara, and both primordial matter and primordial spirit come from the same source — parabrahman — and are resolved again into it. The process is one of evolution or progressive manifestation on various planes of objectivity of the potentialities latent in the spiritual germ. World must be understood, not with regard to any standards of size, but as including a universe of stars on the one hand and an atomic speck on the other.

Daemon is applicable in general to all formative power, from the highest to the lowest; in this aphorism it denotes the formative rays in their manifestation in and on the lower planes of prakriti, called by contrast the nether pole. Western monotheism, having anthropomorphized the higher creative powers into a personal God, personified the lower powers into a Devil and demons. But Satan or the Adversary is only God’s messenger, because what is below reflects what is above. This aphorism, then, states that all the manifested universe is the representation or material inversion or reflection of the divine essence and its emanations which in their aggregate compose the spiritual background and causal forces of the universe. Furthermore, a reflected image reverses.

Daitya(s), Daiteya(s) (Sanskrit) Daitya-s, Daiteya-s Descendants of Diti. If Aditi is understood as mulaprakriti, or virtually cosmic space, so Diti, the nether pole of the former, may be understood as the aggregate of the prakritis. Cosmically, daityas are titans, often called asuras, whose role is that of urgers of evolutionary progress for all things, as contrasted with the incomparably slower, but unceasing, evolutionary inertia of the vast cosmic powers. Terrestrially, they are the titans and giants of the fourth root-race. According to the Hindu Puranas, these daityas are demons and enemies of the ceremonial sacrifice and ritualistic ceremonies; but according to the secret meaning hid under these stories, some of the daityas were the forwards-looking and impulse-providing intellectual entities striving against the inertia or deadweight of human nature.

Daiviprakriti(Sanskrit) ::: A compound signifying "divine" or "original evolver," or "original source," of the universe orof any self-contained or hierarchical portion of such universe, such as a solar system. Briefly, therefore,daiviprakriti may be called "divine matter," matter here being used in its original sense of "divinemother-evolver" or "divine original substance."Now, as original substance manifests itself in the kosmic spaces as primordial kosmic light -- light inoccult esoteric theosophical philosophy being a form of original matter or substance -- many mysticshave referred to daiviprakriti under the phrase "the Light of the Logos." Daiviprakriti is, in fact, the firstveil or sheath or ethereal body surrounding the Logos, as pradhana or prakriti surrounds Purusha orBrahman in the Sankhya philosophy, and as, on a scale incomparably more vast, mulaprakriti surroundsparabrahman. As daiviprakriti, therefore, is elemental matter, or matter in its sixth and seventh stagescounting from physical matter upwards or, what comes to the same thing, matter in its first and secondstages of its evolution from above, we may accurately enough speak of those filmy ethereal wisps of lightseen in the midnight skies as a physical manifestation of daiviprakriti, because when they are not actuallyresolvable nebulae, they are worlds, or rather systems of worlds, in the making.When daiviprakriti has reached a certain state or condition of evolutionary manifestation, we mayproperly speak of it under the term fohat. Fohat, in H. P. Blavatsky's words, is"The essence of cosmic electricity. An occult Tibetan term for Daivi-prakriti, primordiallight: and in the universe of manifestation the ever-present electrical energy and ceaselessdestructive and formative power. Esoterically, it is the same, Fohat being the universalpropelling Vital Force, at once the propeller and the resultant." -- Theosophical Glossary, p.121All this is extremely well put, but it must be remembered that although fohat is the energizing powerworking in and upon manifested daiviprakriti, or primordial substance, as the rider rides the steed, it isthe kosmic intelligence, or kosmic monad as Pythagoras would say, working through both daiviprakritiand its differentiated energy called fohat, which is the guiding and controlling principle, not only in thekosmos but in every one of the subordinate elements and beings of the hosts of multitudes of theminfilling the kosmos. The heart or essence of the sun is daiviprakriti working as itself, and also in itsmanifestation called fohat, but through the daiviprakriti and the fohatic aspect of it runs the all-permeantand directive intelligence of the solar divinity. The student should never make the mistake, however, ofdivorcing this guiding solar intelligence from its veils or vehicles, one of the highest of which isdaiviprakriti-fohat.

Daiviprakriti (Sanskrit) Daivīprakṛti [from daivī divine from the verbal root div to shine + prakṛti original substance or nature] Divine or original evolver; original source; divine matter or original substance. “As original substance manifests itself in the kosmic spaces as primordial kosmic Light . . . many mystics have referred to Daiviprakriti under the phrase ‘the Light of the Logos.’ Daiviprakriti is, in fact, the first veil or sheath or ethereal body surrounding the Logos, as Pradhana or Prakriti surrounds Purusha or Brahman in the Sankhya philosophy, and as, on a scale incomparably more vast, Mulaprakriti surrounds Parabrahman. As Daiviprakriti, therefore, is elemental matter, . . . matter in its first and second stages of its evolution from above, we may accurately enough speak of those filmy ethereal wisps of light seen in the midnight skies as a physical manifestation of Daiviprakriti, because when they are not actually resolvable nebulae, they are worlds, or rather systems of worlds, in the making.

Daiviprakriti

deva ::: a god, a divinity; "a dynamic being manifested in Prakriti for the works of the plane to which he belongs"; any of the "cosmic godheads presiding over the action of cosmic principles", brahman "representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of the principles of Nature"; the Divine, the supreme and universal Deity (isvara, purus.a) "of whom all the gods are different Names and Powers"; the seventh of the ten types of consciousness (dasa-gavas) in the evolutionary scale: mind concentrated in vijñana, exceeding itself.

Duality oj being ::: In ihe experience of yoga the self or being is in essence one with the Divine or at least it is a portion of the Divine and has all the divine potentialities. But in mani- festation it takes two aspects, the Purusha and Prakriti, conscious being and Nature. In Nature here the Divine is veiled, and the

dynamic realisation. In order to get the dynamic realisation it is not enough to rescue the Purusha from subjection to Prakriti ; one must transfer the allegiance of the Purusha from the lower Prakriti with its play of ignorant Forces to the Supreme

Electricity as we know it is the end product of a chain of appearances on various cosmic planes. It is said in old occult works that Father-Mother is the primordial aether or akasa, sometimes called svabhavat, which was homogeneous before the evolution of the Son — fohat or cosmic electricity. Electricity is also mentioned as a form of cosmic vitality, emanating chiefly from the various suns in the universe, but also in a less degree from all other cosmic entities; and behind all such vital activities is the all-permanent cosmic intelligence unfolding itself into the vital web of the minor cosmic intelligences. Electricity on our earth-plane is one of the lowest forms of spirit-light or daiviprakriti.

Elemental Dissolution. See PRAKRITIKA PRALAYA

Element [from Latin elementa first principles; also (singular) elementum an element; cf Sanskrit lī to dissolve] Though element may be applied to anything, it more specifically refers to the matterside of nature; and thus the primordial element is found in mulaprakriti, the fundamental root-substance which underlies all manifestation. Schools of philosophy have seen fire, air, or water (not as understood in the usual sense) as the primal element; or have recognized fire, air, water, earth, and sometimes aether as primal elements.

Erebus (Greek) erebos. Darkness; Erebus and Nux or Nyx (night) sprang from Chaos, and the pair gave birth in their turn to Aether and Hemera (Day). Darkness begets light. “Erebos was the spiritual or active side corresponding to Brahman in Hindu philosophy, and Nyx the passive side corresponding to pradhana or mulaprakriti, . . . Then from Erebos and Nyx as dual were born Aether and Hemera, Spirit and Day — Spirit being here again in this succeeding stage the active side, and Day the passive aspect, the substantial or vehicular side” (FSO 72).

Female Principle Once the unmanifest One becomes the Duad, duality pervades the kosmos, often represented as male and female, or as active and passive, spirit and matter, mind and body, positive and negative. These latter expressions are much to be preferred because of their lack of personal attributes. Synonyms for the female principle are root-matter, mulaprakriti, the eternal cosmic Virgin, Great Mother, womb of nature, cosmic ark, etc. The physical distinction which furnishes this symbol to human minds is that of duality; and if we reason from below to above, we may easily fall into the error of assigning attributes of physical human nature to the celestial beings and formative powers of the kosmos, resulting in phallicism and the degradation of sacred symbols.

Fohat ::: An extremely mystical term used in the occultism of Tibet for what in Sanskrit is called daiviprakriti,which means "divine nature" or "primordial nature," and which also can be called "primordial light." Inone sense of the word fohat may be considered as almost identical with the old mystical Greek eros, butfohat as a technical term contains within itself a far wider range of ideas than does the Greek term.Fohat may be considered as the essence of kosmic electricity, provided, however, that in this definitionwe endow the term electricity with the attribute of consciousness; or, to put it more accurately, providedthat we understand that the essence of electricity is indeed consciousness. It is ever-present and activefrom the primordial beginnings of a manvantara to its last end, nor does it then actually pass out ofexistence, but becomes quiescent or latent as it were, sleeping or dormant during the kosmic pralaya. Inone sense of the word it may be called kosmic will, for the analogy with the conscious will in humanbeings is exceedingly close. It is the incessantly active, ever-moving, impelling or urging force in nature,from the beginning of the evolution of a universe or of a solar system to its end.H. P. Blavatsky, quoting one of the ancient mystically occult works, says in substance: "Fohat is thesteed and thought is the rider." If, however, we liken fohat to what the conscious will is in the humanbeing, we must then think only of the lower or substantial parts -- the pranic activities -- of the humanwill, for behind the substantial parts stands always the directing and guiding consciousness. Fohat beingincessantly active is therefore both formative and destructive, because it is through the ceaseless workingof fohat that unending change continues -- the passing of one phase of manifested existence to anotherphase, whether this manifested existence be a solar system or a planetary chain or a globe or humanbeing or, indeed, any entity.Fohat is as active among the electrons of an atom and among the atoms themselves as it is among thesuns. In one sense it may be called the vital force of the universe, corresponding from this viewpoint tothe pranic activity on all the seven planes of the human constitution.

Fohat (Tibetan-Mongolian) [from Mon pho, fo buddha, buddhi] Cosmic life or vitality; bipolar cosmic vital electricity, equivalent to the light of the Logos, daiviprakriti, eros, the fiery whirlwind, etc. As the bridge between spirit and matter, fohat is the collectivity of intelligent forces through which cosmic ideation impresses itself upon substance, thus forming the various worlds of manifestation. In the manifested universe, it “is that Occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first impulse which becomes in time law. . . . Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power which causes the One to become Two and Three . . . then Fohat is transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms and makes them aggregate and combine” (SD 1:109).

Further she says that theosophy “teaches that it is this original, primordial prima materia, divine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind — the Daiviprakriti (the divine light emanating from the Logos) — which formed the nuclei of all the ‘self-moving’ orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ever-present moving-power and life-principle, the vital soul of the suns, moons, planets, and even of our Earth” (SD 1:602).

Generally in The Secret Doctrine it is the fifth kosmic element from below, a link between kosmic mind or mahat and the lower manifested world, the vehicle of the former and the parent of the latter. Looking at aether in a more general kosmic way, it is the field of activity of the kosmic Third Logos, Brahma-prakriti, and therefore the great womb of manifested being, the treasure house of all kosmic types, forth from which they flow at the opening of manifestation and back into which they will again be ingathered at the beginning of kosmic pralaya. It is in consequence the great mother-substance out of which all the hierarchies are built. It interpenetrates everything, lasting from the beginning of the universal manvantara to its end, and indeed, may be said to continue, in its most spiritualized form throughout kosmic pralaya as the seed-house or storehouse from which everything will flow into manifestation again when the new period of kosmic activity arrives. Considered as the cosmic mother of all things, aether in its highest feminine aspect is the same as the Vedic Aditi or the Hera or Juno of Greece and Rome. Thus in one sense it is also mulaprakriti, the generator or producer of the seeds of beginnings and things. The Old Testament refers to aether as the kosmic waters. In its highest parts it is mystically alaya (the kosmic spirit-soul) or what in Northern Buddhism is called svabhavat, more mystically adi-buddhi. See also ACTIO IN DISTANS; AKASA

Guna: A Sanskrit term denoting a quality or basic attribute of the Cosmic Substance (prakriti). The three gunas of prakriti are: sattva, rajas and tamas (q.v.).

Hence Vach is associated with the work of creation, with the prajapatis. She calls forth the mayavi form of the universe out of abstract space or Chaos, of which the first cosmogonical stage are the seven cosmic elements. Mystically Vach is masculine and feminine at will, as in the Hebrew Genesis Eve is with Adam. It is through her power that Brahma produced the universe. Blavatsky points out that Brahma produced through Vach in the same way that the incomprehensible assumes a tangible form through speech, words, and numbers (cf SD 1:430). Vach through her productive powers produced what Pythagoras called the music of the spheres. The teachings of Pythagoras also speak of the hierarchies of the heavenly host as numbered and expressed in numbers. Vach is equivalent, in some aspects, to Isis, Aditi, mulaprakriti, the waters of space, chaos, and the Qabbalistic Sephirah.

Hera corresponds to the personalized prakriti of the Hindus, as Zeus in so many respects is a Greek counterpart of Brahma. This explains why the functions, high and low, of Hera were generative and productive, in general the fecund producer of all things throughout the drama of manvantara.

holocaust ::: “The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother

I-am, I-am-I I-am-I denotes self-consciousness in which the essential consciousness is reflected in a transmitting vehicle or soul. I-am denotes simple unadulterated being, and is used as a name for the cosmic self. Thus the I-am-I is a lower manifestation of the I-am, which is abstract and incomprehensible to ordinary human mentality. Philosophically, I-am-I is a temporary production of Purusha working in and through the prakritis, or of the image-making power inherent in human consciousness called ahankara (the “I-creating” faculty); so that when evolution has been completed, the I-am-I or self-consciousness will have risen through its various higher forms to become at least for a manvantara the cosmic self.

Ideation The faculty, power, or process of forming ideas. Cosmic ideation denotes an abstraction, being one aspect of cosmic egoity, and also the more concrete reality represented by mahat. Cosmic ideation, focused in a basis or upadhi, results as the abstract consciousness of space working through the monad or vehicle; and the manifestations vary according to the degree of the different upadhis. Cosmic ideation is sometimes called mahabuddhi or mahat, the universal world-soul, the cosmic or spiritual noumenon of matter. As mahat is the primordial essence or principle of cosmic consciousness and intelligence, it is the fountain of the seven prakritis — the seven planes or elements of the universe — and the guiding intelligence of manifested nature on all planes. Going deeper, we have precosmic ideation, which is an aspect of that metaphysical triad which is the root from which proceeds all manifestation.



In Brahmanical philosophy, mahat is the father-mother of manas. In Sankhya philosophy, it corresponds to kosmic buddhi or mahabuddhi and is called the first of the seven prakritis or productive creation, the other six being ahamkara and the five tanmatras.

• individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha in itself is divine, but exteriorised in the ignorance of Nature it is the individual apparent being imperfect with her imperfection.

In its feminine form, aja signifies maya (illusion) and hence prakriti (evolving nature).

In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.

In relation to the universe the Supreme is Brahman, the one Reality which is not only the spiritual material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. All the last terms to which we can reduce the universe, Force and Matter, Name and Form, Purusha and Prakriti, are still not entirely that which the universe really is, either in itself or its nature. As all that we are is the play and form, the mental, psychic, vital and physical expression of a supreme Self unconditioned by mind and life and body, the universe too is the play and form and cosmic soul-expression and nature-expression of a supreme Existence which is unconditioned by force and matter, unconditioned by idea and name and form, unconditioned by the fundamental distinction of Purusha and Prakriti. Our supreme Self and the supreme Existence which has become the universe are one Spirit, one self and one existence. The individual is in nature one expression of the universal Being, in spirit an emanation of the Transcendence. For if he finds his self, he finds too that his own true self is not this natural personality, this created individuality, but is a universal being in its relations with others and with Nature and in its upward term a portion or the living front of a supreme transcendental Spirit.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 296


INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.

Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.

Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.

Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.

Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.

In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.

There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.

Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.

Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.

Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.

The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.

Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.

Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.

Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.

Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.

Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.

Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.

By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.

The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.

Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.

The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.

Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.

Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.

Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.

The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.

This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.

Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.

Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.

The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.

Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.

It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.

If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.

(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.

(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.

Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.

It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.

Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.


In the beginning Brahma was Purusha (spirit) and also prakriti (matter). It is later that he separated himself into two halves — Brahma-Vach (female) and Brahma-Viraj (male). The term Brahma is not found in the Vedas. Blavatsky correlates Adam-Qadmon, Brahma, and Mars as symbols for primitive or initial generative and creative powers typifying water and earth; also all three are associated with the color red (cf SD 2:43, 124-5). See also BRAHMA’s DAY

In the Bhagavad-Gita (7:4), prakriti manifests in eight portions — “earth, water, fire, air, ether [space: kham-akasa], mind [manas], understanding [buddhi] and egoity, self-sense [ahamkara]” — all of which relate to the object side, which gives an erroneous sense of identity or egoity.

In the Brahmanical system the solar system was regarded as an Egg of Brahma (brahmanda), the prakritic or prithivi-form of Brahma, so that its life span is equivalent to the length of Brahma’s manifested life. A Day of Brahma for a planetary chain consists of a planetary manvantara — seven rounds of the various life-waves around that chain — a period of 4,320,000,000 terrestrial years. The ensuing pralaya or Night of Brahma is of an equivalent length, together equaling 8,640,000,000 terrestrial years. Forty-nine such planetary Days and Nights equal one solar manvantara, equivalent to a Year of Brahma; and each such year of Brahma is figured as being 360 of his Days; and 100 such Years of Brahma equal Brahma’s Life, a period of 311,040,000,000,000 terrestrial years — including in this vast time period the various twilights and dawns. Theosophic philosophy states that one-half of Brahma’s Life has been spent, or 50 Years of Brahma. At the end of Brahma’s Life, the final consummation of the solar system, so far as the planetary chain is concerned, will occur, and everything within the bounds of this system will vanish, and the succeeding solar pralaya will commence.

In the cosmic sense the sadhyas signify the names collectively of the twelve great gods, the first twelve cosmic hierarchs emanating from Brahma, out of which flow not only the twelve cosmic planes, but the hierarchies inherent in these twelve planes. Their importance lies in the fact that they are the earliest emanations in serial order from the formative and productive Brahma-prakriti, and therefore are really the origin of all beings and things in the cosmos arranged from the beginning in the duodenary hierarchical scheme. Plato had the same thought when he spoke of Divinity forming the universe according to the number twelve. They are reminiscent of the Latin dii consentes, taken over from the ancient mystical Etruscans who stated that these twelve “agreeing or consenting divinities” form the council of Jupiter, the Latin Brahma. The twelve dii consentes consisted of six feminine and six masculine divinities, and the Etruscan theology stated that they govern not only the world, but time also, coming into existence periodically at the commencement of a world period, and passing into rest or pralaya when the world period ended.

In the cosmogony of the Hebrew Qabbalah, the first Sephirah which emanates from latent divinity is at times represented as feminine; yet when this feminine emanation becomes creative it is then represented as conjoining masculine traits with its own, so that at this stage it is envisaged as masculine-feminine. This first spiritual emanation, emanating from itself the next phase of cosmogonical production, is termed the Shechinah, the mother of all the successively emanated Sephiroth. Thus the Shechinah is an echo of archaic Hindu cosmogonic speculation, corresponding to pradhana or prakriti.

In the liberated stale it is not the inner Purusha only that remains detached ; the inner Purusha is always detached, only one is not conscious of it in the ordinary state. It is the Prakrit! also that is not disturbed by the action of the Gunas or attached to it ; the mind, the vital, (he physical (whatever Prakriti) begin to get the same quietude, unperturbed peace and detachment as the Purusha, but it is quietude, not a cessation of all action. It is quietude in action itself. TTic whole being, Purusha, Prakriit, becomes detached (having no desire or attachment) even in the actions of the gunas. The outer being Is also detached ; the whole being is without desire or attachment and still action is possible, action without desire is possible, action without attach- ment is possible, action without ego is possible.

In theosophical literature, the Hierarchy of Compassion of our solar system is sometimes given as: 1) adi-buddhi (primal wisdom), the mystic universally diffused essence; 2) mahabuddhi (universal buddhi), the Logos; 3) daiviprakriti (universal divine light), universal life, the Second Logos; 4) Sons of Light, the seven cosmic logoi, the logoi of cosmic life, the Third Logos; 5) dhyani-buddhas (buddhas of contemplation); 6) dhyani-bodhisattvas (bodhisattvas of contemplation); 7) manushya-buddhas (human buddhas), racial buddhas; 8) bodhisattvas; and 9) men. Here, the Sons of Light or the seven cosmic logoi emanating from the sun and working in its kingdom are the parents of the rectors or planetary spirits of the seven sacred planets. The seven dhyani-buddhas, also called the celestial buddhas or causal buddhas, through their emanated representatives each govern one round of the septenary cycles of evolution on a planetary chain. The seven dhyani-bodhisattvas, or bodhisattvas of the celestial realms, similarly through their emanated representatives each govern one of the seven globes comprising a planetary chain. The manushya-buddhas are the buddhas which watch over the root-races in a round, two appearing in every race, one near the commencement and one near the midpoint of each root-race. Gautama Buddha was the second racial buddha of the fifth root-race. The bodhisattvas of earth are those spiritual and intellectually advanced human beings who leave the nirvana of buddhahood in order to remain on earth for their sublime work of aiding, stimulating, and guiding those hosts of entities, including humanity, trailing behind them.

In these three columns there are correspondences reading right to left which apply to three vastly differing scales of magnitude both in quality and in explanation. Thus the last term in the first column is daiviprakriti, which really means spirit-matter in manifestation, and therefore is a gross body of the universe, although in the human case this is equivalent to the sthula-sarira or gross physical body.

In the theosophical scheme, it is the sixth principle counting upwards in the human constitution: the vehicle of pure, universal spirit, hence an inseparable garment or vehicle of atman. In its essence of the highest plane of akasa or alaya, buddhi stands in the same relation to atman as, on the cosmic scale, mulaprakriti does to parabrahman.

In the Vedantic system of Krishna, however, avyakta is also parabrahman, that which will not perish even at the time of cosmic pralaya, because parabrahman is the one essence, not only of the whole cosmos, but even of mulaprakriti itself, the foundation of the manifested cosmos. “In case you follow the Sankhyan doctrine, you have to rise from Upadhi to Upadhi in gradual succession, and when you try to rise from the last Upadhi to their Avyaktam, there is unfortunately no connection that is likely to enable your consciousness to bridge the interval. If the Sankhyan system of philosophy is the true one, your aim will be to trace Upadhi to its source, but not consciousness to its source. The consciousness manifested in every Upadhi is traceable to the Logos and not to the Avyaktam of the Sankhyas. It is very much easier for a man to follow his own consciousness farther and farther into the depths of his inmost nature, and ultimately reach its source — the Logos — than to try to follow Upadhi to its source in this Mulaprakriti, this Avyaktam. Moreover, supposing you do succeed in reaching this Avyaktam, you can never fix your thoughts in it or preserve your individuality in it; for, it is incapable of retaining any of these permanently” (Notes on BG 98). Nevertheless the Sankhya philosophy is as true as is the Vedanta, and reaches the same ultimates of philosophic thought and understanding, although along differing systemic lines.

In the Vedas, amrita is applied to the mystical soma juice, which makes a new man of the initiate and enables his spiritual nature to overcome and govern the lower elements of his nature. It is beyond any guna (quality), for it is unconditioned per se (cf SD 1:348). Mystically speaking, therefore, amrita is the “drinking” of the water of supernal wisdom and the spiritual bathing in its life-giving power. It means the rising above all the unawakened or prakritic elements of the constitution, and becoming at one with and thus living in the kosmic life-intelligence-substance.

Ishtar likewise is mystically the theogonic representation of the earth itself in its productive and fecund aspects as the mother of all, and hence essentially to be considered as prakriti emanating from mulaprakriti.

it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into Prakrit! of

Jala (Sanskrit) Jala Water, or liquid matter; one of the five elements or states of prakriti. It comes forth from tejas (fire), and its specific quality or sense is gandha (smell). See also APAS; BHUTA; ELEMENT (BCW 13:67)

Jhumur: “Prakriti, the human embodiment in the spirit of earth in which the Divine, the bridegroom comes. It is in the realm of the spirit where they meet, Radha and Krishna, Purusha and Prakriti. But if the God retires then the chamber becomes empty.”

jiva-prakr.ti (jiva-prakriti; jivaprakriti) ::: the jiva aware of its unity jiva-prakrti with prakr.ti, a unity realised in secondary / double dasya (also called prakritic dasya) when the "individual on the side of action has disappeared into oneness with universal Prakriti".

jiva ::: "the living entity"; the soul, the individual purus.a, "a spirit jiva and self, superior to Nature" which "consents to her acts, reflects her moods", but "is itself a living reflection or a soul-form or a self-creation of the Spirit universal and transcendent", an expression of the "principle of multiplicity in the spiritual being of the one divine Existence"; the jiva as a partial manifestation of the isvara, participating in all his powers as "witness, giver of the sanction, upholder, knower, lord", is also "the meeting-place of the play of the dual aspect of the Divine,Prakriti and Purusha, and in the higher spiritual consciousness he becomes simultaneously one with both these aspects, and there he takes up and combines all the divine relations created by their interaction".

Jnana Yoga ::: The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual
   reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one’s own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 38-39


Jotunn, Jotun (Icelandic) Giant; in the Norse Edda the giants represent the material spheres in which gods embody, thus enlightening those dark worlds while gaining there the “mead” of experience. There are giants of varying types and degrees. The ultimate source of matter (Sanskrit mulaprakriti) is named Mimir in the Edda. Other giants represent periods during which the gods animate a world, race, or other living being. Each named giant is a life period or material embodiment of a god; it exists for as long as the energizing deity is embodied, and dies, slain by the hammer of Thor, at the end of that period. Within the long span of a giant’s life a number of giantesses, “daughters” of the giant, represent smaller cycles, races or subraces of the giant, their father. A giant is thus both a manifest entity and the lifetime of such an entity, thus paralleling the aeons of Greek mythology.

Kali-prakr.ti (Kali-prakriti) ::: Nature as Kali.

Karanopadhi(Sanskrit) ::: A compound meaning the "causal instrument" or "instrumental cause" in the long series ofreimbodiments to which human and other reimbodying entities are subject. Upadhi, the second elementof this compound, is often translated as "vehicle"; but while this definition is accurate enough for popularpurposes, it fails to set forth the essential meaning of the word which is rather "disguise," or certainnatural properties or constitutional characteristics supposed to be the disguises or clothings or masks inand through which the spiritual monad of man works, bringing about the repetitive manifestations uponearth of certain functions and powers of this monad, and, indeed, upon the other globes of the planetarychain; and, furthermore, intimately connected with the peregrinations of the monad through the variousspheres and realms of the solar kosmos. In one sense of the word, therefore, karanopadhi is almostinterchangeable with the thoughts set forth under the term maya, or the illusory disguises through whichspirit works, or rather through which spiritual monadic entities work and manifest themselves.Karanopadhi, as briefly explained under the term "causal body," is dual in meaning. The first and moreeasily understood meaning of this term shows that the cause bringing about reimbodiment is avidya,nescience rather than ignorance; because when a reimbodying entity through repeated reimbodiments inthe spheres of matter has freed itself from the entangling chains of the latter, and has risen intoself-conscious recognition of its own divine powers, it thereby shakes off the chains or disguises of mayaand becomes what is called a jivanmukta. It is only imperfect souls, or rather monadic souls, speaking ina general way, which are obliged by nature's cyclic operations and laws to undergo the repetitivereimbodiments on earth and elsewhere in order that the lessons of self-conquest and mastery over all theplanes of nature may be achieved. As the entity advances in wisdom and knowledge, and in the acquiringof self-conscious sympathy for all that is, in other words, as it grows more and more like unto itsdivine-spiritual counterpart, the less is it subject to avidya. It is, in a sense, the seeds of kama-manas leftin the fabric or being of the reincarnating entity, which act as the karana or reproducing cause, orinstrumental cause, of such entity's reincarnations on earth.The higher karanopadhi, however, although in operation similar to the lower karanopadhi, orkarana-sarira just described, nevertheless belongs to the spiritual-intellectual part of man's constitution,and is the reproductive energy inherent in the spiritual monad bringing about its re-emergence after thesolar pralaya into the new activities and new series of imbodiments which open with the dawn of thesolar manvantara following upon the solar pralaya just ended. This latter karanopadhi or karana-sarira,therefore, is directly related to the element-principle in man's constitution called buddhi -- a veil, as itwere, drawn over the face or around the being of the monadic essence, much as prakriti surroundsPurusha, or pradhana surrounds Brahman, or mulaprakriti surrounds and is the veil or disguise or sakti ofparabrahman. Hence, in the case of man, this karanopadhi or causal disguise or vehicle corresponds in ageneral way to the buddhi-manas, or spiritual soul, in which the spiritual monad works and manifestsitself.It should be said in passing that the doctrine concerning the functions and operations of buddhi in thehuman constitution is extremely recondite, because in buddhi lie the causal impulses or urges bringingabout the building of the constitution of man, and which, when the latter is completed, and when formingman as a septenary entity, express themselves as the various strata or qualities of the auric egg.Finally, the karana-sarira, the karanopadhi or causal body, is the vehicular instrumental form orinstrumental body-form, produced by the working of what is perhaps the most mysterious principle orelement, mystically speaking, in the constitution not only of man, but of the universe -- the verymysterious spiritual bija.The karanopadhi, the karana-sarira or causal body, is explained with minor differences of meaning invarious works of Hindu philosophy; but all such works must be studied with the light thrown upon themby the great wisdom-teaching of the archaic ages, esoteric theosophy. The student otherwise runs everyrisk of being led astray.I might add that the sushupti state or condition, which is that of deep dreamless sleep, involving entireinsensibility of the human consciousness to all exterior impressions, is a phase of consciousness throughwhich the adept must pass, although consciously pass in his case, before reaching the highest state ofsamadhi, which is the turiya state. According to the Vedanta philosophy, the turiya (meaning "fourth") isthe fourth state of consciousness into which the full adept can self-consciously enter and wherein hebecomes one with the kosmic Brahman. The Vedantists likewise speak of the anandamaya-kosa, whichthey describe as being the innermost disguise or frame or vehicle surrounding the atmic consciousness.Thus we see that the anandamaya-kosa and the karana-sarira, or karanopadhi, and the buddhi inconjunction with the manasic ego, are virtually identical.The author has been at some pains to set forth and briefly to develop the various phases of occult andesoteric theosophical thought given in this article, because of the many and various misunderstandingsand misconceptions concerning the nature, characteristics, and functions of the karana-sarira or causalbody.

ks.ara purus.a (kshara purusha) ::: the soul in Nature, the mutable ksara purus.a; "the spirit of mutable things", manifesting "the multiplicity of the divine Being . . . not apart from, but in Prakriti".

Kutastha (Sanskrit) Kūṭastha [from kūṭa the highest, summit + stha standing] Standing at the summit; in philosophy holding the highest position, the primordial divinity; hence often a synonym for Isvara (the divine-spiritual monad) or akshara (the imperishable). Also used for akasa and mulaprakriti. Thus whether in the galaxy, solar system, or a monadic individual such as man, it stands for the indwelling highest monad.

Kwan-yin, Kuan-yin (Chinese) The Chinese Buddhist goddess of compassion, the female aspect of Kwan-shai-yin, referred to in the Stanzas of Dzyan as the triple of Kwan-shai-yin, residing in Kwan-yien-tien, “because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is the ‘Mother, the Wife and the Daughter’ of the Logos, just as in the later theological translations she became ‘the Father, Son and (the female) Holy Ghost’ — the Sakti or Energy — the Essence of the three. Thus in the Esotericism of the Vedantins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Eswara, the Logos, is at one and the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos or Verbum of Parabrahmam; while in that of the trans-Himalayan teachings it is — in the hierarchy of allegorical and metaphysical theogony — ‘the Mother’ or abstract, ideal matter, Mulaprakriti, the Root of Nature . . . a correlation of Adi-Bhuta, manifested in the Logos, Avalokiteshwara; and from the purely occult and Cosmical, Fohat, the ‘Son of the Son,’ the androgynous energy resulting from this ‘Light of the Logos’ ” (SD 1:136-7).

Light Light ranges from the arcana of cosmic being to the physical light that turns the vanes of some scientific mill. As the opposite of darkness, evil, ignorance, sleep, and death, it signifies wisdom, goodness, and life. In one sense it is a permutation of mulaprakriti, and as such is that root-substance which can never become objective to mortals in this race or round. It is objective only in relation to that Darkness which is absolute Light. Otherwise it includes both spirit and matter. Three kinds are enumerated: the abstract and absolute, which is darkness; the light of the unmanifest-manifest or Second Logos; and the latter reflected in the dhyani-chohans, minor logoi, and thence shed upon the lower and more objective planes. In a high aspect, it is daiviprakriti or the light of the Logos, the synthesis of the seven cosmic forces; descending through the planes of manifestation, it condenses into forms; physical matter itself is a condensation of light. Through light everything is thus brought into being. Being a root of mental self, it also therefore is the root of physical self (SD 1:430).

Light of the Logos. See DAIVIPRAKRITI

Logos(Greek) ::: In old Greek philosophy the word logos was used in many ways, of which the Christians oftensadly misunderstood the profoundly mystical meaning. Logos is a word having several applications inthe esoteric philosophy, for there are different kinds or grades of logoi, some of them of divine, some ofthem of a spiritual character; some of them having a cosmic range, and others ranges much morerestricted. In fact, every individual entity, no matter what its evolutionary grade on the ladder of life, hasits own individual logos. The divine-spiritual entity behind the sun is the solar logos of our solar system.Small or great as every solar system may be, each has its own logos, the source or fountainhead of almostinnumerable logoi of less degree in that system. Every man has his own spiritual logos; every atom hasits own logos; every atom likewise has its own paramatman and mulaprakriti, for every entityeverywhere has its own highest. These things and the words which express them are obviously relative.One meaning of the Greek logos is "word" -- a phrase or symbol taken from the ancient Mysteriesmeaning the "lost word," the "lost" logos of man's heart and brain. The logos of our own planetary chain,so far as this fourth round is concerned, is the Wondrous Being or Silent Watcher.The term, therefore, is a relative and not an absolute one, and has many applications.

Madhav: “This is another key idea in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, that Nature, what is called Prakriti in Indian philosophy, is not different, not alien to the Purusha. Nature is not foreign to the soul, to God. It is a conscious front of God. Scratch Nature, look behind the exterior of Nature and you will find God. The apparent difference, distinction between Nature and God is only a superficial appearance. Nature is really a power of God. It is devatma shakti, the self-power of God—svagunair nigudham lost in its qualitative workings. She is not separate; conscious, not something unconscious. Nature is aware that it is only a front of God behind.” The Book of the Divine Mother

Madhyama (Sanskrit) Madhyamā [feminine of madhyama] One of the states of vach (mystic speech), which is of four kinds according to its differentiation: para, pasyanti, madhyama, and vaikhari. The madhyama vach is the link between the mental form (in the Logos) and the manifested form (in matter). It corresponds mystically to the Light of the Logos. Vach, though often equivalent to Logos, is the feminine counterpart of Brahma, the masculine side of the Logos. Thus Vach is the spiritual aspect of prakriti.

Mahachaitanya (Sanskrit) Mahācaitanya [from mahā great + caitanya consciousness, intelligence] The living consciousness or intelligence of the universe or of all nature. Daiviprakriti is, strictly speaking, the mahachaitanya “of the whole cosmos, the one energy, or the only force from which spring all force manifestations” (N on BG 71), this one energy or force being essentially and inherently conscious and intelligent.

Mahakasa (Sanskrit) Mahākāśa [from mahā great + ākāśa ether, space] Great akasa; endless space, the seventh universal principle. Equivalent to pradhana or even mulaprakriti, which describe the boundless space or womb of all being which, in connection with the central point or Brahman, is the cosmic source of all.

Mahan: The Great; the evolute from Prakriti according to the Sankhya; Brahma or Hiranyagarbha.

Mahasarasvati prakr.ti (Mahasaraswati prakriti) ::: the MahasarasMahasarasvati vati nature; prakr.ti expressing the Mahasarasvati aspect of the divine sakti.Mah Mahasarasvati

Mahat: Great; the first product from Prakriti in evolution according to Sankhya philosophy, intellect.

Mahat: Short for mahatattva, meaning in Sanskrit great principle. The Cosmic Intelligence, the first motion that arises in the supreme ideal universe, the first departure from the original condition, the first product of the Cosmic Substance (prakriti).

"Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation.” Essays on the Gita

“Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation.” Essays on the Gita

Manifestation ::: A generalizing term signifying not only the beginning but the continuance of organized kosmic activity,the latter including the various minor activities within itself. First there is of course always the Boundlessin all its infinite planes and worlds or spheres, aggregatively symbolized by the circle; then parabrahman,or the kosmic life-consciousness activity, and mulaprakriti its other pole, signifying root-natureespecially in its substantial aspects. Then the next stage lower, Brahman and its veil pradhana; thenBrahma-prakriti or Purusha-prakriti (prakriti being also maya); the manifested universe appearingthrough and by this last, Brahma-prakriti, "father-mother." In other words, the second Logos orfather-mother is the producing cause of manifestation through their son which, in a planetary chain, is theprimordial or the originating manu, called Svayambhuva.When manifestation opens, prakriti becomes or rather is maya; and Brahma, the father, is the spirit of theconsciousness, or the individuality. These two, Brahma and prakriti, are really one, yet they are also thetwo aspects of the one life-ray acting and reacting upon itself, much as a man himself can say, "I am I."He has the faculty of self-analysis or self-division. All of us know it, we can feel it in ourselves -- oneside of us, in our thoughts, can be called the prakriti or the material element, or the mayavi element, orthe element of illusion; and the other is the spirit, the individuality, the god within.The student should note carefully that manifestation is but a generalizing term, comprehensive thereforeof a vast number of different and differing kinds of evolving planes or realms. For instance, there ismanifestation on the divine plane; there is manifestation also on the spiritual plane; and similarly so onall the descending stages of the ladder or stair of life. There are universes whose "physical" plane isutterly invisible to us, so high is it; and there are other universes in the contrary direction, so far beneathour present physical plane that their ethereal ranges of manifestation are likewise invisible to us.

Manu ::: Manu in the esoteric system is the entities collectively which appear first at the beginning ofmanifestation, and from which, like a cosmic tree, everything is derived or born. Manu actually is thespiritual tree of life of any planetary chain of manifested being. Manu is thus in one sense the thirdLogos; as the second is the father-mother, the Brahma and prakriti; and the first is what we call theunmanifest Logos, or Brahman (neuter) and its cosmic veil pradhana.In other words, the second Logos, father-mother, is the producing cause of manifestation through theirson, which in a planetary chain is Manu, the first of the manus being called in the archaic Hindu systemSvayambhuva.During a Day of Brahma or period of seven rounds, fourteen subordinate or inferior manus appear aspatrons and guardians of the race cycles or life-waves (See also H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine,passim; also Manvantara).Manu is likewise the name of a great ancient Indian legislator, the alleged author of the Laws of Manu(Manava-dharma-sastra).

Manvantara(Sanskrit) ::: This word is a compound, and means nothing more than "between two manus"; more literally,"manu-within or -between." A manu, as said, is the entities collectively which appear first at thebeginning of manifestation; the spiritual tree of life of any planetary chain of manifested being. Thesecond verbal element of "manvantara," or antara, is a prepositional suffix signifying "within" or"between"; hence the compound paraphrased means "within a manu," or "between manus." Amanvantara is the period of activity between any two manus, on any plane, since in any such period thereis a root-manu at the beginning of evolution, and a seed-manu at its close, preceding a pralaya.There are many kinds of manvantaras: prakritika manvantara -- universal manvantara; sauryamanvantara -- the manvantara of the solar system; bhaumika manvantara -- the terrestrial manvantara, ormanvantara of earth; paurusha manvantara -- the manvantara, or period of activity, of man.A round-manvantara is the time required for one round: that is, the cycle from globe A to the last globeof the seven, and starting from the root-manu or collective "humanity" of globe A and ending with theseed-manu or collective "humanity" of Globe G.A planetary manvantara -- also called a maha-manvantara or a kalpa -- is the period of the lifetime of aplanet during its seven rounds. It is also called a Day of Brahma, and its length is 4,320,000,000 years.

Materialism In the rigid philosophical sense, any theory which considers the facts of the universe to be sufficiently explained by the existence and nature of matter. A familiar form of this is what has been called the atomo-mechanical theory, which derives all phenomena from the movements of material atoms in space. The philosophical definition of materialism differs according to the meaning of the word matter; as for instance, when we limit matter by no physical attributes or implications alone, but see in it the sevenfold prakritis or pradhanas of Hindu philosophers and mystics, matter is then seen to be but a name for the veil or shadow of spirit — the other side of spirit as it were. This distinction makes materialism but a synonym for spiritualism — i.e., the profound philosophic theory that the universe is built throughout, from and of the substances and attributes of spirit, which become matter in its innumerable and manifold forms and phases on the lower cosmic planes. What physicists have been calling matter is a percept derived from the interaction of the physical senses with the physical plane of prakriti or nature.

Matris (Sanskrit) Mātṛ-s The divine mothers or personified spiritual energies of the principle gods of the Hindu pantheon. Their number is reckoned as seven, ten, or twelve, and they bear the same relation, each one to her respective consort or god, as prakriti does to Brahma, pradhana to Brahman, and on a still vaster scale as mulaprakriti does to parabrahman. They are the respective wombs of beings bringing to birth or pouring forth the cosmogonical hierarchies. When these matris are by analogy mentioned in minor cases, their functions and attributes correspond with the cosmic sense. The sakti are the personifications or analogical reproductions of the matris on lower planes of being.

Matter in the scientific sense is a percept resulting from the interaction of our physical senses with the physical plane of prakriti. Formerly regarded as having an existence independently of the observer, its illusory nature is now better recognized. In attempting to conceive of matter in a general sense the mind must be relieved of familiar notions of physically extended space, of resistance, mass, bulk, etc. — properties peculiar to the physical plane of consciousness, but which we are apt to transfer unwittingly to our notions of other kinds of matter. We may speak of mind-stuff as the scene of mental activity and the vehicle of thought-force; but we can hardly view this as a kind of rare gas. Grossness, inertness, and immobility are attributes of the physical plane, rather than of matter itself. Yet the word matter has come to be significant of grossness, animalism, and materialism, although it is but the shadow or veil of cosmic spirit, spirit concreted or manifesting under the multifarious forms of the planes of the universe.

Matter In the widest sense, the negative pole of the one universal life regarded as a duality. The manifested One, considered as a unit, is called the manifested Logos; and as a duad it becomes spirit-matter or life. Matter is thus co-eternal with spirit, forming the vehicular or passive aspect of every plane. It is equivalent to prakriti (or sakti, maya, or pradhana), and just as there are seven, ten, or twelve prakritis, so there are seven, ten, or twelve matters: the root-essence of all the series is what the Hindus called mulaprakriti (root-nature). Equivalently, matter may also be defined as the illusory aggregate of veils surrounding the fundamental essence of the universe.

Maya(Sanskrit) ::: The word comes from the root ma, meaning "to measure," and by a figure of speech it alsocomes to mean "to effect," "to form," and hence "to limit." There is an English word mete, meaning "tomeasure out," from the same IndoEuropean root. It is found in the Anglo-Saxon as the root met, in theGreek as med, and it is found in the Latin also in the same form.Ages ago in the wonderful Brahmanical philosophy maya was understood very differently from what it isnow usually understood to be. As a technical term, maya has come to mean the fabrication by man's mindof ideas derived from interior and exterior impressions, hence the illusory aspect of man's thoughts as heconsiders and tries to interpret and understand life and his surroundings; and thence was derived thesense which it technically bears, "illusion." It does not mean that the exterior world is nonexistent; if itwere, it obviously could not be illusory. It exists, but is not. It is "measured out" or is "limited," or itstands out to the human spirit as a mirage. In other words, we do not see clearly and plainly and in theirreality the vision and the visions which our mind and senses present to the inner life and eye.The familiar illustrations of maya in the Vedanta, which is the highest form that the Brahmanicalteachings have taken and which is so near to our own teaching in many respects, were such as follows: Aman at eventide sees a coiled rope on the ground, and springs aside, thinking it a serpent. The rope isthere, but no serpent. The second illustration is what is called the "horns of the hare." The animal calledthe hare has no horns, but when it also is seen at eventide, its long ears seem to project from its head insuch fashion that it appears even to the seeing eye as being a creature with horns. The hare has no horns,but there is then in the mind an illusory belief that an animal with horns exists there.That is what maya means: not that a thing seen does not exist, but that we are blinded and our mindperverted by our own thoughts and our own imperfections, and do not as yet arrive at the realinterpretation and meaning of the world or of the universe around us. By ascending inwardly, by risingup, by inner aspiration, by an elevation of soul, we can reach upwards or rather inwards towards thatplane where truth abides in fullness.H. P. Blavatsky says on page 631 of the first volume of The Secret Doctrine:Esoteric philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism -- though it regards the objectiveUniverse and all in it as Maya, temporary illusion -- draws a practical distinction betweencollective illusion, Mahamaya, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objectiverelations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this illusion lasts.The teaching is that maya is thus called from the action of mulaprakriti or root-nature, the coordinateprinciple of that other line of coactive consciousness which we call parabrahman. From the momentwhen manifestation begins, it acts dualistically, that is to say that everything in nature from that pointonwards is crossed by pairs of opposites, such as long and short, high and low, night and day, good andevil, consciousness and nonconsciousness, etc., and that all these things are essentially mayic or illusory-- real while they last, but the lasting is not eternal. It is through and by these pairs of opposites that theself-conscious soul learns truth. It might be said, in conclusion, that another and very convenient way ofconsidering maya is to understand it to mean "limitation," "restriction," and therefore imperfect cognitionand recognition of reality. The imperfect mind does not see perfect truth. It labors under an illusioncorresponding with its own imperfections, under a maya, a limitation. Magical practices are frequentlycalled maya in the ancient Hindu books.

MENTAL BEING. ::: The true mental being is not the same as the inner mental ; true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error and ignorant thought and will of the lower Prakriti and directly open to the knowledge and guidance above.

Mimameid (Icelandic) [from Mimir a giant + meid tree] The Norse Tree of Knowledge, belonging to the “wise giant” Mimir, owner of the well of wisdom from which Odin, Allfather of gods and men, daily drinks. Mimir represents basic matter from which all worlds are formed, corresponding to Mulaprakriti.

mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother ::: "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.

"That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother"s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” *The Mother

:   "The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.” *Letters on the Mother

  "When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother.” Letters on Yoga :::   **mighty Mother, World-Mother, World-Mother"s.**


Motion The essential characteristic of abstract motion, whether in space, time, or consciousness, commonly manifesting as change. Absolute abstract motion is one of two aspects under which is symbolized Be-ness, the other being abstract space, yet these are and must be one in essence; it is also called the Great Breath. On the planes of manifestation, motion prevails as the positive pole, equivalent to jivatman, spirit, etc., according to which plane is meant. Consciousness and thought are manifestations of motion in the guise of active intelligence, and are necessarily connected with their appropriate forms of prakriti or mulaprakriti. The beginning of differentiation is spoken of as the beginning of change. Life manifests as motion, and its passing from plane to plane produces what is called birth and death. Absolute motion and what humans call absolute rest — really but another form of incessant motion — converge into one. The tendency of cosmic motion is ever toward the spiral; in kinematics, simple harmonic motion generates ellipses, of which the straight line and the circle are limiting cases.

Mukhya (Sanskrit) Mukhya As an adjective, first or primary. In the Puranas, seven creations of Brahma are enumerated, the fourth being called Mukhya, or the fundamental formation, production, or emanation of perceptible beings and things — the evolution or emanation of the mineral and vegetable kingdoms. This creation is called primary (mukhya), and not secondary, because it relates to the primordial cosmic emanative activities. As such, although the fourth in certain enumerations, it is considered the first as productive of the rupa worlds below. The powers, prakritis, and vikaras beginning with these rupa worlds are alluded to as the secondary emanation.

Mulaprakriti along with parabrahman are the two aspects of the one universal principle which is unconditioned to any human conception, and similarly eternal. Parabrahman is unconditioned and undifferentiated reality, and mulaprakriti is its veil or inseparable vehicle. To the First Logos or cosmic ego emerging in parabrahman, “once this ego starts into existence as a conscious being having objective consciousness of its own, we shall have to see what the result of this objective consciousness will be with reference to the one absolute and unconditioned existence from which its starts into manifested existence. From its objective standpoint, Parabrahmam appears to it as Mulaprakriti. . . . Parabrahmam by itself cannot be seen as it is. It is seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that veil is the mighty expanse of cosmic matter” (N on BG 20-1). Mulaprakriti stands in the same relation to parabrahman as the Qabbalistic Life of Space does to ’Eyn Soph; similarly on lower planes, it is what pradhana is to Brahman, or what prakriti is to Brahma.

Mulaprakriti: Avyaktam; the ultimate subtle cause for all matter.

Mulaprakriti (primordial physical matter) in Hindu philosophy is the upadhi or vehicle of every phenomenon, whether physical, mental, or psychic. “Matter is Eternal. It is the Upadhi (the physical basis) for the One infinite Universal Mind to build thereon its ideations” (SD 1:280). An upadhi, then, is the vehicle, carrier, or means by which a higher or superior energy of whatever plane is enabled to manifest its characteristics and qualities on the lower plane, out of the substance of which lower plane the upadhi is built.

Mulaprakriti(Sanskrit) ::: A compound containing mula, "root," prakriti, "nature," root-matter or root-nature.Corresponding to it as the other or active pole is parabrahman, from which Brahman (neuter), the first orunmanifest Logos, proceeds. Mulaprakriti, therefore, as the kosmic veil of parabrahman, may be calledhomogeneous or undifferentiated primordial substance. It is the fountain or root of akasa. (See alsoPrakriti)

Mulaprakriti (Sanskrit) Mūlaprakṛti [from mūla root + prakṛti nature] Root-nature; undifferentiated cosmic substance in its highest form, the abstract substance or essence of what later through various differentiations become the prakritis, the various forms of matter, concrete or sublimate. It is precosmic root-substance, the root-principle of the world stuff and all in the world; that aspect of parabrahman or space which underlies all the ethereally or materially objective planes or space of universal nature. It is again unmanifested primordial stuff or substance, divine-spiritual, undifferentiated, and therefore indestructible, eternal, parentless, and abstractly the Mother — space itself, and the vehicle, lining, or alter ego of parabrahman. It is “the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic Matter. It is not matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of matter, and is co-eternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense. Root-nature is also the source of the subtile invisible properties in visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the one infinite Spirit. The Hindus call it Mulaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial substance, which is the basis of the Upadhi or vehicle of every phenomenon, whether physical, mental or psychic. It is the source from which Akasa radiates” (SD 1:35).

MULAPRAKRITI (Skt root-matter, T.) Original matter at the formation of solar systems, 43 atoms.

Mulaprakriti

mula prakriti. ::: the primary essence from which all things are formed

Naishkarmya: Cessation of works of Prakriti; the state of being actionless (in salvation).

Nature ::: An active force of conscious-being which realises itself in its powers of self-experience, its powers of knowledge, will, self-delight, self-formulation with all their marvellous variations, inversions, conservations and conversions of energy, even perversions, is what we call Prakriti or Nature, in ourselves as in the cosmos.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 437-38


Nature ::: “An active force of conscious-being which realises itself in its powers of self-experience, its powers of knowledge, will, self-delight, self-formulation with all their marvellous variations, inversions, conservations and conversions of energy, even perversions, is what we call Prakriti or Nature, in ourselves as in the cosmos.” The Synthesis of Yoga

Nature ::: Prakriti, the outer or executive side of the Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. The higher, divine Nature (Para Prakriti) is free from Ignorance and its consequences; the lower nature (Prakriti) is a mechanism of active Force put forth for the working of the evolutionary Ignorance. The lower nature of an individual is his mind, life and body.

nature ::: Sri Aurobindo: "An active force of conscious-being which realises itself in its powers of self-experience, its powers of knowledge, will, self-delight, self-formulation with all their marvellous variations, inversions, conservations and conversions of energy, even perversions, is what we call Prakriti or Nature, in ourselves as in the cosmos.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

Nature ::: The consciousness side of nature is composed of vast hierarchies of gods, developed cosmical spirits,spiritual entities, cosmic graduates in the university of life. The material side of nature is theheterogeneous matter, the material world in its many various planes, in all stages of imperfection -- butall these stages filled with armies of entities evolving and growing. The proper term for nature in moderntheosophical usage is prakriti or still more accurately mulaprakriti -- the ever-living kosmic producer, theeternally fecund mother, of the universe. When a theosophist speaks of nature, unless he limits the termto the physical world, he never means the physical world alone, but the vast reaches of universal kosmosand more particularly the inner realms, the causal factors of the boundless All. Hence, a growingunderstanding of nature in this sense -- which is another way of saying an understanding of reality -obviously provides the only basis of a religion founded on the changeless realities.

Nevertheless, theosophy postulates the existence of atomic and subatomic ethers of various degrees of tenuity, ranging from physical to spiritual. Collectively these ethers are the different planes or ranges of akasa, the fundamental substratum of the universe and the garment in which the kosmic divinity clothes itself — the various prakritis as outlined especially in the Sankhya philosophy. Any scientific ether is not the akasa or aether, but solely the lowest plane of the akasic plenum, some of the ranges of the astral light, which in one sense is the highest principle of the earth’s atmosphere — a subtle ethereal energy-stuff permeant through and interpenetrating physical matter of all kinds. See also Aether; Ether

Nirupadhi (Sanskrit) Nirupādhi Without an attribute or vehicle; Purusha and prakriti (spirit and matter) are said to be nirupadhi during pralaya when beyond any of the planes of manifested existence.

No hard and fast enumeration can be made as to the number of planes in the kosmos. The number assigned depends on the particular purpose for which the definition is made. The septenary classification is often used, as in the seven planes of prakriti or the seven states of consciousness pertaining to each. But other enumerations may equally be made, and any plane is subdivided into subplanes.

"Nothing can happen without the presence and support of the Divine, for Nature or Prakriti is the Divine Force and it is this that works out things, but it works them out according to the nature and through or with the will of each man which is full of ignorance — that goes on until men turn to the Divine and become conscious of Him and united with Him. Then only can it be said that all begins to be done in him by the direct Will of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga

“Nothing can happen without the presence and support of the Divine, for Nature or Prakriti is the Divine Force and it is this that works out things, but it works them out according to the nature and through or with the will of each man which is full of ignorance—that goes on until men turn to the Divine and become conscious of Him and united with Him. Then only can it be said that all begins to be done in him by the direct Will of the Divine.” Letters on Yoga

One may say that these are projections of the Jivatman put there to uphold Prakriti on the various levels of the being. The Upa- nishad speaks also of a Supramental and a Bliss Purusha, and if the Supramental and the Bliss Nature were organised in the evolution on earth, we could become aware of them upholding the movements here.

. ottama-paraprakr.ti (purushottama-paraprakriti)—the supreme Being one with his supreme Nature; the "biune" duality of purus.a and prakr.ti on the highest plane of existence. puru visva

“Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it. Parabrahmam by itself cannot be seen as it is. It is seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that veil is the mighty expanse of cosmic matter. It is the basis of material manifestations in the cosmos” (Notes on BG 21). Parabrahman has the same relation to the Logos as our atman does to our karana-sarira; and parabrahman is the very foundation of the highest self.

  “Parabrahman is intimately connected with Mulaprakriti. Their interaction and intermingling cause the first nebulous thrilling, if the words will pass, of the Universal Life when spiritual desire first arose in it in the beginnings of things. . . . Parabrahman is no entity, is no individual, or individualized being. It is a convenient technical word with conveniently vague philosophical significancy, implying whatever is beyond the Absolute or Brahman of any hierarchy. Just as Brahman is the summit of a kosmic Hierarchy, so, following the same line of thought, the Parabrahman is ‘whatever is beyond Brahman’ ” (OG 121).

Parabrahman(Sanskrit) ::: Para is a word meaning "beyond." Brahman (neuter) is sometimes used as the universal self orspirit; also called paramatman. Beyond Brahman is the para-Brahman. Note the deep philosophicalmeaning of this -- there is no attempt here to limit the illimitable, the ineffable, by adjectives. In theSanskrit Vedas and in the works deriving therefrom and belonging to the Vedic literary cycle, this"beyond" is called tat, "THAT," as this world of manifestations is called idam, "This."Parabrahman is intimately connected with mulaprakriti. Their interaction and intermingling cause thefirst nebulous thrilling, if the words will pass, of the universal life when spiritual desire first arose in it inthe beginnings of things. Parabrahman, therefore, literally means "beyond Brahman"; and strictlyspeaking it is Brahman to which the Occidental term Absolute should be applied. Parabrahman is noentity, is no individual or individualized being. It is a convenient technical word with conveniently vaguephilosophical significancy, implying whatever is beyond the Absolute or Brahman of any hierarchy. Justas Brahman is the summit of a kosmic hierarchy, so, following the same line of thought, the parabrahmanis "whatever is beyond Brahman."

Paraprakriti: The higher cosmic energy through which the Supreme Brahman appears as individual souls.

para prakrti (Para Prakriti) ::: the supreme Nature; the very nature of the Divine; the infinite timeless conscious power of the self-existent being out of which all existences in the cosmos are manifested. ::: para prakrtih [nominative]

Parasakti (Sanskrit) Parāśakti The supreme force or great power. The entire universe is built of seven or ten prakritis, with their corresponding seven or ten purushas or cosmic energies. Parasakti, which in one sense is the highest of these seven forces, acts, like all the other saktis, not only on its own plane or in its own specific prakriti, but likewise extends itself throughout all the other six saktis or prakritis. For this reason every kosmic plane has its own dominant energy or prakriti or sakti; and yet at the same time contains those above it, and in undeveloped form those below it which flow forth from it in the procession of unfolding powers as evolution continues through the manvantara. Thus parasakti, which includes on the physical plane what we call light and heat, on its own primordial plane likewise produces the metaphysical origins of light and heat — the intelligent activity of the buddhi principle, signifying light combined with the vital warmth of kama or cosmic love (the Greek Eros).

Parinama-vada: A theory of evolution expounded by the Sankhya (q.v.), according to which the disturbed equilibrium between two primary substances (prakriti and purusha) is responsible for change.

Pelliot, Paul. (1878-1945). French Sinologist, whose retrieval of thousands of manuscripts from DUNHUANG greatly advanced the modern understanding of Buddhism along the ancient SILK ROAD. A pupil of SYLVAIN LÉVI (1863-1935), Pelliot was appointed to the École Française d'Extreme-Orient in Hanoi in 1899. In 1906, Pelliot turned his attention to Chinese Central Asia, leading an expedition from Paris to Tumchuq and KUCHA, where he unearthed documents in the lost TOCHARIAN language. In Urumchi, Pelliot received word of the hidden library cave at Dunhuang discovered by AUREL STEIN and arrived at the site in February 1908. There, he spent three weeks reading through an estimated twenty thousand scrolls. Like Stein, Pelliot sent thousands of manuscripts to Europe to be studied and preserved. Unlike Stein, who knew no Chinese or Prakritic languages, Pelliot was able to more fully appreciate the range of documents at Dunhuang, selecting texts in Chinese, Tibetan, Khotanese, Sogdian (see SOGDIANA), and Uighur and paying particular attention to unusual texts, including rare Christian and Manichaean manuscripts. Today these materials form the Pelliot collection of Dunhuang materials in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Ironically, it was Pelliot's announcement of the Dunhuang manuscript cache to scholars in Beijing in May 1908 that resulted in the immediate closing of the site to all foreigners. Pelliot returned to Paris in 1909, only to be confronted by the erroneous claim that he had returned with forged manuscripts. These charges were proved false only in 1912 with the publication of Stein's book, Ruins of Desert Cathay, which made clear that Stein had left manuscripts behind in Dunhuang. In 1911, Pelliot was made chair of Central Asian Languages at the Collège de France and dedicated the rest of his career to the study of both China and Central Asia. During the First World War, Pelliot served as French military attaché in Beijing. In the postwar years he was an active member of the Société Asiatique. In 1920, he succeeded Édouard Chavannes as the editor of the journal T'oung Pao. His vast erudition, combined with his knowledge of some thirteen languages, made him one of the leading scholars of Asia of his generation.

Persephone (Greek) Proserpina (Latin) The daughter of Zeus and Demeter who became queen of the Underworld, after being carried off by Hades or Pluto, god of the Underworld. As Kore-Persephone, she becomes one of the great Eleusinian divinities, the Divine Maid. The role played by Persephone, Demeter, or Kore (“maiden,” a title applicable to both) is part of a profound allegory in which is found a great deal of occult truth. Persephone or Demeter has a cosmic significance, as well as one applicable to the human race, for in the cosmic meaning the legend involves what the Hindus refer to under the various manifestations of prakriti running throughout manifested nature as a veil or garment of the indwelling cosmic consciousness; and the various permutations under which Kore-Persephone or Demeter is presented, show the various allegorical stages or modifications which the cosmic prakritis undergo. In the application of the legend to man, Kore-Persephone stands for both the spiritual soul and its child, the human soul, which in one manner of envisioning the facts are two; and in another manner, are one. See also DEMETER; KORE-PERSEPHONE

Philosophically, as the supreme cosmic principle of any universe, Brahman is enclosed within its veil or sakti, called pradhana; just as Brahma is similarly infolded within its inseparable sakti called prakriti, and on a still vaster plane mulaprakriti enfolds parabrahman. We have thus: parabrahman-mulaprakriti, Brahman-pradhana, and Brahma- or Purusha-prakriti.

plane ::: “But first we must understand what we mean by planes of consciousness, planes of existence. We mean a general settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga

Plane ::: We mean a general settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 448


Pradhana: A Sankhya term for Prakriti; the chief; the root base of all elements; undifferentiated matter; the material cause of the world in the Sankhya philosophy, corresponding to Maya in Vedanta. It, however, differs from Maya in the following points: It is real, while Maya is unreal or phenomenal; it is independent of Spirit, while Maya is dependent on God.

pradhana. ::: the potential but unmanifest ingredients of the material world; prakriti; the chief; the root base of all elements; undifferentiated matter; the material cause of the world in the Sankhya philosophy, corresponding to maya in vedanta &

prakriti-angsha) ::: a portion of universal Nature expressing the Mahakali-Mahasarasvati combination of the aspects of the divine sakti.

prakritic ::: a. --> Pertaining to Prakrit.

prakritilaya. ::: absorbed or merged in prakriti

prakritim apannah) ::: possessed of the Asuric and Rakshasic nature.[Cf. Gita 9.12, 16.20]

prakriti; prakruti. ::: "nature"; causal matter; primordial substance out of which all things are created; the cause of illusive creation, the delusion; the primal nature without an "I"-sense; primordial unmanifest essence; that state in which the three gunas exist in equilibrium; when this equilibrium is disturbed, creation begins and the body, senses and mind are formed. The man who is deluded by egoism identifies the Self with the body, mind, the life-force and the senses, and ascribes to the Self all the attributes of the body and the senses. In fact, the gunas of nature perform all actions

PRAKRITI (Skt) Matter

Prakrit. (S. Prākṛta). A term that literally means "natural" in Sanskrit, used to designate a group of Indo-Āryan vernacular languages in ancient India. The term "Sanskrit" (saMskṛta) has the sense both of "constructed," "perfected," or "refined," and thus describes a classical language that may not ever have been used for everyday verbal communication. The earliest extant written forms of Prakrit are found in the inscriptions of AsOKA. The Buddha is said to have spoken the Prakritic dialect of Māgadhī, the vernacular language of the Indian state of MAGADHA. Also important for Buddhism is the GĀNDHĀRĪ form of Prakrit, from the GANDHĀRA region of northwest India. These Prakrit dialects eventually evolved into many of the modern Indian vernacular languages, such as Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, and Hindi. Although some scholars do not consider PĀLI and BUDDHIST HYBRID SANSKRIT to be Prakrits in the technical sense, they are clearly influenced by various Prakrits current at the time of their formation.

prakr.ti-aṁsa (prakriti-angsha) ::: portion of universal nature. prakrti-amsa

prakrti (Prakriti) ::: "working out"; Nature; Nature-Force; Nature-Soul; executive or working force. ::: prakrtayah [plural], natural powers. ::: prakrtim [accusative]

prakr.ti (jada prakriti) ::: inert nature.. a prakrti .jadatva

prakr.ti-jiva (prakriti-jiva) ::: the individual soul (jiva) realising itself prakrti-jiva as a manifestation of prakr.ti or universal Nature; see jiva-prakr.ti. prakr.tiṁ yanti bhūtani nigrahah. kiṁ karis.yati (prakritim yanti prakrtim

prakr.ti (prakriti) ::: nature; "the active force of Nature which by its prakrti motion creates and maintains and by its sinking into rest dissolves the phenomenon of the cosmos"; the universal energy acting for the enjoyment of the purus.a on all the planes of being; the "outer or executive side" of the sakti or Conscious Force of the isvara, working in the Ignorance (avidya) as the lower or apara prakr.ti and in the Knowledge (vidya) as the higher or para prakr.ti.

Pralaya(Sanskrit) ::: A compound word, formed of laya, from the root li, and the prefix pra. Li means "to dissolve,""to melt away," "to liquefy," as when one pours water upon a cube of salt or of sugar. The cube of salt orof sugar vanishes in the water -- it dissolves, changes its form -- and this may be taken as a figure,imperfect as it is, or as a symbol, of what pralaya is: a crumbling away, a vanishing away, of matter intosomething else which is yet in it, and surrounds it, and interpenetrates it. Such is pralaya, usuallytranslated as the state of latency, state of rest, state of repose, between two manvantaras or life cycles. Ifwe remember distinctly the meaning of the Sanskrit word, our minds take a new bent in direction, followa new thought. We get new ideas; we penetrate into the arcanum of the thing that takes place. Pralaya,therefore, is dissolution, death.There are many kinds of pralayas. There is the universal pralaya, called prakritika, because it is thepralaya or vanishing away, melting away, of prakriti or nature. Then there is the solar pralaya. Sun inSanskrit is surya, and the adjective from this is saurya: hence, the saurya pralaya or the pralaya of thesolar system. Then, thirdly, there is the terrestrial or planetary pralaya. One Sanskrit word for earth isbhumi, and the adjective corresponding to this is bhaumika: hence, the bhaumika pralaya. Then there isthe pralaya or death of the individual man. Man is purusha; the corresponding adjective is paurusha:hence, the paurusha pralaya or death of man. These adjectives apply equally well to the several kinds ofmanvantaras or life cycles.There is another kind of pralaya which is called nitya. In its general sense, it means "constant" or"continuous," and can be exemplified by the constant or continuous change -- life and death -- of the cellsof our bodies. It is a state in which the indwelling and dominating entity remains, but its differentprinciples and rupas undergo continuous and incessant change. Hence it is called nitya, signifyingcontinuous. It applies to the body of man, to the outer sphere of earth, to the earth itself, to the solarsystem, and indeed to all nature. It is the unceasing and chronic changing of things that are -- the passingfrom phase to phase, meaning the pralaya or death of one phase, to be followed by the rebirth of itssucceeding phase. There are other kinds of pralayas than those herein enumerated.

Pratisamchara (Sanskrit) Pratisaṃcara [from prati-sam-car to move backwards together, return, dissolve, return to the originating source (prakriti or mulaprakriti) from the verbal root char to move] Returning; philosophically, reabsorption or resolution back again into prakriti — in this sense, a synonym of pralaya.

Protomateria [from Greek protos first, original + Latin materia matter] The primordial matter which, infilled with the karmic seeds from the preceding manvantara, evolves out of itself the cosmos. In some of its aspects equivalent to subtle prakriti or pradhana.

Protyle [from Greek protos first + hyle matter] Used by the English chemist Crookes (1832-1919) for a then hypothetical substance of which he believed the chemical elements to be differentiations; used in this sense by Blavatsky and also in a general sense for rudimentary, primordial, or undifferentiated matter. In this wider meaning, there are many protyles, each being the matter of its own plane in the undifferentiated condition; so that the protyle of Crookes would be the undifferentiated basis of physical matter, and therefore quasi-astral. The fundamental cosmic protyle is pradhana or mulaprakriti.

Psj'chic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation of the indiridnal Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is that spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and phyrical as the psychic being until

purus.a (akshara purusha) ::: the immutable spirit, the unchang. ara purusa ing purus.a: "the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works", who stands above all things "in his imperturbable immobility of eternal silence and calm".

purusa-prakrti (Purusha-Prakriti) ::: Soul-Nature. [see purusa and prakrti separately]

purus.a-prakr.ti (purusha-prakriti; purusha prakriti) ::: "the great dupurusa-prakrti ality, Soul-Nature" which "in aspect separate, is inseparable", the dualism of purus.a, "a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue" and prakr.ti,"an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation". On the lower planes of existence, purus.a-prakr.ti differs from isvara-sakti in that "Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other", but at "a certain spiritual and supramental level", this dual power becomes "perfectly Two-in-one, the Master Soul with the Conscious Force within it, and its potentiality disowns all barriers and breaks through every limit"; in the perception of the world, the darsana of purus.a-prakr.ti in all things and beings rises to the vision of Kr.s.n.akali.

Purusha and a Prakriti or Energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the lypal worlds wants to evolve, he has to come down to earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution.

Purusha and Prakriii are separate powers of the being. It is not that Purusha = quiescence and Prakriti = action, so that when all is quiescent there is no Prakriti and when all is action there is no Purusha. When all is active, there is still the Purusha behind the active Nature and when all is quiescent, there is still the Prakriti, but the Prakriti at rest.

Purusha and prakriti stand to each other as the two poles of the same homogeneous, intelligent, living, cosmic substance, the root-principle of the universe, sometimes called svabhavat. In Kapila’s Sankhya philosophy, “unless, allegorically speaking, Purusha mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti, the latter remains irrational, while the former remains inactive without her. Therefore Nature (in man) must become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what he is; and the Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness gradually” (SD 2:42).

Purusha(Sanskrit) ::: A word meaning "man," the Ideal Man, like the Qabbalistic Adam Qadmon, the primordialentity of space, containing with and in prakriti or nature all the septenary (or denary) scales of manifestedbeing. More mystically Purusha has a number of different significancies. In addition to meaning theHeavenly Man or Ideal Man, it is frequently used for the spiritual man in each individual human beingor, indeed, in every self-conscious entity -- therefore a term for the spiritual self. Purusha also sometimesstands as an interchangeable term with Brahma, the evolver or "creator."Probably the simplest and most inclusive significance of Purusha as properly used in the esotericphilosophy is expressed in the paraphrase "the entitative, individual, everlasting divine-spiritual self," thespiritual monad, whether of a universe or of a solar system, or of an individual entity in manifested life,such as man.

Purusha (Sanskrit) Puruṣa Man; the ideal or cosmic man, equivalent to the Qabbalistic ’Adam Qadmon. It contains with prakriti or nature all the seven, ten, or twelve scales of manifested being. Mystically, Purusha is used for the spiritual self or monad in each self-conscious entity, whether a universe, solar system, or human being; also it is sometimes interchangeable with Brahma, the evolver or creator. Purusha is what is called energy or force in science, if these words include the inseparable attribute of intelligence and moral harmony.

Purushas, Three ::: Atman represents itself to the consciousness of the creature in three states, dependent on the relations between Purusha and Prakriti, the Soul and Nature. These three states are Akshara, unmoving or immutable; Kshara, moving or mutable; and Para or Uttama, Supreme or Highest.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 32


Purusha ::: The Conscious Being, Purusha, is the Self as originator, witness, support and lord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature. As the aspect of Self is in its essential character transcendental even when involved and identified with its universal and individual becomings, so the Purusha aspect is characteristically universal-individual and intimately connected with Nature even when separated from her. For this conscious Spirit while retaining its impersonality and eternity, its universality, puts on at the same time a more personal aspect;7 it is the impersonal-personal being in Nature from whom it is not altogether detached, for it is always coupled with her: Nature acts for the Purusha and by its sanction, for its will and pleasure; the Conscious Being imparts its consciousness to the Energy we call Nature, receives in that consciousness her workings as in a mirror, accepts the forms which she, the executive cosmic Force, creates and imposes on it, gives or withdraws its sanction from her movements. The experience of Purusha-Prakriti, the Spirit or Conscious Being in its relations to Nature, is of immense pragmatic importance; for on these relations the whole play of the consciousness depends in the embodied being. If the Purusha in us is passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a constant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental, vital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its formation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance. If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul’s freedom; for it becomes detached, and it is possible then to know Nature and her processes and in all independence, since we are no longer involved in her works, to accept or not to accept, to make the sanction no longer automatic but free and effective; we can choose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from her works and withdraw into the Self’s spiritual silence, or we can reject her present formations and rise to a spiritual level of existence and from there re-create our existence. The Purusha can cease to be subject, anısa, and become lord of its nature, Isvara.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 362-63


purusa ::: human being, mankind; a person; the personal and animating principle in beings; soul, spirit; the Supreme Soul; spirit as passive spectator of the creative force of prakriti.

Rajas: In the Sankhya system of Hindu philosophy, and in theosophical terminology, one of the three constituents of the Cosmic Substance (prakriti, q.v.), viz. the activating aspect of Nature without which the other constituents could not manifest their inherent qualities; in Yoga the quality of egoism or selfishness.

Reality as Isbu’ara tt'ills, governs and possesses Its world of manifestation created and kept in motion and acUon by Its own conscious force which is variously termed as Maya, Prakriti and

Rootless Root The cosmic origin or womb of all, itself therefore necessarily without origin except itself — self-born, parentless. The name is applied to parabrahman, be-ness rather than being. “The One reality is Mulaprakriti (undifferentiated Substance) — the ‘Rootless root’ ” (ML 347).

Root-matter. See MULAPRAKRITI

Root-principle Generally, the spiritual or energic side of what is in its vehicular aspect called root-element, primordial matter or substance, mulaprakriti, or chaos.

Sabda-Brahman(Sanskrit) ::: A phrase literally signifying "WordBrahman" -- a curious analogy with the archaic Greekmystical teaching concerning the Logos. SabdaBrahman, therefore, may be rendered as the activeunmanifest Logos of the solar system, and hence as the soul of Brahman expressing itself through itsakasic veils as the divine Logos, or Word or Sound. This term is closely connected in meaning with theteaching concerning daiviprakriti. H. P. Blavatsky in her posthumous Glossary speaks of theSabda-Brahman as "Ethereal Vibrations diffused throughout Space."

Sabda-Brahman (Sanskrit) Śabda-brahman Word-Brahman, “the soul of Brahman expressing itself through its akasic veils as the Divine Logos, or Word, or Sound” (OG 149); analogous to the active unmanifested Logos of the solar system, and closely connected in meaning with the teachings concerning daiviprakriti.

sankhya ::: n. --> A Hindoo system of philosophy which refers all things to soul and a rootless germ called prakriti, consisting of three elements, goodness, passion, and darkness.

Sankhya: Perhaps the oldest of the major systems of Indian philosophy, founded by Kapila (sixth century B.C.). Originally not theistic, it is realistic in epistemology, dualistic in metaphysics, assuming two moving ultimates, Cosmic Spirit (purusha) and Cosmic Substance (prakriti), both eternal and uncaused. Prakriti possesses the three qualities or principles of sattva, rajas, tamas, first in equipoise. When this is disturbed, the world in its multifariousness evolves in conjunction with purusha which becomes the plurality of selves in the process. The union (samyoga) of spirit and matter is necessary for world evolution, the inactivity of the former needing the verve of the latter, and the non-intelligence of that needing the guidance of conscious purusha. Successively, prakriti produces mahat or buddhi, ahamkara, manas, the ten indriyas, five tanmatras and five mahabhutas (q.v.).

Sattva: Sanskrit for being, existence, reality, true essence; one of the three constituents of the Cosmic Substance (prakriti), viz. the illuminating aspect of Nature that reveals all manifestations; in Yoga, the quality of purity or goodness.

Savarna (Sanskrit) Savarṇā The feminine being substituted by Saranyu for herself as a wife or alter ego of the sun. She is said to have given birth to Manu, and is called in later legend Chhaya (shadow). Saranyu (the quick, the fleet) is the Vedic character for the Sanjna of the Puranas. Saranyu is represented in legend as being the wife of Vivasvat (the sun) and mother of the two Asvins. The legend of this substitution has reference to cosmological mysteries, for the consort of the sun, for purposes of production of the hierarchies of living beings in the solar kingdom, must be that portion of the solar entity which is capable of productive power, and not of the higher parts of the sun’s entity. Thus Saranyu stands for the solar intellect or mind, while Savarna would be a fit prakriti-companion for the generative power of the sun.

Science admits the existence of vast stores of latent energy in the atoms; and considering everything as a question of physical dynamics, it infers that an equivalent quantity of physical energy must have been expended in creating the atom. Energy or life is a fundamental attribute and function of the universe, which has its manifestations on all seven or ten planes of prakriti, appearing as centers of energy which radiate outwards from within. Also used to denote the female potency or sakti (SD 1:l36); aether too is mentioned as the quintessence of energy. Energy expended on the astral plane is far more productive of results than the same amount expended on the physical plane, according to occult dynamics.

Sea of Fire In the Stanzas of Dzyan, “the Super-Astral (i.e., noumenal) Light, the first radiation from the Root, the Mulaprakriti, the undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which becomes Astral Matter. It is also called the ‘Fiery Serpent . . .’ ” (SD 1:75).

Second Logos A logos is the unitary or monadic head of a cosmic hierarchy, such as a universe, from which emanates the various rays or subordinate members of the hierarchy. Next in cosmic evolution after the Absolute of a universe comes the first manifestation called the First or Unmanifest Logos, the parent-precursor of the Manifest-unmanifest Logos, the Second Logos invested with feminine characteristics, and hence often called spirit-matter, life, the spirit of the universe, the combined Brahman-pradhana. It is likewise spoken of as Father-Mother or more commonly as the cosmic Mother. The First Logos does not create, but emanates the Second Logos, which in its turn gives birth to the Third Logos or Brahma-prakriti or Purusha-prakriti, which because of its generative and productive function in cosmogony is called the creative logos. Each higher logos emanates the one immediately below it. See LOGOS; SVABHAVAT

Shechinah (Hebrew) Shĕkhīnāh [from the verbal root shākhan to settle down or around, dwell] An emanation, a dwelling; referring both to the primordial emanation and to the dwelling or kingdom containing the Sephiroth, collectively considered the cosmic Tree of Life. In Jewish religious and mystical thought, the cloud of glory, or veil, surrounding a spiritual or divine manifestation. In the Qabbalah, used in a cosmic sense — termed the superior Shechinah — as the first splendor, or divine or spiritual substance, emanating from ’eyn soph and enveloping it as a veil, from which proceeded the hierarchy of the Sephiroth. This thought corresponds to the Hindu parabrahman and its splendorous veil mulaprakriti, from which proceed the hierarchies of the manifested universe. The inferior Shechinah is associated with the tenth or lowest Sephirah, Malchuth (kingdom or dwelling), which is equivalent to the material or physical universe, as the vehicle or carrier of all the preceding hierarchies of Sephiroth.

Shu (Egyptian) Shu [from shu dry, parched] The Egyptian god of light, popularly associated with heat and dryness, and the ethereal spaces existing between the earth and the vault of the sky; often depicted as holding up the sky with his two hands, one at the place of sunrise, the other of sunset. The phonetic value of shu is the feather, which is the symbol of this deity, and appears above his headdress. Shu is manifest during the day in the beams of the sun, and at night in the beams of the moon; the solar disk is his home. He is likewise one of the chief deities of the underworld, the gate of the pillars of Shu (tchesert) marking the entrance to this region, the pillars representing the four cardinal points said to hold up the sky. Although the twin brother of Tefnut — often alluded to as the twin lion-deities — Shu is more often represented with Seb and Nut (deities of cosmic space and of its garment of ethereal substance) in his position of holding up the sky, because in theosophical terminology cosmic light as well as cosmic intelligence (the Logos) is born from Brahman and pradhana, or parabrahman and mulaprakriti.

Skandha(s)(Sanskrit) ::: Literally "bundles," or groups of attributes, to use H. P. Blavatsky's definition. When deathcomes to a man in any one life, the seeds of those causes previously sown by him and which have not yetcome forth into blossom and full-blown flower and fruit, remain in his interior and invisible parts asimpulses lying latent and sleeping: lying latent like sleeping seeds for future flowerings into action in thenext and succeeding lives. They are psychological impulse-seeds lying asleep until their appropriatestage for awakening into action arrives at some time in the future.In the case of the cosmic bodies, every solar or planetary body upon entering into its pralaya, itsprakritika-pralaya -- the dissolution of its lower principles -- at the end of its long life cycle, exists inspace in the higher activity of its spiritual principles, and in the dispersion of its lowest principles, whichlatter latently exist in space as skandhas in a laya-condition.When a laya-center is fired into action by the touch of wills and consciousnesses on their downward way,becoming the imbodying life of a solar system, or of a planet of a solar system, the center manifests firston its highest plane, and later on its lower plane. The skandhas are awakened into life one after another:first the highest ones, next the intermediate ones, and lastly the inferior ones, cosmically and qualitativelyspeaking.The term skandhas in theosophical philosophy has the general significance of bundles or groups ofattributes, which together form or compose the entire set of material and also mental, emotional, andmoral qualities. Exoterically the skandhas are "bundles" of attributes five in number, but esoterically theyare seven. These unite at the birth of man and constitute his personality. After the death of the body theskandhas are separated and so remain until the reincarnating ego on its downward path into physicalincarnation gathers them together again around itself, and thus reforms the human constitutionconsidered as a unity.In brief, the skandhas can be said to be the aggregate of the groups of attributes or qualities which makeeach individual man the personality that he is; but this must be sharply distinguished from theindividuality.

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Sometimes aether is used in translating the Sanskrit akasa, which has the same etymological and philosophical meaning. Here it is an element or principle coming after manas and kama and before the astral light and ether. Again, it is a high aspect of akasa, having itself also seven subordinate aspects. There are in kosmic space at least seven aethers or prakritis, which exist one within the other in a rising scale of spirituality. Collectively they may be called spirit-aether or akasa.

soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga

  "The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga

  "The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga

  "A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga

  "The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga

  "The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga

  ". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita

  ". . . 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 or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine

"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine

*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.



Space is symbolized by the circle; a central point denotes spiritual monadic activity arising within abstract space. It is equivalent to akasa or aether, water or the waters; Chaos as the spatial deeps. Sometimes space in its manifestation is represented as a serpent with seven heads or as the great sea or deep. Occasionally called aupapaduka (parentless), because it is primary and the source of all, it is spoken of both as mulaprakriti and as parabrahman. In its manifested aspect it is bright space, son of dark space, the former being the ray dropped into cosmic depths. Parent space is the eternal ever-present cause of all — the incomprehensible divinity, whose invisible robes are the mystic root of all matter and of the universe. Space is called Mother before its cosmic activity, and Father-Mother at the first stage of reawakening of manifestation.

Spirit, considered as the cosmic Ens (being) or Brahman is not the cosmic primordial root, but its first manifestation, corresponding to the Greek First Logos — either parabrahman-mulaprakriti, when applied to the galaxy; or Brahman-pradhana when applied to our solar system.

Spirit-hyle [from Greek hyle matter, stuff] The Second Logos, Father-Mother, spirit-matter, Purusha-prakriti. Hyle was used by certain Greek philosophers to signify original cosmic spirit-stuff, and therefore is equivalent to the Sanskrit pradhana, or in a higher, more spiritual essence, mulaprakriti (root-substance). Thus hyle or spirit-hyle is the primordial quasi-conscious matter-substance of cosmic space, both before cosmic manifestation begins and through the entire period of the cosmic manvantara — the cosmic spiritual substantial background, or Mother of space. Again, spirit-hyle, in its prakritis aspect, is the spiritual sediment of surrounding universal chaos, the great deep of cosmic consciousness. Thus it is the primordial element-principle, out of which an objective universe is formed, and into which it again sinks when the cosmic manvantara ends, only to reissue forth at the end of the cosmic pralaya.

Sri Aurobindo: "Akshara, the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being, Witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works.” Essays on the Gita

*Sri Aurobindo: "But first we must understand what we mean by planes of consciousness, planes of existence. We mean a general settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga

Sri Aurobindo: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass though the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” The Mother

Superastral The Pymander of Hermes speaks of a sea of fire, which is the superastral, the noumenal light, mulaprakriti or undifferentiated matter, the first radiation from the root; afterwards it becomes astral matter (SD 1:75).

Surrender of the nature is not an easy thing and may take a long lime ; surrender of the self, if one can do it, is easier and once that is done, that of the nature will come about sooner or later. For that it is necessary to detach oneself from the action of the Prakriti and see oneself as separate. To observe the movements as a witness without being discouraged or disturbed is the best way to cfTccl the necessary detachment and separation.

Svabhavat may be considered as parabrahman-mulaprakriti (superspirit-rootmatter), the one underlying cosmic being or substance, the divine source; the self-existent and, to our as yet undeveloped minds, the great vacuity — mahasunya. It is equivalent to the Northern Buddhist adi-buddhi (primordial buddhi), the Brahmanical akasa, and the Hebrew cosmic waters.

Svadha (Sanskrit) Svadhā [from sva self, oneself + the verbal root dhā to place, fix, constitute, sustain, maintain] In Hinduism the essential individuality or individual nature of a being, whether man, god, or other entity; almost a synonym for svabhava, yet signifying the entity’s individuality as manifested through the vehicles which contain it, rather than the intrinsic characteristic of the egoity itself. This is the reason svadha is often used as a name for maya or prakriti as the source of the universe.

Tamas: One of the three constituents (gunas) of the Cosmic Substance (prakriti), viz. the restraining aspect of Nature that obstructs and envelops the other two constituents by counteracting the tendency of rajas to do work and sattva to reveal; in Yoga, the quality of delusion or ignorance.

Tattvatraya (Sanskrit) Tattvatraya [from tattva reality, essential cosmic element + traya threefold, triad] The three primordial elements in the cosmos, according to the Visishtadvaita or modified nondualistic Vedantists. They state that the tattvatraya is the Logos, its light, and mulaprakriti. Mulaprakriti thus becomes their achit; the light from the Logos is their chit; and the Logos itself is their Isvara (supreme lord).

Tefnut (Egyptian) Tefnut. [from tef to be moist] Egyptian goddess inseparably connected with her twin brother Shu, being brought forth by the sun god Tem (later known as Ra). Tefnut was the goddess of moisture, of the gentle rain and soft wind. She is represented as a woman wearing upon her head the solar disk, or more often with the head of a lioness. Thus, Tefnut is the clothing or garment of Shu as pradhana is to Brahman or mulaprakriti is to parabrahman.

“That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother’s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” The Mother

The Archetypal Man of the Qabbalah is the host of the higher dhyani-chohans collectively called ’Adam Qadmon or the upper triad of the ten Sephiroth, also svabhavat or the fourfold anima mundi, whence proceed the creative, formative, and material worlds. The archetypal world has three planes, corresponding to the First, Second, and Third Logoi, and to parabrahman with mulaprakriti or to Brahman with pradhana. In the human hierarchy, this is paramatman (the supreme self) from which fall the armies of rays which permeate every atom on every plane, constituting the unity in the divine selfhood which is the essence of all. In contrast with the septenary hierarchy below, this upper triad is called arupa (formless).

The Divine appears to us here in one view as an equal, inactive and impersonal Witness Spirit, an immobile consenting Purusha not bound by quality or Space or Time, whose support or sanction is given impartially to the play of all action and energies which the transcendent Will has once permitted and authorised to fulfil themselves in the cosmos. This Witness Spirit, this immobile Self in things, seems to will nothing and determine nothing; yet we become aware that his very passivity, his silent presence compels all things to travel even in their ignorance towards a divine goal and attracts through division towards a yet unrealised oneness. Yet no supreme infallible Divine Will seems to be there, only a widely deployed Cosmic Energy or a mechanical executive Process, Prakriti.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 432


  “The double triangle — the Satkiri Chakram of Vishnu — or the six-pointed star, is the perfect seven. In all the old Sanskrit works — Vedic and Tantrik — you find the number 6 mentioned more often than the 7 — this last figure, the central point being implied, for it is the germ of the six and their matrix. . . . the central point standing for seventh, and the circle, the Mahakasha — endless space — for the seventh Universal Principle. In one sense, both are viewed as Avalokitesvara, for they are respectively the Macrocosm and the microcosm. The interlaced triangles — the upper pointing one — is Wisdom concealed, and the downward pointing one — Wisdom revealed (in the phenomenal world). The circle indicates the bounding, circumscribing quality of the All, the Universal Principle which, from any given point expands so as to embrace all things, while embodying the potentiality of every action in the Cosmos. As the point then is the centre round which the circle is traced — they are identical and one, and though from the standpoint of Maya and Avidya — (illusion and ignorance) — one is separated from the other by the manifested triangle, the 3 sides of which represent the three gunas — finite attributes. In symbology the central point is Jivatma (the 7th principle), and hence Avalokitesvara, the Kwan-Shai-yin, the manifested ‘Voice’ (or Logos), the germ point of manifested activity; — hence — in the phraseology of the Christian Kabalists ‘the Son of the Father and Mother,’ and agreeably to ours — ‘the Self manifested in Self’ — Yih-sin, the ‘one form of existence,’ the child of Dharmakaya (the universally diffused Essence), both male and female. Parabrahm or ‘Adi-Buddha’ while acting through that germ point outwardly as an active force, reacts from the circumference inwardly as the Supreme but latent Potency. The double triangles symbolize the Great Passive and the Great Active; the male and female; Purusha and Prakriti. Each triangle is a Trinity because presenting a triple aspect. The white represents in its straight lines: Gnanam — (Knowledge); Gnata — (the Knower); and Gnayam — (that which is known). The black — form, colour, and substance, also the creative, preservative, and destructive forces and are mutually correlating . . .” (ML 345-6).

  “ . . . the first manifestation of Parabrahmam is a Trinity, the highest Trinity that we are capable of understanding. It consists of Mulaprakriti, Eswara or the Logos, and the conscious energy of the Logos, which is its power and light; and here we have the three principles upon which the whole cosmos seems to be based. First, we have matter; secondly, we have force — at any rate, the foundation of all the forces in the cosmos; and thirdly, we have the ego or the one root of self, of which every other kind of self is but a manifestation or reflection” (Notes on BG 18-22).

"The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

“The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

The higher karanopadhi, belonging to the spiritual-intellectual part of the human constitution, is the reproductive impulse in the spiritual monad which causes it to reemerge into a new series of imbodiments at the dawn of the solar manvantara. This karanopadhi is directly related to buddhi or buddhi-manas, the spiritual soul as a veil or vehicle of the monadic essence or spiritual monad. Its role is similar to that of prakriti with Purusha, or pradhana surrounding Brahman, or mulaprakriti with parabrahman. The karanopadhi is also the vehicle produced by the spiritual bija (seed).

The Holy Ghost is the spiritual ray from the central sun, which passes down through the planes of manifestation, penetrating all hierarchies in its course and therefore likewise the human mind when it is permitted ingress into his soul. It is equivalent to the Light of the Logos, daiviprakriti, the Gnostic Sophia, the Qabbalistic Shechinah (or perhaps Sephirah), the Mother of the Ogdoad, and in Indian thought the feminine sakti. But while daiviprakriti is the Light of the Logos, this is only because the Logos transmits to itself the light from above.

The idea of the three essential modes of Nature is a creation of the ancient Indian thinkers and its truth is not at once obvious, because it was the result of long psychological experiment and profound internal experience. Th
   refore without a long inner experience, without intimate self-observation and intuitive perception of the Nature-forces it is difficult to grasp accurately or firmly utilise. Still certain broad indications may help the seeker on the Way of Works to understand, analyse and control by his assent or
   refusal the combinations of his own nature. These modes are termed in the Indian books qualities, gunas, and are given the names sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattwa is the force of equilibrium and translates in quality as good and harmony and happiness and light; rajas is the force of kinesis and translates in quality as struggle and effort, passion and action; tamas is the force of inconscience and inertia and translates in quality as obscurity and incapacity and inaction. Ordinarily used for psychological self-analysis, these distinctions are valid also in physical Nature. Each thing and every existence in the lower Prakriti contains them and its process and dynamic form are the result of the interaction of these qualitative powers.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 232-233


The moon that we see is the kama-rupa of one of the lunar chain’s seven or twelve globes, each one having its own kama-rupa, since the entire chain of globes is dead. The material of our kama-rupic moon, however, is on the same prakritic plane as that on which our senses operate, so that it is visible and appears to be the original physical body of the moon. Besides transmitting to us certain influences from the sun, the moon also absorbs from and sends back influences to the earth. Hence its effects upon gestation, physiological and mental cycles, the growth of vegetation, the periodic habits of many animals, and various other natural phenomena.

The objective idealism which the theosophic philosophy teaches when considering the noumena and phenomena of existence shows a fundamental reality behind these, above and beyond all manifestations whatsoever, as the root and basis of all entities and things, which although relatively unreal in themselves because products merely, or because based on the various prakritis, nevertheless because so based have a relative reality derivative from this basic root. See also PLEROMA

…there are three, the Kshara, the Akshara, the Uttama. Kshara, the mobile, the mutable is Nature, svabhava, it is the various becoming of the soul; the Purusha here is the multiplicity of the divine Being; it is the Purusha multiple not apart from, but in Prakriti. Akshara, the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being, Witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works. The Uttama is the Lord, the supreme Brahman, the supreme Self, who possesses both the immutable unity and the mobile multiplicity.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 79


The soul or psyche is immutable only^ in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing ps3'cbic individual evolving in tbS manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part Jn the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine J^re that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until h is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge. This evolving psychic being is not therefore at any time all that the soul or essential psychic existence bears within it.

:::   "The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga

“The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge.” Letters on Yoga

“The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” Letters on Yoga

Though sometimes used as an equivalent for avidya, maya is properly applicable only to prakriti, which is doomed to disappear at the time of pralaya. It is thus prakriti and its productions or changes (vikaras) which, by reacting against the operations of the consciousness of a perceiving being, casts the perceiver into the bonds of illusions, out of which the deluded being has to strive in order to free himself from the maya with which he is surrounded.

  “Thus in the Esotericism of the Vedantins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through Eswara, the Logos, is at one and the same time the Mother and also the Daughter of the Logos or Verbum of Parabrahmam; while in that of the trans-Himalayan teachings it is — in the hierarchy of allegorical and metaphysical theogony — ‘the Mother’ or abstract, ideal matter, Mulaprakriti, the Root of Nature; — from the metaphysical standpoint, a correlation of Adi-Bhuta, manifested in the Logos, Avalokiteshwara; — and from the purely occult and Cosmical, Fohat, the ‘Son of the Son,’ the androgynous energy resulting from this ‘Light of the Logos,’ and which manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as the revealed, Electricity — which is Life” (SD 1:136).

Thus the waters of space are equivalent to the veil of cosmic spirit. Water in ancient cosmogonies corresponded to the Hindu prakriti or pradhana, and like the Greek Second Logos was endowed with feminine or productive characteristics. Thus the archaic Greeks in one form of their cosmogonical philosophy taught that all things, including the gods, came forth from Ocean and his wife Tethys:

. ti (apara prakriti) ::: the lower (mental-vital-physical)Nature which is derived from the higher Nature or para prakr.ti; prakr.ti in the lower hemisphere of existence (aparardha), also called traigun.yamayi prakr.ti because its process is limited to the action of the three modes of the traigun.ya or trigun.a.

. ti (bhumayi prakriti) ::: terrestrial nature.

. ti (daivi prakriti) ::: divine nature, the third member of the sakti catus.t.aya, also called devibhava or (at an earlier stage)Can.d.ibhava; the divinising of human nature by calling in the divine Power (sakti) "to replace our limited human energy so that this may be shaped into the image of and filled with the force of a greater infinite energy". In this process, four aspects of the sakti are manifested and combined: Mahesvari, the sakti of wideness and calm; Mahakali, the sakti of strength and swiftness; Mahalaks.mi, the sakti of beauty, love and delight; and Mahasarasvati, the sakti of skill and work.

. ti (kalpanamayi prakriti) ::: Nature creating subjectively by the power of imagination.

. ti (para prakriti) ::: the higher (spiritual and supramental)Nature, the "supreme nature of the Divine which is the real source of cosmic existence and its fundamental creative force and effective energy and of which the other lower and ignorant Nature [apara prakr.ti] is only a derivation and a dark shadow"; prakr.ti in the parardha or higher hemisphere of existence. para purus purusa

. ti (traigunyamayi prakriti) ::: the lower nature . yamayi prakr (apara prakr.ti) whose process is an interaction of the three gun.as (sattva, rajas and tamas), "the inferior nature of things" in which "the play of infinite quality [anantagun.a] is subject to a limited measure" and "managed by a fundamental working in three qualitative modes [traigun.ya] which conflict and combine together in all her creations". traigun traigunyasiddhi . yasiddhi (traigunyasiddhi; traigunya-siddhi; traigunya siddhi)

. ti (trailokyamayi prakriti) ::: (the lower) Nature comprising the three worlds of matter, life and mind. trailokya of bh bhu

Triad A group of three, a triple unity, three-in-one, the number three; it represents the limits of ratiocinative thought, for we cannot go beyond the duality of subject and object, and must postulate a unitary essence common to both. A triad stands at the head of all great cosmogonies and philosophies: spirit-matter, Purusha-prakriti, subject-object, male-female, father-mother, motion-space, etc., plus the fundamental unity and source enclosing each emanated duad — the ineffable, parabrahman, ’eyn soph, etc. Theosophy shows three distinct triadic representations of the universe, making nine, or with a synthesis ten: the ever-existing, the pre-existing, and the phenomenal, allegorized as the initial, the manifested, and the creative triads.

Tsang (Tibetan) bTsan. Strength, might; used particularly as an equivalent for nyingpo or alaya, the world-soul. Alaya is used mainly in the Mahayana contemplative schools of Northern Buddhism, being equivalent of mulaprakriti in its essence as the root or substance of all things; hence alaya is likewise equivalent frequently to akasa, especially in the mystical sense.

udasinata ::: udasinata achieved by a "detached superior. atita udasinata ity to the three modes [trigun.a] of Nature" in which the "soul is inwardly separated and free from the lower Prakriti, not involved in its coils, indifferent and glad above it".

Universal Mind The sum of the states of kosmic consciousness grouped under the human expressions thought, will, understanding, and feeling, collectively expressed in the Sanskrit as mahat. During deep sleep, the human mind is in abeyance on the physical plane, because our consciousness is not affecting the physical brain which in waking hours expresses it, although during the svapna (sleeping-dreaming) state the brain dreams; and similarly in the cosmos at the manvantaric dawn universal mind “was not” because there was as yet no vehicle for its expression through the cosmic hierarchies, this vehicle being the collective Ah-hi or hosts of dhyani-chohans. Universal mind remained during pralaya in a state of intense spiritual-intellectual activity, as the permanent root of subsequent cosmic mental action arising during manvantara. Universal mind is the manifested One, from the still more abstruse One or kosmic unity, and simultaneously with the evolution of universal mind the cosmic supreme One or hierarch also manifests itself in manvantara as avalokitesvara (Logos or atman) through its veil, universal substance or mulaprakriti — a unity with triple aspects. It is the mother of the manasaputras or sons of mind, and is kosmic buddhi or mahabuddhi.

Vach(Sanskrit) ::: A term which means "speech" or "word"; and by the same procedure of mystical thoughtwhich is seen in ancient Greek mysticism, wherein the Logos is not merely the speech or word of theDivinity, but also the divine reason, so Vach has come to mean really more than merely word or speech.The esoteric Vach is the subjective creative intelligent force which, emanating from the subjectiveuniverse, becomes the manifested or concrete expression of ideation, hence Word or Logos. Mystically,therefore, Vach may be said to be the feminine or vehicular aspect of the Logos, or the power of theLogos when enshrined within its vehicle or sheath of action. Vach in India is often called Sata-rupa, "thehundred-formed." Cosmologically in one sense daiviprakriti may be said to be a manifestation or form ofVach.

Vach-sata-rupa (Sanskrit) Vāc-śata-rūpā The goddess in a hundred forms, or Vach as the immanent feminine aspect of divinity in the innumerable phases and forms of nature. Vach as Sata-rupa is the divine creative activity unfolded into the ten planes and their many subplanes of the universe. Each of these has its own keynotes and subordinate keynote. The union of Svayambhuva-Manu with Vach-sata-rupa, his own daughter (here representing the first manifestation of prakriti), is explained cosmically as the symbol of the root-life, the germ from which spring all the solar systems, worlds, and gods, because here Svaymbhuva-Manu is the cosmic manu; on the smaller scale, he with his consort plays the same role in the planetary chains of the solar system, and on a still smaller scale on any globe thereof.

Vaisvanara (Sanskrit) Vaiśvānara [from viśva all + nara man] Relating to or belonging to all men; omnipresent, universal. In Hindu philosophy, it represents one of the four states of Brahma, and hence is a manifestation of Brahma in and through prakriti. Cosmically it is the astral light, or “in another sense, the living magnetic fire that pervades the manifested solar system. It is the most objective . . . and ever present aspect of the One Life, for it is the Vital Principle” (SD 2:311). In the human being it is represented in the Anu-gita as a sevenfold fire which blazes up in the midst of the five pranas (life-streams) which circulate in the body, and a commentary on this work says that Vaisvanara is often used to denote the self. Blavatsky remarks: “In the astronomical and cosmical key, Vaisvanara is Agni, son of the Sun, or Viswanaras, but in the psycho-metaphysical symbolism it is the Self, in the sense of non-separateness, i.e., both divine and human” (SD 2:568n).

Vastubhuta (Sanskrit) Vastubhūta [from vastu substance, matter + bhūta having become from the verbal root bhū to become] Substantial, material, essential stuff or matter. Most generally, the various vikritis, as the offspring or productions of prakriti, with an eye on the hosts of monads in their peregrinations through the substantial realms. Once these beings have contacted the realms of matter, they may be described as being vastubhuta (imbodying in or working in matter).

Vikara (Sanskrit) Vikāra [from vi change + the verbal root kṛ to act, make] A change of form or nature, an alteration or deviation from any natural state. A change from the naturally quiescent and peaceful condition of the inner being to a worse state, thus signifying deterioration; hence, mental or other perturbation, emotion, or passionate feeling. In the Sankhya philosophy, vikara is a result or evolution of an entity from its source or prakriti. Thus, we have as the originants or sources one or other of the various prakritis, and then the vikara derivative from the former. On a cosmic scale, then, the manifested universe is a vikara in all its quasi-infinity of details from the originant seven or ten cosmic prakritis.

Vikriti: Change; derivative products of Prakriti, as Mahat, Buddhi, mind, the senses and the Tanmatras.

Vishnu Purana (Sanskrit) Viṣṇu Purāṇa One of the most celebrated of the 18 principal Puranas, conforming more than any other to the definition of pancha-lakshana (five distinguishing marks) assigned as being the character of a complete Purana by Amara-Simha, an ancient Sanskrit lexicographer. It consists of six books: the first treats of the creation of the universe from cosmic prakriti, and the peopling of the world by the prajapatis or spiritual ancestors; the second book gives a list of kings with many geographical and astronomical details; the third treats of the Vedas and caste; the fourth continues the chronicle of dynasties; the fifth gives the life of Krishna; and the sixth book describes the dissolution of the world, and the future re-issuing of the world after pralaya.

Vital Principle, Fluid, or Force Synonyms for life or jiva, for in theosophy life is not only a force or principle which is an entity, but actually a fluid — not a mere abstraction signifying haphazard results from natural forces. It is the universal activity of spirit in matter: Purusha-prakriti, consciousness-substance, the First and Second Logos. Cosmically, life is in essence one of the spiritual-substantial aspects of Brahman or paramatman, guided by cosmic intelligence; and this cosmic vital fluid or principle, sometimes called fohat, is the universal source of both energy and matter, the carrier of consciousness.

Vyakta (Sanskrit) Vyakta [from vi-añj to cause to appear, display, manifest, emanate] As an adjective, manifest, visible; hence when mulaprakriti (root-matter) becomes vyakta, it becomes differentiated and conditioned — it emanates from itself the seven prakritis, which in their turn produce the different vikritis. Thus the universe in all its multiform ranges of differentiated hierarchical being is manifested.

  “When Daiviprakriti has reached a certain state or condition of evolutionary manifestation, we may properly speak of it under the Tibetan term Fohat. . . . although Fohat is the energizing power working in and upon manifested Daiviprakriti, or primordial substance, as the rider rides the steed, it is the kosmic Intelligence, or kosmic Monad as Pythagoras would say, working through both Daiviprakriti and its differentiated energy called Fohat, which is the guiding and controlling principle, not only in the Kosmos, but in every one of the subordinate elements and beings of the hosts of multitudes of them infilling the Kosmos. The heart or essence of the sun is Daiviprakriti working as itself, and also in its manifestation called Fohat, but through the Daiviprakriti and the fohatic aspect of it runs the all-permeant and directive Intelligence of the solar divinity. The student should never make the mistake, however, of divorcing this guiding solar Intelligence from its veils or vehicles, one of the highest of which is Daiviprakriti-Fohat” (OG 32-3).

White light is in the physical world resolvable into a spectrum or band of colors, and color is defined as a quality of visual perception depending on the wavelength of light. But according to theosophy we could see no color at all unless we had it in our mind from the first, and thus recognized the color outside because of its identity with what is within us. Still less could we resolve the continuous band into seven colors, as even infants can do. The physical stimuli merely evokes what is already in us, the latter recognizing what is objective outside us, causing a phenomenon of cognition to pass along the plane of the physical senses. This becomes more evident when we remember that color sense is relative, depending largely on contrast. Colors are light or sight in its septenary aspect; and color, sight, and light are used almost interchangeably in speaking of the evolution of the senses and their corresponding planes of prakriti.

World-stuff Primordial substance out of which universes, solar systems, or worlds are developed; mulaprakriti (root-matter). Primordial matter in its first form of condensation, the radiant spiritual essence, the spiritual or ethereal “curds” which later become differentiated into the prakritis.

Yet “in all such numerical divisions the One universal Principle, — although referred to as (the) one, because the Only One — never enters into the calculations. It stands, in its character of the Absolute, the Infinite, and the universal abstraction, entirely by Itself and independent of every other Power whether noumenal or phenomenal” (SD 2:598). Here the cosmic One is intimately intertwined with the universal zero, the last being equivalent to the universal All. Analogies in different systems of thought are numerous; for instance, the cosmic zero corresponds to parabrahman-mulaprakriti, whereas the cosmic One or monad corresponds to Brahman. See also UNITY

Zeus, in the conception of the ancient Greek philosophers who nearly all were initiate-thinkers, was not the highest god. It was because all public mention of the cosmic hierarch was forbidden that Homer omitted to mention this first principle, and even the secondary, the Chaos and Aether of Orpheus and Hesiod, commencing his cosmogony with Night, which Zeus reverences — Night here being equivalent to the Hindu pradhana-prakriti.



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1:According to the status of the soul is the status of the Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis,
2:Prakriti has to reveal itself as shakti of the Purusha. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection,
3:Prakriti is the action of the All-conscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance,
4:Prakriti does not act for itself or by its own motion, but with the Self as lord. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Ego,
5:To lose personality is necessary if we are to gain universality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
6:What is magic to our finite reason is the logic of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
7:Our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
8:To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
9:The highest relation of the Soul to existence is the Purusha's possession of Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Its Liberation,
10:Consciousness has no standing-place if there is none who is conscious. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
11:A free power of self-variation must be natural to a consciousness that is infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
12:Time observation and Time movement are relative, but Time itself is real and eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
13:Prakriti is the power of the All-Soul, the power of the Eternal and Infinite self-moved to action and creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action,
14:All forces are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
15:The witness silence of the Spirit is there in the very grain of all the voices and workings of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
16:Prakriti is the field of law and process, but the soul, the Purusha, is the giver of the sanction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality,
17:The mystery of things is the true truth of things; the intellectual presentation is only truth in representation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
18:The Divine is formless and nameless, but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible names and shapes of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
19:When you feel something within watching all the mental activities but separate from them, just as you can watch things going on outside in the street, then that is the separation of Purusha from mental Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
20:It is the one Infinite that appears to us as the many finite: the creation adds nothing to the Infinite; it remains after creation what it was before. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
21:The Divine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by laws and processes because they are the expression of the truth of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
22:Names and forms are nothing but the manifestations of the power of Prakriti. Whatever names and forms you see are nothing but the manifestations of the power of ChitŚakti. Everything is the power of ChitŚakti-even meditation and he who meditates. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
23:The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
24:The finite is a frontal aspect and a self-determination of the Infinite; no finite can exist in itself and by itself, it exists by the Infinite and because it is of one essence with the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
25:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
26:Nothing changes yet all changes, all her workings and creations would in this play collapse into disintegration and chaos; there would be nothing to hold her disparate movements and creations together. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
27:In its fundamental truth the original status of Time behind all its variations is nothing else than the eternity of the Eternal, just as the fundamental truth of Space, the original sense of its reality, is the infinity of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
28:In your nature there are many obstacles, chiefly a great activity of the outward-going mind and a thick crust of the impure lower Prakriti that covers the heart and the vital being. Quieting of the mind and purification of the nature are what you must have before you can fulfil your aim. Aspire for these two things first; ask for them constantly from above. You will not be able to achieve them by your own unaided effort. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Purity,
29:Purusha and Prakriti :::
   ... On one side he becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he is aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myraid form visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
30:Purusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha. The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Soul and Nature,
31:I am not this, not that, neti, neti :::
   We say then to the mind This is a working of Prakriti, this is neither thyself nor myself; stand back from it. We shall find, if we try, that the mind has this power of detachment and can stand back from the body not only in idea, but in act and as it were physically or rather vitally. This detachment of the mind must be strengthened by a certain attitude of indifference to the things of the body; we must not care essentially about its sleep or its waking, its movement or its rest, its pain or its pleasure, its health or ill-health, its vigour or its fatigue, its comfort or its discomfort, or what it eats or drinks.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from Subjection to the Body, 344,
32:Sri Aurobindo: There is a veil between the Supermind above and the lower Prakriti below - the veil of ingrained formations. This veil may completely withdraw or be partially withdrawn. Thus even if there is some little opening, with the contact of Light from above the lower nature will get slowly changed. Even if the being is not entirely purified, varieties of inspirations and powers may come down from above but this may lead to serious errors. Inspirations from above mixing with the impurities from below get all muddled up and the sadhak takes this for an absolute command. Many a sadhak has thus fallen into danger. Therefore, one must particularly lay stress on the purification of the being. All desires and egoism will have to be banished from the being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Anilbaran Roy Interviews and Conversations,
33:The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent. Always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire. In the conscious individual Prakriti turns back to perceive Purusha, World seeks after Self; God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, 50, [T9],
34: The purpose of creation, is lila. The concept of lila escapes all the traditional difficulties in assigning purpose to the creator. Lila is a purpose-less purpose, a natural outflow, a spontaneous self-manifestation of the Divine. The concept of lila, again, emphasizes the role of delight in creation. The concept of Prakriti and Maya fail to explain the bliss aspect of Divine. If the world is manifestation of the Force of Satcitananda, the deployment of its existence and consciousness, its purpose can be nothing but delight. This is the meaning of delight. Lila, the play, the child's joy, the poet's joy, the actor's joy, the mechanician's joy of the soul of things eternally young, perpetually inexhaustible, creating and recreating Himself in Himself for the sheer bliss of that self-creation, of that self-representation, Himself the play, Himself the player, Himself the playground ~ Sri Aurobindo, Philosophy of Social Development, pp-39-40
35:Sails across the sea of life in the twinkling of an eye.' One attains the vision of God if Mahamaya steps aside from the door. Mahamaya's grace is necessary: hence the worship of Sakti. You see, God is near us, but it is not possible to know Him because Mahamaya stands between. Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita were walking along. Rama walked ahead, Sita in the middle, and Lakshmana last. Lakshmana was only two and a half cubits away from Rama, but he couldn't see Rama because Sita - Mahamaya - was in the way.
"While worshipping God, one should assume a definite attitude. I have three attitudes: the attitude of a child, the attitude or a maidservant, and the attitude of a friend. For a long time I regarded myself as a maidservant and a woman companion of God; at that time I used to wear skirts and ornaments, like a woman. The attitude of a child is very good.
"The attitude of a 'hero' is not good. Some people cherish it. They regard themselves as Purusha and woman as Prakriti; they want to propitiate woman through intercourse with her. But this method often causes disaster. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
36:Ishwara-Shakti is not quite the same as Purusha-Prakriti; for Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other. Ishwara is Purusha who contains Prakriti and rules by the power of the Shakti within him. Shakti is Prakriti ensouled by Purusha and acts by the will of the Ishwara which is her own will and whose presence in her movement she carries always with her. The Purusha-Prakriti realisation is of the first utility to the seeker on the Way of Works; for it is the separation of the conscient being and the Energy and the subjection of the being to the mechanism of the Energy that are the efficient cause of our ignorance and imperfection; by this realisation the being can liberate himself from the mechanical action of the nature and become free and arrive at a first spiritual control over the nature. Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216,
37:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother, - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother, Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,
38:This ego or "I" is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of Nature, a mental form of thought centralisation in the perceiving and discriminating mind, a vital form of the centralisation of feeling and sensation in our parts of life, a form of physical conscious reception centralising substance and function of substance in our bodies. All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. All that we externally and superficiallyare and do is not ego but Nature. An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed. The Sadhaka in his progress towards truth and self-knowledge must come to a point where the soul opens its eyes of vision and recognises this truth of ego and this truth of works. He gives up the idea of a mental, vital, physical, "I" that acts or governs action; he recognises that Prakriti, Force of cosmic nature following her fixed modes, is the one and only worker in him and in all things and creatures.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,
39:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,
40:The sign of the immersion of the embodied soul in Prakriti is the limitation of consciousness to the ego. The vivid stamp of this limited consciousness can be seen in a constant inequality of the mind and heart and a confused conflict and disharmony in their varied reactions to the touches of experience. The human reactions sway perpetually between the dualities created by the soul's subjection to Nature and by its often intense but narrow struggle for mastery and enjoyment, a struggle for the most part ineffective. The soul circles in an unending round of Nature's alluring and distressing opposites, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune, good and evil, sin and virtue, joy and grief, pain and pleasure. It is only when, awaking from its immersion in Prakriti, it perceives its oneness with the One and its oneness with all existences that it can become free from these things and found its right relation to this executive world-Nature. Then it becomes indifferent to her inferior modes, equal-minded to her dualities, capable of mastery and freedom; it is seated above her as the high-throned knower and witness filled with the calm intense unalloyed delight of his own eternal existence. The embodied spirit continues to express its powers in action, but it is no longer involved in ignorance, no longer bound by its works; its actions have no longer a consequence within it, but only a consequence outside in Prakriti. The whole movement of Nature becomes to its experience a rising and falling of waves on the surface that make no difference to its own unfathomable peace, its wide delight, its vast universal equality or its boundless God-existence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
41:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows,
   - some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
42:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows, - some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works,
43:Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge; :::
   The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara ¯, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems Of Yoga, 38,
44:separating from the heart and mind and the benefits of doing so :::
   Therefore the mental Purusha has to separate himself from association and self-identification with this desire-mind. He has to say I am not this thing that struggles and suffers, grieves and rejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffled, is angry and afraid and cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional passions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in the sensational and emotional mind. The mind then draws back from its emotions and becomes with these, as with the bodily movements and experiences, the observer or witness. There is again an inner cleavage. There is this emotional mind in which these moods and passions continue to occur according to the habit of the modes of Nature and there is the observing mind which sees them, studies and understands but is detached from them. It observes them as if in a sort of action and play on a mental stage of personages other than itself, at first with interest and a habit of relapse into identification, then with entire calm and detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but to the pure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at thier unreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is playing and loses himself in the play. Secondly, it becomes aware of itself as master of the sanction who by his withdrawl of sanction can make this play to cease. When the sanction is withdrawn, another significant phenomenon takes place; the emotional mind becomes normally calm and pure and free from these reactions, and even when they come, they no longer rise from within but seem to fall on it as impression from outside to which its fibers are still able to respond; but this habit of reponse dies away and the emotional mind is in time entirely liberated from the passions which it has renounced. Hope and fear, joy and grief, liking and disliking, attraction and repulsion, content and discontent, gladness and depression, horror and wrath and fear and disgust and shame and the passions of love and hatred fall away from the liberated psychic being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Heart and the Mind, 352,
45:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218,
46:The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna. But the executive or mechanical prakriti is of the threefold Guna, Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas, and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these three gunas. And in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, caturvyuha , a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things. The ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold type of active human personality and nature, built out of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament, soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual shakti in which they find their culmination and unity beyond all modes. For the crude external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Sudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive shakti within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life. But they are more or less present in an men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 4:15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality,
47:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,
48:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
   But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
   The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
49:3. Conditions internal and external that are most essential for meditation. There are no essential external conditions, but solitude and seculsion at the time of meditation as well as stillness of the body are helpful, sometimes almost necessary to the beginning. But one should not be bound by external conditions. Once the habit of meditation is formed, it should be made possible to do it in all circumstances, lying, sitting, walking, alone, in company, in silence or in the midst of noise etc.
   The first internal condition necessary is concentration of the will against the obstacles to meditation, i.e. wandering of the mind, forgetfulness, sleep, physical and nervous impatience and restlessness etc. If the difficulty in meditation is that thoughts of all kinds come in, that is not due to hostile forces but to the ordinary nature of the human mind. All sadhaks have this difficulty and with many it lasts for a very long time. There are several was of getting rid of it. One of them is to look at the thoughts and observe what is the nature of the human mind as they show it but not to give any sanction and to let them run down till they come to a standstill - this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in his Rajayoga. Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction - the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this way it usually happens that after the time the mind divides into two, a part which is the mental witness watching and perfectly undisturbed and quiet and a part in which the thoughts cross or wander. Afterwards one can proceed to silence or quiet the Prakriti part also. There is a third, an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence. It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out all mental-vital activities. It is easier to let the Silence descend into you, i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of efforts to pull down the Power or the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. if it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes,
50:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],
51:We have now completed our view of the path of Knowledge and seen to what it leads. First, the end of Yoga of Knowledge is God-possession, it is to possess God and be possessed by him through consciousness, through identification, through reflection of the divine Reality. But not merely in some abstraction away from our present existence, but here also; therefore to possess the Divine in himself, the Divine in the world, the Divine within, the Divine in all things and all beings. It is to possess oneness with God and through that to possess also oneness with the universal, with the cosmos and all existences; therefore to possess the infinite diversity also in the oneness, but on the basis of oneness and not on the basis of division. It is to possess God in his personality and his impersonality; in his purity free from qualities and in his infinite qualities; in time and beyond time; in his action and in his silence; in the finite and in the infinite. It is to possess him not only in pure self, but in all self; not only in self, but in Nature; not only in spirit, but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our life, to be one with all life; for our mind, to be one with the universal mind; for our spirit, to be identified with the universal spirit. It is to merge in him in the absolute and find him in all relations. Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge [511] [T1],
52:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule.It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
   If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.
   In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. His isolation will necessarily give a determination and a form to his outward activities that must be quite other than those of a consciously divine collective action. The inner state, the root of his acts, will be the same; but the acts themselves may well be very different from what they would be on an earth liberated from ignorance. Nevertheless his consciousness and the divine mechanism of his conduct, if such a word can be used of so free a thing, would be such as has been described, free from that subjection to vital impurity and desire and wrong impulse which we call sin, unbound by that rule of prescribed moral formulas which we call virtue, spontaneously sure and pure and perfect in a greater consciousness than the mind's, governed in all its steps by the light and truth of the Spirit. But if a collectivity or group could be formed of those who had reached the supramental perfection, there indeed some divine creation could take shape; a new earth could descend that would be a new heaven, a world of supramental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, 206,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:In the primal state before any manifestation, when there was no motion but perfect balance, this Prakriti was indestructible, because decomposition or death comes from instability or change. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
2:The consciousness of the supreme Purusha remains above, but in the mind there may be a Purusha consciousness which they call the cosmic consciousness - it is wide, all-pervading, one. Outside this goes on the play of Prakriti. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
3:There is a veil between the Supermind above and the lower Prakriti below - the veil of ingrained formations. This veil may completely withdraw or be partially withdrawn. Thus even if there is some little opening, with the contact of Light from above the lower nature will get slowly changed. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
4:All action of Sattva, a modification of Prakriti characterised by light and happiness, is for the soul. When Sattva is free from egoism and illuminated with the pure intelligence of Purusha, it is called the self-centred one, because in that state it becomes independent of all relations. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove
5:Thus to act under the guidance coming from above, this is one side of the sadhana, the dynamic side. The other one is the discrimination between the Purusha and the Prakriti. The Purusha will calmly observe, give sanction, choose, but will realise that all this does not belong to him - all these are outside him. This is the static side of the sadhana. These two aspects constitute the basis of Yoga. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
6:When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive neither creating nor preserving nor destroying-, I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active-creating, preserving, destroying-, I call Him Shakti or Maya or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and the Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. Iit is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:According to the status of the soul is the status of the Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Vijnana or Gnosis,
2:Prakriti has to reveal itself as shakti of the Purusha. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection,
3:Your prakriti is not something you acquire after you are born; it is sealed in the womb, at the time you are conceived. For ~ Om Swami,
4:Siva who is known as Kaalatman, the Soul of Time. Kaala is inscrutable; only Siva is beyond Prakriti, Purusha and Kaala. ~ Ramesh Menon,
5:Prakriti is the action of the All-conscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance,
6:Prakriti does not act for itself or by its own motion, but with the Self as lord. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Ego,
7:To lose personality is necessary if we are to gain universality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
8:What is magic to our finite reason is the logic of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
9:Our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
10:To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
11:The highest relation of the Soul to existence is the Purusha’s possession of Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Soul and Its Liberation,
12:Consciousness has no standing-place if there is none who is conscious. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
13:A free power of self-variation must be natural to a consciousness that is infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
14:Time observation and Time movement are relative, but Time itself is real and eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
15:Prakriti is the power of the All-Soul, the power of the Eternal and Infinite self-moved to action and creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Fullness of Spiritual Action,
16:All forces are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
17:The witness silence of the Spirit is there in the very grain of all the voices and workings of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
18:Prakriti is the field of law and process, but the soul, the Purusha, is the giver of the sanction. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality,
19:God and Goddess. Purusha and Prakriti. Observer and observation. Subject and object. That’s what it is. Not this, not that; this too, that too. That’s who we are. Tat tvam asi. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
20:The mystery of things is the true truth of things; the intellectual presentation is only truth in representation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
21:The Divine is formless and nameless, but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible names and shapes of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
22:In the primal state before any manifestation, when there was no motion but perfect balance, this Prakriti was indestructible, because decomposition or death comes from instability or change. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
23:He who is Brahman is none other than Sakti; He who is Purusha has verily become Prakriti. Water is water whether it moves or is still. A snake is a snake whether it wriggles along or stays still and coiled up. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
24:When you feel something within watching all the mental activities but separate from them, just as you can watch things going on outside in the street, then that is the separation of Purusha from mental Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
25:It is the one Infinite that appears to us as the many finite: the creation adds nothing to the Infinite; it remains after creation what it was before. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
26:The Divine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by laws and processes because they are the expression of the truth of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
27:The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
28:The consciousness of the supreme Purusha remains above, but in the mind there may be a Purusha consciousness which they call the cosmic consciousness - it is wide, all-pervading, one. Outside this goes on the play of Prakriti. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
29:The finite is a frontal aspect and a self-determination of the Infinite; no finite can exist in itself and by itself, it exists by the Infinite and because it is of one essence with the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
30:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
31:Nothing changes yet all changes, all her workings and creations would in this play collapse into disintegration and chaos; there would be nothing to hold her disparate movements and creations together. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
32:There is a veil between the Supermind above and the lower Prakriti below - the veil of ingrained formations. This veil may completely withdraw or be partially withdrawn. Thus even if there is some little opening, with the contact of Light from above the lower nature will get slowly changed. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
33:All action of Sattva, a modification of Prakriti characterised by light and happiness, is for the soul. When Sattva is free from egoism and illuminated with the pure intelligence of Purusha, it is called the self-centred one, because in that state it becomes independent of all relations. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
34:In its fundamental truth the original status of Time behind all its variations is nothing else than the eternity of the Eternal, just as the fundamental truth of Space, the original sense of its reality, is the infinity of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
35:Every event in our life is determined by past actions. So every moment is as it is supposed to be. But it is possible to change one’s fate and fortunes. The dance of Prakriti can change if Purusha intervenes. For that one has to invoke Purusha through acts of determination that demonstrate desire and devotion. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
36:Nature triumphs ultimately. The triumph is impersonal, nonjudgmental. Nature kills everybody, not just the “bad.” To call the goddess “Mother” is to acknowledge only one half of her personality. She is also a “killer.” She is the source of joy and sorrow, of hope and despair, life and death. Nature (prakriti), delusion (maya), energy (shakti)—she is the world we react to. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
37:Thus to act under the guidance coming from above, this is one side of the sadhana, the dynamic side. The other one is the discrimination between the Purusha and the Prakriti. The Purusha will calmly observe, give sanction, choose, but will realise that all this does not belong to him - all these are outside him. This is the static side of the sadhana. These two aspects constitute the basis of Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
38:It is I who instills the seed of all births into the vast womb of nature ( prakriti). Nature in turn gives birth to the infinitely diverse temperaments of all creatures.
“Everything that is born, Arjuna, comes from this subtle union of Spirit and nature. Whatever forms are produced in any of the wombs of the universe, know that My nature (prakriti) is the cosmic mother of all creation, and that I am the seed-giving father. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,
39:In your nature there are many obstacles, chiefly a great activity of the outward-going mind and a thick crust of the impure lower Prakriti that covers the heart and the vital being. Quieting of the mind and purification of the nature are what you must have before you can fulfil your aim. Aspire for these two things first; ask for them constantly from above. You will not be able to achieve them by your own unaided effort. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Purity,
40:The knowers of ancient things call this Purana Brahma Vaivarta because in it Brahman (I Khanda [chapter]) and the Universe (II Khanda) are unfolded by Krishna. The actual structure of the Brahma and the Prakriti khandas, is a further corroboration that in the word ‘Brahma-Vivarta’ what is meant is Brahman and not Brahma. It is the Purana of manifested Brahmin, which seems to be comprehensive of all topics of the Purana. ~ Swami Parmeshwaranand, in Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Puranas, Volume 1, p. 223,
41:Purusha and Prakriti :::
   ... On one side he becomes aware of a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue. On the other side he is aware at the same time of an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myraid form visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
42:Purusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha. The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Soul and Nature,
43:I am not this, not that, neti, neti :::
   We say then to the mind This is a working of Prakriti, this is neither thyself nor myself; stand back from it. We shall find, if we try, that the mind has this power of detachment and can stand back from the body not only in idea, but in act and as it were physically or rather vitally. This detachment of the mind must be strengthened by a certain attitude of indifference to the things of the body; we must not care essentially about its sleep or its waking, its movement or its rest, its pain or its pleasure, its health or ill-health, its vigour or its fatigue, its comfort or its discomfort, or what it eats or drinks.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from Subjection to the Body, 344,
44:are only five mahabhutas – earth, water, fire (which includes heat and light), air and space. The tanmatras of these are smell, taste, colour, form, touch, and sound. The five cognitive sense organs are the ears, the skin, the eyes, the tongue and the nose. The five active senses are the mouth, the hands, the feet, the generative organs, and the anus. The inner organ is comprised of four aspects – manas, buddhi, ahamkara and chitta. Manas doubts, buddhi concludes, ahamkara creates pride, chitta remembers. These twenty-four are aspects of Prakriti, and the twenty-fifth is the Atman, the Soul, which is identical with the Purusha, God. Some of the wise say that Kaala, Time, is God, Ishvara’s, supernatural power that brings fear, samsara, birth and ~ Ramesh Menon,
45:Sri Aurobindo: There is a veil between the Supermind above and the lower Prakriti below - the veil of ingrained formations. This veil may completely withdraw or be partially withdrawn. Thus even if there is some little opening, with the contact of Light from above the lower nature will get slowly changed. Even if the being is not entirely purified, varieties of inspirations and powers may come down from above but this may lead to serious errors. Inspirations from above mixing with the impurities from below get all muddled up and the sadhak takes this for an absolute command. Many a sadhak has thus fallen into danger. Therefore, one must particularly lay stress on the purification of the being. All desires and egoism will have to be banished from the being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Anilbaran Roy Interviews and Conversations,
46:The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent. Always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire. In the conscious individual Prakriti turns back to perceive Purusha, World seeks after Self; God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, 50, [T9],
47:The wise know that living by scriptural injunctions (good deeds, sacrifice, and so forth) will help you reach heaven. But the true yogi knows that even heaven is part of nature (prakriti) and thus is eventually perishable. This yogi therefore transcends all of nature to reach Me, Brahman, the Imperishable Godhead, the Divine Love who lives in your heart.”

But know, Arjuna, that I quickly come to those who offer Me all their actions, set their minds on Me with unswerving devotion, worship Me as their dearest delight, and takeMe as their one and only goal in life. Because they so dearly love Me, I save them from the sorrow of death and endless waves of rebirth.
“It is true that one is where one’s mind is. So fix your mind on Me. Be absorbed in Me alone. Focus your devotion on Me. Still yourself in Me. Without a doubt you will then come and live within Me. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,
48:Only humans can conceptualise the idea of infinity. Only humans can communicate such an abstract idea using various forms such as words and symbols. This is because humans are blessed with imagination. It is the one thing that separates us humans from animals. Humans can imagine because we have a highly developed brain, the cerebrum, with an especially large frontal lobe. This anatomical difference separates us from the rest of nature. So much so that in Samkhya, the Indian school of metaphysics, humanity or Purusha is seen as being separate from nature or Prakriti. This difference is seen as fundamental in the study of metaphysics. Because humans can imagine, the notion of a reality beyond the senses, a reality beyond nature, has come into being. Without the cerebrum there would be no imagination, and hence no notion of God! In nature, all things have form. Each of these ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
49:Your body is made of two things: your will to do, your ego, and the physical form you have received from the prakriti, the nature. If the will to do is present within you, then the nature will go on providing you with an appropriate body. This is how you have been born again and again. Sometimes you were an animal, sometimes a bird, a tree some other time, and sometimes a man. Whatsoever you wished to achieve, it has happened. Your desire to achieve becomes the actuality; thoughts become real things. So beware when you desire, because all desires are fulfilled – sooner or later.
If you are of the habit of watching the birds fly in the sky and wonder, ”How free the birds are, I wish I were a bird.” it will not be long before you become a bird. You see dogs mating, and if that moment a thought arises in you, ”What freedom! What happiness!” – soon you will become a dog. Whatever desire you keep within you, it becomes a seed. ~ Osho,
50: The purpose of creation, is lila. The concept of lila escapes all the traditional difficulties in assigning purpose to the creator. Lila is a purpose-less purpose, a natural outflow, a spontaneous self-manifestation of the Divine. The concept of lila, again, emphasizes the role of delight in creation. The concept of Prakriti and Maya fail to explain the bliss aspect of Divine. If the world is manifestation of the Force of Satcitananda, the deployment of its existence and consciousness, its purpose can be nothing but delight. This is the meaning of delight. Lila, the play, the child’s joy, the poet’s joy, the actor’s joy, the mechanician’s joy of the soul of things eternally young, perpetually inexhaustible, creating and recreating Himself in Himself for the sheer bliss of that self-creation, of that self-representation, Himself the play, Himself the player, Himself the playground ~ Sri Aurobindo, Philosophy of Social Development, pp-39-40,
51:Prakriti is said to be composed of three forces, sattwa, rajas and tamas, which are known collectively as the three gunas. These gunas-whose individual characteristics we shall describe in a moment-pass through phases of equilibrium and phases of imbalance; the nature of their relationship to each other is such that it is subject to perpetual change. As long as the gunas maintain their equilibrium, Prakriti remains undifferentiated and the universe exists only in its potential state. As soon as the balance is disturbed, a re-creation of the universe begins. The gunas enter into an enormous variety of combinations-all of them irregular, with one or the other guna predominating over the rest. Hence we have the variety of physical and psychic phenomena which make up our apparent world. Such a world continues to multiply and vary its forms until the gunas find a temporary equilibrium once more, and a new phase of undifferentiated potentiality begins. ~ Prabhavananda,
52:(It is suggested that while the Vedic era saw only the worship of a formless and imageless God, the conduct of rituals and the propitiation of the river and mountain and tree gods of local tribes, all of which were ‘portable’ and not confined to a fixed spot, it was the arrival of the Greeks under Alexander in the fourth century BCE that brought into India the idea of permanent temples enshrining stone images of heroes and gods.) Again, while the Hinduism of the Vedas emerged from mantras and rituals, including elaborate sacrifices, the Puranas promoted their values entirely on the basis of myths and stories. By developing the concept of the saguna Brahman to go with the exalted idea of the nirguna Brahman, the Puranic faith integrated the Vedic religion into the daily worship of ordinary people. Using the seductive power of maya (illusion), the nirguna Brahman of the Vedas took the form of saguna Brahman or Ishvara, the creator of prakriti, the natural world and the God or Bhagavan of all human beings. ~ Shashi Tharoor,
53:Sails across the sea of life in the twinkling of an eye.' One attains the vision of God if Mahamaya steps aside from the door. Mahamaya's grace is necessary: hence the worship of Sakti. You see, God is near us, but it is not possible to know Him because Mahamaya stands between. Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita were walking along. Rama walked ahead, Sita in the middle, and Lakshmana last. Lakshmana was only two and a half cubits away from Rama, but he couldn't see Rama because Sita - Mahamaya - was in the way.
"While worshipping God, one should assume a definite attitude. I have three attitudes: the attitude of a child, the attitude or a maidservant, and the attitude of a friend. For a long time I regarded myself as a maidservant and a woman companion of God; at that time I used to wear skirts and ornaments, like a woman. The attitude of a child is very good.
"The attitude of a 'hero' is not good. Some people cherish it. They regard themselves as Purusha and woman as Prakriti; they want to propitiate woman through intercourse with her. But this method often causes disaster. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
54:Ishwara-Shakti is not quite the same as Purusha-Prakriti; for Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other. Ishwara is Purusha who contains Prakriti and rules by the power of the Shakti within him. Shakti is Prakriti ensouled by Purusha and acts by the will of the Ishwara which is her own will and whose presence in her movement she carries always with her. The Purusha-Prakriti realisation is of the first utility to the seeker on the Way of Works; for it is the separation of the conscient being and the Energy and the subjection of the being to the mechanism of the Energy that are the efficient cause of our ignorance and imperfection; by this realisation the being can liberate himself from the mechanical action of the nature and become free and arrive at a first spiritual control over the nature. Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216,
55:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother, - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother, Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,
56:This ego or "I" is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of Nature, a mental form of thought centralisation in the perceiving and discriminating mind, a vital form of the centralisation of feeling and sensation in our parts of life, a form of physical conscious reception centralising substance and function of substance in our bodies. All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. All that we externally and superficiallyare and do is not ego but Nature. An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed. The Sadhaka in his progress towards truth and self-knowledge must come to a point where the soul opens its eyes of vision and recognises this truth of ego and this truth of works. He gives up the idea of a mental, vital, physical, "I" that acts or governs action; he recognises that Prakriti, Force of cosmic nature following her fixed modes, is the one and only worker in him and in all things and creatures.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,
57:The thought of the Gita is not pure Monism although it sees in one unchanging, pure, eternal Self the foundation of all cosmic existence, nor Mayavada although it speaks of the Maya of the three modes of Prakriti omnipresent in the created world; nor is it qualified Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the Jiva and lays most stress on dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna, who is the Avatara of Vishnu according to the Puranas, as the supreme Deity and allows no essential difference nor any actual superiority of the status of the indefinable relationless Brahman over that of this Lord of beings who is the Master of the universe and the Friend of all creatures. Like the earlier spiritual synthesis of the Upanishads this later synthesis at once spiritual and intellectual avoids naturally every such rigid determination as would injure its universal comprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the opposite to that of the polemist commentators who found this Scripture established as one of the three highest Vedantic authorities and attempted to turn it into a weapon of offence and defence against other schools and systems. The Gita is not a weapon for dialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of spiritual truth and experience and the view it gives us embraces all the provinces of that supreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our vision. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
58:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,
59:The sign of the immersion of the embodied soul in Prakriti is the limitation of consciousness to the ego. The vivid stamp of this limited consciousness can be seen in a constant inequality of the mind and heart and a confused conflict and disharmony in their varied reactions to the touches of experience. The human reactions sway perpetually between the dualities created by the soul's subjection to Nature and by its often intense but narrow struggle for mastery and enjoyment, a struggle for the most part ineffective. The soul circles in an unending round of Nature's alluring and distressing opposites, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune, good and evil, sin and virtue, joy and grief, pain and pleasure. It is only when, awaking from its immersion in Prakriti, it perceives its oneness with the One and its oneness with all existences that it can become free from these things and found its right relation to this executive world-Nature. Then it becomes indifferent to her inferior modes, equal-minded to her dualities, capable of mastery and freedom; it is seated above her as the high-throned knower and witness filled with the calm intense unalloyed delight of his own eternal existence. The embodied spirit continues to express its powers in action, but it is no longer involved in ignorance, no longer bound by its works; its actions have no longer a consequence within it, but only a consequence outside in Prakriti. The whole movement of Nature becomes to its experience a rising and falling of waves on the surface that make no difference to its own unfathomable peace, its wide delight, its vast universal equality or its boundless God-existence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
60:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows,
   - some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
61:A distinction has to be firmly seized in our consciousness, the capital distinction between mechanical Nature and the free Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or single luminous divine Will and the many executive modes and forces of the universe. Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance, - is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows, - some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge. This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Surrender in Works,
62:Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge; :::
   The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara ¯, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems Of Yoga, 38,
63:separating from the heart and mind and the benefits of doing so :::
   Therefore the mental Purusha has to separate himself from association and self-identification with this desire-mind. He has to say I am not this thing that struggles and suffers, grieves and rejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffled, is angry and afraid and cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional passions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in the sensational and emotional mind. The mind then draws back from its emotions and becomes with these, as with the bodily movements and experiences, the observer or witness. There is again an inner cleavage. There is this emotional mind in which these moods and passions continue to occur according to the habit of the modes of Nature and there is the observing mind which sees them, studies and understands but is detached from them. It observes them as if in a sort of action and play on a mental stage of personages other than itself, at first with interest and a habit of relapse into identification, then with entire calm and detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but to the pure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at thier unreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is playing and loses himself in the play. Secondly, it becomes aware of itself as master of the sanction who by his withdrawl of sanction can make this play to cease. When the sanction is withdrawn, another significant phenomenon takes place; the emotional mind becomes normally calm and pure and free from these reactions, and even when they come, they no longer rise from within but seem to fall on it as impression from outside to which its fibers are still able to respond; but this habit of reponse dies away and the emotional mind is in time entirely liberated from the passions which it has renounced. Hope and fear, joy and grief, liking and disliking, attraction and repulsion, content and discontent, gladness and depression, horror and wrath and fear and disgust and shame and the passions of love and hatred fall away from the liberated psychic being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Release from the Heart and the Mind, 352,
64:If Samkhya-Yoga philosophy does not explain the reason and origin of the strange partnership between the spirit and experience, at least tries to explain the nature of their association, to define the character of their mutual relations. These are not real relationships, in the true sense of the word, such as exist for example between external objects and perceptions. The true relations imply, in effect, change and plurality, however, here we have some rules essentially opposed to the nature of spirit.
“States of consciousness” are only products of prakriti and can have no kind of relation with Spirit the latter, by its very essence, being above all experience. However and for SamPhya and Yoga this is the key to the paradoxical situation the most subtle, most transparent part of mental life, that is, intelligence (buddhi) in its mode of pure luminosity (sattva), has a specific quality that of reflecting Spirit. Comprehension of the external world is possible only by virtue of this reflection of purusha in intelligence. But the Self is not corrupted by this reflection and does not lose its ontological modalities (impassibility, eternity, etc.). The Yoga-sutras (II, 20) say in substance: seeing (drashtri; i.e., purusha) is absolute consciousness (“sight par excellence”) and, while remaining pure, it knows cognitions (it “looks at the ideas that are presented to it”). Vyasa interprets: Spirit is reflected in intelligence (buddhi), but is neither like it nor different from it. It is not like intelligence because intelligence is modified by knowledge of objects, which knowledge is ever-changing whereas purusha commands uninterrupted knowledge, in some sort it is knowledge. On the other hand, purusha is not completely different from buddhi, for, although it is pure, it knows knowledge. Patanjali employs a different image to define the relationship between Spirit and intelligence: just as a flower is reflected in a crystal, intelligence reflects purusha. But only ignorance can attribute to the crystal the qualities of the flower (form, dimensions, colors). When the object (the flower) moves, its image moves in the crystal, though the latter remains motionless. It is an illusion to believe that Spirit is dynamic because mental experience is so. In reality, there is here only an illusory relation (upadhi) owing to a “sympathetic correspondence” (yogyata) between the Self and intelligence. ~ Mircea Eliade,
65:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218,
66:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,
67:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
   But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
   The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
68:3. Conditions internal and external that are most essential for meditation. There are no essential external conditions, but solitude and seculsion at the time of meditation as well as stillness of the body are helpful, sometimes almost necessary to the beginning. But one should not be bound by external conditions. Once the habit of meditation is formed, it should be made possible to do it in all circumstances, lying, sitting, walking, alone, in company, in silence or in the midst of noise etc.
   The first internal condition necessary is concentration of the will against the obstacles to meditation, i.e. wandering of the mind, forgetfulness, sleep, physical and nervous impatience and restlessness etc. If the difficulty in meditation is that thoughts of all kinds come in, that is not due to hostile forces but to the ordinary nature of the human mind. All sadhaks have this difficulty and with many it lasts for a very long time. There are several was of getting rid of it. One of them is to look at the thoughts and observe what is the nature of the human mind as they show it but not to give any sanction and to let them run down till they come to a standstill - this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in his Rajayoga. Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction - the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this way it usually happens that after the time the mind divides into two, a part which is the mental witness watching and perfectly undisturbed and quiet and a part in which the thoughts cross or wander. Afterwards one can proceed to silence or quiet the Prakriti part also. There is a third, an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence. It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out all mental-vital activities. It is easier to let the Silence descend into you, i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of efforts to pull down the Power or the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. if it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes,
69:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],
70:We have now completed our view of the path of Knowledge and seen to what it leads. First, the end of Yoga of Knowledge is God-possession, it is to possess God and be possessed by him through consciousness, through identification, through reflection of the divine Reality. But not merely in some abstraction away from our present existence, but here also; therefore to possess the Divine in himself, the Divine in the world, the Divine within, the Divine in all things and all beings. It is to possess oneness with God and through that to possess also oneness with the universal, with the cosmos and all existences; therefore to possess the infinite diversity also in the oneness, but on the basis of oneness and not on the basis of division. It is to possess God in his personality and his impersonality; in his purity free from qualities and in his infinite qualities; in time and beyond time; in his action and in his silence; in the finite and in the infinite. It is to possess him not only in pure self, but in all self; not only in self, but in Nature; not only in spirit, but in supermind, mind, life and body; to possess him with the spirit, with the mind, with the vital and the physical consciousness; and it is again for all these to be possessed by him, so that our whole being is one with him, full of him, governed and driven by him. It is, since God is oneness, for our physical consciousness to be one with the soul and the nature of the material universe; for our life, to be one with all life; for our mind, to be one with the universal mind; for our spirit, to be identified with the universal spirit. It is to merge in him in the absolute and find him in all relations. Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge [511] [T1], #index,
71:Quando Shiva e Shakti se unem no sahasrara, a pessoa experimenta o samadhi, a iluminação ocorre no cérebro e as áreas silenciosas começam a funcionar. Shiva e Shakti permanecem unidos por algum tempo, e durante este período há uma perda total da consciência, pertencente um a outro. Ao mesmo tempo um bindu desenvolve. Bindu significa um ponto, uma gota, e bindu é o substrato de todo o cosmos. Dentro do bindu está a sede da inteligência humana e a sede de toda a criação. Em seguida, bindu se divide em dois, e Shiva e Shakti manifestam-se novamente em dualidade. Quando a ascensão aconteceu, ela foi somente a subida de shakti, mas agora quando a descida acontece, Shiva e Shakti, ambos, descem para os planos grosseiros e há novamente o conhecimento da dualidade. Depois da união total há uma espécie de retorno pelo mesmo caminho da ascensão. A consciência bruta que se tornou refinada, novamente torna-se embrutecida. Este é o conceito da encarnação divina ou avatar.
Quando alguém atinge o mais elevado pináculo de samadhi, purusha e prakriti, ou Shiva e Shakti estão em total união e somente advaita existe, a experiência não dual. Ao mesmo temo, quando não há sujeito/objeto mais distinto, é muito difícil para alguém diferenciar. Se ele está falando com um homem ou com uma mulher, ele não sabe, ele não percebe a diferença. Ele pode até mesmo ser associado com pessoas espirituais ou divinas sem estar ciente disto, porque neste momento, sua consciência está reduzida ao nível da inocência de um bebê. Assim, no estado de samadhi, você é um bebê. Um bebê não pode falar da diferença entre um homem e uma mulher porque ele não tem distinção física ou sexual. Ele não pode distinguir um estudioso de um idiota, ele não pode nem mesmo ver qualquer a diferença entre uma serpente e uma corda. Ele pode segurar uma cobra como segura uma cobra. Isso só acontece quando a união está acontecendo.
Quando Shiva e Shakti descem para os planos grosseiros, que é o mooladhara chakra, eles se separam e vivem como duas entidades. Há dualidade no mooladhara chakra, há dualidade na mente e sentidos e no mundo de nomes e formas, mas não há dualidade no samadhi. Não há nenhuma vidência ou experiência no estado de samadhi. Não há ninguém para dizer como o samadhi porque ele é uma experiência não-dual.
É muito difícil entender por que Shiva e Shakti, ambos, descem para os planos brutos após terem atingindo a mais elevada união. Qual é o objetivo da destruição do mundo e a criação novamente? Qual é o objetivo de transcendência da consciência se você tem de voltar para ele novamente? Por que se preocupar em despertar Kundalini e uni-la com Shiva no sahasrara se você tem de voltar para o mooladhara novamente? Isto é algo muito misterioso e podemos perguntar, "Por despertar Kundalini absolutamente?" Por que construir uma mansão se você sabe que terá de pô-la abaixo quando ela estiver concluída? Na verdade, criamos um monte de coisas que serão destruídas. Então, porque fazê-lo absolutamente? Fazemos muita sadhana para transcender os chakras e ascender da terra para o céu. Então, quando chegamos ao paraíso e nos tornamos um com a grande realidade, de repente decidimos voltar para baixo. E não só, nós trazemos a grande unidade conosco. Seria mais fácil entender se Shakti voltasse sozinha e Shiva permanecesse no céu. Talvez, quando Shakti está prestes a sair, Shiva diga: "Espere, estou indo com você."
Quando Shiva e Shakti descem aos níveis mais grosseiros da consciência, há a dualidade novamente. Isso é porque o homem auto-realizado é capaz de compreender a dor e todos os assuntos da vida mundana. Ele compreende todo o drama da dualidade, multiplicidade e diversidade. Às vezes nós, simples mortais, estamos em um dilema para compreender como este homem, como a mais elevada realização, é capaz de lidar com as dualidades sem esperanças da vida. ~ Satyananda Saraswati,
72:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule.It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
   If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.
   In the actual state of humanity, it is the individual who must climb to this height as a pioneer and precursor. His isolation will necessarily give a determination and a form to his outward activities that must be quite other than those of a consciously divine collective action. The inner state, the root of his acts, will be the same; but the acts themselves may well be very different from what they would be on an earth liberated from ignorance. Nevertheless his consciousness and the divine mechanism of his conduct, if such a word can be used of so free a thing, would be such as has been described, free from that subjection to vital impurity and desire and wrong impulse which we call sin, unbound by that rule of prescribed moral formulas which we call virtue, spontaneously sure and pure and perfect in a greater consciousness than the mind's, governed in all its steps by the light and truth of the Spirit. But if a collectivity or group could be formed of those who had reached the supramental perfection, there indeed some divine creation could take shape; a new earth could descend that would be a new heaven, a world of supramental light could be created here amidst the receding darkness of this terrestrial ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, 206,

IN CHAPTERS [300/367]



  188 Integral Yoga
   34 Yoga
   7 Hinduism
   2 Theosophy
   2 Occultism


  309 Sri Aurobindo
   29 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   21 Sri Ramakrishna
   15 A B Purani
   10 The Mother
   6 Swami Krishnananda
   5 Vyasa
   5 Swami Vivekananda
   4 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   4 Satprem
   4 George Van Vrekhem
   2 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
   2 Patanjali
   2 Mahendranath Gupta
   2 Alice Bailey


   90 Record of Yoga
   66 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   23 The Life Divine
   20 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   19 Essays On The Gita
   15 Letters On Yoga II
   15 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   15 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   14 Letters On Yoga I
   11 Letters On Yoga IV
   7 Isha Upanishad
   7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   6 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   6 Letters On Yoga III
   5 Vishnu Purana
   5 Talks
   5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   4 The Secret Doctrine
   4 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   4 Preparing for the Miraculous
   3 Questions And Answers 1954
   3 Essays Divine And Human
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   2 Vedic and Philological Studies
   2 Raja-Yoga
   2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
   2 Letters On Poetry And Art
   2 Kena and Other Upanishads
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
   2 Amrita Gita
   2 Agenda Vol 08


00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We have, in modern times, a movement towards a more conscious and courageous, knowledge of things that were taboo to puritan ages. Not to shut one's eyes to the lower, darker and hidden strands of our nature, but to bring them out into the light of day and to face them is the best way of dealing with such elements, which otherwise, if they are repressed, exert an unhealthy influence on the mind and nature. The Upanishadic view runs on the same lines, but, with the unveiling and the natural and not merely naturalisticdelineation of these under-worlds (concerning sex and food), it endows them with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual whole; and man is taught to consider and to mould all his movementsof soul and mind and bodyin the light and rhythm of that integral Reality.11
   The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, fundamental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic movement, conformity to which brings to the thrice-bound human being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two elements or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering movement of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the former and the fulfilment of the latter. The Gita elaborates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the gods and the gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, for its own sake, for an egocentric satisfaction; all, even movements relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   The whole symbolic world is represented in the temple garden — the Trinity of the Nature Mother (Kali), the Absolute (Siva), and Love (Radhakanta), the Arch spanning heaven and earth. The terrific Goddess of the Tantra, the soul-enthralling Flute-Player of the Bhagavata, and the Self-absorbed Absolute of the Vedas live together, creating the greatest synthesis of religions. All aspects of Reality are represented there. But of this divine household, Kali is the pivot, the sovereign Mistress. She is Prakriti, the Procreatrix, Nature, the Destroyer, the Creator. Nay, She is something greater and deeper still for those who have eyes to see. She is the Universal Mother, "my Mother" as Ramakrishna would say, the All-powerful, who reveals Herself to Her children under different aspects and Divine Incarnations, the Visible God, who leads the elect to the Invisible Reality; and if it so pleases Her, She takes away the last trace of ego from created beings and merges it in the consciousness of the Absolute, the undifferentiated God. Through Her grace "the finite ego loses itself in the illimitable Ego — Atman — Brahman". (Romain Holland, Prophets of the New India, p. 11.)
   Rani Rasmani spent a fortune for the construction of the temple garden and another fortune for its dedication ceremony, which took place on May 31, 1855.
  --
   "When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive — neither creating nor preserving nor destroying —, I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active — creating, preserving, and destroying —, I call Him Sakti or Maya or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and the Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. It is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one."
   After the departure of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna remained for six months in a state of absolute identity with Brahman. "For six months at a stretch", he said, "I remained in that state from which ordinary men can never return; generally the body falls off, after three weeks, like a sere leaf. I was not conscious of day and night. Flies would enter my mouth and nostrils just as they do a dead body's, but I did not feel them. My hair became matted with dust."

0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of
  Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme.

0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If, however, we leave aside, here also, the actual methods and practices and seek for the central principle, we find, first, that Tantra expressly differentiates itself from the Vedic methods of Yoga. In a sense, all the schools we have hitherto examined are Vedantic in their principle; their force is in knowledge, their method is knowledge, though it is not always discernment by the intellect, but may be, instead, the knowledge of the heart expressed in love and faith or a knowledge in the will working out through action. In all of them the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the
  Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its Tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline, - mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is the general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of formulae and occult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention.
  We have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the worship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective force for all attainment. We get the other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search after the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed
  44

01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the psychic being comes forward and takes possession of the external being, begins to initiate and influence the movements of the mind and life and body and gradually free them from the ordinary round of ignorant nature. The awakening of the psychic being means, as I have said, not only a deepening and heightening of the consciousness and its release from the obscurity and limitation of the inferior Prakriti, confined to the lower threefold status, into what is behind and beyond; it means also a return of the deeper and higher consciousness upon the lower hemisphere and a consequent purification and illumination and regeneration of the latter. Finally, when the psychic being is in full self-possession and power, it can be the vehicle of the direct supramental consciousness which will then be able to act freely and absolutely for the entire transformation of the external nature, its transfiguration into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness in a word, its divinisation.
   This then is the supreme secret, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary human nature : first of all, its psychicisation, that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and work and achieve.

01.04 - Sri Aurobindos Gita, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Supreme Spirit, Purushottama, who holds in himself the dual reality of Brahman and the world, is the master of action who acts but in actionlessness, the Lord in whom and through whom the universes and their creatures live and move and have their being. Karmayoga is union in mind and soul and body with the Lord of action in the execution of his cosmic purpose. And this union is effected through a transformation of the human nature, through the revelation of the Divine Prakriti and its descent upon and possession of the inferior human vehicle.
   Arrived so far, we now find, if we look back, a change in the whole perspective. Karma and even Karmayoga, which hitherto seemed to be the pivot of the Gita's teaching, retire somewhat into the background and present a diminished stature and value. The centre of gravity has shifted to the conception of the Divine Nature, to the Lord's own status, to the consciousness above the three Gunas, to absolute consecration of each limb of man's humanity to the Supreme Purusha for his descent and incarnation and play in and upon this human world.

0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The relationship between Purusha and Prakriti.
  You have only to read what Sri Aurobindo has written on

01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Nicholas Berdyaev is an ardent worker, as a Russian is naturally expected to be, in the cause of the spiritual rehabilitation of mankind. He is a Christian, a neo-Christian: some of his conclusions are old-world truths and bear repetition and insistence; others are of a more limited, conditional and even doubtful nature. His conception of the value of human person, the dignity and the high reality he gives to it, can never be too welcome in a world where the individual seems to have gone the way of vanished empires and kings and princes. But even more important and interesting is the view he underlines that the true person is a spiritual being, that is to say, it is quite other than the empirical ego that man normally is"not this that one worships" as the Upanishads too declare. Further, in his spiritual being man, the individual, is not simply a portion or a fraction; he is, on the contrary, an integer, a complete whole, a creative focus; the true individual is a microcosm yet holding in it and imaging the macrocosm. Only perhaps greater stress is laid upon the aspect of creativity or activism. An Eastern sage, a Vedantin, would look for the true spiritual reality behind the flux of forces: Prakriti or Energy is only the executive will of the Purusha, the Conscious Being. The personality in Nature is a formulation and emanation of the transcendent impersonality.
   There is another aspect of personality as viewed by Berdyaev which involves a bias of the more orthodox Christian faith: the Christ is inseparable from the Cross. So he says: "There is no such thing as personality if there is no capacity for suffering. Suffering is inherent in God too, if he is a personality, and not merely an abstract idea. God shares in the sufferings of men. He yearns for responsive love. There are divine as well as human passions and therefore divine or creative personality must always suffer to the end of time. A condition of anguish and distress is inherent in it." The view is logically enforced upon the Christian, it is said, if he is to accept incarnation, God becoming flesh. Flesh cannot but be weak. This very weakness, so human, is and must be specially characteristic of God also, if he is one with man and his lover and saviour.

0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You know, I can say one thing about this. Theres a type of woman I have met more or less periodically throughout my life. These beings are under the influence, or are incarnations of, or in any case are responsive to forces which Theon called passivenot exactly feminine forces, but on the Prakriti2 side of the universe: the dark Prakriti side (there is an active dark side, the asuric forces, and a passive dark side). And these are terrible beings, terrible! They have wreaked havoc in life. They represent one of the creations biggest difficulties. And they are attracted to me! Mon petit, they adore me, they detest me, they would like to destroy meand individually they CANNOT do without me! They come to me like like fireflies to light. And they hate me! They would like to crush me. Thats how it is.
   I have met five women like that, the last two here (they were the most terrible). Its a phenomenon of hate and rage mixed with loves greatest power of attractionno sweetness, of course, no tenderness, nothing like that but NEED, loves greatest power of attraction, mixed with hate. And they cling, you know, and then what fun!
  --
   Prakriti: Nature or the executive force, as opposed to Purusha, the conscious Soul which sees, knows and creates through its vision. These are the two principles, feminine and masculine, of the universe.
   See Agenda of March 26, 1959 (Vol. I, p. 288): the Titan sent especially to attack Mother's body, and who uses the people around her for this purpose.

0 1965-06-26, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its Purusha, in opposition to Prakriti, Nature.
   But you say that C.S. doesnt want this Spirit?

0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And so the conclusion. Ive always heard it said (I dont know if its true) that men think in a certain way and women in another. On an external level, the difference is not visible, but the attitude the mental attitudeis perhaps different. The mental attitude on the Prakriti side is always action, always action; the mental attitude on the Purusha3 side is conception: conception, overall vision, and also observation, as though it observed what the Prakriti had done and saw how it was done. Now I understand that. Thats how it is. Naturally, no man (here on earth) is exclusively masculine and no woman is exclusively feminine, because it has all been mixed together again and again. Similarly, I dont think any one race is absolutely pure: all that is over, its been mingled together (it is another way to re-create Oneness). But there have been TENDENCIES; Its like that note about Israelites and Muslims, its just a manner of speaking; if I were told, This is what you said, I would reply, Yes, I said that, but I can also say something else and many other things! Its a way of selecting certain things and bringing them to the fore with an action in view (its always with an action in view). But for the moment, everything is like that, everywhere mixed and mingled together with a view to general unificationno one nationality is pure and separate from the others, that no longer exists. But to a certain vision, each thing has its essential role, its raison dtre, its place in universal history. Its like that very strong impression that the Chinese are lunar, that when the moon grew cold, some beings managed to come to the earth, and those beings are at the origin of the Chinese nation; but now there only remains a tracea trace which is the memory of that distinctiveness. And its everywhere the same thing: if you look at the individuals of every nation, you find in every nation that everything is there, but with the memory the memory of a specificness which has been its raison dtre in the great terrestrial unfolding.
   (Mother goes into contemplation)
  --
   Prakriti-Purusha: the two eternal principles, feminine and masculine, which can be translated as the Becoming and the Being, Nature and Soul, Force and Consciousness....
   ***

0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   That may be what the sages of old meant when they spoke of handing the power of Nature or the power of the Prakriti over to the Purushahanding it from the Prakriti over to the Purusha. Perhaps it was their way of expressing the same thing.
   ***

02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yoga does not go beyond the spiritual mind - people feel at the top of the head the joining with the Brahman, but they are not aware of a consciousness above the head. In the same way in the ordinary Yoga one feels the ascent of the awakened inner consciousness (Kundalini) to the brahmarandhra where the Prakriti joins the Brahman-consciousness, but they do not feel the descent. Some may have had these things, but I don't know that they understood their nature, principle or place in a complete sadhana. At least I never heard of these things from others before
  I found them out in my own experience. The reason is that the old Yogins when they went above the spiritual mind passed into samadhi, which means that they did not attempt to be conscious in these higher planes - their aim being to pass away into the

03.13 - Dynamic Fatalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In a higher sense, from a transcendental standpoint, however, this too is only an appearance. In reality man neither helps nor hinders Prakriti. For in that sphere the two are not separate entities. What is viewed as the helping hand of man is really Nature helping herself: man is the conscious movement of Nature. In that transcendent status the past and the future are rolled together in the eternal present and all exist there as an accomplished fact: there is nothing there to be worked out and achieved. But lower down there is a play of forces, of conflicting possibilities and the resultant is a balance of these divergent lines. When one identifies oneself with the higher static consciousness one finds nothing to be done, all is realised the eternal play of the eternal child in the eternal garden.2 But when one lives in the Kurukshetra of forces, one cannot throwaway one's Gandiva and say, I will not fight.
   Sri Aurobindo: The Mother

03.14 - Mater Dolorosa, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The whole question then is thishow far has this Higher Nature been a reality with us, to what extent do we live and move and have our being in it. It is when the normal existence, our body, our life and our mentality have all adopted and absorbed the substance of the Higher Prakriti and become it, when all the modes of Inferior Prakriti have been discarded and annihilated, or rather, have been purified and made to grow into the modes of the Higher Prakriti, that our terrestrial life can become a thing of absolute beauty and perfect perfection.
   If, on the contrary, any part of us belongs to the Inferior Nature, even if the larger part dwells in some higher status of Nature, even then we are not immune to the attacks that come from the inferior Nature. Those whom we usually call pious or virtuous or honest have still a good part of them imbedded in the Lower Nature, in various degrees they are yet its vassals; they owe allegiance to the three gunas, be it even to sattwasattwa is also a movement in Inferior Nature; they are not free. Has not Sri Krishna said: Traigunyaviayved nistraigunyo bhavrjuna1? only thing we must remember is that freedom from the gunas does not necessarily mean an absolute cessation of the play of Prakriti. Being in the gunas we must know how to purify and change them, transmute them into the higher and divine potentials.
   This is a counsel of perfection, one would say. But there is no other way out. If humanity is to be saved, if it is at all to progress, it can be only in this direction. Buddha's was no less a counsel of perfection. He saw the misery of man, the three great maladies inherent in life and his supreme compassion led him to the discovery of a remedy, a radical remedy,indeed it could remove the malady altogether, for it removed the patient also. What we propose is, in this sense, something less drastic. Ours is not a path of escape, although that too needs heroism, but of battle and conquest and lordship.

05.03 - Bypaths of Souls Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There is also the other question asked very often whether men and women always follow different lines of growth or whether there may be intermixture of the lines. Although the soul is sexless, still it may be said that on the whole there are these two lines, masculine and feminine; and generally a soul follows the same line in its incarnations. The soul difference is not in the sex as we know it; but there is a disposition and character that mark the difference and each type, masculine or feminine, is that because of some special role to fulfil, a particular kind of work to be done in a particular way. The difference is difficult to define exactly; but one may say, in the language of the mystics, that it "is the difference between the left hand and the right hand. The mystics refer to the two sides of consciousness, that of light and that of force (chit-tapas), that is to say, knowledge and power. It is not that the two are quite separate entities, they are together and grow together; but in actuality one aspect is more in front than the other. The masculine aspect is often termed as the right hand and the feminine as the left hand of the conscious being. And in a general way man represents the knowledge aspect the conceptual dynamism and woman represents the executive dynamism. This definition however should not be taken absolutely or rigidly. So it can be said that a woman generally remains a woman in all her births and man like-wise remains a man. Here too, although there may not be a central metamorphosis, there may be a partial change: that is to say a part of a mantoo womanish, so to saymay enter a woman and live and fulfil itself or exhaust there; and the masculine part of a woman also can identify itself with its type and pattern in a man. The difference, however, between Purusha and Prakriti, philosophically, seems to be very definite and clear; but in actuality, when they take form and embodiment, it is not easy to define the principles or qualities that mark out the two. At the source when the difference starts, it is a matter of stress and temper and not any so-called division of labour as human mind ordinarily understands it.
   The soul in its inner consciousness knows all its evolutionary formations, remembers those of the past and foresees those of the future, when needed, and even determines them essentially. The mind ruling one incarnation cannot recall other incarnations, for it is a product of that incarnation and is meant to guide and control it; physical memory is a function of the brain in the particular body that the soul inhabits for the time. The soul carries a deeper reminiscence which is part and parcel of the self-consciousness inherent in its nature. The physical memory too can partake of this inner reminiscence if it is purified, illumined and organised around the soul as its instrument of expression. Indeed, although the journey of the soul essentially and originally is the flight of the spirit to the Spirit, yet the final consummation is towards an increasing integration of all the external instruments from the highest to the lowest, from the subtlest to the grossest into a harmonised organised whole, reflecting and embodying the Spirit in its purity and totality. The mind, the life and the body too attain a perfectly unified individuality that is the expression of the soul's truth-consciousness and escaping disruption and dissolution partake ultimately of the inherent immortality of the spiritual being.

05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The distinction between the two may after all be found to be a matter of stress only, involving no fundamental difference, especially as there are sure to be gradations from the one to the other. The most important landmark, however, the most revolutionary step in modern science would be the discovery of the eternal observer or some sign or image of his seated within the observed phenomena of moving thingspuruah Prakritisthohi, as the Gita says.
   ***

05.10 - Knowledge by Identity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Prof. Das evidently holds the orthodox, rather rigid, Sankhya position, viz.,the Purusha or witness is always separate from Prakriti, its object. But after all this is only a standpoint, there are other standpoints equally valid and more comprehensive. Sri Aurobindo holds in this respect what may be generically called the Vedantic position where the basic epistemological principle is that the knower and the known (jt and jeya) are fused together in knowledge (jna). One Vedantic line, it is true however, seems to arrive at a different conclusion, for thus it is asserted, where there is absolute identity, who is it that sees or knows or what is it that is seen or known! But this is only one aspect of the phenomenon.
   When the Upanishad says, one who knows Brahman be comes Brahman, does it not mean that the very condition of knowing Brahman is to become it? Indeed, there is no contradiction or incommensurability between knowing and becoming, between (what is termed by the mystic as) Knowledge and Realisation. Consciousness has a twofold power, Sri Aurobindo says: the power of apprehension and the power of comprehensionprajna and vijna. Prajnana, the apprehending consciousness, sets the object in front, away and separate from itself and contemplates it: Vijnana, the comprehending consciousness, on the other hand, comprehends, embraces the object within itself, as part of its own being. The two are not distinct or incompatible movements, they go together and form one single movement of consciousness. It is the mind, the reason that makes the separation; it is not possible for the mind to view two things simultaneously. It is because of this incapacity of the mind, married to its logic of the finite, that Sri Aurobindo points out the way of correcting it by a higher supramental power which operates in a global way.
   Let us go back to our illustration. I am angry means both I am anger and I know I have anger. It is true in fact and experience. Similarly I am (existent) means both I am existence and I know I am existent. The transcendence of the subject (of which Prof. Das speaks) is nothing but the poise of the consciousness as the apprehending Purusha: it does not negate or exclude identification, which is another arm of a biune process. The two are complementary to each other. Also Purusha and Prakriti are nor contradictories, not mutually exclusive; they are dual aspects or dispositions of the same consciousness or self-conscious reality. Consciousness involved and lost to itself and in itself is Prakriti, consciousness evolved and looking out at itself is Purusha. I am aware of myself and I am myself are two ways of saying the same thing. We imagine Shakespeare expressed the experience graphically and poetically when he made his character say:
   Richard loves Richard, that is I am I.

05.14 - The Sanctity of the Individual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The sanctity of the individual, the value of the human person is one of the cardinal articles of faith of the modern consciousness. Only it has very many avatars. One such has been the characteristic mark of the group of philosophers (and mystics) who are nowadays making a great noise under the name of Existentialists. The individual personality exists, they say, and its nature is freedom. In other words, it chooses, as it likes, its course of life, at every step, and Creates its destiny. This freedom, however, may lead man and will inevitably lead him, according to one section of the group, to the perception and realisation of God, an infinite in which the individual finite lives and moves and has his being; according to others, the same may lead to a very different consummation, to Nothingness, the Great Void, Nihil. All existence is bounded by something unknown and intangible which differs according to your luck or taste,one would almost say to your line of approach, put philosophically, according either to the positive pole or the negative, God or Non-existence. The second alternative seems to be an inevitable corollary of the particular conception of the individual that is entertained by some, viz.,the individual existing only in relation to individuals. Indeed the leader of the French school, Jean-Paul Sartrenot a negligible playwright and novelistseems to conceive the individual as nothing more than the image formed in other individuals with whom he comes in contact. Existence literally means standing out or outside (ex+sistet), coming out of one-self and living in other's consciousnessas one sees one's exact image in another's eye. It is not however the old-world mystic experience of finding one's self in other selves. For here we have an exclusively level or horizontal view of the human personality. The personality is not seen in depth or height, but in line with the normal phenomenal formation. It looks as though, to save personality from the impersonal dissolution to which all monistic idealism leads, the present conception seeks to hinge all personalities upon each other so that they may stand by and confirm each other. But the actual result seems to have been not less calamitous. When we form and fashion each other, we are not building with anything more substantial than sand. Personalities are thus mere eddies in the swirl of cosmic life, they rise up and die down, separate and melt into each other and have no consistency and no reality in the end. The freedom too which is ascribed to such individuals, even when they feel it so, is only a sham and a make-believe. Within Nature nothing is free, all is mechanical lawKarma is supreme. The Sankhya posits indeed many Purushas, free, lodged in the midst of Prakriti, but there the Purusha is hardly an active agent, it is only an inactive, passive, almost impotent, witness. The Existentialist, on the contrary, seeks to make of the individual an active agent; he is not merely being, imbedded or merged in the original Dasein, mere existence, but becoming, the entity that has come out, stood out in its will and consciousness, articulated itself in name and form and act. But the person that stands out as part and parcel of Prakriti, the cosmic movement, is, as we have said, only an instrument, a mode of that universal Nature. The true person that informs that apparent formulation is something else. .
   To be a person, it is said, one must be apart from the crowd. A person is the "single one", one who has attained his singularity, his individual wholeness. And the life's work for each individual person is to make the crowd no longer a crowd, but an association of single ones. But how can this be done? It is not simply by separating oneself from the crowd, by dwelling upon oneself that one can develop into one's true person. The individuals, even when perfect single ones, do not exist by themselves or in and through one another. The mystic or spiritual perception posits the Spirit or God, the All-self as the background and substance of all the selves. Indeed, it is only when one finds and is identified with the Divine in oneself that one is in a position to attain one's true selfhood and find oneself in other selves. And the re-creation of a crowd into such divine individuals is a cosmic work in which the individual is at best a collaborator, not the master and dispenser. Anyway, one has to come out of the human relationship, rise above the give-and-take of human individualshowever completely individual each one may beand establish oneself in the Divine's consciousness which is the golden thread upon which is strung all the assembly of individuals. It is only in and through the Divine, the Spiritual Reality and Person, that one enters into true relation and dynamic harmony with others.
   The truth of the personality is not to be found in its horizontal, but vertical dimension. The Existentialist speaks of the existence (standing out) of the human person as a transcendence. But real transcendence is not so much in coming out as in going up and beyond. To be outside oneself is not always to transcend oneself: to be above oneself is the real transcendence. Man is a true and free person only when he is lord of Prakriti, dominating and commanding Nature, when he is identified with Ishwara, the supreme Person, the Master, and becomes an incarnate will and consciousness of His. The soul in ignorance and in ignorant relation with others must rise and envisage its archetype in the Supreme Divine, as a free formulation of an Idea-Force of the Infinite.
   If we do not keep in view this vertical transcendence and confuse it with immanence, we are likely to arrive at queer conclusions, as for example, one Existentialist says: polarity being an essential truth of the reality, the law of day and night is an eternal and immutable law and therefore, God cannot subsist as pure love; there must be also anger in him. In fact, God too is a becoming God as the human being. The limitation of such a view, characteristically Germanic and intellectual, is evident.

05.26 - The Soul in Anguish, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It seems that the School of Anguish is on the borderl and between the second and the third stage, that is to say, the vital rising into the mental or the mental still carrying an impress of the vital consciousness. It is the emergence of the Purusha consciousness, the individual being in its heart of hearts, in its pure status: for it is that that truly evolves, progresses from level to level, deploying and marshalling according to its stress and scheme the play of its outward nature. Now the Purusha consciousness, as separate from the outward nature, has certain marked characteristics which have been fairly observed and comprehended by the exponents of the school we are dealing with. Sartre, for example, characterises this beingtre en soi, as distinguished from tre pour soi which is something like dynamic purusha or purusha identified or associated with prakrtias composed of the sense of absolute freedom, of full responsibility, of unhindered choice and initiation. Indeed, Purusha is freedom, for in its own status it means liberation from all obligations to Prakriti. But such freedom brings in its train, not necessarily always but under certain conditions, a terrible sense of being all alone, of infinite loneliness. One is oneself, naked and face to face with one's singleness and unbreakable, unsharable individual unity. The others come as a product or corollary to this original sui generisentity. Along with the sense of freedom and choice or responsibility and loneness, there is added and gets ingrained into it the sense of fear and anxiety the anguish (Angst). The burden that freedom and loneliness brings seems to be too great. The Purusha that has risen completely into the mental zone becomes wholly a witness, as the Sankhyans discovered, and all the movements of his nature appear outside, as if foreign: an absolute calm and unperturbed tranquillity or indifference is his character. But it is not so with regard to the being that has still one foot imbedded in the lower region of the vital consciousness; for that indeed is the proper region of anguish, of fear and apprehension, and it is there that the soul becoming conscious of itself and separate from others feels lone, lonely, companionless, without support, as it were. The mentalised vital Purusha suffers from this peculiar night of the soul. Sartre's outlook is shot through with very many experiences of this intermediary zone of consciousness.
   The being immersed in Prakriti, as normally it is, in relation and communion with others, may entertain as a pleasure and luxury, the illusion of its separateness and freedom: it can do so at ease, because it feels it has the secret support of its environment, it is courageous because it feels itself in good company. But once it rises out of the environmental level and stands truly apart and outside itit is the mental being which can do so more or less successfully the first feeling is that of freedom, no doubt, but along with it there is also the uncanny sense of isolation, of heavy responsibility, also a certain impotence, a loss of bearings. The normal Cartesian Co-ordinates, as it were, are gone and the being does not know where to look for the higher multi-dimensional co-ordinates. That is the real meaning of the Anguish which suddenly invades a being at a certain stage of his ascending consciousness.
   The solution, the issue out is, of course, to go ahead. Instead of making the intermediary poise, however necessary it may be, a permanent character of the being and its destiny, as these philosophers tend to do, one should take another bold step, a jump upward. For the next stage, the stage when the true equilibrium, the inherent reconciliation is realised between oneself and others, between the inner soul and its outer nature is what the Upanishad describes as Vijnana, the Vast Knowledge.

06.34 - Selfless Worker, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Prayer says: I look for my conscious mind and I find it no more. . .1 Normally one is conscious of oneself. Whatever one does or whenever one does something, the consciousness always remains behind, I am here, I am doing. And if this sense of I am is not there, one can do nothing. All action stops automatically if I do not see or feel that I am acting. But that is the nature of ordinary consciousness; in the spiritual consciousness things are otherwise. Spiritual consciousness means the consciousness in which this sense of I am doing or even I am has disappeared, got dissolved. Truly, the work is done not by me, by the sense of illness, but by Prakriti, Nature, apparently by Lower Nature, secretly by Higher Nature. When the I disappears, the force that has been working continues to work, only the sense of I attached to it (in ignorance and by ignorance) is no longer there. Or, the I has completely merged itself into the working Force and is one with it. What is conscious is not the personality or the individual I, but the Force of action.
   The Mother: Prayers and Meditations, 7 April 1914

10.02 - Beyond Vedanta, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In other words Purusha is given the exclusive reality, while Prakriti is negated, being identified with unconsciousness and ignorance, is relegated to a status of relative reality. Prakriti is considered as my, the illusory consciousness, the ignorance.
   Purusha is the Brahman, the Conscious Being, the One Absolute Pure Reality.
   The Tantra comes next in the scale. Tantra does not consider Prakriti as absolutely separate from Purusha and opposite in character. Prakriti is not unconsciousness (Achit); it is instinct with consciousness. Indeed Prakriti as conceived by Sankhya or Mayavada is only a lower formulation, an inferior aspect of the higher Prakriti which is one with the higher Purusha, Purushottama. Tantra worships the higher Prakriti as Parashakti, the Divine Mother who holds in herself the supreme Purusha. The world is created and exists not by the power of Maya but by the formative power of the Mother, which was the original meaning of the word 'maya', the Divine Maya. The Divine Mother creates the world and maintains the world in the Delight of her Conscious Existence. She is the Supreme Consciousness (Chinmayee), she is the Power of Delight (Hladini Shakti).
   The whole bifurcation between Tantra and Vedanta hinges upon one point. The Vedanta overlooked one term of the Truth and missed thereby a whole world of experience and reality. The central term of Vedanta is taken as Consciousness, Consciousness pure and simple. It omitted the fact that Consciousness is also Energy. That Chit is Tapas is the central principle in Tantra. The exclusive stress on Chit, Pure Consciousness, led to the realisation of the Pure Purusha as mere Witness, Observer, a passive consciousness. Subsequently it was also added that the Purusha is not merely a Witness, (sk), but the Upholder (bhart), even Enjoyer (bhokt) of the world and creation; finally it was added also that the Purusha may be a creator also (kart), but all this is somewhat outside the pale of orthodox Vedanta, Mayavada. Tantra equated Consciousness with Energy; for it Conscious Energy or Consciousness-Energy is the indivisible Mother-Reality.
  --
   The relation between the Supreme (over and above the creation) and the individual in the creation representing the creation is sometimes described in human terms to give it a concrete and graphic form. This relationship characteristically indicates the fundamental nature of the Reality it deals with. Thus in the Vedantic tradition the Supreme is worshipped as the Father (pit no asi). It is also a relation of Master and disciple, the leader and the led. Ii brings out into prominence the Purusha aspect of the Reality. In the Tantra the relation is as between Mother and child. The supreme Reality is the Divine Mother holding the universe in her arms. The individual worships and adores the Supreme Prakriti as a human child does. The Vaishnava makes the relation as between the lover and the beloved, and the love depicted is intensely vital and even physical, as intense and poignant as the ordinary ignorant human passion. It is to show that the Love Divine can beat the human love on its own ground, that is to say, it can be or it is as passionately sweet and as intensely intimate as any human love. It is why Bhakta Prahlad said to his beloved Vishnu "O Lord, what ordinary men feel and enjoy in and through their physical senses, may I have the same enjoyment in and through Thee."
   Still the Vaishnava love in its concrete reality is a manifestation in a subtle world, the world of an inner physical consciousness.

10.03 - Life in and Through Death, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The gold is there, the purest gold, but it is crusted over with dross. The dross is to be eliminated and the noble metal freed. Indeed each element of the being wherever and whatever it is, each corpuscle, mental, vital or physical is ambivalentit is a polarised entity consisting of two parts or two ends, one pure, the other impure. The ancients thought that the whole creation is impure; the only pure substance is the Divine. The Sankhya posited clearly the demarcation between Purusha, the Conscious Being secreted above and behind and the entire Prakriti which is absolute unconsciousness. But as we have said, a new revelation has been slowly coming up which speaks of a different conclusion 'and a different destiny for man and the universe. Each element of the created universe has a double nature, it is both conscious and unconscious, it is both immortal and mortal. And furthermore, the two are not united or soldered together inextricably so that if one is eliminated the other gets eliminated automatically. Life and death appear to be bound together absolutely and eternally; in fact, however, it is not so. Even in life, Life can be established in its single pure reality free from the normal counterpoint of Death. Purusha is not the only conscious element in or above creation. Prakriti is not merely the unconscious being. The unconscious Prakriti is only the apparent aspect of the Higher Prakriti, the Para Prakriti, which is supremely conscious, for it is one with the Supreme Purusha.
   This Higher Prakriti is the inner reality of each created cell of the universe. And it is always insisting and working for the elimination of its counterpart, the inferior Prakriti; and evolution, human or cosmic is nothing but the gradual corroding of the inferior Prakriti by the pressure of the Light-Energy of the Higher Prakriti. One day when this lower Prakriti is dissolved in this way in each cell, the fullness of the radiant manifestation, an embodiment of the Divine Reality will be realised upon this material earth made spiritual, in this human body made Divine.
   ***

1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  d. These major seven planes of our solar system being but the seven subplanes of the cosmic physical plane, we can consequently see the reason for the emphasis laid by H. P. B. [liv]52, [lv]53 upon the fact that matter and ether are synonymous terms and that this ether is found in some form or other on all the planes, and is but a gradation of cosmic atomic matter, called when undifferentiated mula Prakriti or primordial pre-genetic substance, and when differentiated by Fohat (or the energising Life, the third Logos or Brahma) it is termed Prakriti, or matter. [lvi]54
  e. Our solar system is what is called a system of the fourth order; that is, it has its location on the fourth cosmic etheric plane, counting, as always, from above downwards.

1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  b. His function is the manipulation of Prakriti, or matter, so as to make it fit, or equal to, the demands and needs of the Spirit.
  [143]

10.11 - Beyond Love and Hate, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We may extend this viewpoint and find the resolution of all contrariness and contradictoriness. Paradoxically one may say then all contradictions are an apparent illusion, all contradictions naturally and inevitably mean an inmost unity and identity. Even so the Brahman and the world or the Purusha and the Prakriti are apparent negations to each other, the duality is in the ordinary ignorant consciousness, but the two are one in the supreme indivisible consciousness.
   ***

1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  they are Purusha and Prakriti or Ishvara and Shakti. The prin-
  ciple of the universal manifestation is then their Son, the

1.01 - Maitreya inquires of his teacher (Parashara), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [7]: Viṣṇu is commonly derived in the Purāṇas from the root Vis, to enter, entering into, or pervading the universe, agreeably to the text of the Vedas, 'Having created that (world), he then afterwards enters into it;' being, as our comment observes, undistinguished by place, time, or property. According to the Mātsya P. the name alludes to his entering into the mundane egg: according to the Padma P., to his entering into or combining with Prakriti, as Puruṣa or spirit. In the Mokṣa Dharma of the Mahābhārata, s. 165, the word is derived from the root vī, signifying motion, pervasion, production, radiance; or, irregularly, from krama, to go with the particle vi, implying, variously, prefixed.
  [8]: Brahmā and the rest is said to apply to the series of teachers through whom this Purāṇa was transmitted from its first reputed author, Brahmā, to its actual narrator, the sage Parāśara. See also b. VI. c. 8.

1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Nor shall we deal in any other spirit with the element of philosophical dogma or religious creed which either enters into the Gita or hangs about it owing to its use of the philosophical terms and religious symbols current at the time. When the Gita speaks of Sankhya and Yoga, we shall not discuss beyond the limits of what is just essential for our statement, the relations of the Sankhya of the Gita with its one Purusha and strong Vedantic colouring to the non-theistic or "atheistic" Sankhya that has come down to us bringing with it its scheme of many Purushas and one Prakriti, nor of the Yoga of the Gita, many-sided, subtle, rich and flexible to the theistic doctrine and the fixed, scientific, rigorously defined and graded system of the Yoga of Patanjali.
  In the Gita the Sankhya and Yoga are evidently only two convergent parts of the same Vedantic truth or rather two concurrent ways of approaching its realisation, the one philosophical, intellectual, analytic, the other intuitional, devotional, practical, ethical, synthetic, reaching knowledge through experience. The
  --
  Maya of the three modes of Prakriti omnipresent in the created world; nor is it qualified Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the Jiva and lays most stress on dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it
  Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna, who is the Avatara of Vishnu according to the Puranas, as the supreme Deity and allows no essential difference nor any actual superiority of the status of the indefinable relationless Brahman over that of this Lord of beings who is the Master of the universe and the Friend of all creatures. Like the earlier spiritual synthesis of the Upanishads this later synthesis at once spiritual and intellectual avoids naturally every such rigid determination as would injure its universal
  Our Demand and Need from the Gita

1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We may note also in passing that the Indian ideal of the relation between man and woman has always been governed by the symbolism of the relation between the Purusha and Prakriti (in the Veda Nri and Gna), the male and female divine Principles in the universe. Even, there is to some degree a practical correlation between the position of the female sex and this idea. In the earlier Vedic times when the female principle stood on a sort of equality with the male in the symbolic cult, though with a certain predominance for the latter, woman was as much the mate as the adjunct of man; in later times when the Prakriti has become subject in idea to the Purusha, the woman also depends entirely on the man, exists only for him and has hardly even a separate spiritual existence. In the Tantrik Shakta religion which puts the female principle highest, there is an attempt which could not get itself translated into social practice,even as this Tantrik cult could never entirely shake off the subjugation of the Vedantic idea,to elevate woman and make her an object of profound respect and even of worship.
  Or let us take, for this example will serve us best, the Vedic institution of the fourfold order, caturvara, miscalled the system of the four castes,for caste is a conventional, vara a symbolic and typal institution. We are told that the institution of the four orders of society was the result of an economic evolution complicated by political causes. Very possibly;1 but the important point is that it was not so regarded and could not be so regarded by the men of that age. For while we are satisfied when we have found the practical and material causes of a social phenomenon and do not care to look farther, they cared little or only subordinately for its material factors and looked always first and foremost for its symbolic, religious or psychological significance. This appears in the Purushasukta of the Veda, where the four orders are described as having sprung from the body of the creative Deity, from his head, arms, thighs and feet. To us this is merely a poetical image and its sense is that the Brahmins were the men of knowledge, the Kshatriyas the men of power, the Vaishyas the producers and support of society, the Shudras its servants. As if that were all, as if the men of those days would have so profound a reverence for mere poetical figures like this of the body of Brahma or that other of the marriages of Sury, would have built upon them elaborate systems of ritual and sacred ceremony, enduring institutions, great demarcations of social type and ethical discipline. We read always our own mentality into that of these ancient forefa thers and it is therefore that we can find in them nothing but imaginative barbarians. To us poetry is a revel of intellect and fancy, imagination a plaything and caterer for our amusement, our entertainer, the nautch-girl of the mind. But to the men of old the poet was a seer, a revealer of hidden truths, imagination no dancing courtesan but a priestess in Gods house commissioned not to spin fictions but to image difficult and hidden truths; even the metaphor or simile in the Vedic style is used with a serious purpose and expected to convey a reality, not to suggest a pleasing artifice of thought. The image was to these seers a revelative symbol of the unrevealed and it was used because it could hint luminously to the mind what the precise intellectual word, apt only for logical or practical thought or to express the physical and the superficial, could not at all hope to manifest. To them this symbol of the Creators body was more than an image, it expressed a divine reality. Human society was for them an attempt to express in life the cosmic Purusha who has expressed himself otherwise in the material and the supraphysical universe. Man and the cosmos are both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden Reality.

1.02.2.1 - Brahman - Oneness of God and the World, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  3 Prakriti, executive Nature as opposed to Purusha, which is the Soul governing, taking
  cognizance of and enjoying the works of Prakriti. Shakti, the self-existent, self-cognitive,
  self-effective Power of the Lord (Ishwara, Deva or Purusha), which expresses itself in the
  workings of Prakriti. Maya, signifying originally in the Veda comprehensive and creative
  knowledge, Wisdom that is from of old; afterwards taken in its second and derivative

1.02.2.2 - Self-Realisation, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  PURUSHA IN Prakriti2
  Atman, the Self, represents itself differently in the sevenfold

1.02.3.1 - The Lord, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  of whom Prakriti or Maya is the executive Puissance, the Shakti.
  The Isha Upanishad, having declared the Brahman as the
  --
  modes of its Force of consciousness, its Prakriti or Maya, -
  intensive in self-absorption, diffusive in self-extension. The intensive mode is proper to the pure and silent Brahman; the
  --
  the witness, the modifications effected by Prakriti, but does not
  partake of them, does not get clogged with them, receives not
  --
  Lord, conduct the action of Prakriti without undergoing the
  false impression of identification with the results of its action. It
  --
  vision by the rushing stream of Prakriti's works and fancies itself
  to be a part of that stream and swept in its currents and in its
  --
  of Prakriti and her works. An absolute calm and passivity, purity and equality within, a sovereign and inexhaustible activity
  without is the nature of Brahman as we see it manifested in the
  --
  subjection and bondage. Purusha commands Prakriti, Prakriti
  does not compel Purusha. Na karma lipyate nare.

1.02.3.2 - Knowledge and Ignorance, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  Those who are devoted entirely to the principle of multiplicity and division and take their orientation away from oneness enter into a blind darkness of Ignorance. For this tendency is one of increasing contraction and limitation, disaggregation of the gains of knowledge and greater and greater subjection to the mechanical necessities of Prakriti and finally to her separative and self-destructive forces. To turn away from the progression towards Oneness is to turn away from existence and from light.
  Those who are devoted entirely to the principle of indiscriminate Unity and seek to put away from them the integrality of the Brahman, also put away from them knowledge and completeness and enter as if into a greater darkness. They enter into some special state and accept it for the whole, mistaking exclusion in consciousness for transcendence in consciousness.
  --
  not subjection to joy, - transcends the lower Prakriti, but not
  the higher. To gain the real freedom and the perfect Immortality
  --
  only of the play of Prakriti or Chit-Shakti and consequently a
  certain limited capacity of force of consciousness which has to
  --
  But the way of attaining to immortality is not by the selfdissolution of the individual formation into the flux of Prakriti,
  neither is it by prematurely dissolving it into the All-soul which
  --
  the individual may affirm himself against the flux of Prakriti in
  order eventually to transcend, possess and transform it.
  --
  more and more powerful to deal with the oppositions of Prakriti
  and to change, individually, more and more the terms of ignorance, suffering and weakness into the terms of knowledge, joy

1.02 - Karma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
  36. An egoistic man alone thinks: I am the doer. Really it is the Guna or Prakriti or the sense that does the action. Atman is actionless, Akarta, Nishkriya.
  37. Practise your Svadhanna, your Varnashrama Dharma unselfishly, without egoism. You will attain purification of heart. Knowledge of Brahman will dawn in your heart.

1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  That chief principle (Pradhāna), which is the indiscrete cause, is called by the sages also Prakriti (nature): it is subtile, uniform, and comprehends what is and what is not (or both causes and effects); is durable, self-sustained, illimitable, undecaying, and stable; devoid of sound or touch, and possessing neither colour nor form; endowed with the three qualities (in equilibrium); the mother of the world; without beginning; and that into which all that is produced is resolved[14]. By that principle all things were invested in the period subsequent to the last dissolution of the universe, and prior to creation[15]. For Brahmans learned in the Vedas, and teaching truly their doctrines, explain such passages as the following as intending the production of the chief principle (Pradhāna). "There was neither day nor night, nor sky nor earth, nor darkness nor light, nor any other thing, save only One, unapprehensible by intellect, or That which is Brahma and Pumān (spirit) and Pradhāna (matter)[16]." The two forms which are other than the essence of unmodified Viṣṇu, are Pradhāna (matter) and Puruṣa (spirit); and his other form, by which those two are connected or separated, is called Kāla (time)[17]. When discrete substance is aggregated in crude nature, as in a foregone dissolution, that dissolution is termed elemental (Prākrita). The deity as Time is without beginning, and his end is not known; and from him the revolutions of creation, continuance, and dissolution unintermittingly succeed: for when, in the latter season, the equilibrium of the qualities (Pradhāna) exists, and spirit (Pumān) is detached from matter, then the form of Viṣṇu which is Time abides[18]. Then the supreme Brahma, the supreme soul, the substance of the world, the lord of all creatures, the universal soul, the supreme ruler, Hari, of his own will having entered into matter and spirit, agitated the mutable and immutable principles, the season of creation being arrived, in the same manner as fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, and not from any immediate operation upon mind itself: so the Supreme influenced the elements of creation[19]. Puruṣottama is both the agitator and the thing to be agitated; being present in the essence of matter, both when it is contracted and expanded[20]. Viṣṇu, supreme over the supreme, is of the nature of discrete forms in the atomic productions, Brahmā and the rest (gods, men, &c.)
  Then from that equilibrium of the qualities (Pradhāna), presided over by soul[21], proceeds the unequal developement of those qualities (constituting the principle Mahat or Intellect) at the time of creation[22]. The Chief principle then invests that Great principle, Intellect, and it becomes threefold, as affected by the quality of goodness, foulness, or darkness, and invested by the Chief principle (matter) as seed is by its skin. From the Great principle (Mahat) Intellect, threefold Egotism, (Aha
  --
  khya this incongruity does not occur; for there Pradhāna is independent, and coordinate with primary spirit. The Purāṇas give rise to the inconsistency by a lax use of both philosophical and pantheistical expressions. The most incongruous epithets in our text are however explained away in the comment. Thus nitya, 'eternal,' is said to mean 'uniform, not liable to increase or diminution:' Sadasadātmaka, 'comprehending what is and what is not,' means 'having the power of both cause and effect', as proceeding from Viṣṇu, and as giving origin to material things. Anādi, 'without beginning,' means 'without birth', not being engendered by any created thing, but proceeding immediately from the first cause. 'The mother,' or literally the womb of the world', means the passive agent in creation,' operated on or influenced by the active will of the Creator. The first part of the passage in the text is a favourite one with several of. the Purāṇas, but they modify it and apply it after their own fashion. In the Viṣṇu the original is ###, rendered as above. The Vāyu, Brahmānda, and p. 11 Kūrmma Purāṇas have 'The indiscrete cause, which is uniform, and both cause and effect, and whom those who are acquainted with first principles call Pradhāna and Prakriti-is the uncognizable Brahma, who was before all.' But the application of two synonymes of Prakriti to Brahma seems unnecessary at least. The Brahmā P. corrects the reading apparently: the first line is as before; the second is, ###. The passage is placed absolutely; 'There was an indiscrete cause eternal, and cause and effect, which was both matter and spirit (Pradhāna and Puruṣa), from which this world was made. Instead of 'such' or this,' some copies read 'from which Īśvara or god (the active deity or Brahmā) made the world.' The Hari Vaṃśa has the same reading, except in the last term, which it makes ### that is, according to the commentator, the world, which is Īśvara, was made.' The same authority explains this indiscrete cause, avyakta kārana, to denote Brahmā, the creator an identification very unusual, if not inaccurate, and possibly founded on misapprehension of what is stated by the Bhaviṣya P.: 'That male or spirit which is endowed with that which is the indiscrete cause, &c. is known in the world as Brahmā: he being in the egg, &c.' The passage is precisely the same in Manu, I, 11; except that we have 'visṛṣta' instead of 'viśiṣṭha:' the latter is a questionable reading, and is probably wrong: the sense of the latter is, detached; and the whole means very consistently, 'embodied spirit detached from the indiscrete cause of the world is known as Brahmā.' The Padma P. inserts the first line, ### &c., but has 'Which creates undoubtedly Mahat and the other qualities' assigning the first epithets, therefore, as the Viṣṇu does, to Prakriti only. The Li
  ga also refers the expression to Prakriti alone, but makes it a secondary cause: 'An indiscrete cause, which those acquainted with first principles call Pradhāna and Prakriti, proceeded from that Īśvara (Śiva).' This passage is one of very many instances in which expressions are common to several Purāṇas that seem to be borrowed from one another, or from some common source older than any of them, especially in this instance, as the same text occurs in Manu.
  [15]: The expression of the text is rather obscure; 'All was pervaded (or comprehended) by that chief principle before (recreation), after the (last) destruction.' The ellipses are filled up by the commentator. This, he adds, is to be regarded as the state of things at a Mahā Pralaya, or total dissolution; leaving, therefore, crude matter, nature, or chaos, as a coexistent element with the Supreme. This, which is conformable to the philosophical doctrine, is not however that of the Purāṇas in general, nor p. 12 that of our text, which states (b. VI. c. 4), that at a Prākrita, or elementary dissolution, Pradhāna itself merges into the deity. Neither is it apparently the doctrine of the Vedas, although their language is somewhat equivocal.

1.02 - The Two Negations 1 - The Materialist Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  3:If we assert only pure Spirit and a mechanical unintelligent substance or energy, calling one God or Soul and the other Nature, the inevitable end will be that we shall either deny God or else turn from Nature. For both Thought and Life, a choice then becomes imperative. Thought comes to deny the one as an illusion of the imagination or the other as an illusion of the senses; Life comes to fix on the immaterial and flee from itself in a disgust or a self-forgetting ecstasy, or else to deny its own immortality and take its orientation away from God and towards the animal. Purusha and Prakriti, the passively luminous Soul of the Sankhyas and their mechanically active Energy, have nothing in common, not even their opposite modes of inertia; their antinomies can only be resolved by the cessation of the inertly driven Activity into the immutable Repose upon which it has been casting in vain the sterile procession of its images. Shankara's wordless, inactive Self and his Maya of many names and forms are equally disparate and irreconcilable entities; their rigid antagonism can terminate only by the dissolution of the multitudinous illusion into the sole Truth of an eternal Silence.
  4:The materialist has an easier field; it is possible for him by denying Spirit to arrive at a more readily convincing simplicity of statement, a real Monism, the Monism of Matter or else of Force. But in this rigidity of statement it is impossible for him to persist permanently. He too ends by positing an unknowable as inert, as remote from the known universe as the passive Purusha or the silent Atman. It serves no purpose but to put off by a vague concession the inexorable demands of Thought or to stand as an excuse for refusing to extend the limits of inquiry. Therefore, in these barren contradictions the human mind cannot rest satisfied. It must seek always a complete affirmation; it can find it only by a luminous reconciliation. To reach that reconciliation it must traverse the degrees which our inner consciousness imposes on us and, whether by objective method of analysis applied to Life and Mind as to Matter or by subjective synthesis and illumination, arrive at the repose of the ultimate unity without denying the energy of the expressive multiplicity. Only in such a complete and catholic affirmation can all the multiform and apparently contradictory data of existence be harmonised and the manifold conflicting forces which govern our thought and life discover the central Truth which they are here to symbolise and variously fulfil. Then only can our Thought, having attained a true centre, ceasing to wander in circles, work like the Brahman of the Upanishad, fixed and stable even in its play and its worldwide coursing, and our life, knowing its aim, serve it with a serene and settled joy and light as well as with a rhythmically discursive energy.

10.32 - The Mystery of the Five Elements, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The last two may, however, be represented somewhat differently. The Maruts may symbolise the region of the subtler or supra-electromagnetic forceswhat are now called cosmic rays: they are waves or particles of such infinitesimal magnitude that some of them at least have only a mathematical substance or reality, a probability-point, although of calculable or incalculable energy! Vayu then would represent the fundamental field where these forces playperhaps something like the Einsteinian field with its "corrugated" surface: or it is like the "Pradhana" of Sankhya, the original Prakriti or basic Nature before it burst out in its creative activity.
   Again, the five elements are not merely substances or states and qualities of substance, but they are also forces and energies, material forces and energiessince we have confined ourselves to matter and the material world. Science (we are always referring to Science, we have to do so since we are dealing with and speaking from the standpoint of matter and material existence), Science has familiarised us with the various forms and types of forces and energies. They are, starting from the most patent and gross, going up to more and more subtle energies, first of all mechanical energy, then (2) chemical energy, (3) electrical energy, (4) gravitational energy, and finally (5) the field energy; the last two are perhaps not very clearly differentiated and distinguished, but still one may make the distinction. And this mounting ladder of energy with its various steps, with its five steps corresponds exactly to the old Indian quintetearth, water, fire, air, space.

1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: In order to distinguish the work intended by the Shakti and that dictated by the lower nature you have to be very careful. You must develop the power of looking within. When you look within you must first realise yourself as the Purusha, that is to say, the being quite separate from the movements of Prakriti, Nature, going on in the Prana (the vital parts), the Chitta, the Mind etc. Any movement that arises in Prakriti has to be rejected and anything that comes from Above has to be accepted. Not only must you separate yourself, but the Purusha must become the calm and passive witness. Thus there will be a portion in yourself which will be quiet, unaffected by anything in Prakriti. The calm of the Sakshi, witness, then extends to the nature and then nature remains quite unmoved by any disturbance. You can not merely remain unmoved but also, as Anumanta, give the sanction to certain movements of nature and withhold it from others.
   G: Is this the Yoga? No Asanas, no Pranayama!
  --
   He was asked to practise the preliminary step of separating Purusha and Prakriti the witness Self and the active Nature.
   27 DECEMBER 1923
  --
   When you separate the Purusha from Prakriti you experience a certain calm. That calm is the Purusha consciousness watching the action of Prakriti. It is what is called the Silent Witness. That calm deepens as you detach yourself more and more from Prakriti. You also feel that it is wide, that it is the Lord. It can stop any movement of nature though its will may not be all at once effective; after a time it must prevail. In order to find this Purusha consciousness you have to reject everything in the lower nature, i.e., desires, feelings and mental ideas.
   Athavale: Should we not have the desire to practise the Yoga?
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: He has his own ideas and if he wants to practise Raja Yoga he must go to a Rajayogi Guru. For this Yoga his mind must undergo a radical change. My giving him the Yoga at present is out of the question. If he wants to prepare himself he can practise the separation of Purusha and Prakriti.
   3 JANUARY 1924 (Second Interview)
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: There is not one meaning of the word 'purity'. It depends upon how you understand the word. But what I call essential purity can be attained by making the basis of peace firm and establishing the whole consciousness in the Purusha firmly. When one is firmly established in the Purusha consciousness then one has also got a basis for purity because the Purusha is ever-pure, Nitya Shuddha; he does not require purity, he is inherently pure. Afterwards the purity that remains to be established is that of Prakriti. Once one is established in the Purusha consciousness the Prakriti automatically begins to get purified.
   21 SEPTEMBER 1925

1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Nature, - not as she is in her divine Truth, the conscious Power of the Eternal, but as she appears to us in the Ignorance,- is executive Force, mechanical in her steps, not consciously intelligent to our experience of her, although all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. Not in herself master, she is full of a self-aware Power2 which has an infinite mastery and, because of this Power driving her, she rules all and exactly fulfils the work intended in her by the Ishwara. Not enjoying but enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force, - for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows,- some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can participate in them only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process and formed result what he perceives in his knowledge.
  This is the distinction made by the Sankhyas; and although it is not all the true truth, not in any way the highest truth either of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence.
  2 This Power is the conscious divine Shakti of the Ishwara, the transcendent and universal Mother
  The individual soul or the conscious being in a form may identify itself with this experiencing Purusha or with this active Prakriti. If it identifies itself with Prakriti, it is not master, enjoyer and knower, but reflects the modes and workings of Prakriti. It enters by its identification into that subjection and mechanical working which is characteristic of her. And even, by an entire immersion in Prakriti, this soul becomes inconscient or subconscient, asleep in her forms as in the earth and the metal or almost asleep as in plant life. There, in that inconscience, it is subject to the domination of tamas, the principle, the power, the qualitative mode of obscurity and inertia: sattwa and rajas are there, but they are concealed in the thick coating of tamas.
  Emerging into its own proper nature of consciousness but not yet truly conscious, because there is still too great a domination of tamas in the nature, the embodied being becomes more and more subject to rajas, the principle, the power, the qualitative mode of action and passion impelled by desire and instinct. There is then formed and developed the animal nature, narrow in consciousness, rudimentary in intelligence, rajaso-tamasic in vital habit and impulse. Emerging yet farther from the great Inconscience towards a spiritual status the embodied being liberates sattwa, the mode of light, and acquires a relative freedom and mastery and knowledge and with it a qualified and conditioned sense of inner satisfaction and happiness. Man, the mental being in a physical body, should be but is not, except in a few among this multitude of ensouled bodies, of this nature. Ordinarily he has too much in him of the obscure earth-inertia and a troubled ignorant animal life-force to be a soul of light and bliss or even a mind of harmonious will and knowledge. There is here in man an incomplete and still hampered and baffled ascension towards the true character of the Purusha, free, master, knower and enjoyer.
  --
  The sign of the immersion of the embodied soul in Prakriti is the limitation of consciousness to the ego. The vivid stamp of this limited consciousness can be seen in a constant inequality of the mind and heart and a confused conflict and disharmony in their varied reactions to the touches of experience. The human reactions sway perpetually between the dualities created by the soul's subjection to Nature and by its often intense but narrow struggle for mastery and enjoyment, a struggle for the most part ineffective. The soul circles in an unending round of Nature's alluring and distressing opposites, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune, good and evil, sin and virtue, joy and grief, pain and pleasure. It is only when, awaking from its immersion in Prakriti, it perceives its oneness with the One and its oneness with all existences that it can become free from these things and found its right relation to this executive world-Nature.
  Then it becomes indifferent to her inferior modes, equal-minded to her dualities, capable of mastery and freedom; it is seated above her as the high-throned knower and witness filled with the calm intense unalloyed delight of his own eternal existence.
  The embodied spirit continues to express its powers in action, but it is no longer involved in ignorance, no longer bound by its works; its actions have no longer a consequence within it, but only a consequence outside in Prakriti. The whole movement of Nature becomes to its experience a rising and falling of waves on the surface that make no difference to its own unfathomable peace, its wide delight, its vast universal equality or its boundless God-existence.3
  3 It is not indispensable for the Karmayoga to accept implicitly all the philosophy of the Gita. We may regard it, if we like, as a statement of psychological experience useful as a practical basis for the Yoga; here it is perfectly valid and in entire consonance with a high and wide experience. For this reason I have thought it well to state it here, as far as possible in the language of modern thought, omitting all that belongs to metaphysics rather than to psychology.

1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   is the Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience? What are the great manifestations of its self-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realise it by meditation? May he not see even now the divine cosmic Form of That which is actually speaking to him through the veil of the human mind and body? And his last questions demand a clear distinction between renunciation of works and this subtler renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual difference between Purusha and Prakriti, the Field and the Knower of the Field, so important for the practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine Will; and finally a clear statement of the practical operations and results of the three modes of Prakriti which he is bidden to surmount.
  To such a disciple the Teacher of the Gita gives his divine teaching. He seizes him at a moment of his psychological development by egoistic action when all the mental, moral, emotional values of the ordinary egoistic and social life of man have collapsed in a sudden bankruptcy, and he has to lift him up out of this lower life into a higher consciousness, out of ignorant attachment to action into that which transcends, yet originates and orders action, out of ego into Self, out of life in mind, vitality and body into that higher nature beyond mind which is the status of the Divine. He has at the same time to give him that for which he asks and for which he is inspired to seek by the guidance within him, a new Law of life and action high above the insufficient rule of the ordinary human existence with its endless conflicts and oppositions, perplexities and illusory certainties, a higher Law by which the soul shall be free from this bondage of works and yet powerful to act and conquer in the vast liberty of its divine being. For the action must be performed, the world must fulfil its cycles and the soul of the human being must not turn back in ignorance from the work it is here to do. The whole course of the teaching of the Gita is determined and directed, even in its widest wheelings, towards the fulfilment of these three objects.

1.03 - YIBHOOTI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  ocean of birth and death. The whole of Prakriti in all its states,
  subtle and gross, is within the grasp of this knowledge. There

1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  This sutra has reference to certain specialties of the Samkhya philosophy on which the yoga system of Patanjali, particularly, is based. Of course, it has no contradistinction from other systems of thought as far as the practical aspects are concerned, but the point made in this sutra is that the advance in meditation, or the progress one makes in meditation, is commensurate with the various stages of the manifestation of what is called Prakriti in the Samkhya. The indeterminable, or alinga mentioned in this sutra, is nothing but the pradhana or the Prakriti of the Samkhya.
  The cosmological doctrine of the Samkhya is that there is originally a common base for every form of material existence, and that the variety of this world is really a diversified form of one and the same substance. It is not really a variety of substance but a variety of form forms taken by one and the same substance which the Samkhya calls Prakriti or pradhana. This original material of all things, called pradhana or Prakriti, is constituted of what we know as gunas, the essential properties sattva, rajas and tamas. These are peculiar things which are easily mistaken and misconstrued as certain conditions or attributes of Prakriti or pradhana. However, they are not the ordinary attri butes or qualities of pradhana, but are another name for pradhana itself.
  There is, ultimately, no distinction between substance and quality, though in the world of ordinary sensory experience we are likely to make a distinction between substance and its attri bute. It is not an attri bute; it is a condition of the substance out of which Prakriti is made. Prakriti has three conditions known as sattva, rajas and tamas and what is known as the ultimate state of Prakriti is only the equilibrium of these three gunas, wherein we cannot know which is preponderant and which is submerged. They act and react upon one another with equal force, so that their presence is not objectively felt. There is, therefore, no external consciousness or object-consciousness in the state of the ultimate condition of Prakriti.
  Any person who is absorbed in the condition of Prakriti will not have world-consciousness, because there is no externalisation caused by the preponderance of rajas. The externalisation of the objectification of consciousness by means of perception is due to the preponderance of the rajas quality of Prakriti; but there is no such preponderance in the ultimate condition. They are all equally emphasised with equal intensity and, therefore, there is nothing special in the form of an individual experience. There is no individuality at all, because the individual consciousness is itself an outcome of the rajas preponderating, by which one part of Prakriti is cut off from another part.
  This condition of Prakriti or pradhana the mula Prakriti, as it is called becomes the cause of the first manifestation in the process of evolution. This first form of manifestation, cosmologically, is called mahat in the terminology of the Samkhya. This is a Sanskrit word which practically means what is known as cosmic intellect or universal intelligence. This is, in the language of the Puranas and the Epics, the condition of the Creator or Brahma wherein all individualities are brought together into a single universal point of view. There are no various points of view there; there is only one point of view, and that is the cosmic point of view. Here, everything is directly experienced without the instrumentality of the senses. There is not even this mind as we see it in our own personal individuality. It is pure intelligence, subtly manifest in cosmic sattva, which is the first manifestation of Prakriti.  .
  Then the Samkhya tells us that there is a gradual solidification or concretisation of this state, and there is manifest a tendency to self-affirmation of a cosmic nature which is called ahamkara. This ahamkara is not the egoism of the human being, but it is a logical presupposition of the manifestation of variety. It is purely a logical 'x' without which we cannot explain anything that is manifest subsequently, but it has no connection whatsoever with the pride or the individual egoism of the human beings that we see usually. Sometimes these states of Prakriti, mahat and ahamkara, mentioned in the Samkhya, are identified with the principles of Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat which are mentioned in the Vedanta doctrine.
  It is now that a condition or a state supervenes where there is a sudden split of this cosmic condition into the external and the internal. This is the beginning of what they call samsara or bondage of the jiva. There is no bondage as long as a bifurcation is not introduced between the subject and the object of knowledge. Bondage commences the moment there is a severance of the consciousness from its content, an isolation of the subject from the object. This happens subsequent to the appearance of ahamkara. So, on the objective side, we have what are known as the tanmatras and the mahabhutas. The tanmatras are the subtle principles behind the five gross elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether, and they are called sabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa and gandha in Sanskrit, meaning thereby the sensations of sound, touch, form, taste and smell which have connection with the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether prithivi, appu, tejo, vayu and akasa. This is the external side of the world. Generally, what we call the world is constituted of these five great elements or mahabhutas. But the experiencing side, the subject side, is what is known as the jiva, the principle of individuality you, I, and everyone included who have an extrovert vision of these five mahabhutas, all of which we regard as something outside us, notwithstanding that every one of us, including the bhutas, have come from the same principle of ahamkara. It is something like the right hand looking at the left hand as an object of its perception, though both these are emanations of a single substance, a single unifying principle - namely, the bodily organism.
  --
  So in the various methods of meditation prescribed by Patanjali, he takes us, stage by stage, from the grosser form to the subtler form, from the consciousness of the five elements, which is the lowest form of experience that we can have, higher up to the tanmatras, which are the subtler principles behind the elements, and then to the ahamkara, the mahat and the Prakriti, and finally to the supreme purusha itself. The resting of the purusha in its own consciousness is called kaivalya or moksha. The aim of yoga is liberation which is another name for the non-objectification of the consciousness of the purusha by means of manifestation through the forms of Prakriti, and a resting of the purusha in its own self, in its Supreme Absoluteness. .
  The externalisation of the consciousness of the purusha takes place by degrees, as it was mentioned in this cosmological process. In the beginning there is only a potentiality of such manifestation, which is the condition of mula Prakriti. Then there is an actual manifestation, though not a binding form of it, which is called the mahat. Then again there is a further concretisation of it, which is a lower condition still, yet not a binding condition because of the universality of consciousness still present there, which is the state of the cosmic ahamkara. Then there is a fall, a sudden cut of consciousness into the subjective side and the objective side, which is the problem of the jiva, the difficulty of man every form of tension and unknowing. So, in the beginning, the grossest form becomes the object of meditation. From the gross, we go to the subtle. From the subtle, we rise to that state of awareness which is prior to the manifestation of even the subtle and the gross. And finally, we go to the ultimate cause of all things.
  --
  Whatever be our effort in meditation, the conviction that things are outside us and that they are completely out of our control will repeat itself so vehemently and forcefully that we will be unhappy. Doubts will arise in the mind. "After all, am I going to succeed? How can I control this mountain? What right have I over this mountain?" But we will realise, after repeated practise, that we have some say in the matter of the existence of even a mountain, though it may look that it is irrelevant to the question at hand. Ultimately there is nothing that is disconnected from us and, therefore, there is nothing which cannot be converted into an object of meditation. In fact there is nothing, anywhere in this world, which cannot become an avenue for the entry of consciousness into the Universal Reality. Any object, for the matter of that, can be taken as a suitable object for the purpose of meditation, because Prakriti is permanently present, pervading everything in one form or the other, and so whatever be the object that we take for meditation, it is a form of Prakriti, this pradhana of the Samkhya. So, there is no need to worry oneself about the choice of the object of meditation. It depends upon the predilection of the mind, the tendency of the mind, and the suitability of the relationship one has with the object that has been chosen.
  But once the object has been chosen, the advice given here is that we must persist through that object, and that there should be no change of the object. Otherwise, if we change the object, our efforts will not bring success. Whatever be the object that has been chosen, during the time one engages oneself in meditation upon it there should be a persistent effort to bring that object nearer and nearer to one's own self, though, in the beginning, it may appear to be far off or remote from oneself. There are various factors involved in object-consciousness. One thing is that it is far away from us. The second thing is that it is material in nature, while the meditating consciousness is not material. Another thing is that, because of the remoteness of the object and the isolation of the object from consciousness, one seems to have no control over the object. With all of these factors, there is a desire for the object. This is the essence of samsara. We desire a thing over which we have no control and which we perhaps cannot get with all of our efforts, and yet we need it and we cannot live without it. This is the essence of suffering. But all this suffering can be obviated and eliminated if, through philosophical analysis and repeated meditation, the nature of the object is gradually made a part and parcel of the nature of one's own self.

1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Now and then he would say: "O Mother, Thou art verily Brahman, and Thou art verily akti. Thou art Purusha and Thou art Prakriti. Thou art Virat. Thou art the Absolute, and Thou dost manifest Thyself as the Relative. Thou art verily the twenty-four cosmic principles."
  In the mean time the morning service had begun in the temples of Kli and Radhakanta.

1.04 - KAI VALYA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  nimittam aprayojakan Prakritinan varannabhedastu
  tatah kshetrikavat

1.04 - The Core of the Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  "Arise, slay thy enemies, enjoy a prosperous kingdom," has not the ring of an uncompromising altruism or of a white, dispassionate abnegation; it is a state of inner poise and wideness which is the foundation of spiritual freedom. With that poise, in that freedom we have to do the "work that is to be done," a phrase which the Gita uses with the greatest wideness including in it all works, sarvakarman.i, and which far exceeds, though it may include, social duties or ethical obligations. What is the work to be done is not to be determined by the individual choice; nor is the right to the action and the rejection of claim to the fruit the great word of the Gita, but only a preliminary word governing the first state of the disciple when he begins ascending the hill of Yoga. It is practically superseded at a subsequent stage. For the Gita goes on to affirm emphatically that the man is not the doer of the action; it is Prakriti, it is Nature, it is the great Force with its three modes of action that works through him, and he must learn to see that it is not he who does the work. Therefore the "right to action" is an idea which is only valid so long as we are still under the illusion of being the doer; it must necessarily disappear from the mind like the claim to the fruit, as soon as we cease to be to our own consciousness the doer of our works.
  All pragmatic egoism, whether of the claim to fruits or of the right to action, is then at an end.
  But the determinism of Prakriti is not the last word of the
  Gita. The equality of the will and the rejection of fruits are only means for entering with the mind and the heart and the understanding into the divine consciousness and living in it; and the Gita expressly says that they are to be employed as a means as long as the disciple is unable so to live or even to seek by practice the gradual development of this higher state. And
  --
   Prakriti that acts, foundation of the one, master of the other, the Lord of whom all is the manifestation, who even in our present subjection to Maya sits in the heart of His creatures governing the works of Prakriti, He by whom the armies on the field of Kurukshetra have already been slain while yet they live and who uses Arjuna only as an instrument or immediate occasion of this great slaughter. Prakriti is only His executive force. The disciple has to rise beyond this Force and its three modes or gun.as; he has to become trigun.atta. Not to her has he to surrender his actions, over which he has no longer any claim or "right", but into the being of the Supreme. Reposing his mind and understanding, heart and will in Him, with selfknowledge, with God-knowledge, with world-knowledge, with a perfect equality, a perfect devotion, an absolute self-giving, he has to do works as an offering to the Master of all selfenergisings and all sacrifice. Identified in will, conscious with that consciousness, That shall decide and initiate the action. This is the solution which the Divine Teacher offers to the disciple.
  What the great, the supreme word of the Gita is, its mahavakya, we have not to seek; for the Gita itself declares it in its last utterance, the crowning note of the great diapason.
  --
   a deity who is the supreme and only Self though by him not yet realised in his own being. This is the initial step. Secondly, not only the desire of the fruit, but the claim to be the doer of works has to be renounced in the realisation of the Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing this Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial manifestation, by whom all works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature. To him love and adoration and the sacrifice of works have to be offered; the whole being has to be surrendered to Him and the whole consciousness raised up to dwell in this divine consciousness so that the human soul may share in His divine transcendence of
  Nature and of His works and act in a perfect spiritual liberty.

1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  I have dwelt at length in the previous chapters on the Mother's relation with Sri Aurobindo and her role in his outer life. There used to be considerable speculation in the early days about their mutual relationship. Was it one of Purusha and Prakriti, Master and disciple or Shiva and Shakti? I was therefore very curious from the start to observe and discern the relationship. I came to the conclusion that it was that of Shiva and Shakti. The Mother has said, "Without him, I exist not; without me he is unmanifest." And we were given the unique opportunity of witnessing the dual personality of the One enacting on our earth-plane an immortal drama, rare in the spiritual history of man. I could perfectly realise that without the Mother, Sri Aurobindo's stupendous realisations could not have taken such a concrete shape on this terrestrial base. In fact, he was waiting for the Mother's coming. He said that with the Mother's help he covered ten years of sadhana in one year. The very building up of the Ashram testifies to this irrefutable truth: "He wills, I execute." After Sri Aurobindo's passing, it was feared in some quarters that the Ashram would collapse, at least decline. On the contrary, the manifestation of the Supramental Truth took place after his withdrawal, and since then the Ashram has expanded beyond all belief.
  Sri Aurobindo wrote to me, "...The Mother's pressure for change is always strong even when she does not put it as force, it is there by the very nature of the Divine Energy in her." That is the indubitable, puissant impression of all those who have had anything to do with her from near or far. While one felt in Sri Aurobindo's atmosphere a wide and large freedom of nature, the Mother's contact always brought us to the hard reality of things. Whenever she came to Sri Aurobindo's room, a powerful vibration was set within the calm, passive silence of the Self and we had to be qui vive. We were no longer left to our easy movements. If chattering was going on, it would stop; a newspaper would remain unread; if anyone was leaning against the wall, he would sit upright. In a word, everyone was like a taut bow-string, certainly not out of fear but to rise to her expectations. Even Sri Aurobindo, if in the course of the evening talk, happened to see her coming, would say in a hushed voice, "The Mother is coming!" and would stop talking, while the Mother would encourage us with a smile, "Go on, go on!" Such was her dynamism, cit tapas! This does not imply that she was a stern school-mistress.
  --
  It was a new experience indeed, for till then our approach to her was individual and restricted mostly to practical guidance; there was no intellectual communication and the Mother would always discourage intellectual questions. This was the first time she became collectively expansive and was ready to respond to intellectual seekings, but mainly on spiritual matters. These talks naturally reminded me of Sri Aurobindo's talks for their vivid contrast and I could not but make a mental comparison between them; they sharply bring out the characteristics of two different personalities though their consciousness is one. Here the Mother's personality dominated the whole atmosphere; her tone, mood and manner were stamped with a seriousness, energy and force that demanded close attention. Humour did not play a conspicuous role, but there were flashes of wit. Her eyes were on everybody, her answers, though meant for the questioner, were directed towards all so that there was no room for being inattentive or indifferent. When a play by the Mother was staged by our students, she strictly enjoined on the young children to keep complete silence. The striking difference with Sri Aurobindo, as I have pointed out, was his impersonality. He asked questions or answered them without looking at the questioner. He spoke slowly in a subdued voice with no stress in it. There was no constraint upon you, you were having a talk with a friend, and in friendship, levity, gravity, all were in order. Still, Sri Aurobindo remained Sri Aurobindo to us; there was no loss of reverence. Some of us had hotly discussed topics even to the point of losing our temper before his Witness-Purusha consciousness. That would be very unusual before the Mother. To put a homely simile, they were like a father and mother, both loving but one indulgent, liberal, large, the other a firm though not inconsiderate disciplinarian. Both are aspects of the one Divine Impersonal and Personal, Purusha and Prakriti and both have their ineffable charm. Though all were free to ask her questions, it was not always easy to ask them, as the answers instead of having a direct bearing on the questions were sometimes directed against the consciousness of the person involved; for to her, it was that which was more important, and our consciousness was an open book to her inner sight. These talks continued for quite a long time; the hall used to be packed. Unfortunately no regular record has been kept, first because they flowed very fast and secondly, there were only a few who understood French well. In later days, some talks were held in English out of a special consideration for a few people. I shall quote one or two of them from my scanty records.
  Q: What is the origin of anger and how to get rid of it?

1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What is Mah or Mahas?The word means great, embracing, full, comprehensive. The Earth, also, because of its wideness & containing faculty is called mahi,just as it is called prithivi, dhara, medini, dharani, etc. In various forms, the root itself, mahi, mahitwam, maha, magha, etc, it recurs with remarkable profusion and persistence throughout the Veda. Evidently it expressed some leading thought of the Rishis, was some term of the highest importance in their system of psychology. Turning to the Purana we find the term mahat applied to some comprehensive principle which is supposed itself to be near to the unmanifest, avyaktam but to supply the material of all that is manifest and always to surround, embrace and uphold it. Mahat seems here to be an objective principle; but this need not trouble us; for in the old Hindu system all that is objective had something subjective corresponding to it and constituting its real nature. We find it explicitly declared in the Vishnu Purana that all things here are manifestations of vijnana, pure ideal knowledge, sarvani vijnanavijrimbhitaniideal knowledge vibrating out into intensity of various phenomenal existences each with its subjective reason for existence and objective case & form of existence. Is ideal knowledge then the subjective principle of mahat? If so, vijnanam and the Vedic mahas are likely to be terms identical in their philosophical content and psychological significance. We turn to the Upanishads and find mention made more than once of a certain subjective state of the soul, which is called Mahan Atma, a state into which the mind and senses have to be drawn up as we rise by samadhi of the instruments of knowledge into the supreme state of Brahman and which is superior therefore to these instruments. The Mahan Atma is the state of the pure Brahman out of which the vijnana or ideal truth (sattwa or beness of things) emerges and it is higher than the vijnana but nearer us than the Unmanifest or Avyaktam (Katha: III.10, 11,13 & VI.7). If we understand by the Mahan Atma that status of soul existence (Purusha) which is the basis of the objective mahat or mahati Prakriti and which develops the vijnanam or ideal knowledge as its subjective instrument, then we shall have farther light on the nature of Mahas in the ancient conceptions. We shall see that it is ideal knowledge, vijnanam, or is connected with ideal knowledge.
  But we have first one more step in our evidence to notice,the final & conclusive link. In the Taittiriya Upanishad we are told that there are three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, but the Rishi Mahachamasya insisted on a fourth, Mahas. What is this fourth vyahriti? It is evidently some old Vedic idea and can hardly fail to be our maho arnas. I have already, in my introduction, outlined briefly the Vedic, Vedantic & Puranic system of the seven worlds and the five bodies. In this system the three vyahritis constitute the lower half of existence which is in bondage to Avidya. Bhurloka is the material world, our dwelling place, in which Annam predominates, in which everything is subject to or limited by the laws of matter & material consciousness. Bhuvar are the middle worlds, antariksha, between Swar & Bhur, vital worlds in which Prana, the vital principle predominates and everything is subject to or limited by the laws of vitality & vital consciousness. Swarloka is the supreme world of the triple system, the pure mental kingdom in which manasei ther in itself or, as one goes higher, uplifted & enlightened by buddhipredominates & by the laws of mind determines the life & movements of the existences which inhabit it. The three Puranic worlds Jana, Tapas, Satya,not unknown to the Vedaconstitute the Parardha; they are the higher ranges of existence in which Sat, Chit, Ananda, the three mighty elements of the divine nature predominate respectively, creative Ananda or divine bliss in Jana, the power of Chit (Chich-chhakti) or divine Energy in Tapas, the extension [of] Sat or divine being in Satya. But these worlds are hidden from us, avyaktalost for us in the sushupti to which only great Yogins easily attain & only with the Anandaloka have we by means of the anandakosha some difficult chance of direct access. We are too joyless to bear the surging waves of that divine bliss, too weak or limited to move in those higher ranges of divine strength & being. Between the upper hemisphere & the lower is Maharloka, the seat of ideal knowledge & pure Truth, which links the free spirits to the bound, the gods who deliver to the gods who are in chains, the wide & immutable realms to these petty provinces where all shifts, all passes, all changes. We see therefore that Mahas is still vijnanam and we can no longer hesitate to identify our subjective principle of mahas, source of truth & right thinking awakened by Saraswati through the perceptive intelligence, with the Vedantic principle of vijnana or pure buddhi, instrument of pure Truth & ideal knowledge.

1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But as the consciousness deepens, he becomes aware that this is only a first frontal appearance. For he finds that it is by the silent support, permission or sanction of this witness soul in him that this executive nature can work intimately or persistently upon his being; if the soul withdraws its sanction, the movements of Nature in their action upon and within him become a wholly mechanical repetition, vehement at first as if seeking still to enforce their hold, but afterwards less and less dynamic and real. More actively using this power of sanction or refusal, he perceives that he can, slowly and uncertainly at first, more decisively afterwards, change the movements of Nature. Eventually in this witness soul or behind it is revealed to him the presence of a Knower and master Will in Nature, and all her activities more and more appear as an expression of what is known and either actively willed or passively permitted by this Lord of her existence. Prakriti herself now seems to be mechanical only in the carefully regulated appearance of her workings, but in fact a conscious Force with a soul within her, a self-aware significance in her turns, a revelation of a secret Will and Knowledge in her steps and figures. This Duality, in aspect separate, is inseparable. Wherever there is Prakriti, there is Purusha; wherever there is Purusha, there is Prakriti. Even in his inactivity he holds in himself all her force and energies ready for projection; even in the drive of her action she carries with her all his observing and mandatory consciousness as the whole support and sense of her creative purpose. Once more the seeker discovers in his experience the two poles of existence of One Being and the two lines or currents of their energy negative and positive in relation to each other which effect by their simultaneity the manifestation of all that is within it. Here too he finds that the separative aspect is liberative; for it releases him from the bondage of identification with the inadequate workings of Nature in the Ignorance. The unitive aspect is dynamic and effective; for it enables him to arrive at mastery and perfection; while rejecting what is less divine or seemingly undivine in her, he can rebuild her forms and movements in himself according to a nobler pattern and the law and rhythm of a greater existence. At a certain spiritual and supramental level the Duality becomes still more perfectly Two-in-one, the Master Soul with the Conscious Force within it, and its potentiality disowns all barriers and breaks through every limit. Thus this once separate, now biune Duality of Purusha- Prakriti is revealed to him in all its truth as the second great instrumental and effective aspect of the Soul of all souls, the Master of existence, the Lord of the Sacrifice.
  On yet another line of approach the seeker meets another corresponding but in aspect distinct Duality in which the biune character is more immediately apparent,the dynamic Duality of Ishwara-Shakti. On one side he is aware of an infinite and self-existent Godhead in being who contains all things in an ineffable potentiality of existence, a Self of all selves, a Soul of all souls, a spiritual Substance of all substances, an impersonal inexpressible Existence, but at the same time an illimitable Person who is here self-represented in numberless personality, a Master of Knowledge, a Master of Forces, a Lord of love and bliss and beauty, a single Origin of the worlds, a self-manifester and self-creator, a Cosmic Spirit, a universal Mind, a universal Life, the conscious and living Reality supporting the appearance which we sense as unconscious inanimate Matter. On the other side he becomes aware of the same Godhead in effectuating consciousness and power put forth as a self-aware Force that contains and carries all within her and is charged to manifest it in universal Time and Space. It is evident to him that here there is one supreme and infinite Being represented to us in two different sides of itself, obverse and reverse in relation to each other. All is either prepared or pre-existent in the Godhead in Being and issues from it and is upheld by its Will and Presence; all is brought out, carried in movement by the Godhead in power; all becomes and acts and develops by her and in her its individual or its cosmic purpose. It is again a Duality necessary for the manifestation, creating and enabling that double current of energy which seems always necessary for the world-workings, two poles of the same Being, but here closer to each other and always very evidently carrying each the powers of the other in its essence and its dynamic nature. At the same time by the fact that the two great elements of the divine Mystery, the Personal and the Impersonal, are here fused together, the seeker of the integral Truth feels in the duality of Ishwara-Shakti his closeness to a more intimate and ultimate secret of the divine Transcendence and the Manifestation than that offered to him by any other experience.
  For the Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies which she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the universe, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing substance; on the other by the reascending current of the same energies she leads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its evolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there or here put on its divine character. There is not in her, although she devises a cosmic mechanism, the character of an inconscient mechanical Executrix which we find in the first physiognomy of Prakriti, the Nature-Force; neither is there that sense of an Unreality, creatrix of illusions or semi-illusions, which is attached to our first view of Maya. It is at once clear to the experiencing soul that here is a conscious Power of one substance and nature with the Supreme from whom she came. If she seems to have plunged us into the Ignorance and Inconscience in pursuance of a plan we cannot yet interpret, if her forces present themselves as all these ambiguous forces of the universe, yet it becomes visible before long that she is working for the development of the Divine Consciousness in us and that she stands above drawing us to her own higher entity, revealing to us more and more the very essence of the Divine Knowledge, Will and Ananda. Even in the movements of the Ignorance the soul of the seeker becomes aware of her conscious guidance supporting his steps and leading them slowly or swiftly, straight or by many detours out of the darkness into the light of a greater consciousness, out of mortality into immortality, out of evil and suffering towards a highest good and felicity of which as yet his human mind can form only a faint image. Thus her power is at once liberative and dynamic, creative, effective,creative not only of things as they are, but of things that are to be; for, eliminating the twisted and tangled movements of his lower consciousness made of the stuff of the Ignorance, it rebuilds and new-makes his soul and nature into the substance and forces of a higher divine Nature.
  In this Duality too there is possible a separative experience. At one pole of it the seeker may be conscious only of the Master of Existence putting forth on him His energies of knowledge, power and bliss to liberate and divinise; the Shakti may appear to him only an impersonal Force expressive of these things or an attribute of the Ishwara. At the other pole he may encounter the World-Mother, creatrix of the universe, putting forth the Gods and the worlds and all things and existences out of her spirit-substance. Or even if he sees both aspects, it may be with an unequal separating vision, subordinating one to the other, regarding the Shakti only as a means for approaching the Ishwara. There results a one-sided tendency or a lack of balance, a power of effectuation not perfectly supported or a light of revelation not perfectly dynamic. It is when a complete union of the two sides of the Duality is effected and rules his consciousness that he begins to open to a fuller power that will draw him altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance. He has begun to lay his hand on the integral secret which in its fullness can be grasped only when he overpasses the double term that reigns here of Knowledge inextricably intertwined with an original Ignorance and crosses the border where spiritual mind disappears into supramental Gnosis. It is through this third and most dynamic dual aspect of the One that the seeker begins with the most integral completeness to enter into the deepest secret of the being of the Lord of the Sacrifice.

1.05 - Yoga and Hypnotism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  When the mind is entirely passive, then the force of Nature which works in the whole of animate and inanimate creation, has free play; for it is in reality this force which works in man as well as in the sun and star. There is no doubt of this truth whether in Hinduism or in Science. This is the thing called Nature, the sum of cosmic force and energy, which alone Science recognises as the source of all work and activity. This also is the Prakriti of the Hindus to which under different names Sankhya and Vedanta agree in assigning a similar position and function in the Universe. But the immediate question is whether this force can act in man independently of mans individual will and initiative. Must it always act through his volition or has it a power of independent operation? The first real proof which Science has had of the power of action independent of volition is in the phenomena of hypnotism. Unfortunately the nature of hypnotism has not been properly understood. It is supposed that by putting the subject to sleep the hypnotist is able in some mysterious and unexplained way to substitute his will for the subjects. In a certain sense all the subjects activities in the hypnotic state are the results of his own volition, but that volition is not spontaneous, it is used as a slave by the operator working through the medium of suggestion. Whatever the hypnotist suggests that the subject shall think, act or feel, he thinks, acts or feels, and whatever the hypnotist suggests that the subject shall become, he becomes. What is it that gives the operator this stupendous power? Why should the mere fact of a man passing into this sleep-condition suspend the ordinary reactions of mind and body and substitute others at the mere word of the man who has said to him, Sleep? It is sometimes supposed that it is the superior will of the hypnotist which overcomes the will of the other and makes it a slave. There are two strong objections to this view It does not appear to be true that it is the weak and distracted will that is most easily hypnotised; on the contrary the strong concentrated mind forms a good subject. Secondly, if it were the operators will using the will of the subject, then the results produced must be such as the latter could himself bring about, since the capacities of the instrument cannot be exceeded by the power working through the instrument. Even if we suppose that the invading will brings with it its own force still the results produced must not exceed the sum of its capacity plus the capacity of the instrument. If they commonly do so, we must suppose that it is neither the will of the operator nor the will of the subject nor the sum of these two wills that is active, but some other and more potent force. This is precisely what we see in hypnotic performance.
  What is this force that enables or compels a weak man to become so rigid that strong arms cannot bend him? that reverses the operations of the senses and abrogates pain? that changes the fixed character of a man in the shortest of periods? that is able to develop power where there was no power, moral strength where there was weakness, health where there was disease? that in its higher manifestations can exceed the barriers of space and time and produce that far-sight, far-hearing and far-thinking which shows mind to be an untrammelled agent or medium pervading the world and not limited to the body which it informs or seems to inform? The European scientist experimenting with hypnotism is handling forces which he cannot understand, stumbling on truths of which he cannot give a true account. His feet are faltering on the threshold of Yoga. It is held by some thinkers, and not unreasonably if we consider these phenomena, that mind is all and contains all. It is not the body which determines the operations of the mind, it is the mind which determines the laws of the body. It is the ordinary law of the body that if it is struck, pierced or roughly pressed it feels pain. This law is created by the mind which associates pain with these contacts, and if the mind changes its dharma and is able to associate with these contacts not pain but insensibility or pleasure, then they will bring about those results of insensibility or pleasure and no other. The pain and pleasure are not the result of the contact, neither is their seat in the body; they are the result of association and their seat is in the mind. Vinegar is sour, sugar sweet, but to the hypnotised mind vinegar can be sweet, sugar sour. The sourness or sweetness is not in the vinegar or sugar, but in the mind. The heart also is the subject of the mind. My emotions are like my physical feelings, the result of association, and my character is the result of accumulated past experiences with their resultant associations and reactions crystallising into habits of mind and heart summed up in the word, character. These things like all the rest that are made of the stuff of associations are not permanent or binding but fluid and mutable, anity sarvasaskr. If my friend blames me, I am grieved; that is an association and not binding. The grief is not the result of the blame but of an association in the mind. I can change the association so far that blame will cause me no grief, praise no elation. I can entirely stop the reactions of joy and grief by the same force that created them. They are habits of the mind, nothing more In the same way though with more difficulty I can stop the reactions of physical pain and pleasure so that nothing will hurt my body. If I am a coward today, I can be a hero tomorrow. The cowardice was merely the habit of associating certain things with pain and grief and of shrinking from the pain and grief; this shrinking and the physical sensations in the vital or nervous man which accompany it are called fear, and they can be dismissed by the action of the mind which created them. All these are propositions which European Science is even now unwilling to admit, yet it is being proved more and more by the phenomena of hypnotism that these effects can be temporarily at least produced by one man upon another; and it has even been proved that disease can be permanently cured or character permanently changed by the action of one mind upon another. The rest will be established in time by the development of hypnotism.
  --
  Yo yacchraddha sa eva sa. According as is a mans fixed and complete belief, that he is,not immediately always but sooner or later, by the law that makes the psychical tend inevitably to express itself in the material. The will is the agent by which all these changes are made and old saskras replaced by new, and the will cannot act without faith. The question then arises whether mind is the ultimate force or there is another which communicates with the outside world through the mind. Is the mind the agent or simply the instrument? If the mind be all, then it is only animals that can have the power to evolve; but this does not accord with the laws of the world as we know them. The tree evolves, the clod evolves, everything evolves Even in animals it is evident that mind is not all in the sense of being the ultimate expression of existence or the ultimate force in Nature. It seems to be all only because that which is all expresses itself in the mind and passes everything through it for the sake of manifestation. That which we call mind is a medium which pervades the world. Otherwise we could not have that instantaneous and electrical action of mind upon mind of which human experience is full and of which the new phenomena of hypnotism, telepathy etc. are only fresh proofs. There must be contact, there must be interpenetration if we are to account for these phenomena on any reasonable theory. Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument. There is an ulterior force which works through this subtle medium called mind. An animal species develops, according to the modern theory, under the subtle influence of the environment. The environment supplies a need and those who satisfy the need develop a new species which survives because it is more fit. This is not the result of any intellectual perception of the need nor of a resolve to develop the necessary changes, but of a desire, often though not always a mute, inarticulate and unthought desire. That desire attracts a force which satisfies it What is that force? The tendency of the psychical desire to manifest in the material change is one term in the equation; the force which develops the change in response to the desire is another. We have a will beyond mind which dictates the change, we have a force beyond mind which effects it. According to Hindu philosophy the will is the Jiva, the Purusha, the self in the nandakoa acting through vijna, universal or transcendental mind; this is what we call spirit. The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action. Behind both is the single Self of the universe which contains both Jiva and Prakriti, spirit and material energy. Yoga puts these ultimate existences within us in touch with each other and by stilling the activity of the saskras or associations in mind and body enables them to act swiftly, victoriously, and as the world calls it, miraculously. In reality there is no such thing as a miracle; there are only laws and processes which are not yet understood.
  Yoga is therefore no dream, no illusion of mystics. It is known that we can alter the associations of mind and body temporarily and that the mind can alter the conditions of the body partially. Yoga asserts that these things can be done permanently and completely. For the body conquest of disease, pain and material obstructions, for the mind liberation from bondage to past experience and the heavier limitations of space and time, for the heart victory over sin and grief and fear, for the spirit unclouded bliss, strength and illumination, this is the gospel of Yoga, is the goal to which Hinduism points humanity.

1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  8:The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent. Always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire. In the conscious individual Prakriti turns back to perceive Purusha, World seeks after Self; God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God.
  9:On the other hand it is by means of the universe that the individual is impelled to realise himself. Not only is it his foundation, his means, his field, the stuff of the divine Work; but also, since the concentration of the universal Life which he is takes place within limits and is not like the intensive unity of Brahman free from all conception of bound and term, he must necessarily universalise and impersonalise himself in order to manifest the divine All which is his reality. Yet is he called upon to preserve, even when he most extends himself in universality of consciousness, a mysterious transcendent something of which his sense of personality gives him an obscure and egoistic representation. Otherwise he has missed his goal, the problem set to him has not been solved, the divine work for which he accepted birth has not been done.

1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  4:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda. But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
  5:The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put out in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds to intervene, to govern, to battle and conquer, to lead and turn their cycles, to direct the total and the individual lines of their forces. These Emanations are the many divine forms and personalities in which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhutis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhutis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence. All the scenes of the earth-play have been like a drama arranged and planned and staged by her with the cosmic Gods for her assistants and herself as a veiled actor.
  6:The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Naturebody and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother
  7:Four great Aspects of the Mother four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this universe and in her dealings with the terrestrial play. One is her personality of calm wideness and comprehending wisdom and tranquil benignity and inexhaustible compassion and sovereign and surpassing majesty and all-ruling greatness. Another embodies her power of splendid strength and irresistible passion, her warrior mood, her overwhelming will, her impetuous swiftness and world-shaking force. A third is vivid and sweet and wonderful with her deep secret of beauty and harmony and fine rhythm, her intricate and subtle opulence, her compelling attraction and captivating grace. The fourth is equipped with her close and profound capacity of intimate knowledge and careful flawless work and quiet and exact perfection in all things. Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, Perfection are their several attributes and it is these powers that they bring with them into the world, manifest in a human disguise in their Vibhutis and shall found in the divine degree of their ascension in those who can open their earthly nature to the direct and living influence of the Mother To the four we give the four great names, Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati.

1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  sha and Prakriti. On the Origin of the World, a gnostic text
  from around 200 CE, defines her in terms which, if properly

1.07 - Production of the mind-born sons of Brahma, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  Madhusūdana, whose essence is incomprehensible, in the forms of these (patriarchs and Manus), is the author of the uninterrupted vicissitudes of creation, preservation, and destruction. The dissolution of all things is of four kinds; Naimittika, 'occasional;' Prākritika, 'elemental;' Atyantika, 'absolute;' Nitya, 'perpetual[15]: The first, also termed the Brāhma dissolution, occurs when the sovereign of the world reclines in sleep. In the second, the mundane egg resolves into the primary element, from whence it was derived. Absolute non-existence of the world is the absorption of the sage, through knowledge, into supreme spirit. Perpetual destruction is the constant disappearance, day and night, of all that are born. The productions of Prakriti form the creation that is termed the elemental (Prākrita). That which ensues after a (minor) dissolution is called ephemeral creation: and the daily generation of living things is termed, by those who are versed in the Purāṇas, constant creation. In this manner the mighty Viṣṇu, whose essence is the elements, abides in all bodies, and brings about production, existence, and dissolution. The faculties of Viṣṇu to create, to preserve, and to destroy, operate successively, Maitreya, in all corporeal beings and at all seasons; and he who frees himself from the influence of these three faculties, which are essentially composed of the three qualities (goodness, foulness, and darkness), goes to the supreme sphere, from whence he never again returns. ootnotes and references:
  [1]: It is not clear which of the previous narratives is here referred to, but it seems most probable that the account in p. 35, 36. is intended.

1.07 - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  30:The perfect supramental action will not follow any single principle or limited rule. It is not likely to satisfy the standard either of the individual egoist or of any organised group-mind. It will conform to the demand neither of the positive practical man of the world nor of the formal moralist nor of the patriot nor of the sentimental philanthropist nor of the idealising philosopher. It will proceed by a spontaneous outflowing from the summits in the totality of an illumined and uplifted being, will and knowledge and not by the selected, calculated and standardised action which is all that the intellectual reason or ethical will can achieve. Its sole aim will be the expression of the divine in us and the keeping together of the world and its progress towards the Manifestation that is to be. This even will not be so much an aim and purpose as a spontaneous law of the being and an intuitive determination of the action by the Light of the divine Truth and its automatic influence. It will proceed like the action of Nature from a total will and knowledge behind her, but a will and knowledge enlightened in a conscious supreme Nature and no longer obscure in this ignorant Prakriti. It will be an action not bound by the dualities but full and large in the spirit's impartial joy of existence. The happy and inspired movement of a divine Power and Wisdom guiding and impelling us will replace the perplexities and stumblings of the suffering and ignorant ego.
  31:If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.

1.07 - The Ego and the Dualities, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1:IF ALL is in truth Sachchidananda, death, suffering, evil, limitation can only be the creations, positive in practical effect, negative in essence, of a distorting consciousness which has fallen from the total and unifying knowledge of itself into some error of division and partial experience. This is the fall of man typified in the poetic parable of the Hebrew Genesis. That fall is his deviation from the full and pure acceptance of God and himself, or rather of God in himself, into a dividing consciousness which brings with it all the train of the dualities, life and death, good and evil, joy and pain, completeness and want, the fruit of a divided being. This is the fruit which Adam and Eve, Purusha and Prakriti, the soul tempted by Nature, have eaten. The redemption comes by the recovery of the universal in the individual and of the spiritual term in the physical consciousness. Then alone the soul in Nature can be allowed to partake of the fruit of the tree of life and be as the Divine and live for ever. For then only can the purpose of its descent into material consciousness be accomplished, when the knowledge of good and evil, joy and suffering, life and death has been accomplished through the recovery by the human soul of a higher knowledge which reconciles and identifies these opposites in the universal and transforms their divisions into the image of the divine Unity.
  2:To Sachchidananda extended in all things in widest commonalty and impartial universality, death, suffering, evil and limitation can only be at the most reverse terms, shadow-forms of their luminous opposites. As these things are felt by us, they are notes of a discord. They formulate separation where there should be a unity, miscomprehension where there should be an understanding, an attempt to arrive at independent harmonies where there should be a self-adaptation to the orchestral whole. All totality, even if it be only in one scheme of the universal vibrations, even if it be only a totality of the physical consciousness without possession of all that is in movement beyond and behind, must be to that extent a reversion to harmony and a reconciliation of jarring opposites. On the other hand, to Sachchidananda transcendent of the forms of the universe the dual terms themselves, even so understood, can no longer be justly applicable. Transcendence transfigures; it does not reconcile, but rather transmutes opposites into something surpassing them that effaces their oppositions.

1.07 - The Process of Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Sayama is unseasonable and would be fruitless when a force, quality or tendency is in its infancy or vigour, before it has had the enjoyment and full activity which is its due. When once a thing is born it must have its youth, growth, enjoyment, life and final decay and death; when once an impetus has been given by Prakriti to her creation, she insists that the velocity shall spend itself by natural exhaustion before it shall cease. To arrest the growth or speed unseasonably by force is nigraha, which can be effective for a time but not in perpetuity. It is said in the Gita that all things are ruled by their nature, to their nature they return and nigraha or repression is fruitless. What happens then is that the thing untimely slain by violence is not really dead, but withdraws for a time into the Prakriti which sent it forth, gathers an immense force and returns with extraordinary violence ravening for the rightful enjoyment which it was denied. We see this in the attempts we make to get rid of our evil saskras or associations when we first tread the path of Yoga. If anger is a powerful element in our nature, we may put it down for a time by sheer force and call it self-control, but eventually unsatisfied Nature will get the better of us and the passion return upon us with astonishing force at an unexpected moment. There are only two ways by which we can effectively get the better of the passion which seeks to enslave us. One is by substitution, replacing it whenever it rises by the opposite quality, anger by thoughts of forgiveness, love or forbearance, lust by meditation on purity, pride by thoughts of humility and our own defects or nothingness; this is the method of Rajayoga, but it is a difficult, slow and uncertain method; for both the ancient traditions and the modern experience of Yoga show that men who had attained for long years the highest self-mastery have been suddenly surprised by a violent return of the thing they thought dead or for ever subject. Still this substitution, slow though it be, is one of the commonest methods of Nature and it is largely by this means, often unconsciously or half-consciously used, that the character of a man changes and develops from life to life or even in the bounds of a single lifetime. It does not destroy things in their seed and the seed which is not reduced to ashes by Yoga is always capable of sprouting again and growing into the complete and mighty tree. The second method is to give bhoga or enjoyment to the passion so as to get rid of it quickly. When it is satiated and surfeited by excessive enjoyment, it becomes weak and spent and a reaction ensues which establishes for a time the opposite force, tendency or quality. If that moment is seized by the Yogin for nigraha, the nigraha so repeated at every suitable opportunity becomes so far effective as to reduce the strength and vitality of the vtti sufficiently for the application of the final sayama. This method of enjoyment and reaction is also a favourite and universal method of Nature, but it is never complete in itself and, if applied to permanent forces or qualities, tends to establish a see-saw of opposite tendencies, extremely useful to the operations of Prakriti but from the point of view of self-mastery useless and inconclusive. It is only when this method is followed up by the use of sayama that it becomes effective. The Yogin regards the vtti merely as a play of Nature with which he is not concerned and of which he is merely the spectator; the anger, lust or pride is not his, it is the universal Mothers and she works it and stills it for her own purposes. When, however, the vtti is strong, mastering and unspent, this attitude cannot be maintained in sincerity and to try to hold it intellectually without sincerely feeling it is mithycra, false discipline or hypocrisy. It is only when it is somewhat exhausted by repeated enjoyment and coercion that Prakriti or Nature at the comm and of the soul or Purusha can really deal with her own creation. She deals with it first by vairgya in its crudest form of disgust, but this is too violent a feeling to be permanent; yet it leaves its mark behind in a deep-seated wish to be rid of its cause, which survives the return and temporary reign of the passion. Afterwards its return is viewed with impatience but without any acute feeling of intolerance. Finally supreme indifference or udsnat is gained and the final going out of the tendency by the ordinary process of Nature is watched in the true spirit of the sayam who has the knowledge that he is the witnessing soul and has only to dissociate himself from a phenomenon for it to cease. The highest stage leads either to mukti in the form of laya or disappearance, the vtti vanishing altogether and for good, or else to another kind of freedom when the soul knows that it is Gods ll and leaves it to Him whether He shall throw out the tendency or use it for His own purposes. This is the attitude of the Karmayogin who puts himself in Gods hands and does work for His sake only, knowing that it is Gods force that works in him. The result of that attitude of self-surrender is that the Lord of all takes charge and according to the promise of the Gita delivers His servant and lover from all sin and evil, the vttis working in the bodily machine without affecting the soul and working only when He raises them up for His purposes. This is nirliptat, the state of absolute freedom within the ll.
  The law is the same for the mass as for the individual. The process of human evolution has been seen by the eye of inspired observation to be that of working out the tiger and the ape. The forces of cruelty, lust, mischievous destruction, pain-giving, folly, brutality, ignorance were once rampant in humanity, they had full enjoyment; then by the growth of religion and philosophy they began in periods of satiety such as the beginning of the Christian era in Europe to be partly replaced, partly put under control. As is the law of such things, they have always reverted again with greater or less virulence and sought with more or less success to re-establish themselves. Finally in the nineteenth century it seemed for a time as if some of these forces had, for a time at least, exhausted themselves and the hour for sayama and gradual dismissal from the evolution had really arrived. Such hopes always recur and in the end they are likely to bring about their own fulfilment, but before that happens another recoil is inevitable. We see plenty of signs of it in the reeling back into the beast which is in progress in Europe and America behind the fair outside of Science, progress, civilisation and humanitarianism, and we are likely to see more signs of it in the era that is coming upon us. A similar law holds in politics and society. The political evolution of the human race follows certain lines of which the most recent formula has been given in the watchwords of the French Revolution, freedom, equality and brotherhood. But the forces of the old world, the forces of despotism, the forces of traditional privilege and selfish exploitation, the forces of unfraternal strife and passionate self-regarding competition are always struggling to reseat themselves on the thrones of the earth. A determined movement of reaction is evident in many parts of the world and nowhere perhaps more than in England which was once one of the self-styled champions of progress and liberty. The attempt to go back to the old spirit is one of those necessary returns without which it cannot be so utterly exhausted as to be blotted out from the evolution. It rises only to be defeated and crushed again. On the other hand the force of the democratic tendency is not a force which is spent but one which has not yet arrived, not a force which has had the greater part of its enjoyment but one which is still vigorous, unsatisfied and eager for fulfilment. Every attempt to coerce it in the past reacted eventually on the coercing force and brought back the democratic spirit fierce, hungry and unsatisfied, joining to its fair motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the terrible addition or Death. It is not likely that the immediate future of the democratic tendency will satisfy the utmost dreams of the lover of liberty who seeks an anarchist freedom, or of the lover of equality who tries to establish a socialistic dead level, or of the lover of fraternity who dreams of a world-embracing communism. But some harmonisation of this great ideal is undoubtedly the immediate future of the human race. On the old forces of despotism, inequality and unbridled competition, after they have been once more overthrown, a process of gradual sayama will be performed by which what has remained of them will be regarded as the disappearing vestiges of a dead reality and without any further violent coercion be transformed slowly and steadily out of existence.

1.089 - The Levels of Concentration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Ultimately, what is in the mind of Patanjali is that we have to meditate upon the various stages through which Prakriti passes in the manifestation of this world, the grossest of them being the five elements earth, water, fire, air and ether of which every physical object is made. What he expects us to do is to resolve every object into the five elements. We do not see a son, a daughter, etc.; we see only the five elements, because they are resolvable into these five elements. The body of that person, the body of this object, or whatever it is, is capable of reduction to the level of the five physical elements of which they are constituted.
  Then Patanjali wants us to go above to the tanmatras, the subtle rudimentary principles out of which the physical elements are made. Then he wants us to go above to the cosmical principle of ahamkara tattva, the Universal I which affirms the manifestation of this cosmos on one side as the physical universe, and on the other side as the individual perceivers jivas. And so it goes up, stage by stage, until the supreme purusha is realised. That ultimate union is the aim of yoga; but for that we have to attain union by stages at lower levels. We have to attain this communion, or absorption, or samyama, at each level of practice. These different levels of absorption are called the bhumis.

1.08 - Adhyatma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
  18. Think and feel that Prakriti or Svabhava or Guna does everything. Identify yourself with the Actionless Atman, the Silent Witness and thus free yourself from the bondage of action.
  19. Surrender all actions unto the Lord. Fix your mind on Him. Free yourself from egoism, attachment, desire. No action will bind you. Actions are burnt by the fire of Wisdom. Such actions are no longer actions at all. You will attain the Supreme Abode of everlasting bliss and peace.

1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  11:This ego or "I" is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of Nature, a mental form of thought-centralisation in the perceiving and discriminating mind, a vital form of the centralisation of feeling and sensation in our parts of life, a form of physical conscious reception centralising substance and function of substance in our bodies. All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. All that we externally and superficially are and do is not ego but Nature. An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. Our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed. The sadhaka in his progress towards truth and self-knowledge must come to a point where the soul opens its eyes of vision and recognises this truth of ego and this truth of works. He gives up the idea of a mental, vital, physical "I" that acts or governs action; he recognises that Prakriti, Force of cosmic nature following her fixed modes, is the one and only worker in him and in all things and creatures.
  12:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker.
  13:Purusha- Prakriti, Consciousness-Force, Soul supporting Nature, - for the two even in their separation are one and inseparable, - are at once a universal and a transcendent Power. But there is something in the individual too which is not the mental ego, something that is one in essence with this greater reality: it is a pure reflection or portion of the one Purusha; it is the Soul Person or the embodied being, the individual self, Jivatman; it is the Self that seems to limit its power and knowledge so as to support an individual play of transcendent and universal Nature. In deepest reality the infinitely One is also infinitely multiple; we are not only a reflection or portion of That but we are That; our spiritual individuality - unlike our ego - does not preclude our universality and transcendence. But at present the soul or self in us intent on individualisation in Nature allows itself to be confused with the idea of the ego; it has to get rid of this ignorance, it has to know itself as a reflection or portion or being of the supreme and universal Self and solely a centre of its consciousness in the world-action. But this Jiva Purusha too is not the doer of works any more than the ego or the supporting consciousness of the Witness and Knower. Again and always it is the transcendent and universal Shakti who is the sole doer. But behind her is the one Supreme who manifests through her as the dual power, Purusha- Prakriti, Ishwara-Shakti.1 The Supreme becomes dynamic as the Shakti and is by her the sole originator and Master of works in the universe.
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  17:In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother
  18:The Lord has veiled himself and his absolute wisdom and eternal consciousness in ignorant Nature-Force and suffers her to drive the individual being, with its complicity, as the ego; this lower action of Nature continues to prevail, often even in spite of man's half-lit imperfect efforts at a nobler motive and a purer self-knowledge. Our human effort at perfection fails, or progresses very incompletely, owing to the force of Nature's past actions in us, her past formations, her long-rooted associations; it turns towards a true and high-climbing success only when a greater Knowledge and Power than our own breaks through the lid of our ignorance and guides or takes up our personal will. For our human will is a misled and wandering ray that has parted from the supreme Puissance. The period of slow emergence out of this lower working into a higher light and purer force is the valley of the shadow of death for the striver after perfection; it is a dreadful passage full of trials, sufferings, sorrows, obscurations, stumblings, errors, pitfalls. To abridge and alleviate this ordeal or to penetrate it with the divine delight faith is necessary, an increasing surrender of the mind to the knowledge that imposes itself from within and, above all, a true aspiration and a right and unfaltering and sincere practice. "Practise unfalteringly," says the Gita, "with a heart free from despondency," the Yoga; for even though in the earlier stage of the path we drink deep of the bitter poison of internal discord and suffering, the last taste of this cup is the sweetness of the nectar of immortality and the honey-wine of an eternal Ananda.

1.094 - Understanding the Structure of Things, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The sutra we are studying, etena bhtendriyeu dharma lakaa avasth parim vykhyt (III.13), tells us that the variety of things that we see in this world is the last shape that is taken by Prakriti through the processes known as dharma, laksana and avastha. Every object of perception of the senses is a condition, or avastha, that is maintained by Prakriti. The maintenance of this avastha condition in its form as an object of sense is internally regulated by a pattern, or laksana; the form of the object is a manifestation of this pattern. This laksana pattern, again, is due to a character called dharma that is inherent in the original substance, Prakriti. In spite of the multitudinous variety that we see in the form of things in the world, all this variety is the last shape taken by Prakriti and is reducible to a single substance by the reverse process of the return of the effects to the cause.
  This is what is done in samyama on any particular object. It is this variety that troubles us and entangles us, confuses us, deludes us, and consequently makes us attached to variety, which is really not there. Thus, attachment of any kind is a kind of confusion of thought. It is a blunder that the mind commits due to not being able to gain entry into the basic substance which has taken this variety of shape in the form of these objects to which the mind is attached.
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  The object that we see with the eyes, for instance, is therefore, on a deeper probe, revealed to be an index of a condition which is cosmical in nature. It is not isolated as it appears. The vast Prakriti, being universal in its operations, focuses itself on a pinpoint in the form of an object of sense. And every object has the background of a universal pressure which Prakriti exerts at any given moment of time. This pressure is exerted by Prakriti on any object, whatever be the shape of that object. The different characters exhibited by different objects do not in any way mean a difference in the nature of the pressure exerted by Prakriti on these objects. It has a uniform pressure communicated to everything and anything, and that pressure is the pattern which Prakriti wants to maintain in the form of this manifested universe. That is called the laksana.
  As it was mentioned previously, this universe is only one of the forms which Prakriti can take. In every kalpa, or age-cycle, the form of the universe changes. Kalpa means a cycle of time beginning with the manifestation of the universe and ending with its dissolution, or pralaya. Between the kalpas is a condition of equipoise called samyavastha which contains the potentialities for creation of the next kalpa. In every kalpa, Prakriti takes a particular time-form for the projection of a universe determined by the potentialities existing originally in the condition of equipoise called samyavastha. All schools of thought tell us that the nature of the universe manifested in any particular kalpa is equivalent to the requisite conditions necessary for the fulfilment of the unfulfilled desires of individuals who lay buried, unconscious, at the time of the dissolution of the world prior to this particular manifestation.
  What we are told here is that any particular object or any particular group of objects, for the matter of that do not constitute a separate entity or a reality by itself, or by themselves. On the other hand, this particular object, or a group of objects, represents merely a condition of Prakriti, even as the mind itself is such a condition in a more rarefied form. The subjective manifestation of Prakriti is the mind, and its objective manifestation is the object, the visaya.
  In samyama, or the practice of meditation in the form of total absorption, this point is borne in mind namely, that the meditation is more on a situation or a condition rather than a compact substance. We are under the mistaken notion that there is a solid object in front of us which is completely different from other objects, with no connection at all with other things, separated by space and time. This is not the truth of things.
  The true state of affairs is that any particular form that is visible or tangible in any other manner to the senses is a representation of a particular condition, or avastha, of Prakriti, which has as its background the laksana, or the pattern which is in its mind, or which is its motive just as an artist has a particular pattern present in his mind before he paints a picture with ink on a canvas. The ink can take any shape. He can paint a cow, or a horse, or a human being with the same ink. The substance is the same. Three colours are given to a painter, and the painter can paint anything. Any shape can be taken by the same substance. Likewise, the painter is only Prakriti who painted these pictures of varieties out of a basic substance which is common to all forms, and the mind is not to be deluded into the belief that this variety is really there. There are only three inks sattva, rajas and tamas out of which all this wonderful painting has been presented before the senses. The master genius, who is Prakriti, is the artist.
  Now we come to the point of practice of yoga, which is the intention in this sutra: etena bhtendriyeu dharma lakaa avasth parim vykhyt (III.13). Just as there are the parinamas, or transformations, of the mind known as nirodha parinama, samadhi parinama and ekagrata parinama, there are the dharma, laksana and avastha parinamas of everything. In fact, dharma, laksana and avastha are only other names for these three parinamas mentioned already namely, nirodha, samadhi and ekagrata.
  Hence, we have to establish a connection between the mind and the object by means of understanding these laksanas, avasthas, etc., which are the powers operating behind the form. It was also said that these properties inhere in the substance, Prakriti, and because of the inherence of these properties which are dharmas, they are called dharmi. What is dharma and what is dharmi? It is mentioned in the next sutra: nta udita avyapadeya dharma anupt dharm (III.14). A dharmi is a substance in which dharmas inhere, exist. How do they exist? They exist in three ways: as the past, as the present and as the future. Santa, udita and avyapadesa, the three terms used in this sutra, mean respectively, the past, the present and the future. A particular character of an object that is cognisable or perceptible is the present condition of that object; it is not the whole condition.
  We are all present here as human beings with different personalities. We have a body; we have a mind; we have our own individuality. Each individuality of each person sitting here is a present condition assumed by the characters of a substance of which we are made. It is not the entirety of our nature that is manifest here, because we have a past, and we also have a future. The past has been submerged by the preponderance of the forces that have become present, and similarly, the characters that are going to be manifest in the future are also put down, for the time being, by the force of the characters that are manifest in the present. There are potentialities, latent powers, potencies present in each form in you, in me, in everything which have the peculiarity in them of releasing only certain particular features at a particular time, and pressing down, not allowing to manifest, other features which are not required to manifest at that time. These features which are not manifest may be either past or future. This is a very strange thing, and is also something very terrible.
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  This present condition of experience, which is called udita in this particular sutra, is only one time-form taken by Prakriti, and it has potentialities which were in the past that can manifest themselves once again in the future. There will be an occasion for us to study this in future, when Patanjali will tell us that there is no identical substance called individual at all. There is no self-identical being. They are only different phases of the manifestation of Prakriti, which is mistaken for a self-identical individuality, so that what is intended here is that the so-called asmita, which plays such havoc, is a phantasmagoria. It is not there at all!
  It is very surprising how consciousness can assume such a shape a shape which is really not there, and which is totally unsubstantial. This point Patanjali wants to drive into our minds so that samyama can be made easy, because as long as there are attachments present in the mind, no samyama is possible. Subconscious impulses will drag us in another direction altogether, so the very subconscious attachment should be snapped in the bud. This is possible only by a thorough analysis of the structure of things, the nature of the objects which are the causes of attachment, and the nature of asmita, the egoism, which is another reason for the impossibility of the mind to concentrate on anything that is given.

1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The fourth is anvaya, the immanence of the forces of Prakriti as sattva, rajas and tamas in the elements. These elements are nothing but sattva, rajas and tamas; and their presence in all these forms is hidden. It is these three gunas that, by some peculiar modification of themselves, enter into a peculiar state of density, gradually, and become the five elements. There are no five elements; it is the three gunas appearing as the five. The five elements are nothing but the five gradations in the density of the development of the mula Prakriti herself. That is the immanent aspect of the elements, anvaya the involvement of the elements in the three gunas of Prakriti.
  The last one is called arthavatva, the purpose for which they exist. Everything exists for the liberation of the spirit. That was pointed out in sutras we studied earlier. Bhogpavargrtham dyam (II.18): The whole universe has been manifest for the purpose of providing the field of experience for the individuals therein, in order that they may gain salvation, ultimately, through experiences of this kind. These are the five aspects of the five elements, and we concentrate and do samyama on them.
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  These are, generally speaking, the objective powers that one gains. The subjective powers are mastery over the senses and the mind. Just as there are five aspects mentioned in connection with the control of the elements, five aspects are also mentioned in respect of the control of the senses. Grahaa svarpa asmit anvaya arthavattva sayamt indriyajaya (III.48). The senses can be controlled if we can understand their structure. Just as the five gradations of the manifestation of Prakriti through the elements were mentioned, similar gradations are mentioned in respect of the senses.
  The character of grasping an object is called grahana. The way in which the eyes see, the ears hear, etc. that manner of the senses operating upon objects is called grahana. Svarupa is the senses themselves, independent of these functions. Apart from the functions that the senses perform, they have a nature of their own. That independent nature of the senses, apart from their activity, is called svarupa. Asmita is the I-principle that controls the operation of the five senses. It is the ego principle which organises the activities of the different senses and focuses them on a particular object. That means to say, the higher controls the lower, and the higher includes the lower. Ultimately, it is the I-principle that is the reason behind the working of the senses. Thus, if we can grasp the meaning of this ego, the meaning of the senses also is clear. The fourth one is anvaya. That is similar to the fourth aspect in respect of the power of the five elements namely, the operation of the gunas. The three gunas sattva, rajas and tamas of Prakriti are the rudimentary principles behind the senses and also the ahamkara tattva, or I-principle. Arthavattva is the purpose of the activity of the senses which is, again, to bring about experience for the purpose of the liberation of the spirit. With these connotations of the activities of the senses, one can concentrate, do samyama on the senses themselves, and the senses come under ones control. Grahaa svarpa asmita anvay arthavattva sayamat indriyajaya (III.48).
  Then the sutra, tata manojavitva vikaraabhva pradhnajaya ca (III.49), tells us that the mind becomes powerful and it can carry the body, like a rocket, to any place. That is called manojavitvam: one can fly as fast as the mind flies. Vikranabhava is another perfection that is said to follow. Vikranabhava means the capacity to reach any object, at any distance, and manipulate it in the manner required, according to the wish of the yogi. Again, this is another part of grahsya samapatti, or the power that one gains over the elements.

1.097 - Sublimation of Object-Consciousness, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Sattva puruayo uddhi smye kaivalyam iti (III.56). Kaivalya, or ultimate independence of the spirit, arises when there is equanimity of the structural character of sattva and the purusha. Sattva means the mind, or we may call it Prakriti; purusha is the consciousness. When there is similarity established between the two, then the one does not remain as an object of the other, nor is one a subject in relation to the other. When the two become one on account of the intense purity of the experiencing consciousness, infinity enters into experience. This is kaivalya, this is moksha sattva puruayo uddhi smye kaivalyam iti (III.56). These sutras have given us, in a concise manner, the principles of spiritual contemplation.
  It has to be taken for granted that the conditions which are stated in earlier sutras as necessary for this practice are already acquired to an appreciable degree. In fact, everything that is of importance in the practice of yoga has been mentioned in the Samadhi Pada itself. That one pada is sufficient it is a complete statement of the entire process of yoga practice. The other sections are like an elaborate commentary on those instructions which are given in the Samadhi Pada. We have to recall to our minds, once again, what are these conditions. One of the main things mentioned in the Samadhi Pada were vairagya and abhyasa, and tivra samvegatva intense ardour of the aspiring spirit is required in order that success may become imminent.

1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  How this happens is mentioned in the next sutra: jtyantara parima praktyprt (IV.2). The powers of nature are permanently there in a uniform state. There is neither an increase nor a decrease in the powers of nature. As scientists tell us, there is what is known as the system or the principle of conservation of energy, which states that the energy the total power or force of nature is constant. It does not increase or decrease day by day by external factors. Factors outside nature do not exist. And so, what appears to be an increase of power or capacity is only an entry of certain forces of nature into the system of a human individual. Any kind of transformation in a positive degree is the flowing of the powers of nature into ones system. Prakriti-apuratis the term used in the sutra. The filling up by Prakriti is what is known as Prakriti-apurat.
  When the system is emptied of all impeding factors, Prakriti fills that vacuum that has been created thereby. We are not to struggle hard to draw energy from nature, just as we do not struggle to enjoy the light of the sun provided, of course, we are ready to come out of our house and stand in the open. Likewise is the way in which nature operates. There is a uniform and equally distributed energy of nature everywhere, in every level of manifestation, whether it is subhuman, human, or superhuman. For nature, there is no such thing as these levels. They appear to be there on account of the difference in the degree of the manifestation of the powers of nature. The difference in the degree of this manifestation is, again, due to other factors. These factors are to be removed. The whole of the practice of yoga is nothing but an elimination of the obstructing factors which prevent the entry of the powers of nature into ones system.
  The sutra tells us that a transformation of oneself into a new state, jatyantara parinama, is brought about spontaneously by an increased amount of natural power entering into ones system due to the removal of the impediments. The impediments are our prarabdha karma, the karmas with which we are born, which determine the nature of our present existence in this bodily form. They have a particular direction of action, and due to the force with which the prarabdha works, the force of nature is set aside. When the rajasic and tamasic prarabdha gets diminished and sattvic prarabdha begins to operate, natural forces enter us.
  Thus, by the increase of sattva in us, we allow the powers of nature to enter us. It is the rajas that is predominant in ourselves which cuts off nature from our individual lives. The principal function of rajoguna is separation differentiating one from the other, not allowing in the cooperation of one with the other, and creating a dissimilarity of character and difference in function. Due to the intensity of the action of rajas, there is this division of properties and a separation of individualities, so that there has been the perception and experience of a dividedness of life, while this is really not there. For nature, taken in its completeness, there is no division. It is one total, a comprehensive completeness in which there is no distinction of the subject on one side and the object on the other side. The distinction has been created by certain artificial factors, and these are the operations of the gunas. By diminishing the intensity of the action of rajas through intense concentration of mind, we become more and more approximate to the original condition of Prakriti. The integrating powers of nature begin to act when sattva rises in us. On the other hand, if the rajas is to be predominant, the disintegrating factors start operating.
  Thus, what is yoga? Yoga is nothing but an endeavour in the direction of the increase of sattva in oneself and a decrease of rajas. The methods have already been described in the earlier sections. The sutra merely tells us of a principle of how Prakriti acts namely, that it fills a vacancy wherever a vacancy is created. Empty thyself, and I shall fill thee. This great statement is similar to the principle of this sutra. When we empty ourselves of all those conditioning factors of our individuality, the universal forces will enter us. The universal is not outside us. It is, on account of its being universal by itself, everywhere. But it is not allowed to operate, just as we do not allow the sunlight to enter a house by closing the windows and doors. The vehemence or the force with which the ego-principle, or the I-principle, works in us prevents the entry of universal forces into us. Yoga is the technique of the diminution of the intensity of this I-principle.
  Patanjali gives an example of how Prakriti works. It works in a spontaneous manner, like the flow of water into the fields. Nimmita aprayojaka praktn varaabheda tu tata ketrikavat (IV.3) is the sutra. We are not the creators of the powers of nature. In yoga we do not manifest or bring about something which was not already there. Just as the example given in this sutra tells us, a farmer working in the fields allows water to flow into certain fields, not by creating new water, as the water is already there; he has only to open up a passage for the movement of the water and divert its course in the way required. The role that the farmer plays is incidental. He is not the material cause of the movement of the water. He becomes an agent in the sense that he provides conditions necessary for the flow of water in a particular direction. Likewise is this practice of yoga. It is not going to create new things which were not already there.
  The powers, or the siddhis, which the Vibhuti Pada speaks about are not creations, inventions, etc., but are only spontaneous actions of Prakriti just as there is a spontaneous movement of water in the fields. What does yoga practice do? It does exactly what the farmer does in the fields. Instead of blocking the passage of water and not allowing it to flow into the field for the purpose of irrigation, the farmer opens up a stream, creates a channel, and allows the water to flow. This is what yoga does. At present the movement of energies, which flow of their own accord, are blocked. The movements are blocked due to there being no passage for the entry of the forces of nature. What is it that blocks the entry of these forces? There is only one thing which is the principal obstruction of the operation of natural forces in us. That is the I-principle, the ego, the asmita, which has various other accompaniments raga, dvesa, etc. Raga, dvesa, abhinivesa all these things mentioned earlier are accompanying features of the single impediment which is asmita. We are so powerful in our ego that nothing from outside can enter it. It is hard like flint, and it is, therefore, incapable of allowing the entry of any force into itself, just as any amount of water poured on hard rock will not enter the rock.
  Thus, the aspect which is emphasised here in this sutra, in the context of yoga practice, is the function that the practicant performs in his discipline called yoga. There is spontaneity manifest everywhere. Nature is spontaneity, in other words. Everything happens of its own accord. On the other hand, we may say that the pains that we experience in our lives are not part of nature, because pain is not a part of natural action. It is a peculiar situation that is created by not allowing the forces of nature to enter into ones own system. Ultimately, it is neither pleasure nor pain that is a characteristic of nature. Pleasures and pains are the emotional reactions of the mind. These two reactions cease, and something new altogether arises and comes into play when we become as natural as Prakriti itself. Yoga practice is a process of becoming more and more natural in ones being, and eliminating those causes which have made us unnatural. What is it that is natural, and what is unnatural? Anything that cannot harmonise with the laws of Prakriti should be regarded as unnatural; and anything that is in harmony with the laws of Prakriti is natural. What are these laws of Prakriti?
  We have been told much about it in earlier sutras. But essentially, the law of Prakriti is such that it has no internal distinction within itself. To create internal distinctions or differences of bodies, personalities, individualities, etc., would be a result of disharmony of some kind or the other. In the totality of nature, internal differences are unknown, just as the body, our individual bodily organism, has no feeling of internal differences. There is a principle which brings all these forces together and creates in us a sense of oneness. Likewise in nature, there is a principle which brings all the forces together. The more we approach this centre of unification of nature, the more are we natural, and the more we depart from it, the more are we unnatural. This is the meaning of this particular sutra, nimmita aprayojaka praktn varaabheda tu tata ketrikavat (IV.3): The instrumental cause, which is the practice of yoga, is not actually the creator of the powers or siddhis, but only an agent which allows the operation of natural forces, in the same way as the farmer operates as an instrumental cause in the movements of waters in the fields. This is the literal meaning of this sutra.
  To sum up the teaching of these two sutras cited just now, the present state of existence of a human individual is unnatural, and we should not make the mistake of thinking that we are living a normal life. Our present way of life is abnormal in the sense that it does not harmonise with what eternally exists. The temporal features that we are manifesting in our personal lives are the opposites of the eternal features of Prakriti. Hence, yoga is an instrumental agent in bringing about conditions by which there is a spontaneity of entry of eternal laws into our personality. And in this process of the entry of the eternal characters of Prakriti into us, we develop various powers. Thus, the powers, or siddhis, are nothing but experiences which are incumbent upon our gradual proximity to the ultimate nature of Prakriti. This is what the sutra tells us.

1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
  Again, in the very same meditation, when one struggles to take the elements out of time and space, and think of them as they are, it is called Nirvitarka, without question. When the meditation goes a step higher, and takes the Tanmatras as its object, and thinks of them as in time and space, it is called Savichra, with discrimination; and when in the same meditation one eliminates time and space, and thinks of the fine elements as they are, it is called Nirvichra, without discrimination. The next step is when the elements are given up, both gross and fine, and the object of meditation is the interior organ, the thinking organ. When the thinking organ is thought of as bereft of the qualities of activity and dullness, it is then called Snanda, the blissful Samadhi. When the mind itself is the object of meditation, when meditation becomes very ripe and concentrated, when all ideas of the gross and fine materials are given up, when the Sattva state only of the Ego remains, but differentiated from all other objects, it is called Ssmita Samadhi. The man who has attained to this has attained to what is called in the Vedas "bereft of body". He can think of himself as without his gross body; but he will have to think of himself as with a fine body. Those that in this state get merged in nature without attaining the goal are called Prakritilayas, but those who do not stop even there reach the goal, which is freedom.
  
  --
  The gross objects are only the elements and everything manufactured out of them. The fine objects begin with the Tanmatras or fine particles. The organs, the mind, (The mind, or common sensorium, the aggregate of all the senses), egoism, the mind-stuff (the cause of all manifestation), the equilibrium state of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas materials called Pradhna (chief), Prakriti (nature), or Avyakta (unmanifest) are all included within the category of fine objects, the Purusha (the Soul) alone being excepted.
    

1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  14:Immediately he must take the further step of relegating himself to the position of the Witness. Aloof from the Prakriti, impersonal and dispassionate, he must watch the executive Nature-Force at work within him and understand its action; he must learn by this separation to recognise the play of her universal forces, distinguish her interweaving of light and night, the divine and the undivine, and detect her formidable Powers and Beings that use the ignorant human creature. Nature works in us, says the Gita, through the triple quality of Prakriti, the quality of light and good, the quality of passion and desire and the quality of obscurity and inertia. The seeker must learn to distinguish, as an impartial and discerning witness of all that proceeds within this kingdom of his nature, the separate and the combined action of these qualities; he must pursue the workings of the cosmic forces in him through all the labyrinth of their subtle unseen processes and disguises and know every intricacy of the maze. As he proceeds in this knowledge, he will be able to become the giver of the sanction and no longer remain an ignorant tool of Nature. At first he must induce the NatureForce in its action on his instruments to subdue the working of its two lower qualities and bring them into subjection to the quality of light and good and, afterwards, he must persuade that again to offer itself so that all three may be transformed by a higher Power into their divine equivalents, supreme repose and calm, divine illumination and bliss, the eternal divine dynamis, Tapas. The first part of this discipline and change can be firmly done in principle by the will of the mental being in us; but its full execution and the subsequent transformation can be done only when the deeper psychic soul increases its hold on the nature and replaces the mental being as its ruler. When this happens, he will be ready to make, not only with an aspiration and intention and an initial and progressive self-abandonment but with the most intense actuality of dynamic self-giving, the complete renunciation of his works to the Supreme Will. By degrees his mind of an imperfect human intelligence will be replaced by a spiritual and illumined mind and that can in the end enter into the supramental Truth-Light; he will then no longer act from his nature of the Ignorance with its three modes of confused and imperfect activity, but from a diviner nature of spiritual calm, light, power and bliss. He will act not from an amalgam of an ignorant mind and will with the drive of a still more ignorant heart of emotion and the desire of the life-being and the urge and instinct of the flesh, but first from a spiritualised self and nature and, last, from a supramental Truth-consciousness and its divine force of supernature.
  15:Thus are made possible the final steps when the veil of Nature is withdrawn and the seeker is face to face with the Master of all existence and his activities are merged in the action of a supreme Energy which is pure, true, perfect and blissful for ever. Thus can he utterly renounce to the supramental Shakti his works as well as the fruits of his works and act only as the conscious instrument of the eternal Worker. No longer giving the sanction, he will rather receive in his instruments and follow in her hands a divine mandate. No longer doing works, he will accept their execution through him by her unsleeping Force. No longer willing the fulfilment of his own mental constructions and the satisfaction of his own emotional desires, he will obey and participate in an omnipotent Will that is also an omniscient Knowledge and a myterious, magical and unfathomable Love and a vast bottomless sea of the eternal Bliss of Existence.

1.09 - Legend of Lakshmi, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  [5]: The first effect of primary cause is nature, or Prakriti: the effect of the effect, or of Prakriti, is Mahat: effect in the third degree is Aha
  kāra: in the fourth, or the effect of the effect (Aha

1.09 - The Pure Existent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  15:And the first thing we have to ask ourselves is whether that Force is simply force, simply an unintelligent energy of movement or whether the consciousness which seems to emerge out of it in this material world we live in, is not merely one of its phenomenal results but rather its own true and secret nature. In Vedantic terms, is Force simply Prakriti, only a movement of action and process, or is Prakriti really power of Chit, in its nature force of creative self-conscience? On this essential problem all the rest hinges.

1.1.01 - The Divine and Its Aspects, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
      When one follows after the impersonal Self, one is moving between two opposite principles - the silence and purity of the impersonal inactive Atman and the activity of the ignorant Prakriti. One can pass into the Self, leaving the ignorant Nature or reducing it to silence. Or else, one can live in the peace and freedom of the Self and watch the action of Nature as a witness.
      Even one may put some sattwic control, by tapasya, over the action of the Prakriti; but the impersonal Self has no power to change or divinise the Nature. For that one has to go beyond the impersonal Self and seek after the Divine who is both personal and impersonal and beyond these two aspects. If, however, you practise living in the impersonal Self and can achieve a certain spiritual impersonality, then you grow in equality, purity, peace, detachment, you get the power of living in an inner freedom not touched by the surface movement or struggle of the mental, vital and physical nature, and this becomes a great help when you have to go beyond the impersonal and to change the troubled nature also into something divine.
    The Divine and the Atman

1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   psychic being; if it ascends out of the body to the planes where self is naturally conscious of its wideness and freedom, it knows itself as the self and not the mind, life or body. It is this stress of consciousness that makes all the difference. That is why one has to concentrate the consciousness in heart or mind in order to go within or go above. It is the disposition of the consciousness that determines everything, makes one predominantly mental, vital, physical or psychic, bound or free, separate in the Purusha or involved in the Prakriti.
  Good heavens! what a magnificent muddle [in the correspondent's response to the preceding letter]! The Jivatman is on the supramental plane and the Jiva is the psychic? It is the consciousness with a clear individual "I" that disposes variously the centralising stress on one part or another of the being and yet the quality of this "I" is determined by the part with which it identifies itself - therefore it must be a pure conscious I? All that has no basis whatever and does not hang together. I never said that the Jivatman belongs to the supramental plane or is situated there. The word Jiva in its ordinary sense is the living creature, but in its philosophic sense it is often used as a short way of speaking of the Jivatman, the individual being. Neither can it be said that the psychic being is the Jiva. Nor is it the fact that it is the consciousness with a clear individual "I" that disposes variously the centralising stress on one part or another of the being. Consciousness has no need of a clear individual
  --
   can see different degrees, kinds, powers of consciousness, mental, vital, physical, psychic, spiritual. The Divine has been described as Being-Consciousness-Ananda, even as a Consciousness (Chaitanya), as putting out a force or energy, Shakti, that creates worlds. The mind is a modified consciousness that puts forth a mental energy. But the Divine can stand back from his energy and observe it at its work, it can be the Witness Purusha watching the works of Prakriti. Even the mind can do that - a man can stand back in his mind-consciousness and watch the mental energy doing things, thinking, planning, etc.; all introspection is based upon that fact that one can so divide oneself into a consciousness that observes and an energy that acts. These are quite elementary things supposed to be known to everybody.
  Anybody can do that merely by a little practice; anybody who observes his own thoughts, feelings, actions has begun doing it already. In Yoga we make the division complete, that is all.

11.03 - Cosmonautics, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Thus there is a twofold process for the new man to establish himself here. First, of course, there is the psychological or inner change and reorganisation: man's attempt to reach a new status of being and consciousness not in the category of the mere mental but a supramental status. Its nature and character and formation is being probed into by the new spiritual seekers and aspirants. That work is being done from within outward, and from above downward. This however is supplemented, supported, effectuated or materialised by the other attempt from below going upward and from outside going inward. That is the way of science, of the pragmatic man. The one we may say somewhat philosophically, is the Purusha, the conscious being coming down; the other, Prakriti, pushing up, Nature driving upward or inward.
   It is true the process of acclimatisation that Nature follows is a slow one and gradual though somewhat crude, in spite of scientific refinements and subtleties; yet it is a help and has an accumulated effect. We may just record the progress achieved in the mere outward mechanisation from Lindberg's transatlantic crossing to Borman-company's journey to the moon.

1.1.04 - The Self or Atman, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Self and Nature or Prakriti
  The Self or Atman is inactive, Nature ( Prakriti) or Shakti acts.
  --
  In the experience of Yoga the self or being is in essence one with the Divine or at the least it is a portion of the Divine and has all the divine potentialities. But in manifestation it takes two aspects, the Purusha and Prakriti, conscious being and Nature.
  In Nature here the Divine is veiled, and the individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha in itself is divine, but exteriorised in the ignorance of Nature it is as the individual apparent being imperfect with her imperfection. Thus the soul or psychic essence, which is the Purusha entering into the evolution and supporting it, carries in itself all the divine potentialities, but the individual psychic being which it puts forth as its representative assumes the imperfection of Nature and evolves in it till it has recovered its full psychic essence and united itself with the Self above of which the soul is the individual projection in the evolution. This duality in the being on all its planes, for it is true in different ways not only of the Self and the psychic but of the mental, vital and physical Purushas, has to be grasped and accepted before the experiences of the Yoga can be fully understood.
  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.

11.04 - The Triple Cord, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   has to be pulled down and thrown into the gulfs of non-existenceprimal Prakriti, out of which they are bornso that the subliminal ranges of consciousness emerge and manifest themselves.
   God Varuna is invoked because he is the Lord of the Vast Consciousness, he it is that opens out the passage and leads the human being into worlds of the Vast, the TruthRitam, Brihatfrom mortality to immortality.

1.10 - Conscious Force, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  8:The answer most approved by the ancient Indian mind was that Force is inherent in Existence. Shiva and Kali, Brahman and Shakti are one and not two who are separable. Force inherent in existence may be at rest or it may be in motion, but when it is at rest, it exists none the less and is not abolished, diminished or in any way essentially altered. This reply is so entirely rational and in accordance with the nature of things that we need not hesitate to accept it. For it is impossible, because contradictory of reason, to suppose that Force is a thing alien to the one and infinite existence and entered into it from outside or was non-existent and arose in it at some point in Time. Even the Illusionist theory must admit that Maya, the power of self-illusion in Brahman, is potentially eternal in eternal Being and then the sole question is its manifestation or non-manifestation. The Sankhya also asserts the eternal coexistence of Prakriti and Purusha, Nature and Conscious-Soul, and the alternative states of rest or equilibrium of Prakriti and movement or disturbance of equilibrium.
  9:But since Force is thus inherent in existence and it is the nature of Force to have this double or alternative potentiality of rest and movement, that is to say, of self-concentration in Force and self-diffusion in Force, the question of the how of the movement, its possibility, initiating impulsion or impelling cause does not arise. For we can easily, then, conceive that this potentiality must translate itself either as an alternative rhythm of rest and movement succeeding each other in Time or else as an eternal self-concentration of Force in immutable existence with a superficial play of movement, change and formation like the rising and falling of waves on the surface of the ocean. And this superficial play - we are necessarily speaking in inadequate images - may be either coeval with the self-concentration and itself also eternal or it may begin and end in Time and be resumed by a sort of constant rhythm; it is then not eternal in continuity but eternal in recurrence.
  --
  11:But if we suppose or find Existence to be conscious Being, the problem arises. We may indeed suppose a conscious Being which is subject to its nature of Force, compelled by it and without option as to whether it shall manifest in the universe or remain unmanifest. Such is the cosmic God of the Tantriks and the Mayavadins who is subject to Shakti or Maya, Purusha involved in Maya or controlled by Shakti. But it is obvious that such a God is not the supreme infinite Existence with which we have started. Admittedly, it is only a formulation of Brahman in the cosmos by the Brahman which is itself logically anterior to Shakti or Maya and takes her back into its transcendental being when she ceases from her works. In a conscious existence which is absolute, independent of its formations, not determined by its works, we must suppose an inherent freedom to manifest or not to manifest the potentiality of movement. A Brahman compelled by Prakriti is not Brahman, but an inert Infinite with an active content in it more powerful than the continent, a conscious holder of Force of whom his Force is master. If we say that it is compelled by itself as Force, by its own nature, we do not get rid of the contradiction, the evasion of our first postulate. We have got back to an Existence which is really nothing but Force, Force at rest or in movement, absolute Force perhaps, but not absolute Being.
  12:It is then necessary to examine into the relation between Force and Consciousness. But what do we mean by the latter term? Ordinarily we mean by it our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed. This knowledge gives us a starting-point for the true science of Force and its workings; it delivers us definitely from circumscription by the material and from the illusion of the obvious.

1.10 - Fate and Free-Will, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If, however, there is no escape from the Law, if Nature is supreme and inexorable, there can be no salvation; freedom becomes a chimaera, bondage eternal. There can be no escape, unless there is something within us which is free and lord, superior to Nature. This entity the Hindu teaching finds in the spirit ever free and blissful which is one in essence and in reality with the Supreme Soul of the Universe. The spirit does not act, it is Nature that contains the action. If the spirit acted, it would be bound by its action The thing that acts is Prakriti, Nature, which determines the Swabhava of things and is the source and condition of Law or dharma. The soul or Purusha holds up the swabhava, watches and enjoys the action and its fruit, sanctions the law or dharma. It is the king, Lord or Ishwara without whose consent nothing can be done by Prakriti. But the king is above the law and free.
  It is this power of sanction that forms the element of free will in our lives. The spirit consents not that itself shall be bound, but that its enjoyment should be bound by time, space and causality and by the swabhava and the dharma. It consents to virtue or sin, good fortune or evil fortune, health or disease, joy or suffering, or it refuses them. What it is attached to, that Nature multiplies for it; what it is weary of, has vairgya for, that Nature withdraws from it. Only, because the enjoyment is in space and time, therefore, even after the withdrawal of consent, the habitual action continues for a time just as the locomotive continues to move after the steam is shut off, but in a little while it slows down and finally comes to a standstill. And because the enjoyment is in causality, the removal of the habit of action is effected not spontaneously and freely, but by an established process or one of many established processes. This is the great truth now dawning on the world, that Will is the thing which moves the world and that Fate is merely a process by which Will fulfils itself.

1.10 - The Methods and the Means, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  The question of food has always been one of the most vital with the Bhaktas. Apart from the extravagance into which some of the Bhakti sects have run, there is a great truth underlying this question of food. We must remember that, according to the Sankhya philosophy, the Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, which in the state of homogeneous equilibrium form the Prakriti, and in the heterogeneous disturbed condition form the universe are both the substance and the quality of Prakriti. As such they are the materials out of which every human form has been manufactured, and the predominance of the Sattva material is what is absolutely necessary for spiritual development. The materials which we receive through our food into our body-structure go a great way to determine our mental constitution; therefore the food we eat has to be particularly taken care of. However, in this matter, as in others, the fanaticism into which the disciples invariably fall is not to be laid at the door of the masters.
  And this discrimination of food is, after all, of secondary importance. The very same passage quoted above is explained by Shankara in his Bhshya on the Upanishads in a different way by giving an entirely different meaning to the word hra, translated generally as food. According to him, "That which is gathered in is Ahara. The knowledge of the sensations, such as sound etc., is gathered in for the enjoyment of the enjoyer (self); the purification of the knowledge which gathers in the perception of the senses is the purifying of the food (Ahara). The word 'purification-of-food' means the acquiring of the knowledge of sensations untouched by the defects of attachment, aversion, and delusion; such is the meaning. Therefore such knowledge or Ahara being purified, the Sattva material of the possessor it the internal organ will become purified, and the Sattva being purified, an unbroken memory of the Infinite One, who has been known in His real nature from scriptures, will result."

1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  also called the Great Mother, or known as Maya, Prakriti,
  Lila. 20 World is the play of the Mother of things moved to

1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The distinction is of the greatest importance; for not only does it show that the substance of our religious mentality and discipline goes back to the prehistoric antiquity of the Upanishads, but it justifies the hypothesis that the Vedantins of the Upanishads themselves held it as an inheritance from their Vedic forefa thers. If the Upanishads were only a record of intellectual speculations, the theory of a progression from Vedic materialism to new modes of thought would be entirely probable and no other hypothesis could hold the field without first destroying the rationalistic theory by new and unsuspected evidence. But the moment we perceive that the Upanishads are the result of this ancient & indigenous system of truth-finding, we are liberated from the burden of European examples. Evidently, we have here to deal with phenomena of thought which do not fall within the European scheme of a rapid transition from gross savage superstition to subtle metaphysical speculation. We have phenomena which are either sui generis or, if at any time common to humanity both within and outside India, then more ancient or at any rate earlier in the progression of mind than the modern intellectual methods first universalised by the Hellenic & Latin races; we have an intuitive and experiential method of truth finding, a fixed psychological theory and discipline, a system in which observation & comparison of subjective experiences forms the basis of fixed & verifiable psychological truth, just as nowadays in Europe observation & comparison of objective experiences forms the basis of fixed and verifiable physical truth. The difference between the speculative method and the experiential is that the speculative aims only at logical harmony and, due to the rigid abstract tendency, drives towards new blocks of thought and new mental attitudes; the experiential aims at verification by experience and drives towards the progressive discovery or restatement of eternal truths and their application to varying conditions. The indispensable basis of all Science is the invariability of the same result from the same experiment, given the same conditions; the same experiment with oxygen & hydrogen will always, in whatever age or clime it is applied, have one invariable result, the appearance of water. The indispensable basis of all Yoga is the same invariability in psychological experiments & their results. The same experiment with the limited waking or manifest consciousness and the unlimited unmanifest consciousness from which it is a selection and formation will always, in whatever age or clime it is applied, have the same result, the dissolution, gradual or rapid, complete or partial according to the instruments and conditions of the experiment, of the waking ego into the cosmic consciousness. In each method, physical Science or psychological Science, different Scientists or different teachers may differ as to some of the final generalisations to be drawn from the facts & the most appropriate terms to be used, or invent different instruments in the hope of arriving at a more rapid or a more delicate process, but the facts and the fundamental truths remain common to all, even if stated in different terms, because they are the subjects of a common experience. Now the facts discovered by the Indian method, the duality of Purusha and Prakriti, the triple states of conscious being, the relation between the macrocosm & the microcosm, the fivefold and sevenfold principles of consciousness, the existence of more than one bodily case in which, simultaneously, we dwell, these and a number of other fixed ideas which the modern Yogins hold not as speculative propositions but as observable and verifiable facts of experience, are to be found in the Upanishads already enounced in more ancient formulae and in a slightly different language. The question arises, when did they originate? If they are facts, when were they first discovered? If they are hallucinations, when were the methods of subjective experiment which result so persistently in these hallucinations, first evolved and fixed? Not at the time of the Upanishads, for the Upanishads professedly record the traditional knowledge of older Rishis which is still verifiable by the moderns, prvebhir rishibhir dyo ntanair uta.Then, some time before the composition of the Upanishads, either by the earlier or later Vedic Rishis or by predecessors of the Vedic Rishis or in the interval between the Vedic hymns and the first Vedantic compositions. But for the period between Veda & Vedanta we have no documents, no direct & plain evidence. The question therefore can only be decided by an examination of the Vedic hymns themselves. Only by settling the meaning of Veda can we decide whether the early Vedantins were right in supposing that they were merely restating in more modern terms the substantial ideas & experiences of Vedic Rishis or whether this grand assumption of the Upanishads must take its rank among those pious fictions or willing & half honest errors which have often been immensely helpful to the advance of human knowledge but are none the less impostures upon posterity.
  European scholars believe that they have fixed finally the meaning of Veda. Using as their tools the Sciences of Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology, itself a part of the strangely termed Science of Comparative Religion, they have excavated for us out of the ancient Veda a buried world, a forgotten civilisation, lost names of kings and nations, wars & battles, institutions, social habits & cultural ideas which the men of Vedantic times & their forerunners never dreamed were lying concealed in the revered & sacred words used daily by them in their worship and the fount and authority for their richest spiritual experiences deepest illuminated musings. The picture these discoveries constitute is a remarkable composition, imposing in its mass, brilliant and attractive in its details. The one lingering objection to them is a possible doubt of the truth of these discoveries, the soundness of the methods used to arrive at them. Are the conclusions of Vedic scholarship so undoubtedly true or so finally authoritative as to preclude a totally different hypothesis even though it may lead possibly to an interpretation which will wash out every colour & negative every detail of this great recovery? We must determine, first, whether the foundations of the European theory of Veda are solid & certain fact or whether it has been reared upon a basis of doubtful inference and conjecture. If the former, the question of the Veda is closed, its problem solved; if the latter, the European results may even then be true, but equally they may be false and replaceable by a more acceptable theory and riper conclusions.

1.10 - The Three Modes of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  O TRANSCEND the natural action of the lower Prakriti is indispensable to the soul, if it is to be free in its self and free in its works. Harmonious subjection to this actual universal Nature, a condition of good and perfect work for the natural instruments, is not an ideal for the soul, which should rather be subject to God and his Shakti, but master of its own nature. As agent or as channel of the Supreme Will it must determine by its vision and sanction or refusal the use that shall be made of the storage of energy, the conditions of environment, the rhythm of combined movement which are provided by Prakriti for the labour of the natural instruments, mind, life and body. But this inferior Nature can only be mastered if she is surmounted and used from above. And this can only be done by a transcendence of her forces, qualities and modes of action; otherwise we are subject to her conditions and helplessly dominated by her, not free in the spirit.
  The idea of the three essential modes of Nature is a creation of the ancient Indian thinkers and its truth is not at once obvious, because it was the result of long psychological experiment and profound internal experience. Therefore without a long inner experience, without intimate self-observation and intuitive perception of the Nature-forces it is difficult to grasp accurately or firmly utilise. Still certain broad indications may help the seeker on the Way of Works to understand, analyse and control by his assent or refusal the combinations of his own nature.
  --
  But the embodied being is not limited to these two modes of Prakriti; there is a better and more enlightened way in which he can deal with surrounding impacts and the stream of the world-forces. There is possible a reception and reaction with clear comprehension, poise and balance. This way of natural being has the power that, because it understands, sympathises; it fathoms and controls and develops Nature's urge and her ways: it has an intelligence that penetrates her processes and her significances and can assimilate and utilise; there is a lucid response that is not overpowered but adjusts, corrects, adapts, harmonises, elicits the best in all things. This is the mode of sattwa, the turn of Nature that is full of light and poise, directed to good, to knowledge, to delight and beauty, to happiness, right understanding, right equilibrium, right order: its temperament is the opulence of a bright clearness of knowledge and a lucent warmth of sympathy and closeness. A fineness and enlightenment, a governed energy, an accomplished harmony and poise of the whole being is the consummate achievement of the sattwic nature.
  No existence is cast entirely in the single mould of any of these three modes of the cosmic Force; all three are present in everyone and everywhere. There is a constant combining and separation of their shifting relations and interpenetrating
  --
  The force and the propulsion come from Prakriti and not from the creature. Then he realises how mistaken was his impression that his mind was the doer of his works; his mind was only a small part of him and a creation and engine of Nature. Nature was acting all the while in her own modes moving the three general qualities about as a girl might play with her puppets.
  His ego was all along a tool and plaything; his character and intelligence, his moral qualities and mental powers, his creations and works and exploits, his anger and forbearance, his cruelty and mercy, his love and his hatred, his sin and his virtue, his light and his darkness, his passion of joy and his anguish of sorrow were the play of Nature to which the soul, attracted, won and subjected, lent its passive concurrence. And yet the determinism of Nature or Force is not all; the soul has a word to say in the matter, - but the secret soul, the Purusha, not the mind or the ego, since these are not independent entities, they are parts of Nature. For the soul's sanction is needed for the play and by an inner silent will as the lord and giver of the sanction it can determine the principle of the play and intervene in its combinations, although the execution in thought and will and act and impulse must still be Nature's part and privilege.
  --
   to be nothing better than a device and the sustaining knot of their interaction and, perceiving it, he is delivered from the illusion of the lower egoistic Nature. He escapes from the sattwic egoism of the altruist and the saint and the thinker; he shakes off from its control on his life-impulses the rajasic egoism of the self-seeker and ceases to be the laborious caterer of self-interest and the pampered prisoner or toiling galley-slave of passion and desire; he slays with the light of knowledge the tamasic egoism of the ignorant or passive being, dull, unintelligent, attached to the common round of human life. Thus convinced and conscious of the essential vice of the ego-sense in all our personal action, he seeks no longer to find a means of self-correction and self-liberation in the rajasic or sattwic ego but looks above, beyond the instruments and the working of Nature, to the Master of works alone and his supreme Shakti, the supreme Prakriti. There alone all the being is pure and free and the rule of a divine Truth possible.
  In this progression the first step is a certain detached superiority to the three modes of Nature. The soul is inwardly separated and free from the lower Prakriti, not involved in its coils, indifferent and glad above it. Nature continues to act in the triple round of her ancient habits, - desire, grief and joy attack the heart, the instruments fall into inaction and obscurity and weariness, light and peace come back into the heart and mind and body; but the soul stands unchanged and untouched by these changes. Observing and unmoved by the grief and desire of the lower members, smiling at their joys and their strainings, regarding and unoverpowered by the failing and the darknesses of the thought and the wildness or the weaknesses of the heart and nerves, uncompelled and unattached to the mind's illuminations and its relief and sense of ease or of power in the return of light and gladness, it throws itself into none of these things, but waits unmoved for the intimations of a higher Will and the intuitions of a greater luminous knowledge. Thus doing always, it becomes eventually free even in its nature parts from the strife of the three modes and their insufficient values and imprisoning limits. For now this lower Prakriti feels progressively a compulsion from a higher Shakti. The old habits to which it
  240
  --
  Another action becomes possible, commences, grows, culminates, a working more truly right, more luminous, natural and normal to the deepest divine interplay of Purusha and Prakriti although supernatural and supernormal to our present imperfect nature. The body conditioning the physical mind insists no longer on its tamasic inertia that repeats always the same ignorant movement: it becomes a passive field and instrument of a greater force and light, it responds to every demand of the spirit's force, holds and supports every variety and intensity of new divine experience. Our kinetic and dynamic vital parts, our nervous and emotional and sensational and volitional being, expand in power and admit a tireless action and a blissful enjoyment of experience, but learn at the same time to stand on a foundation of wide self-possessed and self-poised calm, sublime in force, divine in rest, neither exulting and excited nor tortured by sorrow and pain, neither harried by desire and importunate impulses nor dulled by incapacity and indolence. The intelligence, the thinking, understanding and reflective mind, renounces its sattwic limitations and opens to an essential light and peace. An infinite knowledge offers to us its splendid ranges, a knowledge not made up of mental constructions, not bound by opinion and idea or dependent on a stumbling uncertain logic and the petty support of the senses, but self-sure, au thentic, all-penetrating, all-comprehending; a boundless bliss and peace, not dependent on deliverance from the hampered strenuousness of creative energy and dynamic action, not constituted by a
  The Three Modes of Nature
  --
   Prakriti in her force of the Ignorance. If on this basis the nature, the motion of Prakriti, is also to become free, it must be by a quiescence of action in a luminous peace and silence in which all necessary movements are done without any conscious reaction or participation or initiation of action by the mind or by the lifebeing, without any ripple of thought or eddy of the vital parts: it must be done under the impulsion, by the initiation, by the
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1.10 - The Yoga of the Intelligent Will, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We must remember the psychological order of the Sankhya which the Gita accepts. On one side there is the Purusha, the soul calm, inactive, immutable, one, not evolutive; on the other side there is Prakriti or Nature-force inert without the conscious
  Soul, active but only by juxtaposition to that consciousness, by contact with it, as we would say, not so much one at first as indeterminate, triple in its qualities, capable of evolution and involution. The contact of soul and nature generates the play of subjectivity and objectivity which is our experience of being; what is to us the subjective first evolves, because the soulconsciousness is the first cause, inconscient Nature-force only the second and dependent cause; but still it is Nature and not
  --
   of Nature-force assuming the forms of our subjectivity in the evolving consciousness of animal and man, we shall see that the Sankhya system squares well enough with all that modern enquiry has elicited by its observation of material Nature. In the evolution of the soul back from Prakriti towards Purusha, the reverse order has to be taken to the original Nature-evolution, and that is how the Upanishads and the Gita following and almost quoting the Upanishads state the ascending order of our subjective powers. "Supreme, they say," beyond their objects
  "are the senses, supreme over the senses the mind, supreme over the mind the intelligent will: that which is supreme over the intelligent will, is he," - is the conscious self, the Purusha.
  --
  For evidently there are two possibilities of the action of the intelligent will. It may take its downward and outward orientation towards a discursive action of the perceptions and the will in the triple play of Prakriti, or it may take its upward and inward orientation towards a settled peace and equality in the calm and immutable purity of the conscious silent soul no longer subject to the distractions of Nature. In the former alternative the subjective being is at the mercy of the objects of sense, it lives in the outward contact of things. That life is the life of desire. For the senses excited by their objects create a restless or often violent disturbance, a strong or even headlong outward movement towards the seizure of these objects and their enjoyment, and they carry away the sense-mind, "as the winds carry away a ship upon the sea"; the mind subjected to the emotions, passions, longings, impulsions awakened by this outward movement of the senses carries away similarly the intelligent will, which loses therefore its power of calm discrimination and mastery. Subjection of the soul to the confused play
  The Yoga of the Intelligent Will
  --
   of the three gunas of Prakriti in their eternal entangled twining and wrestling, ignorance, a false, sensuous, objective life of the soul, enslavement to grief and wrath and attachment and passion, are the results of the downward trend of the buddhi, - the troubled life of the ordinary, unenlightened, undisciplined man. Those who like the Vedavadins make sense-enjoyment the object of action and its fulfilment the highest aim of the soul, are misleading guides. The inner subjective self-delight independent of objects is our true aim and the high and wide poise of our peace and liberation.
  Therefore, it is the upward and inward orientation of the intelligent will that we must resolutely choose with a settled concentration and perseverance, vyavasaya; we must fix it firmly in the calm self-knowledge of the Purusha. The first movement must be obviously to get rid of desire which is the whole root of the evil and suffering; and in order to get rid of desire, we must put an end to the cause of desire, the rushing out of the senses to seize and enjoy their objects. We must draw them back when they are inclined thus to rush out, draw them away from their objects, - as the tortoise draws in his limbs into the shell, so these into their source, quiescent in the mind, the mind quiescent in intelligence, the intelligence quiescent in the soul and its selfknowledge, observing the action of Nature, but not subject to it, not desiring anything that the objective life can give.
  --
   is a particular intensity, not the essential sign. The test is the expulsion of all desires, their inability to get at the mind, and it is the inner state from which this freedom arises, the delight of the soul gathered within itself with the mind equal and still and highpoised above the attractions and repulsions, the alternations of sunshine and storm and stress of the external life. It is drawn inward even when acting outwardly; it is concentrated in self even when gazing out upon things; it is directed wholly to the Divine even when to the outward vision of others busy and preoccupied with the affairs of the world. Arjuna, voicing the average human mind, asks for some outward, physical, practically discernible sign of this great Samadhi; how does such a man speak, how sit, how walk? No such signs can be given, nor does the Teacher attempt to supply them; for the only possible test of its possession is inward and that there are plenty of hostile psychological forces to apply. Equality is the great stamp of the liberated soul and of that equality even the most discernible signs are still subjective. "A man with mind untroubled by sorrows, who has done with desire for pleasures, from whom liking and wrath and fear have passed away, such is the sage whose understanding has become founded in stability." He is "without the triple action of the qualities of Prakriti, without the dualities, ever based in his true being, without getting or having, possessed of his self."
  For what gettings and havings has the free soul? Once we are possessed of the Self, we are in possession of all things.

1.11 - Powers, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
  All action of Sattva, a modification of Prakriti characterised by light and happiness, is for the soul. When Sattva is free from egoism and illuminated with the pure intelligence of Purusha, it is called the self-centred one, because in that state it becomes independent of all relations.
  
  --
  Saving, because the knowledge takes the Yogi across the ocean of birth and death. The whole of Prakriti in all its states, subtle and gross, is within the grasp of this knowledge. There is no succession in perception by this knowledge; it takes in all things simultaneously, at a glance.
  

1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  Shakti, Purusha and Prakriti. A Gnostic text from the second
  55 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, p. 21.

1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     There is another greater step to be taken after the surrender of our instrumental ego to the Divine shakti. It is not enough to know her as the one Cosmic Force that moves us and all creatures on the planes of mind, life and Matter; for this is the lower Nature and, although the Divine Knowledge, Light, Power are there concealed and at work in the Ignorance and can break partly its veil and manifest something of their true character or descend from above and uplift these inferior workings, yet, even if we realise the One ill a spiritualised mind, a spiritualised life-movement, a spiritualised body-consciousness, an imperfection remains in the dynamic parts. There is a stumbling response to the Supreme Power, a veil over the face of the Divine, a constant mixture of the Ignorance. It is only when we open to the Divine shakti in the truth of her force which transcends this lower Prakriti that we can be perfect instruments of her power and knowledge.
     Not only liberation but perfection must be the aim of the Karmayoga. The Divine works through our nature and according to our nature; if our nature is imperfect, the work also will be imperfect, mixed, inadequate. Even it may be marred by gross errors, falsehoods, moral weaknesses, diverting influences. The work of the Divine will be done in us even then, but according to our weakness, not according to the strength and purity of its source. If ours were not an integral Yoga, if we sought only the liberation of the self within us or the motionless existence of Purusha separated from Prakriti, this dynamic imperfection might not matter. Calm, untroubled, not depressed, not elated, refusing to accept the perfection or imperfection, fault or merit, sin or virtue as ours, perceiving that it is the modes of Nature working in the field of her modes that make this mixture, we could withdraw into the silence of the spirit and, pure, untouched, witness only the workings of Prakriti. But in an integral realisation this can only be a step on the way, not our last resting-place. For we aim at the divine realisation not only in the immobility of the Spirit, but also in the movement of Nature. And this cannot be altogether until we can feel the presence and power of the Divine in every step, motion, figure of our activities, in every turn of our will, in every thought, feeling and impulse. No doubt, we can feel that in a sense even in the nature of the Ignorance, but it is the divine Power and Presence in a disguise, a diminution, an inferior figure. Ours is a greater demand, that our nature shall be a power of the Divine in the Truth of the Divine, in the Light, in the force of the eternal self-conscient Will, in the wideness of the sempiternal Knowledge.
     After the removal of the veil of ego, the removal of the veil of Nature and her inferior modes that govern our mind, life and body. As soon as the limits of the ego begin to fade, we see how that veil is constituted and detect the action of cosmic Nature in us, and in or behind cosmic Nature we sense the presence of the cosmic Self and the dynamisms of the world-pervading Ishwara. The Master of the instrument stands behind all this working, and even within the working there is his touch and the drive of a great guiding or disposing Influence. It is no longer ego or ego-force that we serve; we obey the World-Master and his evolutionary impulse. At each step we say in the language of the Sanskrit verse, "Even as I am appointed by Thee seated in my heart, so, 0 Lord, I act." But still this action may be of two very different kinds, one only illumined, the other transformed and uplifted into a greater supernature. For we may keep on in the way of action upheld and followed by our nature when by her and her illusion of egoism we were "turned as if mounted on a machine," but now with a perfect understanding of the mechanism and its utilisation for his world purposes by the Master of works whom we feel behind it. This is indeed as far as even many great Yogis have reached on the levels of spiritualised mind; but it need not be so always, for there is a greater supramental possibility. It is possible to rise beyond spiritualised mind and to act spontaneously in the living presence of the original divine Truth-Force of the Supreme Mother Our motion one with her motion and merged in it, our will one with her will, our energy absolved
  --
     For here in the world, though the gnosis is there secretly behind existence, what acts is not the gnosis but a magic of Knowledge-Ignorance, an incalculable yet apparently mechanical overmind Maya. The Divine appears to us here in one view as an equal, inactive and impersonal Witness Spirit, an immobile consenting Purusha not bound by quality or Space or Time, whose support or sanction is given impartially to the play of all action and energies which the transcendent Will has once permitted and authorised to fulfil themselves in the cosmos. This Witness Spirit, this immobile Self in things, seems to will nothing and determine nothing; yet we become aware that his very passivity, his silent presence compels all things to travel even in their ignorance towards a divine goal and attracts through division towards a yet unrealised oneness. Yet no supreme infallible Divine Will seems to be there, only a widely deployed Cosmic Energy of a mechanical executive Process, Prakriti. This is one side of the cosmic Self; the other presents itself as a universal Divine, one in being, multiple in personality and power, who conveys to us, when we enter into the consciousness of his universal forces, a sense of infinite quality and will and act and a world-wide knowledge and a one yet innumerable delight; for through him we become one with all existences not only in their essence but in their play of action, see ourself in all and all in ourself, perceive all knowledge and thought and feeling as motions of the one Mind and Heart, all energy and action as kinetics of the one Will m power, all Matter and form as particles of the one Body, all personalities as projections of the one Person, all egos as deformations of the one and sole real "I" in existence. In him we no longer stand separate, but lose our active ego in the universal movement, even as by the Witness who is without qualities and for ever unattached and unentangled, we lose our static ego in the universal peace.
     And yet there remains a contradiction between these two terms, the aloof divine Silence and the all-embracing divine Action, which we may heal in ourselves in a certain manner, in a certain high degree which seems to us complete, yet is not complete because it cannot altogether transform and conquer. A universal Peace, Light, Power, Bliss is ours, but its effective expression is not that of the Truth-Consciousness, the divine Gnosis, but still, though wonderfully freed, uplifted and illumined, supports only the present self-expression of the Cosmic Spirit and does not transform, as would a transcendental Descent, the ambiguous symbols and veiled mysteries of a world of Ignorance. Ourselves are free, but the earth-consciousness remains in bondage; only a further transcendental ascent and descent can entirely heal the contradiction and transform and deliver.

1.11 - The Seven Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We see that these Waters are the same as those of Vamadeva's hymn, of Vasishtha's, closely connected with the clarity and the honey, - ghr.tasya yonau srava the madhunam, scotanti dhara madhuno ghr.tasya; they lead to the Truth, they are themselves the source of the Truth, they flow in the unobstructed and shoreless Vast as well as here upon the earth. They are figured as fostering cows (dhenavah.), mares (asvah.), they are called sapta van.h., the seven Words of the creative goddess Vak, - Speech, the expressive power of Aditi, of the supreme Prakriti who is spoken of as the Cow just as the Deva or Purusha is described in the Veda as Vrishabha or Vrishan, the Bull. They are therefore the seven strands of all being, the seven streams or currents or forms of movement of the one conscious existence.
  We shall find that in the light of the ideas which we have discovered from the very opening of the Veda in Madhuchchhandas' hymns and in the light of the symbolic interpretations which are now becoming clear to us, this passage apparently so figured, mysterious, enigmatical becomes perfectly straightforward and coherent, as indeed do all the passages of the Veda which seem now almost unintelligible when once their right clue is found. We have only to fix the psychological function of Agni, the priest, the fighter, the worker, the truth-finder, the winner of beatitude for man; and that has already been fixed for us in the first hymn of the Rig Veda by Madhuchchhandas' description of him, - "the Will in works of the Seer true and most rich in

1.11 - The Three Purushas, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the oceanic stir and change of universal Nature the soul or Purusha is the standing-point, stable, unmoving, unchanging, eternal,nitya sarvagata sthur acaloya santana. In the whole, the Purusha or soul is one,there is One Spirit which supports the stir of the Universe, not many. In the individual the One Purusha has three stages of personality; He is One, but triple, trivt. The Upanishads speak of two birds on one tree, of which one eats the fruit of the tree, the other, seated on a higher branch, does not eat but watches its fellow; one is a or lord of itself, the other is ana, not lord of itself, and it is when the eater looks up and perceives the greatness of the watcher and fills himself with it that grief, death, subjection,in one word my, ignorance and illusion, ceases to touch him. There are two unborn who are male and one unborn who is female; she is the tree with its sweet and bitter fruit, the two are the birds. One of the unborn enjoys her sweetness, the other has put it away from him. These are the two Purushas, the akara, or immutable spirit, and the kara, or apparently mutable, and the tree or woman is Prakriti, universal Energy which the Europeans call Nature. The kara purua is the soul in Nature and enjoying Nature, the akara purua is the soul above Nature and watching her. But there is One who is not seated on the tree but occupies and possesses it, who is not only lord of Himself, but lord of all that is: He is higher than the kara, higher than the akara, He is Purushottama, the Soul one with God, with the All.
  These three Purushas are described in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita. There are two Purushas in the world, the akara and the kara,the kara is all creatures, the akara is called kastha, the one on the summit. There is another Purusha, the highest (uttama), called also the Paramatma or Supreme Spirit, who enters into the three worlds, (the worlds of suupti, svapna, jgrat, otherwise the causal, mental and physical planes of existence), and sustains them as their imperishable lord. And in the thirteenth chapter, while drawing the distinction between the lower Purusha and the higher, Sri Krishna defines more minutely the relations of God and the individual soul to Nature. Prakriti is the basic source of cause, effect and agency; the Purusha, of the sense of enjoyment of happiness and grief; for it is the soul in Nature (Purusha in Prakriti) that enjoys the threefold workings of things caused by Nature, (the play of conservation, creation and destruction; reception, reaction and resistance; illumination, misconception and obscuration; calm, work and inertia; all being different manifestations of three fundamental forces called the gunas or essential properties of Prakriti), and it is the attachment of the soul to the gunas that is the cause of births in bodies good and evil. The highest Purusha in this body is the one who watches, who sanctions, who enjoys, who upholds, who is the mighty Lord and the Supreme Soul.
  The personality of the Supreme Soul is universal, not individual. Whatever is in all creatures, character, idea, imagination, experience, sensation, motion, is contained by Him as an object of spiritual enjoyment without limiting or determining Him. He is all things at once. Such a universality is necessary to support and supply individual existence, but it cannot be the determining limit of individual existence. Something has to be reserved, something put forward, and this partial manifestation is the individual. It is verily an eternal part of Me that in the world of individual existence becomes the Jiva or individual. The Jiva or individual is kara purua, and between him and the Supreme stands the akara purua, the bird on the summit of the tree, joyous in his own bliss, undisturbed by the play of Nature, impartially watching it, receiving its images on his calm immovable existence without being for a moment bound or affected, eternally self-gathered, eternally free. This akara purua is our real self, our divine unity with God, our inalienable freedom from that which is transient and changing. If it did not exist, there would be no escape from the bondage of life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue; we should be prisoners in a cage without a door, beating our wings against the bars in vain for an exit; life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue would be eternal, ineffugable realities, not temporary rules determining the great game of life, and we should be unwilling actors, not free playmates of God able to suspend and renew the game when we will. It is by realising our oneness with the akara purua that we get freedom from ignorance, freedom from the cords of desire, freedom from the imperative law of works. On the other hand if the akara purua were all, as the Sankhya philosophy contends, there would be no basis for different experience, no varying personality, every individual existence would be precisely like every other individual existence, the development and experience of one soul in Nature an exact replica of the development and experience of another soul. It is the kara purua who is all creatures, and the variety of experience, character and development is effected by a particular part of the universal swabhava or nature of conscious existence in phenomena being attached to a particular individual or Jiva. This is what is meant by saying that it is a part of God which becomes the Jiva. This swabhava, once determined, does not change; but it manifests various parts of itself, at various times, under various circumstances, in various forms of action and various bodies suited to the action or development it has to enjoy. It is for this reason that the Purusha in Nature is called kara, fluid, shifting, although it is not in reality fluid or shifting, but constant, eternal and immutable, santana. It is the variety of its enjoyment in Time, Space and Causality that makes it kara. The enjoyment of the akara purua is self-existent, beyond Time, Space and Causality, aware of but undisturbed by the continual multitudinous flux and reflux of Prakriti. The enjoyment of Purushottama is both in Prakriti and beyond it, it embraces and is the reality of all experience and enjoyment.
  Development is determined by the kara purua, but not conducted by him. It is Prakriti, the Universal Energy, that conducts development under the law of cause and effect, and is the true agent. The soul is not the agent, but the lord who enjoys the results of the action of his agent, Prakriti or Nature; only by his attachment to Prakriti he forgets himself and identifies himself with her so as to have the illusion of agency and, by thus forgetting himself, ceases to be lord of himself, becomes subject to Causality, imprisoned in Time and Space, bound by the work which he sanctions. He himself, being a part of God, is made in His image, of one nature with Him. Therefore what God is, he also is, only with limitation, subject to Time, Space and Causality, because he has, of his own will, accepted that bondage. He is the witness, and if he ceased to watch, the drama would stop. He is the source of sanction, and what he declares null and void, drops away from the development. He is the enjoyer, and if he became indifferent, that individual development would be arrested. He is the upholder, and if he ceased to sustain the dhra, the vehicle, it would fall and cease. He is the lord, and it is for his pleasure that Nature acts. He is the spirit, and matter is only his vehicle, his robe, his means of self-expression. But all his sanctions, refusals, behests act not at once, not there and then, not by imperative absolute compulsion, but subject to lapse of time, change of place, working of cause to effect. The lapse may be brief or long, a moment or centuries; the change small or great, here or in another world; the working direct or indirect, with the rapid concentration of processes which men call a miracle or with the careful and laboured evolution in which every step is visibly ordered and deliberate; but so long as the Jiva is bound, his lordship is limited and constitutional, not despotic and absolute. His sanction and signature are necessary, but it is the Lords spiritual and temporal of his mind and body, the Commons in his external environment who do the work of the State, execute, administer, legislate.
  The first step in self-liberation is to get rid of the illusion of agency, to realise that Nature acts, not the soul. The second is to remove the siege of phenomenal associations by surrendering lordship to God, leaving Him alone to uphold and sanction by the abdication of ones own independent use of these powers, offering up the privilege of the enjoyer to Him. All that is then left is the attitude of the akara purua, the free, blissful self existence, watching the action of Prakriti, but outside it. The kara withdraws into the akara. When the sk or witness withdraws into God Himself, that is the utter liberation.
  ***

1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Teacher first makes a distinction between the two means of salvation on which in this world men can concentrate separately, the Yoga of knowledge, the Yoga of works, the one implying, it is usually supposed, renunciation of works as an obstacle to salvation, the other accepting works as a means of salvation. He does not yet insist strongly on any fusion of them, on any reconciliation of the thought that divides them, but begins by showing that the renunciation of the Sankhyas, the physical renunciation, Sannyasa, is neither the only way, nor at all the better way. Nais.karmya, a calm voidness from works, is no doubt that to which the soul, the Purusha has to attain; for it is Prakriti which does the work and the soul has to rise above involution in the activities of the being and attain to a free serenity and poise watching over the operations of Prakriti, but not affected by them. That, and not cessation of the works of Prakriti, is what is really meant by the soul's nais.karmya.
  Therefore it is an error to think that by not engaging in any kind of action this actionless state of the soul can be attained and enjoyed. Mere renunciation of works is not a sufficient, not even quite a proper means for salvation. "Not by abstention from works does a man enjoy actionlessness, nor by mere renunciation (of works) does he attain to his perfection," - to siddhi, the accomplishment of the aims of his self-discipline by
  --
  But at least it must be one necessary means, indispensable, imperative? For how, if the works of Prakriti continue, can the soul help being involved in them? How can I fight and yet in my soul not think or feel that I the individual am fighting, not desire victory nor be inwardly touched by defeat? This is the teaching of
  Works and Sacrifice
  --
  "For none stands even for a moment not doing work; everyone is made to do action helplessly by the modes born of Prakriti."
  The strong perception of the great cosmic action and the eternal activity and power of the cosmic energy which was so much emphasised afterwards by the teaching of the Tantric Shaktas who even made Prakriti or Shakti superior to Purusha, is a very remarkable feature of the Gita. Although here an undertone, it is still strong enough, coupled with what we might call the theistic and devotional elements of its thought, to bring in that activism which so strongly modifies in its scheme of Yoga the quietistic tendencies of the old metaphysical Vedanta. Man embodied in the natural world cannot cease from action, not for a moment, not for a second; his very existence here is an action; the whole universe is an act of God, mere living even is His movement.
  Our physical life, its maintenance, its continuance is a journey, a pilgrimage of the body, sarra-yatra, and that cannot be effected without action. But even if a man could leave his body unmaintained, otiose, if he could stand still always like a tree or sit inert like a stone, tis.t.hati, that vegetable or material immobility would not save him from the hands of Nature; he would not be liberated from her workings. For it is not our physical movements and activities alone which are meant by works, by karma; our mental existence also is a great complex action, it is even the greater and more important part of the works of the unresting energy, - subjective cause and determinant of the physical. We have gained nothing if we repress the effect but
  --
   free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection. Do action thus self-controlled, says Krishna, niyatam kuru karma tvam: I have said that knowledge, the intelligence, is greater than works, jyayas karman.o buddhih., but I did not mean that inaction is greater than action; the contrary is the truth, karma jyayo akarman.ah.. For knowledge does not mean renunciation of works, it means equality and non-attachment to desire and the objects of sense; and it means the poise of the intelligent will in the Soul free and high-uplifted above the lower instrumentation of Prakriti and controlling the works of the mind and the senses and body in the power of self-knowledge and the pure objectless self-delight of spiritual realisation, niyatam karma.2 Buddhiyoga is fulfilled by karmayoga; the Yoga of the self-liberating intelligent will finds its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works.
  Thus the Gita founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, nis.kama karma, and unites the subjective practice of the Sankhyas - rejecting their merely physical rule - with the practice of Yoga.
  --
  The difficulty is this, how, our nature being what it is and desire the common principle of its action, is it possible to institute a really desireless action? For what we call ordinarily disinterested action is not really desireless; it is simply a replacement of certain smaller personal interests by other larger desires which have only the appearance of being impersonal, virtue, country, mankind. All action, moreover, as Krishna insists, is done by the gun.as of Prakriti, by our nature; in acting according to the
  Shastra we are still acting according to our nature, - even if this
  --
  All being and all action of Prakriti exist only for the sake of the Divine; from that it proceeds, by that it endures, to that it is directed. But so long as we are dominated by the ego-sense we cannot perceive or act in the spirit of this truth, but act for the satisfaction of the ego and in the spirit of the ego, otherwise than for sacrifice. Egoism is the knot of the bondage. By acting
  Godwards, without any thought of ego, we loosen this knot and finally arrive at freedom.
  --
  The Sankhya starts from the notion of the divine status as that of the immutable and inactive Purusha which each soul is in reality and makes an opposition between inactivity of Purusha and activity of Prakriti; so its logical culmination is cessation of all works. Yoga starts from the notion of the Divine as Ishwara, lord of the operations of Prakriti and therefore superior to them, and its logical culmination is not cessation of works but the soul's superiority to them and freedom even though doing all works.
  In the opposition of Vedism and Vedantism works, karma, are restricted to Vedic works and sometimes even to Vedic sacrifice and ritualised works, all else being excluded as not useful to salvation. Vedism of the Mimansakas insisted on them as the means, Vedantism taking its stand on the Upanishads looked on them as only a preliminary belonging to the state of ignorance and in the end to be overpassed and rejected, an obstacle to the seeker of liberation. Vedism worshipped the Devas, the gods, with sacrifice and held them to be the powers who assist our salvation. Vedantism was inclined to regard them as powers of the mental and material world opposed to our salvation (men, says the Upanishad, are the cattle of the gods, who do not desire man to know and be free); it saw the Divine as the immutable

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  or, if not Matter, then, with the Sankhya philosophy, an indeterminate inconscient active Force or Prakriti of which even mind
  and reason are mechanical operations, - the Conscious Soul, if

1.12 - Delight of Existence - The Solution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  5:If, on the other hand, we look at world-existence in relation to consciousness only and to force of consciousness, we may regard, describe and realise it as a movement of Force obeying some secret will or else some necessity imposed on it by the very existence of the Consciousness that possesses or regards it. It is then the play of Prakriti, the executive Force, to satisfy Purusha, the regarding and enjoying Conscious-Being or it is the play of Purusha reflected in the movements of Force and with them identifying himself. World, then, is the play of the Mother of things moved to cast Herself for ever into infinite forms and avid of eternally outpouring experiences.
  6:Again if we look at World-Existence rather in its relation to the self-delight of eternally existent being, we may regard, describe and realise it as Lila, the play, the child's joy, the poet's joy, the actor's joy, the mechanician's joy of the Soul of things eternally young, perpetually inexhaustible, creating and re-creating Himself in Himself for the sheer bliss of that selfcreation, of that self-representation, - Himself the play, Himself the player, Himself the playground. These three generalisations of the play of existence in its relation to the eternal and stable, the immutable Sachchidananda, starting from the three conceptions of Maya, Prakriti and Lila and representing themselves in our philosophical systems as mutually contradictory philosophies, are in reality perfectly consistent with each other, complementary and necessary in their totality to an integral view of life and the world. The world of which we are a part is in its most obvious view a movement of Force; but that Force, when we penetrate its appearances, proves to be a constant and yet always mutable rhythm of creative consciousness casting up, projecting in itself phenomenal truths of its own infinite and eternal being; and this rhythm is in its essence, cause and purpose a play of the infinite delight of being ever busy with its own innumerable self-representations. This triple or triune view must be the starting-point for all our understanding of the universe.
  7:Since, then, eternal and immutable delight of being moving out into infinite and variable delight of becoming is the root of the whole matter, we have to conceive one indivisible conscious Being behind all our experiences supporting them by its inalienable delight and effecting by its movement the variations of pleasure, pain and neutral indifference in our sensational existence. That is our real self; the mental being subject to the triple vibration can only be a representation of our real self put in front for the purposes of that sensational experience of things which is the first rhythm of our divided consciousness in its response and reaction to the multiple contacts of the universe. It is an imperfect response, a tangled and discordant rhythm preparing and preluding the full and unified play of the conscious Being in us; it is not the true and perfect symphony that may be ours if we can once enter into sympathy with the One in all variations and attune ourselves to the absolute and universal diapason.
  --
  16:Such then is the view of the universe which arises out of the integral Vedantic affirmation. An infinite, indivisible existence all-blissful in its pure self-consciousness moves out of its fundamental purity into the varied play of Force that is consciousness, into the movement of Prakriti which is the play of Maya. The delight of its existence is at first self-gathered, absorbed, subconscious in the basis of the physical universe; then emergent in a great mass of neutral movement which is not yet what we call sensation; then further emergent with the growth of mind and ego in the triple vibration of pain, pleasure and indifference originating from the limitation of the force of consciousness in the form and from its exposure to shocks of the universal Force which it finds alien to it and out of harmony with its own measure and standard; finally, the conscious emergence of the full Sachchidananda in its creations by universality, by equality, by self-possession and conquest of Nature. This is the course and movement of the world.
  17:If it then be asked why the One Existence should take delight in such a movement, the answer lies in the fact that all possibilities are inherent in Its infinity and that the delight of existence - in its mutable becoming, not in its immutable being, - lies precisely in the variable realisation of its possibilities. And the possibility worked out here in the universe of which we are a part, begins from the concealment of Sachchidananda in that which seems to be its own opposite and its self-finding even amid the terms of that opposite. Infinite being loses itself in the appearance of non-being and emerges in the appearance of a finite Soul; infinite consciousness loses itself in the appearance of a vast indeterminate inconscience and emerges in the appearance of a superficial limited consciousness; infinite selfsustaining Force loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of atoms and emerges in the appearance of the insecure balance of a world; infinite Delight loses itself in the appearance of an insensible Matter and emerges in the appearance of a discordant rhythm of varied pain, pleasure and neutral feeling, love, hatred and indifference; infinite unity loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of multiplicity and emerges in a discord of forces and beings which seek to recover unity by possessing, dissolving and devouring each other. In this creation the real Sachchidananda has to emerge. Man, the individual, has to become and to live as a universal being; his limited mental consciousness has to widen to the superconscient unity in which each embraces all; his narrow heart has to learn the infinite embrace and replace its lusts and discords by universal love and his restricted vital being to become equal to the whole shock of the universe upon it and capable of universal delight; his very physical being has to know itself as no separate entity but as one with and sustaining in itself the whole flow of the indivisible Force that is all things; his whole nature has to reproduce in the individual the unity, the harmony, the oneness-in-all of the supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "Yes, it is. But that concept is something far beyond the ordinary man. Daya springs from sattva. Sattva preserves, rajas creates, and tamas destroys. But Brahman is beyond the three gunas. It is beyond Prakriti.
  "None of the three gunas can reach Truth; they are like robbers, who cannot come to a public place for fear of being arrested. Sattva, rajas, and tamas are like so many robbers.
  --
  MASTER: "It signifies the yoga, or union, of Purusha and Prakriti. Whatever you perceive in the universe is the outcome of this union. Take the image of iva and Kli.
  Kli stands on the bosom of iva; iva lies under Her feet like a corpse; Kli looks at iva. All this denotes the union of Purusha and Prakriti. Purusha is inactive; therefore iva lies on the ground like a corpse. Prakriti performs all Her activities in conjunction with Purusha. Thus She creates, preserves, and destroys. That is also the meaning of the conjoined images of Radha and Krishna. On account of that union, again, the images are slightly inclined toward each other.
  "To denote this union, Sri Krishna wears a pearl in His nose, Radha a blue stone in hers.

1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Krishna will say in a subsequent chapter; but it is the knowledge of him in the workings of Prakriti, in the workings of the three
  The Significance of Sacrifice
  --
  Nature, nistraigun.ya. The Brahman is one but self-displayed in two aspects, the immutable Being and the creator and originator of works in the mutable becoming, atman, sarvabhutani; it is the immobile omnipresent Soul of things and it is the spiritual principle of the mobile working of things, Purusha poised in himself and Purusha active in Prakriti; it is aks.ara and ks.ara. In both of these aspects the Divine Being, Purushottama, manifests himself in the universe; the immutable above all qualities is His poise of peace, self-possession, equality, samam brahma; from that proceeds His manifestation in the qualities of Prakriti and their universal workings; from the Purusha in Prakriti, from this
  Brahman with qualities, proceed all the works1 of the universal energy, Karma, in man and in all existences; from that work proceeds the principle of sacrifice. Even the material interchange between gods and men proceeds upon this principle, as typified in the dependence of rain and its product food on this working and on them the physical birth of creatures. For all the working of Prakriti is in its true nature a sacrifice, yajna, with the Divine
  Being as the enjoyer of all energisms and works and sacrifice and the great Lord of all existences, bhoktaram yajnatapasam sarvaloka-mahesvaram, and to know this Divine all-pervading and established in sacrifice, sarvagatam yajne pratis.t.hitam, is the true, the Vedic knowledge.
  --
  But he may be known in an inferior action through the devas, the gods, the powers of the divine Soul in Nature and in the eternal interaction of these powers and the soul of man, mutually giving and receiving, mutually helping, increasing, raising each other's workings and satisfaction, a commerce in which man rises towards a growing fitness for the supreme good. He recognises that his life is a part of this divine action in Nature and not a thing separate and to be held and pursued for its own sake. He regards his enjoyments and the satisfaction of his desires as the fruit of sacrifice and the gift of the gods in their divine universal workings and he ceases to pursue them in the false and evil spirit of sinful egoistic selfishness as if they were a good to be seized from life by his own unaided strength without return and without thankfulness. As this spirit increases in him, he subordinates his desires, becomes satisfied with sacrifice as the law of life and works and is content with whatever remains over from the sacrifice, giving up all the rest freely as an offering in the great and beneficent interchange between his life and the worldlife. Whoever goes contrary to this law of action and pursues works and enjoyment for his own isolated personal self-interest, lives in vain; he misses the true meaning and aim and utility of living and the upward growth of the soul; he is not on the path which leads to the highest good. But the highest only comes when the sacrifice is no longer to the gods, but to the one allpervading Divine established in the sacrifice, of whom the gods are inferior forms and powers, and when he puts away the lower self that desires and enjoys and gives up his personal sense of being the worker to the true executrix of all works, Prakriti, and his personal sense of being the enjoyer to the Divine Purusha, the higher and universal Self who is the real enjoyer of the works of Prakriti. In that Self and not in any personal enjoyment he finds now his sole satisfaction, complete content, pure delight; he has nothing to gain by action or inaction, depends neither on gods nor men for anything, seeks no profit from any, for the self-delight is all-sufficient to him, but does works for the sake of the Divine only, as a pure sacrifice, without attachment or desire. Thus he gains equality and becomes free from the
  The Significance of Sacrifice
  --
   modes of Nature, nistraigun.ya; his soul takes its poise not in the insecurity of Prakriti, but in the peace of the immutable
  Brahman, even while his actions continue in the movement of
  --
  That this is the sense of the passage is made clear in what follows, by the affirmation of lokasangraha as the object of works, of Prakriti as the sole doer of works and the divine
  Purusha as their equal upholder, to whom works have to be given up even in their doing, - this inner giving up of works and yet physical doing of them is the culmination of sacrifice,
  --
  Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahmanaction." This then is the knowledge in which the liberated man has to do works of sacrifice. It is the knowledge declared of old in the great Vedantic utterances, "I am He", "All this verily is the Brahman, Brahman is this Self." It is the knowledge of the entire unity; it is the One manifest as the doer and the deed and the object of works, knower and knowledge and the object of knowledge. The universal energy into which the action is poured is the Divine; the consecrated energy of the giving is the Divine; whatever is offered is only some form of the Divine; the giver of the offering is the Divine himself in man; the action, the work, the sacrifice is itself the Divine in movement, in activity; the goal to be reached by sacrifice is the Divine. For the man who has this knowledge and lives and acts in it, there can be no binding works, no personal and egoistically appropriated action; there is only the divine Purusha acting by the divine Prakriti in His own being, offering everything into the fire of His self-conscious cosmic energy, while the knowledge and the possession of His divine existence and consciousness by the soul unified with Him is the goal of all this God-directed movement and activity. To know that and to live and act in this unifying consciousness is to be free.
  The Significance of Sacrifice

1.12 - The Strength of Stillness, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In this calm, right knowledge comes. The thoughts of men are a tangle of truth and falsehood, satyam and antam. True perception is marred and clouded by false perception, true judgment lamed by false judgment, true imagination distorted by false imagination, true memory deceived by false memory. The activity of the mind must cease, the chitta be purified, a silence fall upon the restlessness of Prakriti, then in that calm, in that voiceless stillness illumination comes upon the mind, error begins to fall away and, so long as desire does not stir again, clarity establishes itself in the higher stratum of the consciousness compelling peace and joy in the lower. Right knowledge becomes the infallible source of right action. Yoga karmasu kaualam.
  The knowledge of the Yogin is not the knowledge of the average desire-driven mind. Neither is it the knowledge of the scientific or of the worldly-wise reason which anchors itself on surface facts and leans upon experience and probability. The Yogin knows Gods way of working and is aware that the improbable often happens, that facts mislead. He rises above reason to that direct and illuminated knowledge which we call vijnam. The desire-driven mind is emmeshed in the intricate tangle of good and evil, of the pleasant and the unpleasant, of happiness and misfortune. It strives to have the good always, the pleasant always, the happiness always. It is elated by fortunate happenings, disturbed and unnerved by their opposite. But the illuminated eye of the seer perceives that all leads to good; for God is all and God is sarvama

1.13 - The Lord of the Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  All truth of works must depend upon the truth of being. All active existence must be in its inmost reality a sacrifice of works offered by Prakriti to Purusha, Nature offering to the supreme and infinite Soul the desire of the multiple finite Soul within her. Life is an altar to which she brings her workings and the fruits of her workings and lays them before whatever aspect of the Divinity the consciousness in her has reached for whatever result of the sacrifice the desire of the living soul can seize on as its immediate or its highest good. According to the grade of consciousness and being which the soul has reached in Nature, will be the Divinity it worships, the delight which it seeks and the hope for which it sacrifices. And in the movement of the mutable Purusha in Nature all is and must be interchange; for
  126
  --
  Purusha or Brahman; it is to make it dwell always on the one idea of the one Self and not in the many-branching conceptions of the mind and many-streaming impulses of desire. Taken by itself this path would seem to lead to the complete renunciation of works, to an immobile passivity and to the severance of the soul from Nature. But in reality such an absolute renunciation, passivity and severance are impossible. Purusha and Prakriti are twin principles of being which cannot be severed, and so long as we remain in Nature, our workings in Nature must continue, even though they may take a different form or rather a different sense from those of the unenlightened soul. The real renunciation - for renunciation, sannyasa, there must be - is not the fleeing from works, but the slaying of ego and desire.
  The way is to abandon attachment to the fruit of works even while doing them, and the way is to recognise Nature as the agent and leave her to do her works and to live in the soul as the witness and sustainer, watching and sustaining her, but not attached either to her actions or their fruits. The ego, the limited and troubled personality is then quieted and merged in the consciousness of the one impersonal Self, while the works of Nature continue to our vision to operate through all these

1.14 - Descendants of Prithu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
  "We bow to him whose glory is the perpetual theme of every speech; him first, him last; the supreme lord of the boundless world; who is primeval light; who is without his like; indivisible and infinite; the origin of all existent things, movable or stationary. To that supreme being who is one with time, whose first forms, though he be without form, are day and evening and night, be adoration. Glory to him, the life of all living things, who is the same with the moon, the receptacle of ambrosia, drunk daily by the gods and progenitors: to him who is one with the sun, the cause of heat and cold and rain, who dissipates the gloom, and illuminates the sky with his radiance: to him who is one with earth, all-pervading, and the asylum of smell and other objects of sense, supporting the whole world by its solidity. We adore that form of the deity Hari which is water, the womb of the world, the seed of all living beings. Glory to the mouth of the gods, the eater of the Havya; to the eater of the Kavya, the mouth of the progenitors; to Viṣṇu, who is identical with fire; to him who is one with air, the origin of ether, existing as the five vital airs in the body, causing constant vital action; to him who is identical with the atmosphere, pure, illimitable, shapeless, separating all creatures. Glory to Kṛṣṇa, who is Brahmā in the form of sensible objects, who is ever the direction of the faculties of sense. We offer salutation to that supreme Hari who is one with the senses, both subtle and substantial, the recipient of all impressions, the root of all knowledge: to the universal soul, who, as internal intellect, delivers the impressions received by the senses to soul: to him who has the properties of Prakriti; in whom, without end, rest all things; from whom all things proceed; and who is that into which all things resolve. We worship that Puruṣottoma, the god who is pure spirit, and who, without qualities, is ignorantly considered as endowed with qualities. We adore that supreme Brahma, the ultimate condition of Viṣṇu, unproductive, unborn, pure, void of qualities, and free from accidents; who is neither high nor low, neither bulky nor minute, has neither shape, nor colour, nor shadow, nor substance, nor affection, nor body; who is neither etherial nor susceptible of contact, smell, or taste; who has neither eyes, nor ears, nor motion, nor speech, nor breath, nor mind, nor name, nor race, nor enjoyment, nor splendour; who is without cause, without fear, without error, without fault, undecaying, immortal, free from passion, without sound, imperceptible, inactive, independent of place or time, detached from all investing properties; but (illusively) exercising irresistible might, and identified with all beings, dependent upon none. Glory to that nature of Viṣṇu which tongue can not tell, nor has eye beheld."
  Thus glorifying Viṣṇu, and intent in meditation on him, the Pracetasas passed ten thousand years of austerity in the vast ocean; on which Hari, being pleased with them, appeared to them amidst the waters, of the complexion of the full-blown lotus leaf. Beholding him mounted on the king of birds, Garuḍa, the Pracetasas bowed down their heads in devout homage; when Viṣṇu said to them, "Receive the boon you have desired; for I, the giver of good, am content with you, and am present." The Pracetasas replied to him with reverence, and told him that the cause of their devotions was the command of their father to effect the multiplication of mankind. The god, having accordingly granted to them the object of their prayers, disappeared, and they came up from the water.

1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Nature. Reaching the inner actionlessness of the silent Purusha, nais.karmya, and leaving Prakriti to do her works, we can attain supremely beyond to the status of the divine Mastery which is
  The Principle of Divine Works
  --
  To exalt oneself out of the lower imperfect Prakriti, traigun.yamay maya, into unity with the divine being, consciousness and nature,1 madbhavam agatah., is the object of the Yoga. But when this object is fulfilled, when the man is in the Brahmic status and sees no longer with the false egoistic vision himself and the world, but sees all beings in the Self, in God, and the
  Self in all beings, God in all beings, what shall be the action,
  --
   inactive, impersonal self; for that by itself would lead the liberated man to actionless immobility. It is not characteristically that of the Kshara, the multitudinous, the personal, the Purusha self-subjected to Prakriti; for that by itself would lead him back into subjection to his personality and to the lower nature and its qualities. It is the nature of the Purushottama who holds both these together and by his supreme divinity reconciles them in a divine reconciliation which is the highest secret of his being, rahasyam hyetad uttamam. He is not the doer of works in the personal sense of our action involved in Prakriti; for God works through his power, conscious nature, effective force, - Shakti,
  Maya, Prakriti, - but yet above it, not involved in it, not subject to it, not unable to lift himself beyond the laws, workings, habits of action it creates, not affected or bound by them, not unable to distinguish himself, as we are unable, from the workings of life, mind and body. He is the doer of works who acts not, kartaram akartaram. "Know me," says Krishna, "for the doer of this (the fourfold law of human workings) who am yet the imperishable non-doer. Works fix not themselves on me (na limpanti), nor have I desire for the fruits of action." But neither is he the inactive, impassive, unpuissant Witness and nothing else; for it is he who works in the steps and measures of his power; every movement of it, every particle of the world of beings it forms is instinct with his presence, full of his consciousness, impelled by his will, shaped by his knowledge.
  He is, besides, the Supreme without qualities who is possessed of all qualities, nirgun.o gun..3 He is not bound by any mode of nature or action, nor consists, as our personality consists, of a sum of qualities, modes of nature, characteristic operations of the mental, moral, emotional, vital, physical being, but is the source of all modes and qualities, capable of developing any he wills in whatever way and to whatever degree he wills; he is the infinite being of which they are ways of becoming, the immeasurable quantity and unbound ineffable of which they are measures, numbers and figures, which they seem to rhythmise

1.15 - LAST VISIT TO KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "He who is Brahman is the dyakti, the Primal Energy. When inactive He is called Brahman, the Purusha; He is called akti, or Prakriti, when engaged in creation, preservation, and destruction. These are the two aspects of Reality: Purusha and Prakriti. He who is the Purusha is also Prakriti. Both are the embodiment of Bliss.
  "If you are aware of the Male Principle, you cannot ignore the Female Principle: He who is aware of the father must also think of the mother. ( Keshab laughs ) He who knows darkness also knows light. He who knows night also knows day. He who knows happiness also knows misery. You understand this, don't you?"

1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Gita explains the ordinary imperfect action of the creature by its subjection to the mechanism of Prakriti and its limitation by the self-representations of Maya. These two terms are only complementary aspects of one and the same effective force of divine consciousness. Maya is not essentially illusion, - the element or appearance of illusion only enters in by the ignorance of the lower Prakriti, Maya of the three modes of Nature,
  - it is the divine consciousness in its power of various selfrepresentation of its being, while Prakriti is the effective force of that consciousness which operates to work out each such self-representation according to its own law and fundamental idea, svabhava and svadharma, in its own proper quality and particular force of working, gun.a-karma. "Leaning - pressing down upon my own Nature ( Prakriti) I create (loose forth into various being) all this multitude of existences, all helplessly subject to the control of Nature." Those who know not the Divine lodged in the human body, are ignorant of it because they are grossly subject to this mechanism of Prakriti, helplessly subject to its mental limitations and acquiescent in them, and dwell in an Asuric nature that deludes with desire and bewilders with egoism the will and the intelligence, mohinm prakr.tim sritah..
  For the Purushottama within is not readily manifest to any and every being; he conceals himself in a thick cloud of darkness or a bright cloud of light, utterly he envelops and wraps himself in his Yogamaya.1 "All this world," says the Gita, "because it is bewildered by the three states of being determined by the modes of Nature, fails to recognise me, for this my divine Maya of the modes of Nature is hard to get beyond; those cross beyond it who approach Me; but those who dwell in the Asuric nature of being, have their knowledge reft from them by Maya." In
  --
   other words, there is the inherent consciousness of the divine in all, for in all the Divine dwells; but he dwells there covered by his Maya and the essential self-knowledge of beings is reft from them, turned into the error of egoism by the action of Maya, the action of the mechanism of Prakriti. Still by drawing back from the mechanism of Nature to her inner and secret Master man can become conscious of the indwelling Divinity.
  Now it is notable that with a slight but important variation of language the Gita describes in the same way both the action of the Divine in bringing about the ordinary birth of creatures and his action in his birth as the Avatar. "Leaning upon my own
  Nature, prakr.tim svam avas.t.abhya," it will say later, "I loose forth variously, visr.jami, this multitude of creatures helplessly subject owing to the control of Prakriti, avasam prakr.ter vasat."
  "Standing upon my own Nature," it says here, "I am born by my self-Maya, prakr.tim svam adhis.t.haya . . . atmamayaya, I loose forth myself, atmanam sr.jami." The action implied in the word avas.t.abhya is a forceful downward pressure by which the object controlled is overcome, oppressed, blocked or limited in its movement or working and becomes helplessly subject to the controlling power, avasam vasat; Nature in this action becomes mechanical and its multitude of creatures are held helpless in the mechanism, not lords of their own action. On the contrary the action implied in the word adhis.t.haya is a dwelling in, but also a standing upon and over the Nature, a conscious control and government by the indwelling Godhead, adhis.t.hatr devata, in which the Purusha is not helplessly driven by the Prakriti through ignorance, but rather the Prakriti is full of the light and the will of the Purusha. Therefore in the normal birth that which is loosed forth, - created, as we say, - is the multitude of creatures or becomings, bhutagramam; in the divine birth that which is loosed forth, self-created, is the self-conscious self-existent being, atmanam; for the Vedantic distinction between atma and bhutani is that which is made in European philosophy between the Being and its becomings. In both cases Maya is the means of the creation or manifestation, but in the divine birth it is by self-Maya, atmamayaya, not the involution in the lower Maya
  156

1.15 - The Supreme Truth-Consciousness, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  17:Secondly, this conscious Soul concentrated in knowledge, this Purusha observing and governing the Force that has gone forth from him, his Shakti or Prakriti, repeats himself in every form of himself. He accompanies, as it were, his Force of consciousness into its works and reproduces there the act of selfdivision from which this apprehending consciousness is born. In each form this Soul dwells with his Nature and observes himself in other forms from that artificial and practical centre of consciousness. In all it is the same Soul, the same divine Being; the multiplication of centres is only a practical act of consciousness intended to institute a play of difference, of mutuality, mutual knowledge, mutual shock of force, mutual enjoyment, a difference based upon essential unity, a unity realised on a practical basis of difference.
  18:We can speak of this new status of the all-pervading Supermind as a further departure from the unitarian truth of things and from the indivisible consciousness which constitutes inalienably the unity essential to the existence of the cosmos. We can see that pursued a little farther it may become truly Avidya, the great Ignorance which starts from multiplicity as the fundamental reality and in order to travel back to real unity has to commence with the false unity of the ego. We can see also that once the individual centre is accepted as the determining standpoint, as the knower, mental sensation, mental intelligence, mental action of will and all their consequences cannot fail to come into being. But also we have to see that so long as the soul acts in the Supermind, Ignorance has not yet begun; the field of knowledge and action is still the truth-consciousness, the basis is still the unity.

1.1.5 - Thought and Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To reject doubts means control of ones thoughtsvery certainly so. But the control of ones thoughts is as necessary as the control of ones vital desires and passions or the control of the movements of ones body for the Yoga, and not for the Yoga only. One cannot be a fully developed mental being even, if one has not a control of the thoughts, is not their observer, judge, master,the mental Purusha, manomaya purua, ak, anumant, vara. It is no more proper for the mental being to be the tennis ball of unruly and uncontrollable thoughts than to be a rudderless ship in the storm of the desires and passions or a slave of either the inertia or the impulses of the body. I know it is more difficult because man being primarily a creature of mental Prakriti identifies himself with the movements of his mind and cannot at once dissociate himself and stand free from the swirl and eddies of the mind whirlpool. It is comparatively easy for him to put a control on his body, at least a certain part of its movements: it is less easy but still very possible after a struggle to put a mental control on his vital impulsions and desires; but to sit, like the Tantrik Yogi on the river, above the whirlpool of his thoughts is less facile. Nevertheless it can be done; all developed mental men, those who get beyond the average, have in one way or other or at least at certain times and for certain purposes to separate the two parts of the mind, the active part which is a factory of thoughts and the quiet masterful part which is at once a Witness and a Will, observing them, judging, rejecting, eliminating, accepting, ordering corrections and changes, the Master in the House of Mind, capable of self-empire, svrjya.
  The Yogi goes still farther; he is not only a master there, but even while in mind in a way, he gets out of it, as it were, and stands above or quite back from it and free. For him the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or refusal to these thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing NatureForce. It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this. Sit in meditation, he said, but do not think, look only at your mind; you will see thoughts coming into it; before they can enter throw them away from you till your mind is capable of entire silence. I had never heard before of thoughts coming visibly into the mind from outside, but I did not think of either questioning the truth or the possibility, I simply sat down and did it. In a moment my mind became silent as a windless air on a high mountain summit and then I saw a thought and then another thought coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought or a labourer in a thought-factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free too to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire.
  --
  Yogic control can come in one of two ways or by their combination. (1) To separate the witness Soul in you from the movements of the mental, vital and physical Prakriti to which these things belong, learn to look upon them and in the end to feel them as not yourself, not a part of the inner or true being but occurring on the surface, and to experience the inner being as the Purusha eternally calm, silent and immovable. This separation once done, learn by abhysa to give the effective comm and of the Purusha to the movements of the Prakriti to ceaserefusing the sanction to all that you wish to eliminate. The process is long and laborious and the final perfection can only come by resolute and persevering practice. (2) To open yourself to the Divine Power and give up all into its hands, yourself only rejecting and refusing sanction to all that you feel to be false and contrary to truth and purity in you.
  This is as an answer to your difficulty, but I cannot direct you or give you any Sadhana, which I give only to those who are called from within to my way of Yoga and not for any limited object like the one you have in view.

1.16 - The Process of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  He is ignorant because there is upon the eyes of his soul and all its organs the seal of that Nature, Prakriti, Maya, by which he has been put forth into manifestation out of God's eternal being; she has minted him like a coin out of the precious metal of the divine substance, but overlaid with a strong coating of the alloy of her phenomenal qualities, stamped with her own stamp and mark of animal humanity, and although the secret sign of the Godhead is there, it is at first indistinguishable and always with difficulty decipherable, not to be really discovered except by that initiation into the mystery of our own being which distinguishes a Godward from an earthward humanity.
  In the Avatar, the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines
  --
   maya, into the lower or human nature. This seems to be the inner doctrine of the Christian incarnation; in its Trinity the Father is above in this inner Heaven; the Son or supreme Prakriti become
  Jiva of the Gita descends as the divine Man upon earth, in the mortal body; the Holy Spirit, pure Self, Brahmic consciousness is that which makes them one and that also in which they communicate; for we hear of the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus and it is the same descent which brings down the powers of the higher consciousness into the simple humanity of the Apostles.
  --
  Maya," presiding over the actions of my Prakriti. Here there is no question of the Lord and the human Jiva or of the Father and the Son, the divine Man, but only of the Lord and his Prakriti.
  The Divine descends by his own Prakriti into birth in its human form and type and brings into it the divine Consciousness and the divine Power, though consenting, though willing to act in the form, type, mould of humanity, and he governs its actions in the body as the indwelling and over-dwelling Soul, adhis.t.haya. From above he governs always, indeed, for so he governs all nature, the human included; from within also he governs all nature, always, but hidden; the difference here is that he is manifest, that the nature is conscious of the divine Presence as the Lord, the Inhabitant, and it is not by his secret will from above, "the will of the Father which is in heaven," but by his quite direct and apparent will that he moves the nature. And here there seems to be no room for the human intermediary; for it is by resort to his own nature, prakr.tim svam, and not the special nature of the
  Jiva that the Lord of all existence thus takes upon himself the human birth.

1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "The whole thing, in a nutshell is that one must develop ecstatic love for Satchidananda. What kind of love? How should one love God? Gauri used to say that one must become like Sita to understand Rma; like Bhagavati, the Divine Mother, to understand Bhagavan, iva. One must practise austerity, as Bhagavati did, in order to attain iva. One must cultivate the attitude of Prakriti in order to realize Purusha-the attitude of a friend, a handmaid, or a mother.
  "I saw Sita in a vision. I found that her entire mind was concentrated on Rma. She was totally indifferent to everything-her hands, her feet, her clothes, her jewels. It seemed that Rma had filled every bit of her life and she could not remain alive without Rma."

1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  The Purusha is the Chidatma and Prakriti the Chitakti. Sri Krishna is the Chidatma and Sri Radha the Chitakti. The devotees are so many forms of the Chitakti. They should think of themselves as companions or handmaids of the Chitakti, Sri Radha. This is the whole gist of the thing.'"
  After dusk Sri Ramakrishna went to the Kli temple and was pleased to see M.

1.18 - Mind and Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  8:That apprehending consciousness, the Prajnana, places, as we have seen, the working of the indivisible All, active and formative, as a process and object of creative knowledge before the consciousness of the same All, originative and cognisant as the possessor and witness of its own working, - somewhat as a poet views the creations of his own consciousness placed before him in it as if they were things other than the creator and his creative force, yet all the time they are really no more than the play of self-formation of his own being in itself and are indivisible there from their creator. Thus Prajnana makes the fundamental division which leads to all the rest, the division of the Purusha, the conscious soul who knows and sees and by his vision creates and ordains, and the Prakriti, the Force-Soul or Nature-Soul which is his knowledge and his vision, his creation and his allordaining power. Both are one Being, one existence, and the forms seen and created are multiple forms of that Being which are placed by Him as knowledge before Himself as knower, by Himself as Force before Himself as Creator. The last action of this apprehending consciousness takes place when the Purusha pervading the conscious extension of his being, present at every point of himself as well as in his totality, inhabiting every form, regards the whole as if separately, from each of the standpoints he has taken; he views and governs the relations of each soulform of himself with other soul-forms from the standpoint of will and knowledge appropriate to each particular form.
  9:Thus the elements of division have come into being. First, the infinity of the One has translated itself into an extension in conceptual Time and Space; secondly, the omnipresence of the One in that self-conscious extension translates itself into a multiplicity of the conscious soul, the many Purushas of the Sankhya; thirdly, the multiplicity of soul-forms has translated itself into a divided habitation of the extended unity. This divided habitation is inevitable the moment these multiple Purushas do not each inhabit a separate world of its own, do not each possess a separate Prakriti building a separate universe, but rather all enjoy the same Prakriti, - as they must do, being only soulforms of the One presiding over the multiple creations of His power, - yet have relations with each other in the one world of being created by the one Prakriti. The Purusha in each form actively identifies himself with each; he delimits himself in that and sets off his other forms against it in his consciousness as containing his other selves which are identical with him in being but different in relation, different in the various extent, various range of movement and various view of the one substance, force, consciousness, delight which each is actually deploying at any given moment of Time or in any given field of Space. Granted that in the divine Existence, perfectly aware of itself, this is not a binding limitation, not an identification to which the soul becomes enslaved and which it cannot exceed as we are enslaved to our self-identification with the body and unable to exceed the limitation of our conscious ego, unable to escape from a particular movement of our consciousness in Time determining our particular field in Space; granted all this, still there is a free identification from moment to moment which only the inalienable self-knowledge of the divine soul prevents from fixing itself in an apparently rigid chain of separation and Time succession such as that in which our consciousness seems to be fixed and chained.
  10:Thus the depiecing is already there; the relation of form with form as if they were separate beings, of will-of-being with willof-being as if they were separate forces, of knowledge-of-being with knowledge-of-being as if they were separate consciousnesses has already been founded. It is as yet only "as if"; for the divine soul is not deluded, it is aware of all as phenomenon of being and keeps hold of its existence in the reality of being; it does not forfeit its unity: it uses mind as a subordinate action of the infinite knowledge, a definition of things subordinate to its awareness of infinity, a delimitation dependent on its awareness of essential totality - not that apparent and pluralistic totality of sum and collective aggregation which is only another phenomenon of Mind. Thus there is no real limitation; the soul uses its defining power for the play of well-distinguished forms and forces and is not used by that power.

1.18 - The Divine Worker, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Nature is at work, keeps unimpaired her hold. On the contrary in the full flood of action the soul is free from its works, is not the doer, not bound by what is done, and he who lives in the freedom of the soul, not in the bondage of the modes of Nature, alone has release from works. This is what the Gita clearly means when it says that he who in action can see inaction and can see action still continuing in cessation from works, is the man of true reason and discernment among men. This saying hinges upon the Sankhya distinction between Purusha and Prakriti, between the free inactive soul, eternally calm, pure and unmoved in the midst of works, and ever active Nature operative as much in inertia and cessation as in the overt turmoil of her visible hurry of labour. This is the knowledge which the highest effort of the discriminating reason, the buddhi, gives to us, and therefore whoever possesses it is the truly rational and discerning man, sa
  The Divine Worker

1.19 - Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:Mind thus appears as a creative cosmic agency. This is not the impression which we normally have of our mentality; rather we regard it primarily as a perceptive organ, perceptive of things already created by Force working in Matter, and the only origination we allow to it is a secondary creation of new combined forms from those already developed by Force in Matter. But the knowledge we are now recovering, aided by the last discoveries of Science, begins to show us that in this Force and in this Matter there is a subconscious Mind at work which is certainly responsible for its own emergence, first in the forms of life and secondly in the forms of mind itself, first in the nervous consciousness of plant-life and the primitive animal, secondly in the ever-developing mentality of the evolved animal and of man. And as we have already discovered that Matter is only substance-form of Force, so we shall discover that material Force is only energy-form of Mind. Material force is, in fact, a subconscious operation of Will; Will that works in us in what seems to be light, though it is in truth no more than a halflight, and material Force that works in what to us seems to be a darkness of unintelligence, are yet really and in essence the same, as materialistic thought has always instinctively felt from the wrong or lower end of things and as spiritual knowledge working from the summit had long ago discovered. We may say, therefore, that it is a subconscious Mind or Intelligence which, manifesting Force as its driving-power, its executive Nature, its Prakriti, has created this material world.
  3:But since, as we have now found, Mind is no independent and original entity but only a final operation of the Truthconsciousness or Supermind, therefore wherever Mind is, there Supermind must be. Supermind or the Truth-consciousness is the real creative agency of the universal Existence. Even when Mind is in its own darkened consciousness separated from its source, yet is that larger movement always there in the workings of Mind; forcing them to preserve their right relation, evolving from them the inevitable results they bear in themselves, producing the right tree from the right seed, it compels even the operations of so brute, inert and darkened a thing as material Force to result in a world of Law, of order, of right relation and not, as it would otherwise be, of hurtling chance and chaos. Obviously, this order and right relation can only be relative and not the supreme order and supreme right which would reign if Mind were not in its own consciousness separated from Supermind; it is an arrangement, an order of the results right and proper to the action of dividing Mind and its creation of separative oppositions, its dual contrary sides of the one Truth. The Divine Consciousness, having conceived and thrown into operation the Idea of this dual or divided representation of Itself, deduces from it in real-idea and educes practically from it in substance of life, by the governing action of the whole Truth-consciousness behind it, its own inferior truth or inevitable result of various relation. For this is the nature of Law or Truth in the world that it is the just working and bringing out of that which is contained in being, implied in the essence and nature of the thing itself, latent in its self-being and self-law, svabhava and svadharma, as seen by the divine Knowledge. To use one of those wonderful formulas of the Upanishad2 which contain a world of knowledge in a few revealing words, it is the Self-existent who as the seer and thinker becoming everywhere has arranged in Himself all things rightly from years eternal according to the truth of that which they are.
  4:Consequently, the triple world that we live in, the world of Mind-Life-Body, is triple only in its actual accomplished evolution. Life involved in Matter has emerged in the form of thinking and mentally conscious life. But with Mind, involved in it and therefore in Life and Matter, is the Supermind, which is the origin and ruler of the other three, and this also must emerge. We seek for an intelligence at the root of the world, because intelligence is the highest principle of which we are aware and that which seems to us to govern and explain all our own action and creation and, therefore, if there is a Consciousness at all in the universe, we presume that it must be an Intelligence, a mental Consciousness. But intelligence only perceives, reflects and uses within the measure of its capacity the work of a Truth of being superior to itself; the power behind that works must therefore be another and superior form of Consciousness proper to that Truth. We have, accordingly, to mend our conception and affirm that not a subconscious Mind or Intelligence, but an involved Supermind, which puts Mind in front of it as the immediately active special form of its knowledge-will subconscious in Force and uses material Force or Will subconscious in substance of being as its executive Nature or Prakriti, has created this material universe.
  5:But we see that here Mind is manifested in a specialisation of Force to which we give the name of Life. What then is Life? and what relation has it to Supermind, to this supreme trinity of Sachchidananda active in creation by means of the Real-Idea or Truth-consciousness? From what principle in the Trinity does it take its birth? or by what necessity, divine or undivine, of the Truth or the illusion, does it come into being? Life is an evil, rings down the centuries the ancient cry, a delusion, a delirium, an insanity from which we have to flee into the repose of eternal being. Is it so? and why then is it so? Why has the Eternal wantonly inflicted this evil, brought this delirium or insanity upon Himself or else upon the creatures brought into being by His terrible all-deluding Maya? Or is it rather some divine principle that thus expresses itself, some power of the Delight of eternal being that had to express and has thus thrown itself into Time and Space in this constant outburst of the million and million forms of life which people the countless worlds of the universe?

12.02 - The Stress of the Spirit, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There seems to be an entity lying at the other end away from Matter, it is the Spirit, the individual Conscious Being. If Matter is Bondage, Law, Determinism, Spirit is Freedom, Liberty, Self-choice. That is the well-known dualityPurusha and Prakriti, that divide existence between themselves. Purusha is the conscient Being, and Prakriti the inconscient becoming. These dual realities are however not irrevocably distinct and separate incommensurables. They are not unbridgeable units foreign to each other. The conscient being infuses itself into the inconscient becoming and initiates a conscious movement in the unconscious field. Thus where there was the absolute determinism of matter, sparks from the free consciousness intervene and modify the settled balance. That is the inner sense of the aberrations that one observes in the play even of physical laws. It is just the beginning of the stress of consciousness in unconscious matter. That stress increases in the march of time, in the process of evolution; and the natural freedom of the subject impinges on the rigid law of the object making it more and more pliable and plastic, more and more malleable and even reversible. In man a balance is struck between freedom and bondage although apparently bondage overweighs freedom. In the higher evolved status of being man arrives and can arrive at yet greater degrees of freedom and in the end eliminate altogether the element of bondage and transmute it into the self-expressed rhythm of the higher consciousness. The supreme Divine Consciousness or Being is that where Nature's determinism is dissolved in the self-law of the All Spirit, the Divine Will becoming the law of the being.
   The whole process of creation, the final goal of the Divine Lila is the liberation of Nature, Prakriti. Prakriti is born in Bondage as inconscient Energy. Prakriti itself is a prison-house made of, wholly made of unconsciousness. The conscious Being is there involved, imprisoned and suffers and is miserable. For the gloom of unconsciousness covers it and almost swallows it up. That is the immanent Godhead in creation and is in man his soul, an emanation and representative of the Godhead. As it is commonly understood, liberation means the release of the Godhead out of the prison escaping into the Transcendent. The riddle of this creation is therefore to be solved by this process of escape of the Conscious Principle from out of the unconscious covering beyond into the pure Consciousness laya for the human being and pralaya for the creation. Actually the Upanishad gives graphically the direction to the human soul to pull himself out, out of the containing form: even as one draws the inner stem of a blade of grass out of its covering, for that which is Pure, Stainless is not here but out there.
   But we have set before us a different process. The immanent Godhead, the Conscious Being imbedded, apparently lost in matter need not withdraw or depart elsewhere to be free and to be itself. We have already said the force of its consciousness has or can have a different function and is strong enough to carry out that function. Its very presence is sufficient to infuse its own light and freedom into the environing covering and gradually dissolve its dark ignorance. Man through his soul and self can liberate his ordinary ignorant nature: he not merely liberates himself from this nature but transmutes it into an expression and emanantion of the Divine Consciousness. Even so the cosmic Godhead buried in the universe grows, evolves and slowly spreads and establishes the radiance of its consciousness in the cosmic nature, makes this also the expression and embodiment of his conscious energy. That is the liberation or rebirth of nature, not its dissolution and extinction. Not extraction, but infiltration is the process.

1.2.03 - Purity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In your nature there are many obstacles, chiefly a great activity of the outward-going mind and a thick crust of the impure lower Prakriti that covers the heart and the vital being.
  Quieting of the mind and purification of the nature are what you must have before you can fulfil your aim. Aspire for these two things first; ask for them constantly from above. You will not be able to achieve them by your own unaided effort.

1.2.1 - Mental Development and Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The only way [to separate oneself from mental activities such as reading] is to separate the Prakriti and Purusha. When you feel something within watching all the mental activities but separate from them, just as you can watch things going on outside in the street, then that is the separation of Purusha from mental Prakriti.
  ***

1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  The tanmatras proceed from Prakriti. The statements on creation differ considerably. There is mentioned yugapatsrshti (simultaneous creation) and kramasrshti (gradual creation). The significance is not emphasis on creation but on the original source.
  Talk 293.

1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  The tanmatras proceed from Prakriti. The statements on creation differ considerably. There is mentioned yugapatsrshti (simultaneous creation) and kramasrshti (gradual creation). The significance is not emphasis on creation but on the original source.
  Talk 293.
  --
  Purusha and Prakriti, Sri Bhagavan said:
  Purusha and Prakriti are only the bifurcation of the one Supreme.
  They are surmised because the student has the sense of duality deep rooted. The same Gita also says that Purushottama lies beyond
  Purusha and Prakriti.
  D.: What are para-nadi, Sushumna nadi and the Heart?

1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  8:In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
  9:If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms of consciousness and knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to realise. The one total and manysided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme. Overmind thus gives to the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly variable outcome of their play is the determinant of the creation, of its process, its course and its consequence.

1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  4 The necklace of many figures is Prakriti, creative Nature which comes under the
  control of the soul that has attained to the divine existence.
  --
  whose pleasure Prakriti fulfils the cosmic play.
  106

1.3.04 - Peace, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  [imaginations about old enjoyments] can float on the surface and try to come in - only then they do not occupy the consciousness but touch it merely. It is what was regarded by the old Yogis as a mechanical remnant of Prakriti, a continuation of its blind habit which remained after the essential liberation of the self. It was treated lightly as of no importance - but that view is not tenable in our sadhana which aims not only at a liberation of the
  Purusha but at a complete transformation of the Prakriti also.
  That is of course how it should be. It should go so far indeed that you will feel this peace and vastness as your very self, the abiding stuff of your consciousness - unchangeably there.

1.3.05 - Silence, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To be calm, steady, fixed in the spirit, dhra, sthira, this quietude of the mind, this separation of the inner Purusha from the outer Prakriti is very helpful, almost indispensable. So long as the being is subject to the whirl of thoughts or the turmoil of the vital movements one cannot be thus calm and fixed in the spirit. To detach oneself, to stand back from them, to feel them separate from oneself is indispensable.
  For the discovery of the true individuality and building up of it in the nature, two things are necessary, first, to be conscious of one's psychic being behind the heart and, next, this separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti. For the true individual is behind veiled by the activities of the outer nature.
  Silence is always good; but I do not mean by quietness of mind entire silence. I mean a mind free from disturbance and trouble,

1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  Purusha and Prakriti, Sri Bhagavan said:
  Purusha and Prakriti are only the bifurcation of the one Supreme.
  They are surmised because the student has the sense of duality deep rooted. The same Gita also says that Purushottama lies beyond
  Purusha and Prakriti.
  D.: What are para-nadi, Sushumna nadi and the Heart?

1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  Para is beyond the body. Parantakala is transcendence over the body, etc., i.e., jnana (knowledge). Paramritat prakriteh = beyond Prakriti. Sarve implies that all are qualified for knowledge and liberation (moksha). yatayah = yama niyama sametah sat purushah
  = good men well disciplined. The whole passage implies passing into the real beyond the unreal. na karmana na prajaya dhanena tyagenaike amritatvamanasuh parena nakam nihitam guhayam, vibhrajate yadyatayo visanti vedanta vijnana sunishchitarthah sanyasayogadyatayah shuddha satvah te brahmaloke tu parantakale paramritat parimuchyanti sarve dahram vipapam paravesmabhutum yat pundarikam puramadhya samstham tatrapi dahram gaganam visokastasmin yadantastadupasitavyam yo vedadau svarah prokto vedante cha pratishtitah tasya Prakritilinasya yah parah sa Mahesvarah
  [Deathlessness is not obtained through action or begetting offspring or wealth. Some attain that state through renunciation.

15.07 - Souls Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of he sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.2
   Rigveda, V, 2.4.

1954-04-28 - Aspiration and receptivity - Resistance - Purusha and Prakriti, not masculine and feminine, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1954-04-28 - Aspiration and receptivity - Resistance - Purusha and Prakriti, not masculine and feminine
  class:chapter
  --
  Mother, doesnt the Purusha commit mistakes like the Prakriti?
  That depends on the point of view I dont know!
  --
  What is the work of Purusha and Prakriti?
  Ah! Once again I have to give the impression that I dont know. (Mother turns to Nolini.) Nolini, explain this. (Laughter) As for me, I understand nothing at all of this, it does not correspond to any inner experience for me, I have never had this experience; consequently, I cannot speak about it.
  --
  The Indian concept I know theoretically, and it is enough to read books to know it that is not what I call knowing. I can speak to you only about things I have experienced. Well, this does not correspond to anything in me. I have not had that experience. I have had very clearly the experience of a witness looking at things, completely detached from everything, who knows all and does not move, who allows everything to be done and who I have also had the experience of a will, which decides. Naturally, everybody has the experience of a moving force the force in Nature, in its obscurity, and all thateverybody has that experience. But as for making a clear-cut division in this way and calling one Purusha, masculine, and the other Prakriti, feminine, no, I refuse to do that I have always objected to it and shall always object. And that is why I prefer not to speak about it.
  This seems to me an Asiatic version, or perhaps more particularly Indian, I dont know, of the Chaldean conception of a single, masculine God: you know, the Christian God. This is for me something that comes (pardon me) from a masculine mentality thats a bit warped. That is how I feel about the subject. Now, if you had not asked me, I would never have spoken about it to you!

1954-05-12 - The Purusha - Surrender - Distinguishing between influences - Perfect sincerity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  (Nolini) No, it is the conscious being. There is the being and the becoming. The conscious being is Purusha, the becoming is Prakriti.
  But then each inner being has its Purusha? Or is there one Purusha in all the beings?

1954-08-11 - Division and creation - The gods and human formations - People carry their desires around them, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  What does this mean? It means what it says. (Laughter) It means that in the world the single force of the creating energy is divided in all the manifestation, even the most contrary manifestation, you see. It is this single force which, in the creation, is divided into Purusha and Prakriti and, also, energy and resistance. Thats what it means; at the origin the force is single and in the manifestation it is divided, and it is divided in all the contraries, which are at the same time complementaries. Because, for creation, this division was necessary, otherwise there would have been only one single thing all the time.
  What does Vibhuti mean?

1955-06-15 - Dynamic realisation, transformation - The negative and positive side of experience - The image of the dry coconut fruit - Purusha, Prakriti, the Divine Mother - The Truth-Creation - Pralaya - We are in a transitional period, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1955-06-15 - Dynamic realisation, transformation - The negative and positive side of experience - The image of the dry coconut fruit - Purusha, Prakriti, the Divine Mother - The Truth-Creation - Pralaya - We are in a transitional period
  class:chapter
  --
  Sweet Mother, what does this mean: one must transfer the allegiance of the Purusha from the lower Prakriti
  You dont know what this means?
  In the ordinary case, of the ordinary being and ordinary life, the Purusha is subjected to Prakriti, to the external Nature, he is her slave. So Sri Aurobindo says that it is not enough to free oneself from this slavery. He begins that way: it is not enough to free oneself from the slavery; he must keep his allegiance, but instead of obeying Prakriti, he must obey the Divine Mother; that is, instead of obeying something which is lower than himself, he must obey what is higher. That is the sentence: transfer his allegiance from this to that.
  Do you understand? No? Ah, it is probably someone who wrote to him saying that he wanted his Purusha to be completely free from allegiance to Prakriti. So he answered: No, thats not enough; if you free it, it is only half the work; your allegiance must be there, but instead of being related to Prakriti, it must exist for the Divine Mother. And then later he explains the difference. There is an entire passage there in which he says that the Divine Mother should not be identified with Prakriti. Naturally there is something of the Divine Mother there, because something of the Divine Mother is behind everything. But one must not think that Prakriti is the Divine Mother.
  (Nolini) It is the negative and positive sideas Tara askedof allegiance to Prakriti.
  Allegiance to Prakriti, yes, its true. To get rid of this allegiance to Prakriti is the negative side of the development; one frees himself from his allegiance to Prakriti, but one must take a step further and have the positive side of being surrendered to the Divine Mother.
  The last sentence: in the Truth-Creation the law is that of a constant unfolding without any Pralaya. What is this constant unfolding?

1956-02-15 - Nature and the Master of Nature - Conscious intelligence - Theory of the Gita, not the whole truth - Surrender to the Lord - Change of nature, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force,for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows.
    The individual soul or the conscious being in a form may identify itself with this experiencing Purusha or with this active Prakriti. If it identifies itself with Prakriti, it is not master, enjoyer and knower.
    The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 91
  --
  Its so convenient, isnt it? You say, I am like that, what can I do about it? I separate myself from Nature, I let her do whatever she likes, I am not this Nature, I am the Purusha. Ah! let her go her own way; after all, I cant change her. This is extremely convenient. And that is why people adopt it; for they imagine they are in the Purusha, but at the least scratch they fall right back into Prakriti, and then they fly into a temper or are in despair or fall ill. And thats that.
  I heard someone who had, however, realised precisely this kind of identification with the Purusha and radiated a very remarkable atmosphere; but he called dangerous revolutionaries all those who wanted to change something in the earth-Nature, all who wanted things on earth to changewanted, for example, that suffering might be abolished or ultimately the necessity of death might be done away with, that there might be an evolution, a luminous progress requiring no destruction: Ah! those who think like that are dangerous revolutionaries. If need be, they should be put in prison!
  --
    In the passage of The Synthesis of Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 91) the Mother had just read, Sri Aurobindo expounds the traditional distinction between Purusha and Prakriti, the Master of Nature and Nature, and describes the different stages of immersion of the Master of Nature in Nature, or of the soul in the activities of the world; then he shows the traditional path of the liberation of the spirit, which rises above Nature and becomes once again the Master of Nature.
  ***

20.01 - Charyapada - Old Bengali Mystic Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The solid stake of Dual Consciousness Purusha and Prakriti
   is broken, .
  --
   Purusha and Prakriti in right relation means the victory of the Supreme Consciousness
   Life is a dangerous river. You have to cross it to go over to the other shore of safety, the spiritual life. But once in it, you are doomed. You are drowned in its fathomless depths or if you try to clamber up its sides you are bogged down in their sticky mud. The one thing to do is to build a bridgeit can be only out of the materials of life itself. Life's experiences form the materials. They are trees, as it were, luxuriant in growth. You have to cut them down, dry themthey must be dead before they can be used as planks for the bridge. The sharp edge of a concentrated consciousness the sense of the unreality and inanity of this existenceis the axe for cutting the growth of life.
  --
   Sisters:the powers that control the dhra: 32, perhaps body, life, mind, and each containing five jnendriyas and five karmendriyas plus the one above and the one below (Purusha and Prakriti); the Vedas also speak of ten sisters.
   Moon:the being of delight.

2.01 - Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Next we see that the determinations of our mind do not all proceed from itself; for waves and currents of mental energy enter into it from outside: these take form in it or appear already formed from some universal Mind or from other minds and are accepted by us as our own thinking. We can perceive also an occult or subliminal mind in ourselves from which thoughts and perceptions and will-impulses and mental feelings arise; we can perceive too higher planes of consciousness from which a superior mind energy works through us or upon us. Finally we discover that that which observes all this is a mental being supporting the mind substance and mind energy; without this presence, their upholder and source of sanctions, they could not exist or operate. This mental being or Purusha first appears as a silent witness and, if that were all, we would have to accept the determinations of mind as a phenomenal activity imposed upon the being by Nature, by Prakriti, or else as a creation presented to it by Prakriti, a world of thought which Nature constructs and offers to the observing Purusha. But afterwards we find that the Purusha, the mental being, can depart from its posture of a silent or accepting Witness; it can become the source of reactions, accept, reject, even rule and regulate, become the giver of the command, the knower. A knowledge also arises that this mind-substance manifests the mental being, is its own expressive substance and the mental energy is its own consciousness-force, so that it is reasonable to conclude that all mind determinations arise from the being of the Purusha. But this conclusion is complicated by the fact that from another view-point our personal mind seems to be little more than a formation of universal Mind, an engine for the reception, modification, propagation of cosmic thought-waves, idea-currents, will-suggestions, waves of feeling, sense-suggestions, form-suggestions. It has no doubt its own already realised expression, predispositions, propensities, personal temperament and nature; what comes from the universal can only find a place there if it is accepted and assimilated into the self-expression of the individual mental being, the personal Prakriti of the Purusha. But still, in view of these complexities, the question remains entire whether all this evolution and action is a phenomenal creation by some universal Energy presented to the mental being or an activity imposed by Mind-Energy on the Purusha's indeterminate, perhaps indeterminable existence, or whether the whole is something predetermined by some dynamic truth of Self within and only manifested on the mind surface.
  To know that we would have to touch or to enter into a cosmic state of being and consciousness to which the totality of things and their integral principle would be better manifest than to our limited mind experience.
  Overmind consciousness is such a state or principle beyond individual mind, beyond even universal mind in the Ignorance; it carries in itself a first direct and masterful cognition of cosmic truth: here then we might hope to understand something of the original working of things, get some insight into the fundamental movements of cosmic Nature. One thing indeed becomes clear; it is self-evident here that both the individual and the cosmos come from a transcendent Reality which takes form in them: the mind and life of the individual being, its self in nature must therefore be a partial self-expression of the cosmic Being and, both through that and directly, a self-expression of the transcendent Reality, - a conditional and half-veiled expression it may be, but still that is its significance. But also we see that what the expression shall be is also determined by the individual himself: only what he can in his nature receive, assimilate, formulate, his portion of the cosmic being or of the Reality, can find shape in his mind and life and physical parts; something that derives from the Reality, something that is in the cosmos he expresses, but in the terms of his own self-expression, in the terms of his own nature. But the original question set out for us by the phenomenon of the universe is not solved by the Overmind knowledge, - the question, in this case, whether the building of thought, experience, world of perceptions of the mental Person, the mind Purusha, is truly a self-expression, a self-determination proceeding from some truth of his own spiritual being, a manifestation of that truth's dynamic possibilities, or whether it is not rather a creation or construction presented to him by Nature, by Prakriti, and only in the sense of being individualised in his personal formation of that Nature can it be said to be his own or dependent on him; or, again, it might be a play of a cosmic Imagination, a fantasia of the Infinite imposed on the blank indeterminable of his own eternal pure existence. These are the three views of creation that seem to have an equal chance of being right, and mind is incapable of definitely deciding between them; for each view is armed with its own mental logic and its appeal to intuition and experience.
  Overmind seems to add to the perplexity, for the overmental view of things allows each possibility to formulate itself in its own independent right and realise its own existence in cognition, in dynamic self-presentation, in substantiating experience.

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: It speaks of the Para Prakriti and says that advanced souls attain to the Para Prakriti.
   Sri Aurobindo: The Para Prakriti there is used in general terms.
   Disciple: Yes. I don't find the transformation in the Gita. The exposition of the levels of consciousness beyond mind, their functions, a dear, rational statement of intuitive consciousness, inspiration, revelation, and the ascent of the consciousness through the Overmind to the Supermind these things are quite new and not found even in the Upanishads.

2.01 - The Object of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  12:In relation to the universe the Supreme is Brahman, the one Reality which is not only the spiritual, material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. All the last terms to which we can reduce the universe, Force and Matter, Name and Form, Purusha and Prakriti, are still not entirely that which the universe really is either in itself or its nature. As all that we are is the play and form, the mental, psychic, vital and physical expression of a supreme Self unconditioned by mind and life and body, the universe too is the play and form and cosmic soul-expression and nature-expression of a supreme existence which is unconditioned by force and matter, unconditioned by idea and name and form, unconditioned by the fundamental distinction of Purusha and Prakriti. Our supreme Self and the supreme Existence which has become the universe are one spirit, one self and one existence. The individual is in nature one expression of the universal Being, in spirit an emanation of the Transcendence. For if he finds his self, he finds too that his own true self is not this natural personality, this created individuality, but is a universal being in its relations with others and with Nature and in its upward term a portion or the living front of a supreme transcendental Spirit.
  13:This supreme Existence is not conditioned by the individual or by the universe. A spiritual knowledge can therefore surpass or even eliminate these two powers of the Spirit and arrive at the conception of something utterly Transcendent, something that is unnameable and mentally Unknowable, a sheer Absolute. The traditional way of knowledge eliminates individual and universe. The Absolute it seeks after is featureless, indefinable, relationless, not this, not that, neti neti. And yet we can say of it that it is One, that it is Infinite, that it is Ineffable Bliss, Consciousness, Existence. Although Unknowable to the mind, yet through our individual being and through the names and forms of the universe we can approach the realisation of the supreme Self that is Brahman, and by the realisation of the Self we come to a certain realisation also of this utter Absolute of which our true Self is the essential form in our consciousness (svarupa). These are the devices the human mind is compelled to use if it is to form to itself any conception at all of a transcendent and unconditioned Absolute. The system of negation is indispensable to it in order to get rid of its own definitions and limited experience; it is obliged to escape through a vague Indefinite into the Infinite. For it lives in a closed prison of constructions and representations that are necessary for its action but are not the self-existent truth either of Matter or Life or Mind or Spirit. But if we can once cross beyond the Mind's frontier twilight into the vast plane of supramental Knowledge, these devices cease to be indispensable. Supermind has quite another, a positive and direct and living experience of the supreme Infinite. 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.

2.01 - The Two Natures, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Gita related and synthetised works and knowledge. The vision of the World-Purusha intervenes in the eleventh chapter, gives a dynamic turn to this stage of the synthesis and relates it vividly to works and life. Thus again all is brought powerfully back to the original question of Arjuna round which the whole exposition revolves and completes its cycle. Afterwards the Gita proceeds by the differentiation of the Purusha and Prakriti to work out its ideas of the action of the gunas, of the ascension beyond the gunas and of the culmination of desireless works with knowledge where that coalesces with Bhakti, - knowledge, works and love made one, - and it rises thence to its great finale, the supreme secret of self-surrender to the Master of Existence.
  In this second part of the Gita we come to a more concise and easy manner of statement than we have yet had. In the first six chapters the definitions have not yet been made which give the key to the underlying truth; difficulties are being met and solved; the progress is a little laboured and moves through several involutions and returns; much is implied the bearing of which is not yet clear. Here we seem to get on to clearer ground and to lay hold of a more compact and pointed expression. But because of this very conciseness we have to be careful always
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  Shakti, Prakriti. Is there then a higher Nature than that of the three gunas? Is there a power of pragmatic creation, will, action other than that of ego, desire, mind, sense, reason and the vital impulse?
  Therefore, in this uncertainty, what has now to be done is to give more completely the knowledge on which divine works are to be founded. And this can only be the complete, the integral knowledge of the Divine who is the source of works and in whose being the worker becomes by knowledge free; for he knows the free Spirit from whom all works proceed and participates in his freedom. Moreover this knowledge must bring a light that justifies the assertion with which the first part of the Gita closes.
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  Nature. There is then nothing else here left to be known, because all is that Divine Existence. It is only because our view here is not thus integral, because it rests on the dividing mind and reason and the separative idea of the ego, that our mental perception of things is an ignorance. We have to get away from this mental and egoistic view to the true unifying knowledge, and that has two aspects, the essential, jnana, and the comprehensive, vijnana, the direct spiritual awareness of the supreme Being and the right intimate knowledge of the principles of his existence, Prakriti,
  Purusha and the rest, by which all that is can be known in its divine origin and in the supreme truth of its nature. That integral knowledge, says the Gita, is a rare and difficult thing; "among thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows me in all the principles of my existence, tattvatah.."
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  Nature constituted of the five bhutas, - elements, as it is rendered, but rather elemental or essential conditions of material being to which are given the concrete names of earth, water, fire, air and ether, - the mind with its various senses and organs, the reason-will and the ego, is the Sankhya description of Prakriti.
  The Sankhya stops there, and because it stops there, it has to set up an unbridgeable division between the soul and Nature; it has to posit them as two quite distinct primary entities. The Gita also, if it stopped there, would have to make the same incurable antinomy between the Self and cosmic Nature which would then be only the Maya of the three gunas and all this cosmic existence would be simply the result of this Maya; it could be nothing else.
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  In this highest dynamis Purusha and Prakriti are one. Prakriti there is only the will and the executive power of the Purusha, his activity of being, - not a separate entity, but himself in Power.
  This supreme Prakriti is not merely a presence of the power of spiritual being immanent in cosmic activities. For then it might be only the inactive presence of the all-pervading Self, immanent in all things or containing them, compelling in a way the world action but not itself active. Nor is this highest Prakriti the avyakta of the Sankhyas, the primary unmanifest seed-state of the manifest active eightfold nature of things, the one productive original force of Prakriti out of which her many instrumental and executive powers evolve. Nor is it sufficient to interpret that idea of avyakta in the Vedantic sense and say that this supreme
  Nature is the power involved and inherent in unmanifest Spirit or Self out of which cosmos comes and into which it returns. It is that, but it is much more; for that is only one of its spiritual states. It is the integral conscious-power of the supreme Being,
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  This is to throw the sense of the Gita into language suited to our modern way of thinking; but if we look at its description of the Para Prakriti, we shall find that this is practically the substance of what it says. For first, this other higher Prakriti is, says Krishna, my supreme nature, prakr.tim me param. And this
  "I" here is the Purushottama, the supreme Being, the supreme
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  Shakti is what is meant by the Para Prakriti. For speaking first of the origin of the world from the point of view of the active power of his Nature, Krishna assevers, "This is the womb of all beings," etad-yonni bhutani. And in the next line of the couplet, again
  The Two Natures
  --
  Nature, Para Prakriti, are identified: they are put as two ways of looking at one and the same reality. For when Krishna declares,
  I am the birth of the world and its dissolution, it is evident that it is this Para Prakriti, supreme Nature, of his being which is both these things. The Spirit is the supreme Being in his infinite consciousness and the supreme Nature is the infinity of power or will of being of the Spirit, - it is his infinite consciousness in its inherent divine energy and its supernal divine action. The birth is the movement of evolution of this conscious Energy out of the Spirit, para prakr.tir jvabhuta, its activity in the mutable universe; the dissolution is the withdrawing of that activity by involution of the Energy into the immutable existence and selfga thered power of the Spirit. That then is what is initially meant by the supreme Nature.
  The supreme Nature, para prakr.tih., is then the infinite timeless conscious power of the self-existent Being out of which all existences in the cosmos are manifested and come out of timelessness into Time. But in order to provide a spiritual basis for this manifold universal becoming in the cosmos the supreme
  Nature formulates itself as the Jiva. To put it otherwise, the eternal multiple soul of the Purushottama appears as individual spiritual existence in all the forms of the cosmos. All existences are instinct with the life of the one indivisible Spirit; all are supported in their personality, actions and forms by the eternal multiplicity of the one Purusha. We must be careful not to make the mistake of thinking that this supreme Nature is identical with the Jiva manifested in Time in the sense that there is nothing else or that it is only nature of becoming and not at all nature of being: that could not be the supreme nature of the Spirit. Even in Time it is something more; for otherwise the only truth of it in the cosmos would be nature of multiplicity and there would be no nature of unity in the world. That is not what the Gita says: it does not say that the supreme Prakriti is in its essence the
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  Jiva; it constitutes the essence and develops the movement of the nature. It is a principle in each creature that derives from and is immediately related to a transcendent divine Becoming, that of the Ishwara, madbhavah.. In this relation of the divine bhava to the svabhava and of the svabhava to the superficial bhavah., of the divine Nature to the individual self-nature and of the self-nature in its pure and original quality to the phenomenal nature in all its mixed and confused play of qualities, we find the link between that supreme and this lower existence. The degraded powers and values of the inferior Prakriti derive from
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  Para Prakriti is the energy at the basis of the various sensory relations of which, according to the ancient Sankhya system, the ethereal, the radiant, electric and gaseous, the liquid and the other elemental conditions of matter are the physical medium.
  The five elemental conditions of matter are the quantitative or material element in the lower nature and are the basis of material forms. The five Tanmatras - taste, touch, scent, and the others - are the qualitative element. These Tanmatras are the subtle energies whose action puts the sensory consciousness in relation to the gross forms of matter, - they are the basis of all phenomenal knowledge. From the material point of view matter is the reality and the sensory relations are derivative; but from the spiritual point of view the truth is the opposite. Matter and the material media are themselves derivative powers and at bottom are only concrete ways or conditions in which the workings of the quality of Nature in things manifest themselves to the sensory consciousness of the Jiva. The one original and
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  And what is essential in the senses, most spiritual, most subtle is itself stuff of that eternal quality and power. But energy or power of being in Nature is the Divine himself in his Prakriti; each sense in its purity is therefore that Prakriti, each sense is the Divine in his dynamic conscious force.
  This we gather better from the other terms of the series. "I am the light of sun and moon, the manhood in man, the intelligence of the intelligent, the energy of the energetic, the strength of the strong, the ascetic force of those who do askesis, tapasya."
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  OM, which is the foundation of all the potent creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthetises and releases all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of Vak and Shabda and of which the other sounds, out of whose stuff words of speech are woven, are supposed to be the developed evolutions. That makes it quite clear. It is not the phenomenal developments of the senses or of life or of light, intelligence, energy, strength, manhood, ascetic force that are proper to the supreme Prakriti. It is the essential quality in its spiritual power that constitutes the Swabhava. It is the force of spirit so manifesting, it is the light of its consciousness and the power of its energy in things revealed in a pure original sign that is the self-nature. That force, light, power is the eternal seed from which all other things are the developments and derivations and variabilities and plastic circumstances. Therefore the Gita throws in as the most general statement in the series, "Know me to be the eternal seed of all existences, O son of Pritha."
  This eternal seed is the power of spiritual being, the conscious will in the being, the seed which, as is said elsewhere, the Divine casts into the great Brahman, into the supramental vastness,

2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  "All this world and every object in this world of Prakriti has been created as a habitation for the Lord."
  Nor is it enough to see him in all things and beings, sarvabhutes.u; you must see him in all events, actions, thoughts, feelings, in yourself and others, throughout the world. For this realisation two things are necessary: first, that you should give up to him the fruit of all your actions, secondly, that you should give up to him the actions themselves. Giving up the fruits of action does not mean that you must have the vairagya for the fruits, turn away from them or refuse to act with a given end before you. It means that you must act, not because you want this or that to happen or think it necessary that this or that should happen and your action needed to bring it about, but because it is kartavyam, demanded by the Master of your being and must be done with whatever result God is pleased to give.
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  The best foundation for the surrender of action is the realisation that Prakriti is doing all our actions at God's comm and and God through our svabhava determines the action. From that moment the action belongs to him, it is not yours nor the responsibility yours; there is indeed no responsibility, no bondage of
  Karma, for God has no responsibility, but is in every way master and free. Our actions become not only like the Shastric man's svabhavaniyata, regulated by nature and therefore dharma, but the svabhava itself is controlled like a machine by God. It is not easy for us, full as we are of the Sanskaras of ignorance, to arrive at this stage of knowledge, but there are three stages by
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  Purusha stand apart and be trigun.atta, beyond the three gun.as, but the Prakriti, though using the gun.as, will be free from their bondage. Sattwa, as we know it, will disappear into pure prakasa and jyotih., and the nature will live in a pure, free and infinite self-existing illumination. Tamas, as we know it, will disappear into pure sama or santi, and the nature will take its firm stand on an infinite and ineffable rest and peace. Rajas, as we know it, will disappear into pure tapas, and the nature will flow in
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  God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasangraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts,
   u(sFd
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   devotional meaning of the story, which you know, it is a good image of his World-Lila. He is sarva, everyone, each Purusha with his apparently different Prakriti and action is he, and yet at the same time he is the Purushottama who is with Radha, the Para Prakriti, and can withdraw all these into himself when he wills and put them out again when he wills. From one point of view they are one with him, from another one yet different, from yet another always different because they always exist, latent in him or expressed at his pleasure. There is no profit in disputing about these standpoints. Wait until you see God and know yourself and him and then debate and discussion will be unnecessary.
  The goal marked out for us is not to speculate about these things, but to experience them. The call upon us is to grow into the image of God, to dwell in him and with him and be a channel of his joy and might and an instrument of his works. Purified from all that is asubha, transfigured in soul by his touch, we have to act in the world as dynamos of that divine electricity and send it thrilling and radiating through mankind, so that wherever one of us stands, hundreds around may become full of his light and force, full of God and full of Ananda. Churches,

2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti
  class:chapter
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  Chapter II - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti
    It is there in beings indivisible and as if divided.Gita.1
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    Know Purusha and Prakriti to be both eternal without beginning. Gita.3
    One must know Maya as Prakriti and the Master of Maya as the great Lord of all. Swetaswatara Upanishad.4
    It is the might of the Godhead in the world that turns the wheel of Brahman. Him one must know, the supreme Lord of all lords, the supreme Godhead above all godheads. Supreme too is his Shakti and manifold the natural working of her knowledge and her force. One Godhead, occult in all beings, the inner Self of all beings, the all-pervading, absolute without qualities, the overseer of all actions, the witness, the knower. Swetaswatara Upanishad.5
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  An absolute, eternal and infinite Self-existence, Self-awareness, Self-delight of being that secretly supports and pervades the universe even while it is also beyond it, is, then, the first truth of spiritual experience. But this truth of being has at once an impersonal and a personal aspect; it is not only Existence, it is the one Being absolute, eternal and infinite. As there are three fundamental aspects in which we meet this Reality, Self, Conscious Being or Spirit and God, the Divine Being, or to use the Indian terms, the absolute and omnipresent Reality, Brahman, manifest to us as Atman, Purusha, Ishwara, - so too its power of Consciousness appears to us in three aspects: it is the self-force of that consciousness conceptively creative of all things, Maya; it is Prakriti, Nature or Force made dynamically executive, working out all things under the witnessing eye of the Conscious Being, the Self or Spirit; it is the conscious Power of the Divine Being, Shakti, which is both conceptively creative and dynamically executive of all the divine workings. These three aspects and their powers base and comprise the whole of existence and all Nature and, taken together as a single whole, they reconcile the apparent disparateness and incompatibility of the supracosmic Transcendence, the cosmic universality and the separativeness of our individual existence; the Absolute, cosmic Nature and ourselves are linked in oneness by this triune aspect of the one Reality. For taken by itself the existence of the Absolute, the Supreme Brahman, would be a contradiction of the relative universe and our own real existence would be incompatible with its sole incommunicable Reality. But the Brahman is at the same time omnipresent in all relativities; it is the Absolute independent of all relatives, the Absolute basing all relatives, the Absolute governing, pervading, constituting all relatives; there is nothing that is not the omnipresent Reality. In observing the triple aspect and the triple power we come to see how this is possible.
  If we look at this picture of the Self-Existence and its works as a unitary unlimited whole of vision, it stands together and imposes itself by its convincing totality: but to the analysis of the logical intellect it offers an abundance of difficulties, such as all attempts to erect a logical system out of a perception of an illimitable Existence must necessarily create; for any such endeavour must either effect consistency by an arbitrary sectioning of the complex truth of things or else by its comprehensiveness become logically untenable. For we see that the Indeterminable determines itself as infinite and finite, the Immutable admits a constant mutability and endless differences, the One becomes an innumerable multitude, the Impersonal creates or supports personality, is itself a Person; the Self has a nature and is yet other than its nature; Being turns into becoming and yet it is always itself and other than its becomings; the Universal individualises itself and the Individual universalises himself; Brahman is at once void of qualities and capable of infinite qualities, the Lord and Doer of works, yet a non-doer and a silent witness of the workings of Nature. If we look carefully at these workings of Nature, once we put aside the veil of familiarity and our unthinking acquiescence in the process of things as natural because so they always happen, we discover that all she does in whole or in parts is a miracle, an act of some incomprehensible magic. The being of the Self-existence and the world that has appeared in it are, each of them and both together, a suprarational mystery. There seems to us to be a reason in things because the processes of the physical finite are consistent to our view and their law determinable, but this reason in things, when closely examined, seems to stumble at every moment against the irrational or infrarational and the suprarational: the consistency, the determinability of process seems to lessen rather than increase as we pass from matter to life and from life to mentality; if the finite consents to some extent to look as if it were rational, the infinitesimal refuses to be bound by the same laws and the infinite is unseizable. As for the action of the universe and its significance, it escapes us altogether; if Self, God or Spirit there be, his dealings with the world and us are incomprehensible, offer no clue that we can follow. God and Nature and even ourselves move in a mysterious way which is only partially and at points intelligible, but as a whole escapes our comprehension. All the works of Maya look like the production of a suprarational magical Power which arranges things according to its wisdom or its phantasy, but a wisdom which is not ours and a phantasy which baffles our imagination.
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  Brahman the Reality is the self-existent Absolute and Maya is the Consciousness and Force of this self-existence; but with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and at the same time individual-universal in each being; Maya can then be seen as the self-power, Atma-Shakti, of the Atman. It is true that when we first become aware of this Aspect, it is usually in a silence of the whole being or at the least in a silence within which draws back or stands away from the surface action; this Self is then felt as a status in silence, an immobile immutable being, self-existent, pervading the whole universe, omnipresent in all, but not dynamic or active, aloof from the ever mobile energy of Maya. In the same way we can become aware of it as the Purusha, separate from Prakriti, the Conscious Being standing back from the activities of Nature. But this is an exclusive concentration which limits itself to a spiritual status and puts away from it all activity in order to realise the freedom of Brahman the self-existent Reality from all limitation by its own action and manifestation: it is an essential realisation, but not the total realisation. For we can see that the Conscious-Power, the Shakti that acts and creates, is not other than the Maya or all-knowledge of Brahman; it is the Power of the Self; Prakriti is the working of the Purusha, Conscious Being active by its own Nature: the duality then of Soul and WorldEnergy, silent Self and the creative Power of the Spirit, is not really something dual and separate, it is biune. As we cannot separate Fire and the power of Fire, it has been said, so we cannot separate the Divine Reality and its Consciousness-Force, Chit-Shakti. This first realisation of Self as something intensely silent and purely static is not the whole truth of it, there can also be a realisation of Self in its power, Self as the condition of world-activity and world-existence. However, the Self is a fundamental aspect of Brahman, but with a certain stress on its impersonality; therefore the Power of the Self has the appearance of a Force that acts automatically with the Self sustaining it, witness and support and originator and enjoyer of its activities but not involved in them for a moment. As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaks.a; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a
  Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self.
  There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.
  The Conscious Being, Purusha, is the Self as originator, witness, support and lord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature. As the aspect of Self is in its essential character transcendental even when involved and identified with its universal and individual becomings, so the Purusha aspect is characteristically universal-individual and intimately connected with Nature even when separated from her. For this conscious Spirit while retaining its impersonality and eternity, its universality, puts on at the same time a more personal aspect;7 it is the impersonal-personal being in Nature from whom it is not altogether detached, for it is always coupled with her: Nature acts for the Purusha and by its sanction, for its will and pleasure; the Conscious Being imparts its consciousness to the Energy we call Nature, receives in that consciousness her workings as in a mirror, accepts the forms which she, the executive cosmic Force, creates and imposes on it, gives or withdraws its sanction from her movements. The experience of Purusha- Prakriti, the Spirit or Conscious Being in its relations to Nature, is of immense pragmatic importance; for on these relations the whole play of the consciousness depends in the embodied being. If the Purusha in us is passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a constant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental, vital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its formation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance. If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom; for it becomes detached, and it is possible then to know Nature and her processes and in all independence, since we are no longer involved in her works, to accept or not to accept, to make the sanction no longer automatic but free and effective; we can choose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from her works and withdraw into the
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  These two are eternally separate entities, but in relation to each other. Prakriti is Nature-power, an executive Power, it is Energy apart from Consciousness; for Consciousness belongs to the Purusha, Prakriti without Purusha is inert, mechanical, inconscient. Prakriti develops as its formal self and basis of action primal Matter and in it manifests life and sense and mind and intelligence; but intelligence too, since it is part of Nature and its product in primal Matter, is also inert, mechanical, inconscient, - a conception which sheds a certain light on the order and perfectly related workings of the Inconscient in the material universe: it is the light of the soul, the Spirit, that is imparted to the mechanical workings of sense-mind and intelligence, they become conscious by its consciousness, even as they become active only by the assent of the spirit.
  The Purusha becomes free by drawing back from Prakriti; it becomes master of her by refusing to be involved in Matter.
  Nature acts by three principles, modes or qualities of its stuff and its action, which in us become the fundamental modes of our psychological and physical substance and its workings, the principle of inertia, the principle of kinesis and the principle of balance, light and harmony: when these are in unequal motion, her action takes place; when they fall into equilibrium she passes into quiescence. Purusha, conscious being, is plural, not one and single, while Nature is one: it would seem to follow that whatever principle of oneness we find in existence belongs to Nature, but each soul is independent and unique, sole to itself and separate whether in its enjoyment of Nature or its liberation from Nature. All these positions of the Sankhya we find to be perfectly valid in experience when we come into direct inner contact with the realities of individual soul and universal Nature; but they are pragmatic truths and we are not bound to accept them as the whole or the fundamental truth either of self or of Nature. Prakriti presents itself as an inconscient Energy in the material world, but, as the scale of consciousness rises, she reveals herself more and more as a conscious force and we perceive that even her inconscience concealed a secret consciousness; so too conscious being is many in its individual souls, but in its self we can experience it as one in all and one in its own essential existence. Moreover, the experience of soul and Nature as dual is true, but the experience of their unity has also its validity. If Nature or Energy is able to impose its forms and workings on Being, it can only be because it is Nature or Energy of Being and so the Being can accept them as its own; if the Being can become lord of Nature, it must be because it is its own Nature which it had passively watched doing its work, but can control and master; even in its passivity its consent is necessary to the action of Prakriti and this relation shows sufficiently that the two are not alien to each other. The duality is a position taken up, a double status accepted for the operations of the self-manifestation of the being; but there is no eternal and fundamental separateness and dualism of Being and its Consciousness-Force, of the Soul and Nature.
  It is the Reality, the Self, that takes the position of the Conscious Being regarding and accepting or ruling the works of its own Nature. An apparent duality is created in order that there may be a free action of Nature working itself out with the support of the Spirit and again a free and masterful action of the Spirit controlling and working out Nature. This duality is also necessary that the Spirit may be at any time at liberty to draw back from any formation of its Nature and dissolve all formation or accept or enforce a new or a higher formation. These are very evident possibilities of the Spirit in its dealings with its own Force and they can be observed and verified in our own experience; they are logical results of the powers of the Infinite Consciousness, powers which we have seen to be native to its infinity. The Purusha aspect and the Prakriti aspect go always together and whatever status Nature or Consciousness-force in action assumes, manifests or develops, there is a corresponding status of the Spirit. In its supreme status the Spirit is the supreme Conscious Being, Purushottama, and the Consciousness-Force is his supreme Nature, Para- Prakriti. In each status of the gradations of Nature, the Spirit takes a poise of its being proper to that gradation; in Mind-Nature it becomes the mental being, in Life-Nature it becomes the vital being, in nature of Matter it becomes the physical being, in supermind it becomes the Being of Knowledge; in the supreme spiritual status it becomes the Being of Bliss and pure Existence. In us, in the embodied individual, it stands behind all as the psychic Entity, the inner
  Self supporting the other formulations of our consciousness and spiritual existence. The Purusha, individual in us, is cosmic in the cosmos, transcendent in the transcendence: the identity with the Self is apparent, but it is the Self in its pure impersonalpersonal status of a Spirit in things and beings - impersonal because undifferentiated by personal quality, personal because it presides over the individualisations of self in each individual - which deals with the works of its Consciousness-force, its executive force of self-nature, in whatever poise is necessary for that purpose.
  --
  Nature, she reveals to us the supreme and omnipresent power of the Ishwara and ourselves as beings of his being, but that power is herself and we are that in her supernature. If we would realise a higher formation or status of being, then it is still through her, through the Divine Shakti, the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit that it has to be done; our surrender must be to the Divine Being through the Divine Mother for it is towards or into the supreme Nature that our ascension has to take place and it can only be done by the supramental Shakti taking up our mentality and transforming it into her supramentality. Thus we see that there is no contradiction or incompatibility between these three aspects of Existence, or between them in their eternal status and the three modes of its Dynamis working in the universe. One Being, one Reality as Self bases, supports, informs, as Purusha or Conscious Being experiences, as Ishwara wills, governs and possesses its world of manifestation created and kept in motion and action by its own Consciousness-Force or Self-Power, - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti.
  A certain difficulty arises for our mind in reconciling these different faces or fronts of the One Self and Spirit, because we are obliged to use abstract conceptions and defining words and ideas for something that is not abstract, something that is spiritually living and intensely real. Our abstractions get fixed into differentiating concepts with sharp lines between them: but the Reality is not of that nature; its aspects are many but shade off into each other. Its truth could only be rendered by ideas and images metaphysical and yet living and concrete, - images which might be taken by the pure Reason as figures and symbols but are more than that and mean more to the intuitive vision and feeling, for they are realities of a dynamic spiritual experience. The impersonal truth of things can be rendered into the abstract formulas of the pure reason, but there is another side of truth which belongs to the spiritual or mystic vision and without that inner vision of realities the abstract formulation of them is insufficiently alive, incomplete. The mystery of things is the true truth of things; the intellectual presentation is only truth in representation, in abstract symbols, as if in a cubist art of thought-speech, in geometric figure. It is necessary in a philosophic inquiry to confine oneself mostly to this intellectual presentation, but it is as well to remember that this is only the abstraction of the Truth and to seize it completely or express it completely there is needed a concrete experience and a more living and full-bodied language.

2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: The Jiva is something more than the psychic being. The psychic being is behind the heart; while the Jiva is high above, connected with the Central Being. It is that which on every level of consciousness becomes the Purusha, the Prakriti and the personalities of Nature. The psychic being, one may say, is the soul-personality. The psychic being most purely reflects the Divine in the lower triplicity of mind, life and body. There are four higher levels: Sat, Chit, Ananda and Vijnana; they are in Knowledge, while below in the three levels mind, life and body there is a mixture of ignorance and knowledge. The psychic being is behind the mind, life and body; it is most open to the higher Truth; that is why it is indispensable for the manifestation of the Divine.
   The psychic being alone can open itself completely to the Truth. This is so because the movements of the lower parts mind, life and body are full of defects, errors and mixtures and, however sincere they may be and however hard they may try to transform themselves into movements of the Truth, they cannot do it unless the psychic being comes to their help. Of course, these lower parts have their own sincerity.

2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  into the Male and Female, Purusha and Prakriti, has created this
  world of innumerable forms and names. Brahman is spoken of
  --
  forms the Ocean of Prakriti, which is the substratum of all form
  or matter. Of these two, the Ocean of spiritual force and the
  --
  she that moveth? Because it is a form of Prakriti whose essential
  characteristic is motion; for by motion she creates this material
  --
  of the world which Prakriti enacts for his delectation. Now if
  as the Sankhyas and other philosophies and the Christians and
  --
  illusions unrolled by Prakriti for the delight of the Purusha. You
  will then do your works t
  --
  him. It is not in reality he that is doing the actions, but Prakriti
  inspired by the presence of the Purusha in him.
  --
  and ktA as Prakriti; and if it be said that Parabrahman the
  Turiya Atma in whom all bhed disappears is aktA, I answer
  --
  avf, and must let the gunas of Prakriti work. Since this is so,
  let every man who wishes to throw his kt&y km behind him, see
  --
  God is the Master of His Prakriti, not its slave; but the Prakriti
  attached to this Jivatman has created causes while in the illusion
  --
  under the compulsion of our Prakriti or Nature, and are, as
  it were, slaves & bound by her actions which we imagine to
  --
  Self, then we are masters of our Prakriti and not bound by
  her creations; our soul becomes the Sakshi, the silent spectator,
  --
  regarded in his creative activity through Purusha & Prakriti, is
  called the Lord. Therefore it now uses the neuter form of the
  --
  & swifter than mind. He is both Purusha & Prakriti, and yet at
  the same time He is neither, but One and indivisible; Purusha
  & Prakriti being merely conceptions in His mind deliberately
  raised for the sake of creating multiplicity. As Prakriti, He is
  swifter than the mind; for Prakriti is His creative force making
  matter & its forms through motion. All creation is motion, all
  --
  unformed Prakriti which the Sankhya calls Pradhana or primary
  idea, substance, plasm or what you will, of matter, one aspect
  --
  downstream, imitating the processes of Prakriti, and especially
  studying & utilising critical stages of transition, then the secret
  --
  Spirit, for without the presence of Spirit, which gives Prakriti
  the force to act, Prakriti would be inert, nay could not exist.
  For what is Prakriti itself but the creation of the mighty Shakti,
  who is without end & without beginning, the Shakti of the
  --
  grosser & temporary manifestations of Prakriti such as his own
  vital passions of lust & ambition; the Deva, being sattwic & a

2.02 - The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We have before us three powers, the Purushottama as the supreme truth of that into which we have to grow, the Self and the Jiva. Or, as we may put it, there is the Supreme, there is the impersonal spirit, and there is the multiple soul, timeless foundation of our spiritual personality, the true and eternal individual, mamaivamsah. sanatanah.. All these three are divine, all three are the Divine. The supreme spiritual nature of being, the Para Prakriti free from any limitation by the conditioning
  Ignorance, is the nature of the Purushottama. In the impersonal
  Self there is the same divine nature, but here it is in its state of eternal rest, equilibrium, inactivity, nivritti. Finally, for activity, for pravritti, the Para Prakriti becomes the multiple spiritual personality, the Jiva. But the intrinsic activity of this supreme
  Gita, VII. 15-28.
  --
  The Gita has laid it down from the beginning that the very first precondition of the divine birth, the higher existence is the slaying of rajasic desire and its children, and that means the exclusion of sin. Sin is the working of the lower nature for the crude satisfaction of its own ignorant, dull or violent rajasic and tamasic propensities in revolt against any high self-control and self-mastery of the nature by the spirit. And in order to get rid of this crude compulsion of the being by the lower Prakriti in its inferior modes we must have recourse to the highest mode of that
   Prakriti, the sattwic, which is seeking always for a harmonious light of knowledge and for a right rule of action. The Purusha, the soul within us which assents in Nature to the varying impulse of the gunas, has to give its sanction to that sattwic impulse and that sattwic will and temperament in our being which seeks after such a rule. The sattwic will in our nature has to govern us and not the rajasic and tamasic will. This is the meaning of all high reason in action as of all true ethical culture; it is the law of

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  of spiritual force which sets Prakriti to produce and watches
  her workings, and Prakriti, the mighty female energy which
  produces and works unweariedly for the pleasure of Purusha.
  --
   Prakriti, the visible form of Prakriti, the great female material
  energy of the Lord, and the essence of Prakriti is motion; for by
  motion she creates this material world. Indeed all object matter
  --
  illusions of Prakriti; Karma or action which also is merely her
  motion, energy at work, will not master him and drive him as a
  --
  watches the infinite play of Prakriti in the life of the creature
  It informs. And just as by the power of Avidya Sacchidananda
  --
  drama of the world which Prakriti enacts for his delectation.
  Once I experience this truth, I can take as much pleasure in the
  --
  actions are but the dramatic illusions unrolled by Prakriti for
  the delight of the Purusha, you will then be able to do works
  --
  always part of Prakriti, and whatever is Prakriti, must do work.
  The Gita says this plainly
  --
  work, for he is no longer the slave of Prakriti, but he cannot
  stop it except by finally leaving his body & mind through Yoga
  --
  master of Prakriti, not its slave. But the Prakriti attached to this
  Jivatman has created, while in the illusion of bondage, causes
  --
  fetters of Prakriti, but detained by his own will until the time
  appointed for his captivity shall have elapsed.
  --
  the field of your own Prakriti are the lord, creator, preserver and
  destroyer. You are He; only for your own amusement you have
  --
  under the compulsion of Prakriti and are slaves and bound by
  her actions which we falsely imagine to be our own. But when
  --
  motion and the drama and as Prakriti is the motion and the
  drama? It is the One motionless, unconditioned, inexpressible
  --
  generates forms in Prakriti the female or material Energy. The
  spiritual entity does not work, but merely is and has a result; it
  --
  Energy, Isha, the play of Prakriti for Purusha, are all merely
  the manifestation of that unmanifested It. What we envisage
  --
  The action of Prakriti proceeds upon the principle of selection
  leading naturally to development; she selects the limited out of
  --
  three gunas or essential qualities of Prakriti, passivity, activity
  The Karmayogin
  --
  remembered that Prakriti is no other than Avidya, the great Illusion. She is that impalpable indeterminable source of subtle and
  gross matter, Matter in the abstract, the idea of difference and
  --
  is developed form and organism, vitality, receptive mind, discriminating mind, Egoism. Out of this one method of Prakriti,
  selection, liberation and development, the whole evolution of the
  --
  and Prakriti; - Purusha, that which lies concealed in the Vast of
  universal existence, Prakriti, active or operative energy thrown
  forward from the concealed spiritual source. The whole of Evolution spiritual, psychical, material, is the result of Purusha and
  --
  in the evolution of the psychic states Prakriti worked on by
  Purusha creates for the manifestations of Self as spirit psychic
  --
  the causal, subtle and gross bodies Prakriti shapes itself so as
  to create the material out of which the psychical coverings of
  --
  noumenal condition of Prakriti the Self forms for its uses matter
  in its most refined and simple form, undifferentiated and undeveloped, but pregnant with the whole of material evolution. The
  --
  hand in hand with the materialistic. Prakriti or Nature, an original energy manifesting in substance is the origin, the material
  and the agent of evolution. This original energy is not Prana, the
  --
  Sankhya gives the name of Prakriti, while Vedanta & Buddhism,
  admitting the term Prakriti, prefer to call it Maya. But Prakriti
  is not in itself sufficient to explain the origin of the universe;
  --
  or Spirit. It is the presence of Purusha and Prakriti together,
  says Sankhya, that can alone account for cosmic evolution.
  --
  - that Purusha & Prakriti are themselves merely aspects, obverse and reverse sides, of a single Supreme entity or Self of
  Things. Buddhism, still more trenchant, does away with the
  reality of Purusha and Prakriti altogether and regards Cosmic
  Evolution as a cosmic illusion.
  The necessity for positing another force than Prakriti arises
  from the very nature of Prakriti and its operations. The fundamental characteristic of Prakriti as soon as it manifests is eternal motion, - motion without beginning, without end, without
  limit, without cessation or respite. Its cosmic stir is like an
  --
  idea of Prakriti and we arrive at something we cannot recognize,
  an inactive energy, an immaterial substance. Without motion,
  --
  suppose that an eternal Prakriti with eternal motion, mutability,
  multiplicity as its characteristics is the Alpha & Omega of existence. But a consideration of the Universe does not justify our
  --
  mobile Prakriti, but something else which is eternally stable.
  Eternal mutability, likewise, can lead to nothing but eternal
  --
  There is therefore not only this mutable Prakriti, but something
  else which is eternally immutable.
  --
  into an original Unity. There is therefore not only this evermultiplying Prakriti, but something else which is eternally One.
  In this mobile, mutable, multitudinous Prakriti, there is then a
  persistent element which is stable, immutable and one. We have
  --
  to Prakriti by its mere presence or propinquity without thereby
  becoming itself active. Spirit remains what it essentially is, pure
  existence, consciousness and delight; it is Prakriti that vibrating
  to the touch of this conscious delight in existence, begins to act,
  --
  of the vibrations of Prakriti in Consciousness and not changes
  in Spirit itself. Purusha is the eternally immutable, immobile and
  singly real condition of Universal Evolution; Prakriti in action
  is its eternal motion, mutability, multiplicity.
  --
  sufficient for its purposes; it considers Purusha and Prakriti to be
  both ultimate eternal entities in the Supreme Reality and their
  --
  Spirit and Matter, Purusha and Prakriti, which are merely its
  noumenal self-expressions. Nor could Vedanta be satisfied with
  --
  of Prakriti at every point of its evolutions without itself moving
  and acting. And if Spirit and Matter are not entirely different
  --
  Time, Space, Condition reposing in the sense of actual Infinity and Immutability, - this is Prakriti, Origin-of-Matter working in Spirit; and all philosophic analysis of existence must
  inevitably culminate in this noumenon; for without it the Universe as it is, cannot be conceived; it is the very condition of
  --
  word, Prakriti, immediately generates the noumenon of motion
  characterized by change and relation of parts and we have at
  --
  needed for the evolution of the cosmos. Prakriti with its evolution Pradhana is the material cause of the Universe; the presence
  The Karmayogin
  --
  of Spirit containing, supporting and pervading Prakriti and its
  evolutions is the efficient cause of the Universe.
  --
  Reality of Things unaffected by Prakriti or its phenomena. We
  may therefore safely conclude that so far as the Supreme Reality
  --
  three States, we find that it consists in the reflection of Prakriti as
  if by the Spirit. Spirit follows Prakriti through her three stages of
  material evolution, informing and sustaining them and mirrors
  --
  Self, Prakriti the noumenon of not-Self or apparent Self. It is in
  this true Self of Parabrahman that the evolutions of apparent
  --
  and the reference is obviously to those vibrations of Prakriti on
  the tranquil surface of Self which are the beginning and cause of
  --
  affected by the vibrations of Prakriti, even when It is supporting
  the cosmos and seems to be moving in it. Throughout it remains
  --
  the watcher in the train, the train is Prakriti, the landscape the
  Universal Self in the Cosmos. The watcher is not moving, the
  --
  or Wish, in other words, by Itself. Will by Will necessitates phenomena in Itself, atmanyatmana. But when Prakriti translates
  Will into phenomena in the terms of Time, Space, Causality,
  --
  He does not move, but He moves as mobile and multiple Prakriti.
  When it is said that Brahman is One and Unmoving, it is not
  --
  of His substance. Purusha alone is not Brahman, Prakriti also
  is Brahman; for He is not only the efficient cause of His Cosmos, but its material Cause as well. It is true that the motion
  --
  and multiplicity of Prakriti are phenomenal and superficial, the
  stability and immutability of Purusha fundamental and real;
  --
  nature has been illusorily brought about by the play of Prakriti,
  the noumenon of false self, on the one eternal Reality, creating
  --
  We have seen that Prakriti or nature in all its operations
  works through three inherent gunas or qualities which repeat
  --
  the action of external Prakriti in its broad masses is the same
  all over the world; therefore human personality is necessarily

2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: The impulse to act is always there, especially if one has been doing action. It is a movement of the dynamic mind which wants to go on doing things. It goes on acting, planning, thinking even when one does not want to act. The dynamic mind wants to throw itself into action. From the point of view of Yoga it is a waste of energy. What you have to do is to separate yourself from your nature and all its movements. You must be able to see them as things coming from the universal Prakriti. You must externalise them all.
   14 OCTOBER 1925

2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "That which is the Pure tman is the Great Cause, the Cause of the cause. The gross, the subtle, the causal, and the Great Cause. The five elements are gross. Mind, buddhi, and ego are subtle. Prakriti, the Primal Energy, is the cause of all these. Brahman, Pure tman, is the Cause of the cause.
  This Pure tman alone is our real nature. What is jnna? It is to know one's own Self and keep the mind in It. It is to know the Pure tman.
  --
  MASTER: "Yaoda went mad with grief because she was separated from Krishna. She went to Radhika, who was meditating. Radhika said to her an ecstatic state: 'I am the Ultimate Prakriti, the Primal Power. Ask a boon of Me.' Yaoda said to her: 'What shall I ask of You? Please bless me, that with all my body, mind, and speech I may think of God and serve Him; that with my ears I may hear the singing of God's name and glories; that with my hands I may serve Hari and His devotees; that with my eyes I may behold His form and His devotees.'
  "Your eyes fill with tears when you utter the name of God. Why then should you worry about anything? Divine love has grown in you.

2.03 - The Supreme Divine, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   experience. By that Brahman, a phrase which in the Upanishads is more than once used for the self-existent as opposed to the phenomenal being, the Gita intends, it appears, the immutable self-existence which is the highest self-expression of the Divine and on whose unalterable eternity all the rest, all that moves and evolves, is founded, aks.aram paramam. By adhyatma it means svabhava, the spiritual way and law of being of the soul in the supreme Nature. Karma, it says, is the name given to the creative impulse and energy, visargah., which looses out things from this first essential self-becoming, this Swabhava, and effects, creates, works out under its influence the cosmic becoming of existences in Prakriti. By adhibhuta is to be understood all the result of mutable becoming, ks.aro bhavah.. By adhidaiva is intended the
  Purusha, the soul in Nature, the subjective being who observes and enjoys as the object of his consciousness all that is this mutable becoming of his essential existence worked out here by
  --
  Being, Consciousness, Will or Power, yayedam dharyate jagat: that is the Para Prakriti. The self-awareness of the Spirit in this supreme Nature perceives in the light of self-knowledge the dynamic idea, the au thentic truth of whatever he separates in his own being and expresses it in the Swabhava, the spiritual nature of the Jiva. The inherent truth and principle of the self of each Jiva, that which works itself out in manifestation, the essential divine nature in all which remains constant behind all conversions, perversions, reversions, that is the Swabhava. All that is in the Swabhava is loosed out into cosmic Nature for her to do what she can with it under the inner eye of the Purushottama. Out of the constant svabhava, out of the essential nature and self-principle of being of each becoming, she creates the varied mutations by which she strives to express it, unrolls all her changes in name and form, in time and space and those successions of condition developed one out of the other in time and space which we call causality, nimitta.
  All this bringing out and continual change from state to state is Karma, is action of Nature, is the energy of Prakriti, the worker, the goddess of processes. It is first a loosing forth of the svabhava into its creative action, visargah.. The creation is of existences in the becoming, bhuta-karah., and of all that they subjectively or otherwise become, bhava-karah.. All taken together, it is a constant birth of things in Time, udbhava, of which the creative energy of Karma is the principle. All this mutable becoming emerges by a combination of the powers and energies of Nature, adhibhuta, which constitutes the world and is the object of the soul's consciousness. In it all the soul is the enjoying and observing Deity in Nature; the divine powers of
  294
  --
   mind and will and sense, all the powers of its conscious being by which it reflects this working of Prakriti are its godheads, adhidaiva. This soul in Nature is therefore the ks.ara purus.a, it is the mutable soul, the eternal activity of the Godhead: the same soul in the Brahman drawn back from her is the aks.ara purus.a, the immutable self, the eternal silence of the Godhead. But in the form and body of the mutable being inhabits the supreme
  Godhead. Possessing at once the calm of the immutable existence and the enjoyment of the mutable action there dwells in man the
  --
  Nature as a sacrifice and awaits the conscious self-giving of the human soul: but always even in the human creature's ignorance and egoism he is the Lord of his swabhava and the Master of all his works, who presides over the law of Prakriti and Karma.
  From him the soul came forth into the play of Nature's mutations; to him the soul returns through immutable self-existence to the highest status of the Divine, param dhama.
  Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation. The body is abandoned, but the soul goes on its way, tyaktva kalevaram.
  Much then depends on what he is at the critical moment of his departure. For whatever form of becoming his consciousness is fixed on at the time of death and has been full of that always in his mind and thought before death, to that form he must attain, since the Prakriti by Karma works out the soul's thoughts and energies and that is in real fact her whole business. Therefore, if the soul in the human being desires to attain to the status of the
  Purushottama, there are two necessities, two conditions which must be satisfied before that can be possible. He must have

2.04 - ADVICE TO ISHAN, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER (to the devotees): "Sri Krishna has a peacock feather on His crest. The feather bears the sign of the female sex. The significance of this is that Krishna carries Prakriti, the female principle, on His head. When Krishna joined the circle of the gopis to dance with them, He appeared there as a woman. That is why you see Him wearing women's apparel in the company of the gopis. Unless a man assumes the nature of a woman, he is not entitled to her company. Assuming the attitude of a woman, he can sport with her and enjoy her company.
  Disciplines during the Sdhan period But a man must be extremely careful during the early stages of spiritual discipline. Then he must live far away from any woman. He must not go too close to one even if she is a great devotee of God. You see, a man must not sway his body while climbing to the roof; he may fall. Weak people should hold on to a support while going up the stairs.
  --
  Purusha and Prakriti
  "Sri Krishna is the Purusha and Radha the Prakriti, the Chitakti, the dyakti. Radha is the Prakriti, the embodiment of the three Guns. Sattva, rajas, and tamas are in her. As you remove the layers of an onion, you will first see tints of both black and red, then only red, and last of all only white.
  The Vaishnava scriptures speak of 'Kam-Radha', 'Prem-Radha', and 'Nitya-Radha'.
  --
  "Names and forms are nothing but the manifestations of the power of Prakriti. Sita said to Hanuman: 'My child, in one form I am Sita, in another form I am Rma. In one form I am Indra, in another I am IndRani. In one form I am Brahma, in another, Brahmani. In one form I am Rudra, in another, Rudrani.' Whatever names and forms you see are nothing but the manifestations of the power of Chitakti. Everything is the power of Chitakti-even meditation and he who meditates. As long as I feel that I am meditating, I am within the jurisdiction of Prakriti. (To M.) Try to assimilate what I have said. One should hear what the Vedas and the Puranas say, and carry it out in life.
  (To the pundit) "It is good to live in the company of holy men now and then. The disease of worldliness has become chronic in man. It is mitigated, to a great extent, in holy company.

2.04 - On Art, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: I think he says at one place that it typifies the male and the female the Purusha and the Prakriti aspect without which there is no creation.
   But at one place he speaks of the Mithuna verging on the obscene. But I did not see anything of that in the illustrations.

2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A manifestation of this kind, self-creation or Lila, would not seem justifiable if it were imposed on the unwilling creature; but it will be evident that the assent of the embodied spirit must be there already, for Prakriti cannot act without the assent of the
  Purusha. There must have been not only the will of the Divine

2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Sankhya view of things, Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature.
  These solutions then must be put aside as untenable, unless we modify our first view of the Reality and concede to it a power of manifold status of consciousness or a power of manifold status of existence.

2.06 - The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Still, the Self goes on with its imperishable aspect of immanence, its immutable aspect of divine envelopment, its endless trick of becoming each thing and all things; our detection of the cheat and our withdrawal do not seem to affect one tittle either the Self or the universe. Must we not then know also what it is that thus persists superior to our acceptance and rejection and too great, too eternal to be affected by it? Here too there must be some invincible reality at work and the integrality of Knowledge demands that we shall see and realise it; otherwise it may prove that our own knowledge and not the Lord in the universe was the cheat and the illusion. Therefore we must concentrate again and see and realise also this which persists so sovereignly and must know the Self as no other than the Supreme Soul which is the Lord of Nature, the upholder of cosmic existence by whose sanction it proceeds, whose will compels its multitudinous actions and determines its perpetual cycles. And we must yet concentrate once again and see and realise and must know the Self as the one Existence who is both the Soul of all and the Nature . of all, at once Purusha and Prakriti and so able both to express himself in all these forms of things and to be all these formations. Otherwise we have excluded what the Self does not exclude and made a wilful choice in our knowledge.
  The old ascetic Path of Knowledge admitted the unity of things and the concentration on all these aspects of the one Existence, but it made a distinction and a hierarchy. The Self that becomes all these forms of thing is the Virat or universal Soul; the Self that creates all these forms is Hiranyagarbha, the luminous pr creatively perceptive Soul; the Self that contains all these things involved in it is Prajna, the conscious Cause or originally determining Soul; beyond all these is the Absolute who permits all this unreality, but has no dealings with it. Into That we must withdraw and have no farther dealings with the universe, since Knowledge means the final Knowledge, and therefore these lesser realisations must fall away from us or be lost in That. But evidently from our point of view these are practical distinctions made by the mind which have a value for certain purposes, but no ultimate value. Our view of the world insists on unity; the universal Self is not different from the perceptive and creative, nor the perceptive from the causal, nor the causal from the Absolute, but it is one "Self-being which has become all becomings," and which is not any other than the Lord who manifests Himself as all these individual existences nor the Lord any other than the sole-existing Brahman who verily is all this that we can see, sense, live or mentalise. That Self, Lord, Brahman we would know that we may realise our unity with it and with all that it manifests and in that unity we would live. For we demand of knowledge that it shall unite; the knowledge that divides must always be a partial knowing good for certain practical purposes; the knowledge that unites is the knowledge.

2.06 - Works Devotion and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The inner soul in man is here a partial self-manifestation of the Divine, self-limited for the works of his Nature in the universe, prakr.tir jva-bhuta. In his spiritual essence the individual is one with the Divine. In the works of the divine Prakriti he is one with him, yet there is an operative difference and many deep relations with God in Nature and with God above cosmic Nature.
  In the works of the lower appearance of Prakriti he seems by an ignorance and egoistic separation to be quite other than the
  One and to think, will, act, enjoy in this separative consciousness for the egoistic pleasure and purpose of his personal existence in the universe and its surface relations with other embodied minds and lives. But in fact all his being, all his thinking, all his willing and action and enjoyment are only a reflection - egoistic and perverted so long as he is in the ignorance - of the

2.07 - BANKIM CHANDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Purusha and Prakriti imply and, Their inner harmony "Sri Krishna is the Purusha; Srimati is His akti, the Primal Power. The two are Purusha and Prakriti. What is the meaning of the Yugala Murti, the conjoined images of Radha and Krishna? It is that Purusha and Prakriti are not different; there is no difference between them. Purusha cannot exist without Prakriti, and Prakriti cannot exist without Purusha. If you mention the one, the other is understood. It is like fire and its power to burn; one cannot think of fire without its power to burn; again, one cannot think of fire's power to burn without fire. Therefore in the conjoined images of Radha and Krishna, Krishna's eyes are fixed on Radha and Radha's on Krishna. Radha's complexion is golden, like lightning; so Krishna wears yellow apparel. Krishna's complexion is blue, like a dark cloud; so Radha wears a blue dress; she has also decked herself with blue sapphires. Radha has tinkling anklets; so Krishna has them too. In other words, there is inner and outer harmony between Purusha and Prakriti."
  As Sri Ramakrishna finished these words, Bankim and his friends began to whisper in English.

2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: He wants to stick to the mental consciousness and to the ordinary nature and tries to master the movements of nature from the mental consciousness helped, if possible, by prayer. He has hardly even a cursory acquaintance with the division of Purusha and Prakriti, so necessary to establish the basis of the spiritual life.
   Disciple: The prayers in the Ashram are a fixed routine.

2.07 - The Release from Subjection to the Body, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Our first step in this path of knowledge, having once determined in our intellect that what seems is not the Truth, that the self is not the body or life or mind, since these are only its forms, must be to set right our mind in its practical relation with the life and the body so that it may arrive at its own right relation with the Self. This it is easiest to do by a device with which we are already familiar, since it played a great part in our view of the Yoga of Works, it is to create a separation between the Prakriti and the Purusha. The Purusha, the soul that knows and commands has got himself involved in the workings of his executive conscious force, so that he mistakes this physical working of it which we call the body for himself; he forgets his own nature as the soul that knows and commands; he believes his mind and soul to be subject to the law and working of the body; he forgets that he is so much else besides that is greater than the physical form; he forgets that the mind is really greater than Matter and ought not to submit to its obscurations, reactions, habit of inertia, habit of incapacity; he forgets that he is more even than the mind, a Power which can raise the mental being above itself; that he is the Master, the Transcendent and it is not fit the Master should be enslaved to his own workings, the Transcendent imprisoned in a form which exists only as a trifle in its own being. All this forgetfulness has to be cured by the Purusha remembering his own true nature and first by his remembering that the body is only a working and only one working of Prakriti.
  We say then to the mind "This is a working of Prakriti, this is neither thyself nor myself; stand back from it." We shall find, if we try, that the mind has this power of detachment and can stand back from the body not only in idea, but in act and as it were physically or rather vitally. This detachment of the mind must be streng thened by a certain attitude of indifference to the things of the body; we must not care essentially about its sleep or its waking, its movement or its rest, its pain or its pleasure, its health or ill-health, its vigour or its fatigue, its comfort or its discomfort, or what it eats or drinks. This does not mean that we shall not keep the body in right order so far as we can; we have not to fall into violent asceticisms or a positive neglect of the physical frame. But we have not either to be affected in mind by hunger or thirst or discomfort or ill-health or attach the importance which the physical and vital man attaches to the things of the body, or indeed any but a quite subordinate and purely instrumental importance. Nor must this instrumental importance be allowed to assume the proportions of a necessity; we must not for instance imagine that the purity of the mind depends on the things we eat or drink, although during a certain stage restrictions in eating and drinking are useful to our inner progress; nor on the other hand must we continue to think that the dependence of the mind or even of the life on food and drink is anything more than a habit, a customary relation which Nature has set up between these principles. As a matter of fact the food we take can be reduced by contrary habit and new relation to a minimum without the mental or vital vigour being in any way reduced; even on the contrary with a judicious development they can be trained to a greater potentiality of vigour by learning to rely on the secret fountains of mental and vital energy with which they are connected more than upon the minor aid of physical aliments. This aspect of self-discipline is however more important in the Yoga of self-perfection than here; for our present purpose the important point is the renunciation by the mind of attachment to or dependence on the things of the body.
  Thus disciplined the mind will gradually learn to take up towards the body the true attitude of the Purusha. First of all, it will know the mental Purusha as the upholder of the body and not in any way the body itself; for it is quite other than the physical existence which it upholds by the mind through the agency of the vital force. This will come to be so much the normal attitude of the whole being to the physical frame that the latter will feel to us as if something external and detachable like the dress we wear or an instrument we happen to be carrying in our hand. We may even come to feel that the body is in a certain sense non-existent except as a sort of partial expression of our vital force and of our mentality. These experiences are signs that the mind is coming to a right poise regarding the body, that it is exchanging the false viewpoint of the mentality obsessed and captured by physical sensation for the viewpoint of the true truth of things.

2.07 - The Supreme Word of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Purusha, and Purusha has always some relation with Prakriti.
  But now the reason of this double aspect of silence and of activity is revealed in its entire significance, - because the silent all-pervading Self is only one side of the truth of the divine
  --
  Parabrahman who is Parameshwara, supreme Lord because he is the supreme Self and Spirit, and from his highest original existence he originates and governs the universe, not self-deceived, but with an all-knowing omnipotence. Nor is the working of his divine Nature in the cosmos an illusion whether of his or our consciousness. The only illusive Maya is the ignorance of the lower Prakriti which is not a creator of non-existent things on the impalpable background of the One and Absolute, but because of its blind encumbered and limited working misrepresents to the human mind by the figure of ego and other inadequate figures of mind, life and matter the greater sense, the deeper realities of existence. There is a supreme, a divine Nature which is the true creatrix of the universe. All creatures and all objects are becomings of the one divine Being; all life is a working of the power of the one Lord; all nature is a manifestation of the one
  Infinite. He is the Godhead in man; the Jiva is spirit of his Spirit.
  --
  Even in becoming all he is still a Transcendence; even in assuming finite forms he is always the Infinite. Nature, Prakriti, is in her essence his spiritual power, self-power, atmasakti; this spiritual self-power develops infinite primal qualities of becoming in the inwardness of things and turns them into an external surface of form and action. For in her essential, secret and divine order the spiritual truth of each and all comes first, a thing of her deep identities; their psychological truth of quality and nature is dependent on the spiritual for all in it that is au thentic, it derives from the spirit; least in necessity, last in order the objective truth of form and action derives from inner quality of nature and depends on it for all these variable presentations of existence here in the external order. Or in other words, the objective fact is only an expression of a sum of soul factors and these go back always to a spiritual cause of their appearance.
  This finite outward becoming is an expressive phenomenon of the divine Infinite. Nature is, secondarily, the lower Nature, a subordinate variable development of a few selective combinations out of the many possibilities of the Infinite. Evolved out of essential and psychological quality of being and becoming, svabhava, these combinations of form and energy, action and movement exist for a quite limited relation and mutual experience in the cosmic oneness. And in this lower, outward and apparent order of things Nature as an expressive power of the

2.07 - The Upanishad in Aphorism, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  What thou callest world is the movement of Kali; as such embrace thy world-existence. In thy all-embracing stillness of vision thou art Purusha and inhabitest; in thy outward motion and action thou art Prakriti and the builder of the habitation. Thus envisage thy being.
  There are many knots of the movement and each knot thy eyes look upon as an object; many currents and each current thy mind sees as force and tendency. Forces and objects are the forms of Kali.
  --
  That which inhabits the forms of Kali is Self and Lord of the Movement. Purusha is master of Prakriti, not her subject; Soul determines Form & Action & is not determined by them. Spirit reflects in its knowledge the activity of Nature, but only those activities which it has itself compelled Nature to initiate.
  The soul in the body is master of body and not subject to its laws or limited by its experiences.
  --
  My universal soul need no more be limited by my individual mind and body, than my individual consciousness is limited by the experiences of a single cell in my body. The walls which imprison us have been built up by Prakriti in her movement and exist only in her inferior kingdoms. As one rises higher they become conventional boundaries which we can always stride across and, on the summits, they merely mark off compartments in our universal consciousness.
  The soul does not move, but motion of Nature takes place in its perfect stillness.
  --
  This transcendence & dissolution may result either in loss of the waking self & relapse into some sleepbound principle, undifferentiated Prakriti, sushupta Purusha, Sunyam Brahma (Nihil), etc or in loss of the world self in Parabrahman or in universalisation of the waking self & the joy of God's divine being in & beyond the world, Amritam. The last is the goal proposed for man by the Isha Upanishad.
  The waking ego, identifying the Jiva with its bodily, vital & mental experiences which are part of the stream of Nature's movement & subject to Nature & the process of the movement, falsely believes the soul to be the subject of Nature & not its lord, anish and not Ish. This is the illusion of bondage which the manomaya Purusha either accepts or seeks to destroy. Those who accept it are called baddha Jivas, souls in bondage; those who seek to destroy it mumukshu Jivas, self-liberating souls, - those who have destroyed it are mukta Jivas, souls free from illusion & limitation.

2.08 - AT THE STAR THEATRE (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "The attitude of a 'hero' is not good. Some people cherish it. They regard themselves as Purusha and woman as Prakriti; they want to propitiate woman through intercourse with her. But this method often causes disaster."
  GIRISH: "At one time I too cherished that idea."
  --
  He told her the three characteristics of disinterested action: first, control of the sense-organs; second, absence of egotism; and third, surrendering the fruit of action to Sri Krishna. He further told her that no dharma is possible for the egotistic person. Quoting from the Git, he said: "The Guns of Prakriti perform all action. With the understanding deluded by egotism, man thinks, I am the doer."
  Bhavani next spoke to her about surrendering the fruit of action to Sri Krishna. Again he quoted from the Git : "Whatever thou doest, whatever thou eatest, whatever thou givest away, whatever austerity thou practisest, O son of Kunti, do that as an offering unto Me."

2.08 - The Release from the Heart and the Mind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But the ascending soul has to separate itself not only from the life in the body but from the action of the life-energy in the mind; it has to make the mind say as the representative of the Purusha "I am not the Life; the Life is not the self of the Purusha, it is only a working and only one working of Prakriti." The characteristics of Life are action and movement, a reaching out to absorb and assimilate what is external to the individual and a principle of satisfaction or dissatisfaction In what it seizes upon or what comes to it, which is associated with the all-pervading phenomenon of attraction and repulsion. These three things are everywhere in Nature because Life is everywhere in Nature. But in us mental beings they are all given a mental value according to the mind which perceives and accepts them. They take the form of action, of desire and of liking and disliking, pleasure and pain. The Prana is everywhere in us supporting not only the action of our body, but of our sense-mind, our emotional mind, our thought-mind; and bringing its own law or Dharma into all these, it confuses, it limits, it throws into discord their right action and creates that impurity of misplacement and that tangled confusion which is the whole evil of our psychological existence. In that confusion one law seems to reign, the law of desire. As the universal Divine Being, all-embracing and all-possessing, acts, moves, enjoys purely for the satisfaction of divine Delight, so the individual life acts, moves, enjoys and suffers predominantly for the satisfaction of desire. Therefore the psychic life-energy presents itself to our experience as a sort of desire-mind, which we have to conquer if we mean to get back to our true self.
  Desire is at once the motive of our actions, our lever of accomplishment and the bane of our existence. If our sense-mind, emotional mind, thought-mind could act free from the intrusions and importations of the life-energy, if that energy could be made to obey their right action instead of imposing its own yoke on our existence, all human problems would move harmoniously to their right solution. The proper function of the life-energy is to do what it is bidden by the divine principle in us, to reach to and enjoy what is given to it by that indwelling Divine and not to desire at all. The proper function of the sense-mind is to lie open passively, luminously to the contacts of Life and transmit their sensations and the rasa or right taste and principle of delight in them to the higher function; but interfered with by the attractions and repulsions, the acceptances and refusals, the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, the capacities and incapacities of the life-energy in the body it is, to begin with, limited in its scope and, secondly, forced in these limits to associate itself with all these discords of the life in Matter. It becomes an instrument for pleasure and pain instead of for delight of existence.
  --
  Therefore the mental Purusha has to separate himself from association and self-identification with this desire-mind. He has to say "I am not this thing that struggles and suffers, grieves and rejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffied, is angry and afraid and cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional passions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in the sensational and emotional mind." The mind then draws back from its emotions and becomes with these, as with the bodily movements and experiences, the observer or witness. There is again an inner cleavage. There is this emotional mind in which these moods and passions continue to occur according to the habit of the modes of Nature and there is the observing mind which sees them, studies and understands but is detached from them. It observes them as if in a sort of action and play on a mental stage of personages other than itself, at first with interest and a habit of relapse into identification, then with entire calm and detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but to the pure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at their unreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is playing and loses himself in the play. Secondly, it becomes aware of itself as master of the sanction who by his withdrawal of sanction can make this play to cease. When the sanction is withdrawn, another significant phenomenon takes place; the emotional mind becomes normally calm and pure and free from these reactions, and even when they come, they no longer rise from within but seem to fall oil it as impressions from outside to which its fibres are still able to respond; but this habit of response dies away and the emotional mind is in time entirely liberated from the passions which it has renounced. Hope and fear, joy and grief, liking and disliking, attraction and repulsion, content and discontent, gladness and depression, horror and wrath and fear and disgust and shame and the passions of love and hatred fall away from the liberated psychic being.
  What takes their place ? It may be, if we will, an entire calm, silence and indifference. But although this is a stage through which the soul has usually to pass, it is not the final aim we have placed before us. Therefore the Purusha becomes also the master who wills and whose will it is to replace wrong by right enjoyment of the psychic existence. What he wills. Nature executes. What was fabric-stuff of desire and passion, is turned into reality of pure, equal and calmly intense love and joy and oneness. The real soul emerges and takes the place left vacant by the desire-mind. The cleansed and emptied cup is filled with the wine of divine love and delight and no longer with the sweet and bitter poison of passion. The passions, even the passion for good, misrepresent the divine nature. The passion of pity with its impure elements of physical repulsion and emotional inability to bear the suffering of others has to be rejected and replaced by the higher divine compassion which sees, understands, accepts the burden of others and is strong to help and heal, not with self-will and revolt against the suffering in the world and with ignorant accusation of the law of things and their source, but with light and knowledge and as an instrument of the Divine in its emergence. So too the love that desires and grasps and is troubled with joy and shaken with grief must be rejected for the equal, all-embracing love that is free from these things and has no dependence upon circumstances and is not modified by response or absence of response. So we shall deal with all the movements of the soul; but of these things we shall speak farther when we consider the Yoga of self-perfection.
  --
  The desire-mind must also be rejected from the instrument of thought and this is best done by the detachment of the Purusha from thought and opinion itself. Of this we have already had occasion to speak when we considered in what consists the integral purification of the being. For all this movement of knowledge which we are describing is a method of purification and liberation whereby entire and final self-knowledge becomes possible, a progressive self-knowledge being itself the instrument of the purification and liberation. The method with the thought-mind will be the same as with all the rest of the being. The Purusha, having used the thought-mind for release from identification with the life and body and with the mind of desire and sensations and emotions, will turn round upon the thought-mind Itself and will say "This too I am not; I am not the thought or the thinker; all these ideas, opinions, speculations, strivings of the intellect, its predilections, preferences, dogmas, doubts, self-corrections are not myself; all this is only a working of Prakriti which takes place in the thought-mind." Thus a division is created between the mind that thinks and wills and the mind that observes and the Purusha becomes the witness only; he sees, he understands the process and laws of his thought, but detaches himself from it. Then as the master of the sanction he withdraws his past sanction from the tangle of the mental undercurrent and the reasoning intellect and causes both to cease from their importunities. He becomes liberated from subjection to the thinking mind and capable of the utter silence.
  For perfection there is necessary also the resumption by the Purusha of his position as the lord of his Nature and the will to replace the mere mental undercurrent and intellect by the truth-conscious thought that lightens from above. But the silence is necessary; in the silence and not in the thought we shall find the Self, we shall become aware of it, not merely conceive it, and we shall withdraw out of the mental Purusha into that which is the source of the mind. But for this withdrawal a final liberation is needed, the release from the ego-sense in the mind.

2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: I was thinking about it after the talk. You know there is, perhaps, a traditional method of Yoga in Maharashtra which belongs to the Dattatreya cult. The truth behind it is that Dattatreya represents the highest realisation he always keeps his consciousness immersed in the Infinite and the freedom of the Infinite is brought down by him to the mental, vital and even to the physical plane. Therefore a man who is a Siddha of the path acts free like the Infinite even in his Prakriti and therefore may often act in a way which is considered immoral by society. He tries to bring down the power of the free Infinite into the instruments of manifestation and this he considers perfection. But it is doubtful whether it is perfection.
   The danger of the realisation of the Infinite, free from all bondage, is that except in the highest condition, many false experiences can also masquerade as true. For instance, such a man gets tremendous power and generally has an ego-centric nature. Even Ravana was a great yogi. One having a great control over the vital plane only is generally known as a Rakshasa. The Asura controls his mind and his vital being. There is a great possibility of committing a blunder in the Dattatreya path.

2.09 - The Release from the Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is then in the way of the spiritual philosophies and religions, not in that of any earth-bound materialistic doctrine, that the seeker of the highest knowledge has to walk, even if with enriched aims and a more comprehensive spiritual purpose. But how far has he to proceed in the elimination of the ego? In the ancient way of Knowledge we arrive at the elimination of the ego-sense which attaches itself to the body, to the life, to the mind and says of all or any of them, "This is I." Not only do we, as in the way of works, get rid of the "I" of the worker and see the Lord alone as the true source of all works and sanction of works and His executive Nature-power or else His supreme shakti as the sole agent and worker, -- but we get rid also of the ego-sense which mistakes the instruments or the expressions of our being for our true self and spirit. But even if all this has been done, something remains still; there remains a substratum of all these, a general sense of the separate I. This substratum ego is something vague, indefinable, elusive; it does not or need not attach itself to anything in particular as the self; it does not identify itself with anything collective, it is a sort of fundamental form or power of the mind which compels the mental being to feel himself as a perhaps indefinable but still a limited being which is not mind, life or body but under which their activities proceed in Nature. The others were a qualified ego-idea and ego-sense supporting themselves on the play of the Prakriti; but this is the pure fundamental ego-power supporting itself on the consciousness of the mental Purusha. And because it seems to be above or behind the play and not in it, because it does not say "I am the mind, life or body," but "I am a being on whom the action of mind, life and body depends," many think themselves released and mistake this elusive Ego for the One, the Divine, the true Purusha or at the very least for the true Person within them, -- mistaking the indefinable for the Infinite. But so long as this fundamental ego-sense remains, there is no absolute release. The egoistic life, even if diminished in force and intensity, can still continue well enough with this support. If there is the error m identification, the ego life may under that pretext get rather exaggerated intensity and force. Even if there is no such error, the ego life may be wider, purer, more flexible and release may be now much easier to attain and nearer to accomplishment, but still there is as yet no definitive release. It is imperative to go farther, to get rid of this indefinable but fundamental ego-sense also and get back to the Purusha on whom it is supporting itself, of whom it is a shadow; the shadow has to disappear and by its disappearance reveal the spirit's unclouded substance.
  That substance is the self of the man called in European thought the Monad, in Indian philosophy, Jiva or Jivatman, the living entity, the self of the living creature. This Jiva is not the mental ego-sense constructed by the workings of Nature for her temporary purpose. It is not a thing bound, as the mental being, the vital, the physical are bound, by her habits, laws or processes. The Jiva is a spirit and self, superior to Nature. It is true that it consents to her acts, reflects her moods and upholds the triple medium of mind, life and body through which she casts them upon the soul's consciousness; but it is itself a living reflection or a soul-form or a self-creation of the Spirit universal and transcendent. The One Spirit who has mirrored some of His modes of being in the world and in the soul, is multiple in the Jiva. That Spirit is the very Self of our self, the One and the Highest, the Supreme we have to realise, the infinite existence into which we have to enter. And so far the teachers walk in company, all agreeing that this is the supreme object of knowledge, of works and of devotion, all agreeing that if it is to be attained, the Jiva must release himself from the ego-sense which belongs to the lower Nature or Maya. But here they part company and each goes his own way. The Monist fixes his feet on the path of an exclusive Knowledge and sets for us as sole ideal an entire return, loss, immersion or extinction of the Jiva in the Supreme. The Dualist or the partial Monist turns to the path of Devotion and directs us to shed indeed the lower ego and material life, but to see as the highest destiny of the spirit of man, not the self-annihilation of the Buddhist, not the self-immersion of the Adwaitin, not a swallowing up of the many by the One, but an eternal existence absorbed in the thought, love and enjoyment of the Supreme, the One, the All-Lover.
  --
  When there is an insufficient purity in the mental being, the release appears at first to be partial and temporary; the Jiva seems to descend again into the egoistic life and the higher consciousness to be withdrawn from him. In reality, what happens is that a cloud or veil intervenes between the lower nature and the higher consciousness and the Prakriti resumes for a time its old habit of working under the pressure but not always with a knowledge or present memory of that high experience. What works in it then is a ghost of the old ego supporting a mechanical repetition of the old habits upon the remnants of confusion and impurity still left in the system. The cloud intervenes and disappears, the rhythm of ascent and descent renews itself until the impurity has been worked out. This period of alternations may easily be long in the integral Yoga; for there an entire perfection of the system is required; it must be capable at all times and in all conditions and all circumstances, whether of action or inaction, of admitting and then living in the consciousness of the supreme Truth. Nor is it enough for the Sadhaka to have the utter realisation only in the trance of Samadhi or in a motionless quietude, but he must in trance or in waking, in passive reflection or energy of action be able to remain in the constant Samadhi of the firmly founded Brahmic consciousness349a. But if or when our conscious being has become sufficiently pure and clear, then there is a firm station in the higher consciousness. The impersonalised Jiva, one with the universal or possessed by the Transcendent, lives high-seated above349b and looks down undisturbed at whatever remnants of the old working of Nature may revisit the system. He cannot be moved by the workings of the three modes of Prakriti in his lower being, nor can he be shaken from his station by the attacks even of grief and suffering. And finally, there being no veil between, the higher peace overpowers the lower disturbance and mobility. There is a settled silence in which the soul can take sovereign possession of itself above and below and altogether.
  Such possession is not indeed the aim of the traditional Yoga of knowledge whose object is rather to get away from the above and the below and the all into the indefinable Absolute. But whatever the aim, the path of knowledge must lead to one first result, an absolute quietude; for unless the old action of Nature in us be entirely quieted, it is difficult if not impossible to found either any true soul-status or any divine activity. Our nature acts on a basis of confusion and restless compulsion to action, the Divine acts freely out of a fathomless calm. Into that abyss of tranquillity we must plunge and become that, if we are to annul the hold of this lower nature upon the soul. Therefore the universalised Jiva first ascends into the Silence; it becomes vast, tranquil, actionless. What action takes place, whether of body and these organs or any working whatever, the Jiva sees but does not take part in, authorise or in any way associate itself with it. There is action, but no personal actor, no bondage, no responsibility. If personal action is needed, then the Jiva has to keep or recover what has been called the form of the ego, a sort of mental image of an "I" that is the knower, devotee, servant or instrument, but an image only and not a reality. If even that is not there, still action can continue by the mere continued force of Prakriti, without any personal actor, without indeed there being any sense of an actor at all; for the Self into which the Jiva has cast its being is the actionless, the fathomless still. The path of works leads to the realisation of the Lord, but here even the Lord is not known; there is only the silent Self and Prakriti doing her works, even, as it seems at first, riot with truly living entities but with names and forms existing in the Self but which the Self does not admit as real. The soul may go even beyond this realisation; it may either rise to the Brahman on the other side of all idea of Self as a Void of everything that is here, a Void of unnameable peace and extinction of all, even of the Sat, even of that Existent which is the impersonal basis of individual or universal personality; or else it may unite with it as an ineffable "That" of which nothing can be said; for the universe and all that is does not even exist in That, but appears to the mind as a dream more unsubstantial than any dream ever seen or imagined, so that even the word dream seems too positive a thing to express its entire unreality. These experiences are the foundation of that lofty illusionism which takes such firm hold of the human mind in its highest overleapings of itself.
  These ideas of dream and illusion are simply results in our still existent mentality of the new poise of the Jiva and its denial of the claim made upon it by its old mental associations and view of life and existence. In reality, the Prakriti does not act for itself or by its own motion, but with the Self as lord; for out of that Silence wells all this action, that apparent Void looses out as if into movement all these infinite riches of experiences. To this realisation the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga must arrive by the process that we shall hereafter describe. What then, when he so resumes his hold upon the universe and views no longer himself in the world but the cosmos in himself, will be the position of the Jiva or what will fill in his new consciousness the part of the ego-sense? There will be no ego-sense even if there is a sort of individualisation for the purposes of the play of universal consciousness in an individual mind and frame; and for this reason that all will be unforgettably the One and every Person or Purusha will be to him the One in many forms or rather in many aspects and poises, Brahman acting upon Brahman, one Nara-Narayana351 everywhere. In that larger play of the Divine the joy of the relations of divine love also is possible without the lapse into the ego-sense, -- just as the supreme state of human love likewise is described as the unity of one soul in two bodies. The ego-sense is not indispensable to the world-play in which it is so active and so falsifies the truth of things; the truth is always the One at work on itself, at play with itself, infinite in unity, infinite in multiplicity. When the individualised consciousness rises to and lives in that truth of the cosmic play, then even in full action, even in possession of the lower being the Jiva remains still one with the Lord, and there is no bondage and no delusion. He is in possession of Self and released from the ego.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

2.1.01 - The Central Process of the Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As regards Xs questionthis is not a Yoga of Bhakti alone; it is or at least it claims to be an integral Yoga, that is, a turning of all the being in all its parts to the Divine. It follows that there must be knowledge and works as well as Bhakti and, in addition, it includes a total change of the nature, a seeking for perfection, so that the nature also may become one with the nature of the Divine. It is not only the heart that has to turn to the Divine and change, but the mind alsoso knowledge is necessary, and the will and power of action and creation alsoso works too are necessary. In this Yoga the methods of other Yogas are taken uplike this of Purusha- Prakriti, but with a difference in the final object. Purusha separates from Prakriti, not in order to abandon her, but in order to know himself and her and to be no longer her plaything, but the knower, lord and upholder of the nature; but having become so or even in becoming so, one offers all that to the Divine. One may begin with knowledge or with works or with Bhakti or with Tapasya of self-purification for perfection (change of nature) and develop the rest as a subsequent movement or one may combine all in one movement. There is no single rule for all, it depends on the personality and the nature. Surrender is the main power of the Yoga, but the surrender is bound to be progressive; a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, but only a will in the being for that completeness,in fact it takes time; yet it is only when the surrender is complete that the full flood of the sadhana is possible. Till then there must be the personal effort with an increasing reality of surrender. One calls in the power of the Divine Shakti and once that begins to come into the being, it at first supports the personal endeavour, then progressively takes up the whole action, although the consent of the sadhak continues to be always necessary. As the Force works, it brings in the different processes that are necessary for the sadhak, processes of knowledge, of Bhakti, of spiritualised action, of transformation of the nature. The idea that they cannot be combined is an error.
  ***
  --
  The third way which is one of the two ways towards Yoga by works is the separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. But this also means living in an inner peace and silence and dealing with the activities as if they were a thing of the surface. (The other way of beginning the Yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.)
  If there is any secret or key of my Yoga which you say you have not found, it lies in these methodsand, in reality, there is nothing so mysterious, impossible or even new about them in themselves. It is only the farther development at a later stage and the aim of the Yoga that are new. But that one need not concern oneself with in the earlier stages unless one wishes to do so as a matter of mental knowledge.

2.1.02 - Classification of the Parts of the Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2. The distinction between Purusha and Prakriti is according to the Sankhya System - the Purusha is the silent witness consciousness which observes the actions of Prakriti - Prakriti is the force of Nature which one feels as doing all the actions, when one gets rid of the sense of the ego as doer. Then there is the realisation of these two entities. This is quite different from the psychic being. It is felt in the mind, vital, physical - most easily in the mind where the mental being (Purusha) is seated and controls the others (manomayah. purus.ah. pran.a-sarra-neta).
  3. Prajna, Taijasa etc. are a different classification and have to do, not with the different parts of the being, but with three different states (waking, dream, sleep - gross, subtle, causal).
  --
  - true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error and ignorant thought and will of the lower Prakriti and directly open to the knowledge and guidance from above.
  Higher vital usually refers to the vital mind and emotive being as opposed to the middle vital which has its seat in the navel and is dynamic, sensational and passionate and the lower which is made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-reactions.

2.1.02 - Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Works done in this spirit are quite as effective as bhakti or contemplation. One gets by the rejection of desire, rajas and ego a quietude and purity into which the Peace ineffable can descend; one gets by the dedication of ones will to the Divine, by the merging of ones will in the Divine Will the death of ego and the enlarging into the cosmic consciousness or else the uplifting into what is above the cosmic; one experiences the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and is liberated from the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of ones inner being and feels the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing ones works and the Self or Purusha watching or witness but free; one feels all ones works taken from one and done by the universal or the supreme Mother or by the Divine Power controlling and acting from behind the heart. By constant reference of all ones will and works to the Divine, love and adoration grow, the psychic being comes forward. By the reference to the Power above we can come to feel it above and its descent and the opening to an increasing consciousness and knowledge. Finally works, bhakti and knowledge join together and self-perfection becomes possiblewhat we call the transformation of the nature.
  These results certainly do not come all at once; they come more or less slowly, more or less completely according to the condition and growth of the being. There is no royal road to the divine realisation.

2.1.02 - Nature The World-Manifestation, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  God in the world is Brahman-Iswara-Atman, Prakriti or
  Shakti and Jiva. These are the three terms of His worldmanifestation.
  --
  The Power of itself which thus manifests what is in its being is its Shakti, Maya or Prakriti, three names for the same thing. It is called Prakriti when it is seen in its executive aspect as working out the manifestation for the Purusha or Ishwara.
  Whether we regard the soul that manifests in a body as a portion of the Divine, eternal therefore like the Divine, as is held by the
  --
  Existence is composed of Prakriti & Purusha, the consciousness that sees and the consciousness that executes & formalises what we see. The one we call Soul, the other Nature. These are the first double term from which our Yoga has to start.
  When we come to look in at ourselves instead of out at the world and begin to analyse our subjective experience, we find that there are two parts of our being which can be,
  --
   to all appearance, entirely separated from each other, one a consciousness which is still & passive and supports, and the other a consciousness which is busy, active & creative, and is supported. The passive & fundamental consciousness is the Soul, the Purusha, Witness or Sakshi; the active & superstructural consciousness is Nature, Prakriti, processive or creative energy of the Sakshi. But the two seem at first to stand apart & distinct, as if they had no share in each other.
  The Purusha, still & silent witness of whatever Prakriti chooses to create, not interfering with her works, but reflecting only whatever forms, names & movements she casts on the pure mirror of his eternal existence and the Prakriti restlessly creating, acting, forming & effecting things for the delight of the Purusha, compose the double system of the Sankhyas.
  But as we continue analysing their relations and accumulate more and more experience of our subjective life, we find that this seeing of the Purusha is in effect a command. Whatever
  --
  & Prakriti are therefore not only the Witness & the Activity witnessed, but the Lord & his executive energy. The Purusha is
  Ishwara, the Prakriti is His shakti. Their play with each other is both the motive & the executive force of all existence in the universe.
  25
  --
  Bliss, not to realise it with the lower nature, in the Apara Prakriti, not to be able to grasp and possess it. Two things are necessary for the fullness of man's bliss, - the fullness of his being and the fullness of his knowledge creating by their union the fullness of his strength in all its manifestations, viryam, balam, bhrajas, tejas, ojas. For Ananda, Sat & Chit make one reality, and Chit is in its outward working pure force to which our Rishis gave the name of Tapas. To attain even here upon earth this fullness of bliss dependent upon fullness of existence, illumination and force, must always be humanity's drift, man's collective endeavour. To attain it within himself here and beyond, iha ca amutra ca, must always be the drift of the human unit, the individual's endeavour. Wherever the knowledge in him thinks it can grasp this bliss, it will fix its heaven. This is Swarga,
  Vaikuntha, Goloka; this is Nirvana.

2.10 - THE MASTER AND NARENDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  The river parted and a pathway was formed between the waters. Following that path, the gopis and Vysa crossed the river. Vysa had said, 'If I have not eaten anything'. That means, the real man is Pure tman. tman is unattached and beyond Prakriti. It has neither hunger nor thirst; It knows neither birth nor death; It does not age, nor does It die. It is immutable as Mount Sumeru.
  Jeevanmukta & Separation of body and soul "He who has attained this Knowledge of Brahman is a jivanmukta, liberated while living in the body. He rightly understand that the tman and the body are two separate things.

2.11 - The Modes of the Self, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Connected with this triple mode of the Self is that distinction which Indian philosophy has drawn between the Qualitied and the Qualityless Brahman and European thought has made between the Personal and the Impersonal God. The Upanishad indicates clearly enough the relative nature of this opposition, when it speaks of the Supreme as the "Qualitied who is without qualities"363. We have again two essential modes, two fundamental aspects, two poles of eternal being, both of them exceeded in the transcendent divine Reality. They correspond practically to the Silent and the Active Brahman. For the whole action of the universe may be regarded from a certain point of view as the expression and shaping out in various ways of the numberless and infinite qualities of the Brahman. His being assumes by conscious Will all kinds of properties, shapings of the stuff of conscious being, habits as it were of cosmic character and power of dynamic self-consciousness, gunas, into which all the cosmic action can be resolved. But by none of these nor by all of them nor by their utmost infinite potentiality is He bound; He is above all His qualities and on a certain plane of being rests free from them. The Nirguna or Unqualitied is not incapable of qualities, rather it is this very Nirguna or No-Quality who manifests Himself as Saguna, as Ananta-guna, infinite quality, since He contains all in His absolute capacity of boundlessly varied self-revelation. He is free from them in the sense of exceeding them; and indeed if He were not free from .them they could not be infinite; God would be subject to His qualities, bound by His nature, Prakriti would be supreme and Purusha its creation and plaything. The Eternal is bound neither by quality nor absence of quality, neither by Personality nor by Impersonality; He is Himself, beyond all our positive and all our negative definitions.
  But if we cannot define the Eternal, we call unify ourselves with it. It has been said that we can become the Impersonal, but not tile personal God, but this is only true in the sense that no one can become individually the Lord of all the universes; we can free ourselves into the existence of the active Brahman as well as that of the Silence; we can live in both, go back to our being in both, but each in its proper way, by becoming one with the Nirguna in our essence and one with the Saguna in the liberty of our active being, in our nature364. The Supreme pours Himself out of an eternal peace, poise and silence into an eternal activity, free and infinite, freely fixing for itself its self-determinations, using infinite quality to shape out of it varied combination of quality. We have to go back to that peace, poise and silence and act out of it with the divine freedom from the bondage of qualities but still using qualities even the most opposite largely and flexibly for the divine work in the world. Only, while the Lord acts out of the centre of all things, we have to act by transmission of His will and power and self-knowledge through the individual centre, the soul-form of Him which we are. The Lord is subject to nothing; the Individual soul-form is subject to its own highest Self and the greater and more absolute is that subjection the greater becomes its sense of absolute force and freedom.

2.12 - THE MASTERS REMINISCENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Again, I used to be absorbed in the ideal of Radha and Krishna and would constantly see their forms. Or again, I would be absorbed in Gaurnga. He is the harmonization of two ideals: the Purusha and the Prakriti. At such times I would always see the form of Gaurnga.
  Master's meditation on formless Spirit

2.13 - Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  One and the Many, containing both, aware of both, Ignorance can only come about as a subordinate phenomenon by some concentration of consciousness absorbed in a part knowledge or a part action of the being and excluding the rest from its awareness. There may be either a concentration of the One in itself to the exclusion of the Many or of the Many in their own action to the exclusion of the all-awareness of the One, or of the individual being in himself to the exclusion both of the One and the rest of the Many who are then to him separated units not included in his direct awareness. Or again there may be or there may intervene at a certain point some general rule of exclusive concentration, operative in all these three directions, a concentration of separative active consciousness in a separative movement; but this takes place not in the true self, but in the force of active being, in Prakriti.
  This hypothesis we adopt in preference to the others, because none of the others taken by itself will hold or will square
  --
  Nature could be done. What is inconscient there is the Prakriti, the formal, the motional action of the energy absorbed in the working, identified with it, to such an extent as to be bound in a sort of trance or swoon of concentration, unable to go back, while imprisoned in that form, to its real self, to the integral conscious being and the integral force of conscious being which it has put behind it, of which in its ecstatic trance of mere working and energy it has become oblivious. Prakriti, the executive
  Force, becomes unaware of Purusha, the Conscious Being, holds him hidden within herself and becomes again slowly aware only with the emergence of consciousness from this swoon of the
  Inconscience. Purusha indeed consents to assume the apparent form of itself which Prakriti constructs for it; it seems to become the Inconscient, the physical being, the vital being, the mental being: but in all these it remains still in reality itself; the light of the secret conscious Being supports and informs the action of the inconscient or emergingly conscious energy of Nature.
  The inconscience is superficial like the ignorance of the waking human mind or the inconscience or subconscience of his sleeping mind, and within it is the All-conscient; it is entirely phenomenal, but it is the complete phenomenon. So complete is it that it is only by an impulsion of evolutionary consciousness emerging into other forms less imprisoned by this inconscient method of working that it can come back to itself, recover in the animal a partial awareness, then in man at his highest some possibility of approach to a first more complete though still superficial initiation of a truly conscious working. But still, as in the case of the superficial and the real man where there is also a similar though lesser inability, the difference is phenomenal only.
  --
  The ignorance, we see, is not in the secret soul, but in the apparent Prakriti; nor does it belong to the whole of that Prakriti,
  - it cannot, for Prakriti is the action of the All-conscient, - but arises in some development from its original integrality of light and power. Where does that development take place, in what principle of being does it find its opportunity and starting-point?
  Not, certainly, in the infinite being, the infinite consciousness, the infinite delight which are the supreme planes of existence
  --
  It must be remembered, however, that when we speak of a partial movement of Consciousness-Force absorbed in its forms and actions, in a limited field of its working, this does not imply any real division of its integrality. The putting of the rest of itself behind it has only the effect of making all that rest occult to the frontal immediately active energy in the limited field of movement, but not of shutting it out of the field; in fact the integral Force is there though veiled by the Inconscience, and it is that integral Force supported by the integral self-being which through its frontal energy does all the work and inhabits all the forms created by the movement. It is to be noted also that in order to remove the veil of the Ignorance the conscious Force of being in us uses a reverse action of its power of exclusive concentration; it quiets the frontal movement of Prakriti in the individual consciousness and concentrates exclusively on the concealed inner being, - on the Self or on the true inner, psychic or mental or vital being, the Purusha, - to disclose it. But when it has done so, it need not remain in this opposite exclusiveness; it can resume its integral consciousness or a global consciousness which includes both being of Purusha and action of Prakriti, the soul and its instruments, the Self and the dynamisms of the SelfPower, atmasakti: it can then embrace its manifestation with a larger consciousness free from the previous limitation, free from the results of Nature's forgetfulness of the indwelling Spirit. Or it may quiet the whole working it has manifested, concentrate on a higher level of Self and Nature, raise the being to it and bring down the powers of the higher level to transform the previous manifestation: all that is so transformed is still included, but as a part of the higher dynamism and its higher values, in a new and greater self-creation. This is what can happen when the
  Consciousness-Force in our being decides to raise its evolution from the mental to the supramental level. In each case it is Tapas that is effective, but it acts in a different manner according to the thing that has to be done, according to the predetermined process, dynamism, self-deploying of the Infinite.

2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   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?
   Sri Aurobindo: It is not the Purusha but the Prakriti which has to be made to aspire and made fit. The Purusha is silent, passive, looking at Prakriti.
   Disciple: What is the characteristic way of Purusha looking at the world from the Supermind?

2.14 - AT RAMS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "I was talking to Captain. I said: 'Nothing exists except Purusha and Prakriti.
  Nrada said to Rma, "O Rma, all the men You see are parts of Yourself, and all the women are parts of Sita." '

2.14 - The Passive and the Active Brahman, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The difficulty which the mental being experiences in arriving at an integral realisation of true being and world-being may be met by following one or other of two different lines of his self-development. He may evolve himself from plane to plane of his own being and embrace on each successively his oneness with the world and with Sachchidananda realised as the Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious-Soul and Nature-Soul of that plane, taking into himself the action of the lower grades of being as he ascends. He may, that is to say, work out by a sort of inclusive process of self-enlargement arid transformation the evolution of the material into the divine or spiritual man. This seems to have been the method of the most ancient sages of which we get some glimpse in the Rig Veda and some of the Upanishads384. He may, on the other hand, aim straight at the realisation of pure self-existence on the highest plane of mental being and from that secure basis realise spiritually under the conditions of his mentality the process by which the self-existent becomes all existences, but without that descent into the self-divided egoistic consciousness which is a circumstance of evolution in the Ignorance. Thus identified with Sachchidananda in the universal self-existence as the spiritualised mental being, he may then ascend beyond to the supramental plane of the pure spiritual existence. It is the latter method the stages of which we may now attempt to trace for the seeker by the path of knowledge.
  When the Sadhaka has followed the discipline of withdrawal from the various identifications of the self with the ego, the mind, the life, the body, he has arrived at realisation by knowledge of a pure, still, self-aware existence, one, undivided, peaceful, inactive, undisturbed by the action of the world. The only relation that this Self seems to have with the world is that of a disinterested Witness not at all involved in or affected or even touched by any of its activities. If this state of consciousness is pushed farther one becomes aware of a self even more remote from world-existence; all that is in the world is in a sense in that Self and yet at the same time extraneous to its consciousness, non-existent in its existence, existing only in a sort of unreal mind, -- a dream therefore, an illusion. This aloof and transcendent Real Existence may be realised as an utter Self of one's own being; or the very idea of a self and of one's own being may be swallowed up in it, so that it is only for the mind an Unknowable That, Unknowable to the mental consciousness and without any possible kind of actual connection or commerce with world-existence. It can even be realised by the mental being as a Nihil, Non-Existence or Void, but a Void of all that is in the world, a Non-Existence of all that is in the world and yet the only Reality. To proceed farther towards that Transcendence by concentration of one's own being upon it is to lose mental existence and world-existence altogether and cast oneself into the Unknowable.
  --
  The basis of this status of consciousness is the mind's exclusive realisation of pure self-existence in which consciousness is at rest, inactive, widely concentrated ill pure self-awareness of being, not active and originative of any kind of becoming. Its aspect of knowledge is at rest in the awareness of undifferentiated identity; its aspect of force and will is at rest in the awareness of unmodifiable immutability. And yet it is aware of names and forms, it is aware of movement; but this movement does not seem to proceed from the Self, but to go on by some inherent power of its own and only to be reflected in the Self. In other words, the mental being has put away from himself by exclusive concentration the dynamic aspect of consciousness, has taken refuge in the static and built a wall of non-communication between the two; between the passive and the active Brahman a gulf has been created and they stand on either side of it, the one visible to the other but with no contact, no touch of sympathy, no sense of unity between them. Therefore to the passive Self all conscious being seems to be passive in its nature, all activity seems to be non-conscious in itself and mechanical (jada) in its movement. The realisation of this status is the basis of the ancient Sankhya philosophy which taught that the Purusha or Conscious-Soul is a passive, inactive, immutable entity, Prakriti or the Nature-Soul including even the mind and the understanding active, mutable, mechanical, but reflected in the Purusha which identifies itself with what is reflected in it and lends to it its own light of consciousness. When the Purusha learns not to identify himself, then Prakriti begins to fall away from its impulse of movement and returns towards equilibrium and rest. The Vedantic view of the same status led to the philosophy of the inactive Self or Brahman as the one reality and of all the rest as name and form imposed on it by a false activity of mental illusion which has to be removed by right knowledge of the immutable Self and refusal of the imposition387a. The two views really differ only in their language and their viewpoint; substantially, they are the same intellectual generalisation from the same spiritual experience.
  If we rest here, there are only two possible attitudes toward the world. Either we must remain as mere inactive witnesses of the world-play or act in it mechanically without any participation of the conscious self and by mere play of the organs of sense and motor-action387b. In the former choice what we do is to approach as completely as possible to the inactivity of the passive and silent Brahman. We have stilled our mind and silenced the activity of the thought and the disturbances of the heart, we have arrived at an entire inner peace and indifference; we attempt now to still the mechanical action of the life and body, to reduce it to the most meagre minimum possible so that It may eventually cease entirely and for ever. This, the final aim of the ascetic Yoga which refuses life, is evidently not our aim. By the alternative choice we can have an activity perfect enough in outward appearance along with an entire inner passivity, peace, mental silence, indifference and cessation of the emotions, absence of choice in the will.

2.15 - On the Gods and Asuras, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: There is the old idea of Devas and Asuras struggling to control human evolution. The Asuras are responsible for the great complexity of the world, but in my opinion they are not a necessity. They realise themselves through revolt, suffering, struggle, and difficulty. But the world could have evolved differently more like a flower blooming from within outwards. But the forces of the Asura-type entered the universal play of forces and perverted it. This is the truth known to almost all the religions: for instance, the snake, the Evil, tempting Eve Prakriti. Eve deceiving Adam Purusha. Adam consenting and their fall: this they speak of as the fall of the cosmic man.
   In India this struggle as to who should control the course of human evolution, between the Devas and the Asuras, expresses the same truth.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: What is your mind? It is merely an organisation, for a particular purpose, of the universal mind. So long as you are in the Ignorance you go on saying I, I, My, My and nothing interests you more than that. But when you get to the Supermind you know that it is all false. Then you know your Self; the Jiva knows itself and also sees the mould of Prakriti. You also know the Higher Power above and so you don't commit the mistake which the mind does. Even when the yogi speaks of "my power" or "my work" it is for mere convenience. All the time he is conscious of the Divine Power that is working through him. It looks more pretentious to say "the Divine Power that is working through me".
   Disciple: Without using I and My one cannot even speak.

2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  On the one side, then, presented to us as the Reality, we have an absolute Self-Existence, an eternal sole self-being, and through the experience of the silent and inactive Self or the detached immobile Purusha we can move towards this featureless and relationless Absolute, negate the actions of the creative Power, whether that be an illusory Maya or a formative Prakriti, pass from all circling in cosmic error into the eternal Peace and Silence, get rid of our personal existence and find or lose ourselves in that sole true Existence. On the other side, we have a Becoming which is a true movement of Being, and both the Being and the Becoming are truths of one absolute Reality.
  The first view is founded on the metaphysical conception which formulates an extreme perception in our thought, an exclusive experience in our consciousness of the Absolute as a reality void of all relations and determinations: that imposes as its consequence a logical and practical necessity to deny the world of relativities as a falsity of unreal being, a non-existent (Asat), or at least a lower and evanescent, temporal and pragmatic selfexperience, and to cut it away from the consciousness in order to arrive at liberation of the spirit from its false perceptions or its inferior creations. The second view is based on the conception of the Absolute as neither positively nor negatively limitable. It is beyond all relations in the sense that it is not bound by any relativities or limitable by them in its power of being: it cannot be tied down and circumscribed by our relative conceptions, highest or lowest, positive or negative; it is bound neither by our knowledge nor by our ignorance, neither by our concept of existence nor by our concept of non-existence. But neither can it be limited by any incapacity to contain, sustain, create or manifest relations: on the contrary, the power to manifest itself in infinity of unity and infinity of multiplicity can be regarded as an inherent force, sign, result of its very absoluteness, and this possibility is in itself a sufficient explanation of cosmic existence. The Absolute cannot indeed be bound in its nature to manifest a cosmos of relations, but neither can it be bound not to manifest any cosmos. It is not itself a sheer emptiness; for a vacant Absolute is no Absolute, - our conception of a Void or Zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know or grasp it: it bears in itself some ineffable essentiality of all that is and all that can be; and since it holds in itself this essentiality and this possibility, it must also hold in itself in some way of its absoluteness either the permanent truth or the inherent, even if latent, realisable actuality of all that is fundamental to our or the world's existence. It is this realisable actuality actualised or this permanent truth deploying its possibilities that we call manifestation and see as the universe.
  --
  But there are other conceptions of reality, other conceptions of the nature of knowledge which demand consideration. There is the view that all that exists is a subjective creation of Mind, a structure of Consciousness, and that the idea of an objective reality self-existent, independent of Consciousness, is an illusion, since we have and can have no evidence of any such independent self-existence of things. This way of seeing may lead to the affirmation of the creative Consciousness as the sole Reality or to the denial of all existence and the affirmation of Non-Existence or a nescient Zero as the sole Reality. For, in one view, the objects constructed by consciousness have no intrinsic reality, they are merely structures; even the consciousness that constructs them is itself only a flux of perceptions that assume an appearance of connection and continuity and create a sense of continuous time, but in reality these things have no stable basis as they are only an appearance of reality. This would mean that the reality is an eternal absence at once of all self-conscious existence and of all that constitutes movement of existence: Knowledge would mean a return to that from the appearance of the constructed universe. There would be a double and complete self-extinction, the disappearance of Purusha, the cessation or extinction of Prakriti; for the conscious Soul and Nature are the two terms of our being and comprehend all that we mean by existence, and the negation of both is the absolute Nirvana. What is real, then, must be either an Inconscience, in which this flux and these structures appear, or a Superconscience beyond all idea of self or existence. But this view of the universe is only true of the appearance of things when we regard our surface mind as the whole of consciousness; as a description of the working of that Mind it is valid: there, undoubtedly, all looks like a flux and a construction by an impermanent Consciousness. But this cannot prevail as a whole account of existence if there is a greater and deeper self-knowledge and world-knowledge, a knowledge by identity, a consciousness to which that knowledge is normal and a Being of which that consciousness is the eternal self-awareness; for then the subjective and the objective can be real and intimate to that consciousness and being, both can be something of itself, sides of its identity, au thentic to its existence.
  On the other hand, if the constructing Mind or Consciousness is real and the sole reality, then the universe of material beings and objects may have an existence, but it is purely subjective-structural, made by Consciousness out of itself, maintained by it, dissolving into it in their disappearance. For if there is nothing else, no essential Existence or Being supporting the creative Power, and there is not, either, a sustaining Void or Nihil, then this Consciousness which creates everything must itself have or be an existence or a substance; if it can make structures, they must be constructions out of its own substance or forms of its own existence. A consciousness which is not that of an Existence or is not itself an existence, must be an unreality, a perceptive Force of a Void or in a Void raising there unreal structures made of nothing, - a proposition which is not easily acceptable unless all others prove to be invalid. It then becomes apparent that what we see as consciousness must be a Being or an Existence out of whose substance of consciousness all is created.
  But if we thus get back to the biune or the dual reality of Being and Consciousness, we can either suppose with Vedanta one original Being or with Sankhya a plurality of beings to whom Consciousness or some Energy to which we attribute consciousness presents its structures. If a plurality of separate original beings alone is real, then, since each would be or create its own world in its own consciousness, the difficulty is to account for their relations in a single identical universe; there must be a one Consciousness or one Energy, - corresponding to the Sankhya idea of a single Prakriti which is the field of experience of many like Purushas, - in which they meet in an identical mind-constructed universe. This theory of things has the advantage of accounting for the multitude of souls and multitude of things and the oneness in diversity of their experience, while at the same time it gives a reality to the separate spiritual growth and destiny of the individual being. But if we can suppose a One Consciousness, or a One Energy, creating a multitude of figures of itself and accommodating in its world a plurality of beings, there is no difficulty in supposing a one original Being who supports or expresses himself in a plurality of beings, - souls or spiritual powers of his one-existence; it would follow also that all objects, all the figures of consciousness would be figures of the Being. It must then be asked whether this plurality and these figures are realities of the one Real Existence, or representative personalities and images only, or symbols or values created by Mind to represent It. This would depend largely on whether it is only Mind as we know it that is in action or a deeper and greater Consciousness, of which Mind is a surface instrument, executrix of its initiations, medium of its manifestations. If it is the former, the universe constructed and seen by Mind can only have a subjective or symbolic or representative reality: if the latter, then the universe and its natural beings and objects can be true realities of the One Existence, forms or powers of its being manifested by its force of being. Mind would be only an interpreter between the universal Reality and the manifestations of its creative Consciousness-Force, Shakti, Prakriti, Maya.
  It is clear that a Mind of the nature of our surface intelligence can be only a secondary power of existence. For it bears the stamp of incapacity and ignorance as a sign that it is derivative and not the original creatrix; we see that it does not know or understand the objects it perceives, it has no automatic control of them; it has to acquire a laboriously built knowledge and controlling power. This initial incapacity could not be there if these objects were the Mind's own structures, creations of its self-Power. It may be that this is so because individual mind has only a frontal and derivative power and knowledge and there is a universal Mind that is whole, endowed with omniscience, capable of omnipotence. But the nature of Mind as we know it is an Ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is a knower of fractions and worker of divisions striving to arrive at a sum, to piece together a whole, - it is not possessed of the essence of things or their totality: a universal Mind of the same character might know the sum of its divisions by force of its universality, but it would still lack the essential knowledge, and without the essential knowledge there could be no true integral knowledge.

2.15 - The Cosmic Consciousness, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To realise and unite oneself with the active Brahmanis to exchange, perfectly or imperfectly according as the union is partial or complete, the individual for the cosmic consciousness. The ordinary existence of man is not only an individual but an egoistic consciousness; it is, that is to say, the individual soul or Jivatman identifying himself with the nodus of his mental, vital, physical experiences in the movement of universal Nature, with his mind-created ego and, less intimately, with the mind, life, body which receive the experiences; for of these he can say "my mind, life, body," regarding them as himself yet partly as not himself and something which he possesses and uses, but of the ego he says, "It is I." By detaching himself from all identification with mind, life and body, he can get back from his ego to the consciousness of the true Individual, the Jivatman, who is the real possessor of mind, life and body. Looking back from this Individual to that of which it is the representative and conscious figure, he can get back to the transcendent consciousness of pure Self, absolute Existence or absolute Non-being, three poises of the same eternal Reality. But between the movement of universal Nature and this transcendent Existence, possessor of the one and cosmic self of the other, is the cosmic consciousness, the universal Purusha of whom all Nature is the Prakriti or active conscious Force. We can arrive at that, become that whether by breaking the walls of the ego laterally, as it were, identifying oneself with all existences in the One, or else from above by realising the pure Self or absolute Existence in its outgoing, immanent, all-embracing, all-constituting self-knowledge and self-creative power.
  It is as the immanent, silent Self in all that the foundation of this cosmic consciousness can most easily be laid by the mental being, the Witness pure and omnipresent who regards all the activity of the universe as the Conscious Soul of the cosmos, Sachchidananda for whose delight universal Nature displays the eternal procession of her works. We are aware of an unwounded Delight, a pure and perfect Presence, an infinite and self-contained Power present in ourselves and all things, not divided by their divisions, not affected by the stress and struggle of the cosmic manifestation, within it all even while superior to it all. Because of that all this exists, but that does not exist because of all this; it is too great to be limited by the movement in Time and Space which it inhabits and supports. This foundation enables us to possess in the security of the divine existence the whole universe within our own being. We are no longer limited and shut in by what we inhabit, but like the Divine contain in ourselves all that for the purpose of the movement of Nature we consent to inhabit. We are not mind or life or body, but the informing and sustaining Soul, silent, peaceful, eternal, that possesses them; and this Soul we find everywhere sustaining and informing and possessing all lives and minds and bodies and cease to regard it as a separate and individual being in our own. In it all this moves and acts; within all this it is stable and immutable. Having this, we possess our eternal self-existence at rest in its eternal consciousness and bliss.
  --
  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.
  The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the mental being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijnana and which we may term the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind where the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge. If we can break down the veil of the intellectual, emotional, sensational mind which our ordinary existence has built between us and the Divine, we can then take up through the Truth-mind all our mental, vital and physical experience and offer it up to the spiritual -- this was the secret or mystic sense of the old Vedic "sacrifice" -- to be converted into the terms of the infinite truth of Sachchidananda, and we can receive the powers and illuminations of the infinite Existence in forms of a divine knowledge, will and delight to be imposed on our mentality, vitality, physical existence till the lower is transformed into the perfect vessel of the higher. This was the double Vedic movement of the descent and birth of the gods in the human creature and the ascent of the human powers that struggle towards the divine knowledge, power and delight and climb into the godheads, the result of which was the possession of the One, the Infinite, the beatific existence, the union with God, the Immortality. By possession of this ideal plane we break down entirely the opposition of the lower and the higher existence, the false gulf created by the Ignorance between the finite and the Infinite, God and Nature, the One and the Many, open the gates of the Divine, fulfil the individual in the complete harmony of the cosmic consciousness and realise in the cosmic being the epiphany of the transcendent Sachchidananda.

2.16 - Oneness, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The soul thus possesses itself in the unity of Sachchidananda upon all the manifest planes of its own being. This is the characteristic of the integral knowledge that it unifies all in Sachchidananda because not only is Being one in itself, but it is one everywhere, in all its poises and in every aspect, in its utmost appearance of mutiplicity as in its utmost appearance of oneness. The traditional knowledge while it admits this truth in theory, yet reasons practically as if the oneness were not equal everywhere or could not be equally realised in all. It finds it in the unmamfest Absolute, but not so much in the manifestation, finds it purer in the Impersonal than in the Personal, complete in the Nirguna, not so complete in the Saguna, satisfyingly present in the silent and inactive Brahman, not so satisfyingly present in the active. Therefore it places all these other terms of the Absolute below their opposites in the scale of ascent and urges their final rejection as if it were indispensable to the utter realisation. The integral knowledge makes no such division; it arrives at a different kind of absoluteness in its vision of the unity. It finds the same oneness in the Unmanifest and the Manifest, in the Impersonal and the Personal, in Nirguna and Saguna, in the infinite depths of the universal silence and the infinite largeness of the universal action. It finds the same absolute oneness in the Purusha and the Prakriti, in the divine Presence and the works of the divine Power and Knowledge, in the eternal manifestness of the one Purusha and the constant manifestation of the many Purushas; in the inalienable unity of Sachchidananda keeping constantly real to itself its own manifold oneness and in the apparent divisions of mind, life and body in which oneness is constantly, if secretly real and constantly seeks to be realised. All unity is to it an intense, pure and infinite realisation, all difference an abundant, rich and boundless realisation of the same divine and eternal Being.
  The complete realisation of unity is therefore the essence of the integral knowledge and of the integral Yoga. To know Sachchidananda one in Himself and one in all His manifestation is the basis of knowledge; to make that vision of oneness real to the consciousness in its status and in its action, and to become that by merging the sense of separate individuality in the sense of unity with the Being and with all beings is its effectuation in Yoga of knowledge; to live, think, feel, will and act in that sense of unity is its effectuation in the individual being and the individual life. This realisation of oneness and this practice of oneness in difference is the whole of the Yoga.
  Sachchidananda is one in Himself in whatever status or whatever plane of existence. We have therefore to make that the basis of all effectuation whether of consciousness or force or being, whether of knowledge or will or delight. We have, as we have seen, to live in the consciousness of the Absolute transcendent and of the Absolute manifested in all relations, impersonal and manifest as all personalities, beyond all qualities and rich in infinite quality, a silence out of which the eternal Word creates, a divine calm and peace possessing itself in infinite joy and activity. We have to find Him knowing all, sanctioning all, governing all, containing, upholding and informing all as the Purusha and at the same time executing all knowledge, will and formation as Prakriti. We have to see Him as one Existence, Being gathered in itself and Being displayed in all existences; as one Consciousness concentrated in the unity of its existence, extended in universal nature and many-centred in innumerable beings; one Force static in its repose of self-gathered consciousness and dynamic in its activity of extended consciousness; one Delight blissfully aware of its featureless infinity and blissfully aware of all feature and force and forms as itself; one creative knowledge and governing Will, supramental, originative and determinative of all minds, lives and bodies; one Mind containing all mental beings and constituting all their mental activities; one Life active in all living beings and generative of their vital activities; one substance constituting all forms and objects as the visible and sensible mould in which mind and life manifest and act just as one pure existence is that ether in which all Conscious-Force arid Delight exist unified and find themselves variously. For these are the seven principles of the manifest being of Sachchidananda.
  The integral Yoga of knowledge has to recognise the double nature of this manifestation, -- for there is the higher nature of Sachchidananda in which He is found and the lower nature of mind, life and body in which He is veiled, -and to reconcile and unite the two in the oneness of the illumined realisation. We have not to leave them separate so that we live a sort of double life, spiritual within or above, mental and material in our active and earthly living; we have to re-view and remould the lower living in the light, force and joy of the higher reality. We have to realise Matter as a sense-created mould of Spirit, a vehicle for all manifestation of the light, force and joy of Sachchidananda in the highest conditions of terrestrial being and activity. We have to see Life as a channel for the infinite Force divine and break the barrier of a sense-created and mind-created farness and division from it so that that divine Power may take possession of and direct and change all our life-activities until our vitality transfigured ceases in the end to be the limited life-force which now supports mind and body and becomes a figure of the all-blissful conscious-force of Sachchidananda. We have similarly to change our sensational and emotional mentality into a play of the divine Love and universal Delight; and we have to surcharge the intellect which seeks to know and will in us with the light of the divine Knowledge-Will until it is transformed into a figure of that higher and sublime activity.

2.16 - The 15th of August, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: It has become customary to expect some speech from me on this day. I prefer to communicate through the Silent Consciousness, because speech addresses itself to the mind while through the Silent Consciousness one can reach something deeper. We are practising together a Yoga which is quite different in certain essentials from other methods which go by the same name. According to the old method we have to select the intellect, the emotion or the will or to differentiate between Purusha and Prakriti, the conscious Soul and Nature. By that we arrive at an Infinite of Knowledge, an all-Loving and all-Beautiful Supreme or an Infinite Impersonal Will, or the Silent Brahman beyond our mind, emotional being or will, or our individual Purusha.
   Our Yoga does not aim at an impersonal Infinite of Knowledge, Will or Ananda, but at the realization of a Supreme Being, an Infinite Knowledge which is beyond the limited infinity of the human knowledge, an Infinite Power which is the source of our personal will and an Ananda which cannot be seized by surface movements of emotion.

2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: To detach oneself from all these things. To think as if all these things belong to the outer being, or someone else. As one goes on doing this the Purusha gradually withdraws its sanction from the Prakriti and Prakriti loosens its hold over nature till a spiritual control takes place. But if one associates oneself with the Prakriti then the Purusha becomes a slave to it. Rejection, of course, is the stronger way. One has to reject these things before they enter, as I did the thoughts. It is more powerful and the result also is quick.
   There is also a mental control; but there too it is the nature of Mind trying to control the nature of the Vital. It has only a temporary and partial control. The thing is rather suppressed within and can come out at any opportunity.

2.17 - THE MASTER ON HIMSELF AND HIS EXPERIENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "It is also stated that He who is Purusha is also Prakriti; He who is Brahman is also akti. He is called Purusha or Brahman when He is inactive, that is to say, when He ceases to create, preserve, or destroy; and He is called akti or Prakriti when He engages in those activities. But He who is Brahman is none other than akti; He who is Purusha has verily become Prakriti. Water is water whether it moves or is still. A snake is a snake whether it wriggles along or stays still and coiled up.
  "What Brahman is cannot be described. Speech stops there. In the kirtan the singers at first sing: 'My Nitai dances like a mata hati.' As they become more and more ecstatic, they can hardly utter the whole sentence. They sing only: 'Hati! Hati!' As their mood deepens they sing only: 'Ha! Ha!' At last they cannot sing even that; they become completely unconscious."
  --
  Thou art the subtle Great Prakriti, made of sattva, rajas, and tamas; Thou alone art the Purusha, the Lord dwelling in the bodies of all.
  As Sri Ramakrishna listened to the hymn he went into samdhi. He remained standing.

2.17 - The Soul and Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The first of these principles in importance is the duality -- which resolves itself into a unity -- of Purusha and Prakriti of which we have had occasion to speak in the Yoga of Works, but which is of equal importance for the Yoga of knowledge. This division was made most clearly by the old Indian philosophies; but it bases itself upon the eternal fact of practical duality in unity upon which the world-manifestation is founded. It is given different names according to our view of the universe. The Vedantins spoke of the Self and Maya, meaning according to their predilections by the Self the Immutable and by Maya the power the Self has of imposing on itself the cosmic illusion, or by the Self the Divine Being and by Maya the nature of conscious-being and the conscious-force by which the Divine embodies himself in soul-forms and forms of things. Others spoke of Ishwara and shakti, the Lord and His force. His cosmic power. The analytic philosophy of the Sankhyas affirmed their eternal duality without any possibility of oneness, accepting only relations of union and separation by which the cosmic action of Prakriti begins, proceeds or ceases for the Purusha; for the Purusha is an inactive conscious existence, -it is the Soul the same in itself and immutable forever, -- Prakriti the active force of Nature which by its motion creates and maintains and by its sinking into rest dissolves the phenomenon of the cosmos. Leaving aside these philosophical distinctions, we come to the original psychological experience from which all really take their start, that there are two elements in the existence of living beings, of human beings at least if not of all cosmos, -- a dual being. Nature and the soul.
  This duality is self-evident. Without any philosophy at all, by the mere force of experience it is what we can all perceive, although we may not take the trouble to define. Even the most thoroughgoing materialism which denies the soul or resolves it into a more or less illusory result of natural phenomena acting upon some ill-explained phenomenon of the physical brain which we call consciousness or the mind, but which is really no more than a sort of complexity of nervous spasms, cannot get rid of the practical fact of this duality. It does not matter at all how it came about; the fact is not only there, it determines our whole existence, it is the one fact which is really important to us as human beings with a will and an intelligence and a subjective existence which makes all our happiness and our suffering. The whole problem of life resolves itself into this one question, -- "What are we to do with this soul and nature set face to face with each other, this Nature, this personal and cosmic activity, which tries to impress itself upon the soul, to possess, control, determine it, and this soul which feels that in some mysterious way it has a freedom, a control over itself, a responsibility for what it is and does, and tries therefore to turn upon Nature, its own and the world's, and to control, possess, enjoy, or even, it may be, reject and escape from her?" In order to answer that question we have to know, -- to know what the soul can do, to know what it call do with itself, to know too what it can do with Nature and the world. The whole of human philosophy, religion, science is really nothing but an attempt to get at the right data upon which it will be possible to answer the question and solve, as satisfactorily as our knowledge will allow, the problem of our existence.
  --
  The distinction made in the Gita between the Purusha and the Prakriti gives us the clue to the various attitudes which the soul can adopt towards Nature in its movement towards perfect freedom and rule. The Purusha is, says the Gita, witness, upholder, source of the sanction, knower, lord, enjoyer; Prakriti executes, it is the active principle and must have an operation corresponding to the attitude of the Purusha. The soul may assume, if it wishes, the poise of the pure witness, saksi; it may look on at the action of Nature as a thing from which it stands apart; it watches, but does not itself participate. We have seen the importance of this quietistic capacity; it is the basis of the movement of withdrawal by which we can say of everything, -- body, life, mental action, thought, sensation, emotion, -- "This is Prakriti working in the life, mind and body, it is not myself, it is not even mine," and thus come to the soul's separation from these things and to their quiescence. This may, therefore, be an attitude of renunciation or at least of non-participation, tamasika, with a resigned and inert endurance of the natural action so long as it lasts, rajasika, with a disgust, aversion and recoil from it, sattvika, with a luminous intelligence of the soul's separateness and the peace and joy of aloofness and repose; but also it may be attended by an equal and impersonal delight as of a spectator at a show, joyous but unattached and ready to rise up at any moment and as joyfully depart. The attitude of the Witness at its highest is the absolute of unattachment and freedom from affection by the phenomena of the cosmic existence.
  As the pure Witness, the soul refuses the function of upholder or sustainer of Nature. The upholder, bharta, is another, God or Force or Maya, but not the soul, which only admits the reflection of the natural action upon its watching consciousness, but not any responsibility for maintaining or continuing it. It does not say "All this is in me and maintained by me, an activity of my being," but at the most "This is imposed on me, but really external to myself." Unless there is a clear and real duality in existence, this cannot be the whole truth of the matter; the soul is the upholder also, it supports in its being the energy which unrolls the spectacle of the cosmos and which conducts its energies. When the Purusha accepts this upholding, it may do it still passively and without attachment, feeling that it contri butes the energy but not that it controls and determines it. The control is another. God or Force or the very nature of Maya; the soul only upholds indifferently so long as it must, so long perhaps as the force of its past sanction and interest in the energy continues and refuses to be exhausted. But if the attitude of the upholder is fully accepted, an important step forward has been taken towards identification with the active Brahman and his joy of cosmic being. For the Purusha has become the active giver of the sanction.
  In the attitude of the Witness there is also a kind of sanction, but it is passive, inert and has no kind of absoluteness about it; but if he consents entirely to uphold, the sanction has become active, even though the soul may do no more than consent to reflect, uphold and thereby maintain in action all the energies of Prakriti, not determining, not selecting, believing that it is God or Force itself or some Knowledge-Will that selects and determines, and the soul only a witness and upholder and thereby giver of the sanction, anumanta, but not the possessor and the director of the knowledge and the will, jnata isvarah. But if it habitually selects and rejects in what is offered to it, it determines; the relatively passive has become an entirely active sanction and is on the way to be an active control.
  This it becomes when the soul accepts its complete function as the knower, lord and enjoyer of Nature. As the knower the soul possesses the knowledge of the force that acts and determines, it sees the values of being which are realising themselves in cosmos, it is in the secret of Fate. But the force is itself determined by the knowledge which is its origin and the source and standardiser of its valuations and effectuations of values. Therefore in proportion as the soul becomes again the knower, it becomes also the controller of the action. Nor can it do this without becoming the active enjoyer, bhokta. In the lower being the enjoyment is of a twofold kind, positive and negative, which in the electricity of sensation translates itself into joy and suffering; but in the higher it is an actively equal enjoyment of the divine delight in self-manifestation. There is no loss of freedom, no descent into an ignorant attachment. The man free in his soul is aware that the Divine is the lord of the action of Nature, that Maya is His Knowledge-Will determining and effecting all, that Force is the Will side of this double divine Power in which knowledge is always present and effectual; he is aware of himself also, even individually, as a centre of the divine existence, -- a portion of the Lord, the Gita expresses it, -- controlling so far the action of Nature which he views, upholds, sanctions, enjoys, knows and by the determinative power of knowledge controls; and when he universalises himself, his knowledge reflects only the divine knowledge, his will effectuates only the divine will, he enjoys only the divine delight and not an ignorant personal satisfaction. Thus the Purusha preserves its freedom in its possession, renunciation of limited personality even in its representative enjoyment and delight of cosmic being. It has taken up fully in the higher poise the true relations of the soul and Nature.
  Purusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha: the Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its shakti, -- that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects, unrolling the worlds and viewing them, acting in them and upholding the action, executing works and giving the sanction without which the force of Nature cannot act, executing and controlling the knowledge and the will and knowing and controlling the determinations of the knowledge-force and will-force, ministering to the enjoyment and enjoying, -- the Soul possessor, observer, knower, lord of Nature, Nature expressing the being, executing the will, satisfying the self-knowledge, ministering to the delight of being of the soul. There we have, founded on the very nature of being, the supreme and the universal relation of Prakriti with Purusha. The absolute joy of the soul in itself and, based upon that, the absolute joy of the soul in Nature are the divine fulfilment of the relation.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Of course. Usually the Purusha consents to the action of Prakriti but he can withdraw his consent and stand apart. He can be free by getting out of evolution, by being free from the working of ego and nature-personalities.
   Disciple: When the freedom of the Purusha is won then it becomes possible for the individual to look beyond the Cosmic Spirit to the Transcendent and act in the Cosmos according to the will of the Transcendent is it so?
  --
   You must become free if you want to be free from responsibility. There are three ways, or rather several ways, of attaining that freedom. One is by the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and realising it as free from it. Another is by realising the Self, the Atman or the Spirit, free from the cosmic movement. A third is by the identification with the Transcendent by realising the Paramatman. You can also have this freedom by merging into the Shunyam through the Buddhistic discipline.
   Disciple: In the experience of the first two methods does the Purusha remain the witness?
   Sri Aurobindo: Not necessarily. It may be a witness in the first method because the Purusha separates himself from Prakriti and is then the witness not taking part in her action.
   But in the second the realisation of the Self the Purusha need not be the witness of the universe, or the universal movement. The Self may remain ingathered without witnessing anything. There are many conditions into which the spirit can pass.
  --
   Disciple: The Sankhya's division between Purusha and Prakriti, in one sense, is very sharp, and so it helps one to get away from the bondage of Prakriti.
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is categorical. They believe in the two Purusha and Prakriti, as the final elements. Sankhya and Buddhism were both first understood and appreciated by Europe. Sankhya because of its sharp distinction between Purusha who is consciousness and Prakriti which they believe to be inconscient. According to Sankhya, Prakriti is jada inconscient, and it is the light of the consciousness of Purusha that makes Prakriti appear conscious. It believes that even Buddhi is jada.
   But we in our Yoga need not accept this sharp cleavage between Purusha and Prakriti.
   The Europeans like Buddhism for its strong rationalism; its logic leads to Shunyam, the state of non-being, which is its aim. There is also a strong note of agnosticism in Buddhism which appeals to them. It is something that hangs in the air, for the base is Shunyam you don't know on what basis the whole thing stands.

2.18 - SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  He said, "I am giving you these two globules: one is Purusha and the other is Prakriti."
  (All laugh,)
  MASTER (smiling): "Oh yes, Purusha and Prakriti are always together. Haven't you observed pigeons? The male and female cannot live separately. Wherever Purusha is, there is Prakriti, and wherever Prakriti is, there is Purusha."
  It was Vijaya day. Sri Ramakrishna asked Dr. Sarkar to have some refreshments. The devotees served him with sweets.

2.18 - The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For already by his possession of intelligent will, deformed ray of the gnosis though it be, he begins to put on the double nature of Sachchidananda; he is no longer, like the animal, an undeveloped conscious being entirely driven by Prakriti, a slave of the executive Force, played with by the mechanical energies of Nature, but has begun to be a developing conscious soul or Purusha interfering with what was her sole affair, wishing to have a say in it and eventually to be the master. He cannot do it yet, he is too much in her meshes, too much involved in her established mechanism: but he feels, - though as yet too vaguely and uncertainly, - that the spirit within him wishes to rise to yet higher heights, to widen its bounds; something within, something occult, knows that it is not the intention of the deeper conscious Soul-Nature, the Purusha- Prakriti, to be satisfied with his present lowness and limitations. To climb to higher altitudes, to get a greater scope, to transform his lower nature, this is always a natural impulse of man as soon as he has made his place for himself in the physical and vital world of earth and has a little leisure to consider his farther possibilities. It must be so not because of any false and pitiful imaginative illusion in him, but,
  first, because he is the imperfect, still developing mental being and must strive for more development, for perfection, and still more because he is capable, unlike other terrestrial creatures, of becoming aware of what is deeper than mind, of the soul within him, and of what is above the mind, of supermind, of spirit, capable of opening to it, admitting it, rising towards it, taking hold of it. It is in his human nature, in all human nature, to exceed itself by conscious evolution, to climb beyond what he is. Not individuals only, but in time the race also, in a general rule of being and living if not in all its members, can have the hope, if it develops a sufficient will, to rise beyond the imperfections of our present very undivine nature and to ascend at least to a superior humanity, to rise nearer, even if it cannot absolutely reach, to a divine manhood or supermanhood. At any rate, it is the compulsion of evolutionary Nature in him to strive to develop upward, to erect the ideal, to make the endeavour.

2.18 - The Soul and Its Liberation, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We have now to pause and consider to what this acceptance of the relations of Purusha and Prakriti commits us; for it means that the Yoga which we are pursuing has for end none of the ordinary aims of humanity. It neither accepts our earthly existence as it is, nor can be satisfied with some kind of moral perfection or religious ecstasy, with a heaven beyond or with some dissolution of our being by which we get satisfactorily done with the trouble of existence. Our aim becomes quite other; it is to live in the Divine, the Infinite, in God and not in any mere egoism and temporality, but at the same time riot apart from Nature, from our fellow-beings, from earth and the mundane existence, any more than the Divine lives aloof from us and the world. He exists also in relation to the world and Nature and all these beings, but with an absolute and inalienable power, freedom and self-knowledge. Our liberation and perfection is to transcend ignorance, bondage and weakness and live in Him in relation to the world and Nature with the divine power, freedom and self-knowledge. For the highest relation of the Soul to existence is the Purusha's possession of Prakriti, when he is no longer ignorant and subject to his nature, but knows, transcends, enjoys and controls his manifested being and determines largely and freely what shall be his self-expression.
  A oneness finding itself out in the variations of its own duality is the whole play of the soul with Nature in its cosmic birth and becoming. One Sachchidananda everywhere, self-existent, illimitable, a unity indestructible by the utmost infinity of its own variations, is the original truth of being for which our knowledge seeks and to that our subjective existence eventually arrives. From that all other truths arise, upon that they are based, by that they are at every moment made possible and in that they in the end can know themselves and each other, are reconciled, harmonised and justified. All relations in the world, even to its greatest and most shocking apparent discords, are relations of something eternal to itself in its own universal existence; they are not anywhere or at any time collisions of disconnected beings who meet fortuitously or by some mechanical necessity of cosmic existence. Therefore to get back to this eternal fact of oneness is our essential act of self-knowledge; to live in it must be the effective principle of our inner possession of our being and of our right and ideal relations with the world. That is why we have had to insist first and foremost on oneness as the aim and in a way the whole aim of our Yoga of knowledge.
  --
  An active force of conscious-being which realises itself in its powers of self-experience, its powers of knowledge, will, self-delight, self-formulation with all their marvellous variations, inversions, conservations and conversions of energy, even perversions, is what we call Prakriti or Nature, in ourselves as in the cosmos. But behind this force of variation is the eternal equilibrium of the same force in an equal unity which supports impartially, governs even as it has originated the variations and directs them to whatever aim of its self-delight the Being, the Purusha, has conceived in its consciousness and determined by its will or power of consciousness. That is the divine Nature into unity with which we have to get back by our Yoga of self-knowledge. We have to become the Purusha, Sachchidananda, delighting in a divine individual possession of its Prakriti and no longer mental beings subject to our egoistic nature. For that is the real man, the supreme and integral self of the individual, and the ego is only a lower and partial manifestation of ourselves through which a certain limited and preparatory experience becomes possible and is for a time indulged. But this indulgence of the lower being is not our whole possibility; it is not the sole or crowning experience for which we exist as human beings even in this material world.
  This individual being of ours is that by which ignorance is possible to self-conscious mind, but it is also that by which liberation into the spiritual being is possible and the enjoyment of divine immortality. It is not the Eternal in His transcendence or in His cosmic being who arrives at this immortality; it is the individual who rises into self-knowledge, in him it is possessed and by him it is made effective. All life, spiritual, mental or material, is the play of the soul with the possibilities of its nature; for without this play there can be no self-expression and no relative self-experience. Even then, in our realisation of all as our larger self and in our oneness with God and other beings, this play can and must persist, unless we desire to cease from all self-expression and all but a tranced and absorbed self-experience. But then it is in the individual being that this trance or this liberated play is realised; the trance is this mental being's immersion in the sole experience of unity, the liberated play is the taking up of his mind into the spiritual being for the free realisation and delight of oneness. For the nature of the divine existence is to possess always its unity, but to possess it also in an infinite experience, from many standpoints, on many planes, through many conscious powers or selves of itself, individualities -- in our limited intellectual language -- of the one conscious being. Each one of us is one of these individualities. To stand away from God in limited ego, limited mind is to stand away from ourselves, to be unpossessed of our true individuality, to be the apparent and not the real individual; it is our power of ignorance. To be taken up into the divine Being and be aware of our spiritual, infinite and universal consciousness as that in which we now live, is to possess our supreme and integral self, our true Individuality; it is our power of self-knowledge.
  --
  Here there comes in the complication of the idea that immortality is only possible after death in other worlds, upon higher planes of existence or that liberation must destroy all possibility of mental or bodily living and annihilate the individual existence for ever in an impersonal infinity. These ideas derive their strength from a certain justification in experience and a sort of necessity or upward attraction felt by the soul when it shakes off the compelling ties of mind and matter. It is felt that these ties are inseparable from all earthly living or from all mental existence. Death is the king of the material world, for life seems to exist here only by submission to death, by a constant dying; immortality has to be conquered here with difficulty and seems to be in its nature a rejection of all death and therefore of all birth into the material world. The field of immortality must be in some immaterial plane, in some heaven where either the body does not exist or else is different and only a form of the soul or a secondary circumstance. On the other hand, it is felt by those who would go beyond immortality even, that all planes and heavens are circumstances of the finite existence and the infinite self is void of all these things. They are dominated by a necessity to disappear into the impersonal and infinite and an inability to equate in any way the bliss of impersonal being with the soul's delight in its becoming. Philosophies have been invented which justify to the intellect this need of immersion and disappearance; but what is really important and decisive is the call of the Beyond, the need of the soul, its delight -- in this case -- in a sort of impersonal existence or non-existence. For what decides is the determining delight of the Purusha, the relation which it wills to establish with its Prakriti, the experience at which it arrives as the result of the line it has followed in the development of its individual self-experience among all the various possibilities of its nature. Our intellectual justifications are only the account of that experience which we give to the reason and the devices by which we help the mind to assent to the direction in which the soul is moving.
  The cause of our world-existence is not, as our present experience induces us to believe, the ego; for the ego is only a result and a circumstance of our mode of world-existence. It is a relation which the many-souled Purusha has set up between individualised minds and bodies, a relation of self-defence and mutual exclusion and aggression in order to have among all the dependences of things in the world upon each other a possibility of independent mental and physical experience. But there can be no absolute independence upon these planes; impersonality which rejects all mental and physical becoming is therefore the only possible culmination of this exclusive movement: so only can an absolutely independent self-experience be achieved. The soul then seems to exist absolutely, independently in itself; it is free in the sense of the Indian word, svadhina, dependent only on itself, not dependent upon God and other beings. Therefore in this experience God, personal self and other beings are all denied, cast away as distinctions of the ignorance. It is the ego recognising its own insufficiency and abolishing both itself and its contraries that its own essential instinct of independent self-experience may be accomplished; for it finds that its effort to achieve it by relations with God and others is afflicted throughout with a sentence of illusion, vanity and nullity. It ceases to admit them because by admitting them it becomes dependent on them; it ceases to admit its own persistence, because the persistence of ego means the admission of that which it tries to exclude as not self, of the cosmos and other beings. The self-annihilation of the Buddhist is in its nature absolute exclusion of all that the mental being perceives; the self-immersion of the Adwaitin in his absolute being is the self-same aim differently conceived: both are a supreme self-assertion of the soul of its exclusive independence of Prakriti.
  The experience which we first arrive at by the sort of shortcut to liberation which we have described as the movement of withdrawal, assists this tendency. For it is a breaking of the ego and a rejection of the habits of the mentality we now possess; for that is subject to matter and the physical senses and conceives of things only as forms, objects, external phenomena and as names which we attach to those forms. We are not aware directly of the subjective life of other beings except by analogy from our own and by inference or derivative perception based upon their external signs of speech, action, etc., which our minds translate into the terms of our own subjectivity. When we break out from ego and physical mind into the infinity of the spirit, we still see the world and others as the mind has accustomed us to see them, as names and forms; only in our new experience of the direct and superior reality of spirit, they lose that direct objective reality and that indirect subjective reality of their own which they had to the mind. They seem to be quite the opposite of the truer reality we now experience; our mentality, stilled and indifferent, no longer strives to know and make real to itself those intermediate terms which exist in them as in us and the knowledge of which has for its utility to bridge over the gulf between the spiritual self and the objective phenomena of the world. We are satisfied with the blissful infinite impersonality of a pure spiritual existence; nothing else and nobody else any longer matters to us. What the physical senses show to us and what the mind perceives and conceives about them and so imperfectly and transiently delights in, seems now unreal and worthless; we are not and do not care to be in possession of the intermediate truths of being through which these things are enjoyed by the One and possess for Him that value of His being and delight which makes, as we might say, cosmic existence a thing beautiful to Him and worth manifesting. We can no longer share in God's delight in the world; on the contrary, it looks to us as if the Eternal had degraded itself by admitting into the purity of its being the gross nature of Matter or had falsified the truth of its being by imagining vain names and unreal forms. Or else if we perceive at all that delight, it is with a far-off detachment which prevents us from participating in it with any sense of intimate possession, or it is with an attraction to the superior delight of an absorbed and exclusive self-experience which does not allow us to stay any longer in these lower terms than we are compelled to stay by the continuance of our physical life and body.
  But if either in the course of our Yoga or as the result of a free return of our realised Self upon the world and a free repossession of its Prakriti by the Purusha in us, we become conscious not only of the bodies and outward self-expression of others, but intimately of their inner being, their minds, their souls and that in them of which their own surface minds are not aware, then we see the real Being in them also and we see them as selves of our Self and not as mere names and forms. They become to us realities of the Eternal. Our minds are no longer subject to the delusion of trivial unworthiness or the illusion of unreality. The material life loses indeed for us its old absorbing value, but finds the greater value which it has for the divine Purusha; regarded no longer as the sole term of our becoming, but as merely having a subordinate value in relation to the higher terms of mind and spirit, it increases by that diminution instead of losing in value. We see that our material being, life, nature are only one poise of the Purusha in relation to its Prakriti and that their true purpose and importance can only be appreciated when they are seen not as a thing in itself, but as dependent on higher poises by which they are supported; from those superior relations they derive their meaning and, therefore, by conscious union with them they can fulfil all their valid tendencies and aims. Life then becomes justified to us and no longer stultified by the possession of liberated self-knowledge.
  This larger integral knowledge and freedom liberates in the end and fulfils our whole existence. When we possess it, we see why our existence moves between these three terms of God, ourselves and the world; we no longer see them or any of them in opposition to each other, inconsistent, incompatible, nor do we on the other hand regard them as terms of our ignorance which all disappear at last into a pure impersonal unity. We perceive their necessity as terms rather of our self-fulfilment which preserve their value after liberation or rather find then only their real value. We have no longer the experience of our existence as exclusive of the other existences which make up by our relations with them our experience of the world; in this new consciousness they are all contained in ourselves and we in them. They and we are no longer so many mutually exclusive egos, each seeking its own independent fulfilment or self-transcendence and ultimately aiming at nothing else; they are all the Eternal and the self in each secretly embraces all in itself and seeks in various ways to make that higher truth of its unity apparent and effective in its terrestrial being. Not mutual exclusiveness, but mutual inclusiveness is the divine truth of our individuality, love the higher law and not an independent self-fulfilment. The Purusha who is our real being is always independent and master of Prakriti and at this independence we are rightly seeking to arrive; that is the utility of the egoistic movement and its self-transcendence, but its right fulfilment is not in making absolute the ego's principle of independent existence, but in arriving at this other highest poise of the Purusha with regard to its Prakriti. There is transcendence of Nature, but also possession of Nature, perfect fulfilment of our individuality, but also perfect fulfilment of our relations with the world and with others. Therefore an individual salvation in heavens beyond, careless of the earth, is not our highest objective; the liberation and self-fulfilment of others is as much our own concern, -- we might almost say, our divine self-interest, -- as our own liberation. Otherwise our unity with others would have no effective meaning. To conquer the lures of egoistic existence in this world is our first victory over ourselves; to conquer the lure of individual happiness in heavens beyond is our second victory; to conquer the highest lure of escape from life and a self-absorbed bliss in the impersonal infinity is the last and greatest victory. Then are we rid of all individual exclusiveness and possessed of our entire spiritual freedom.
  The state of the liberated soul is that of the Purusha who is for ever free. Its consciousness is a transcendence and an all-comprehending unity. Its self-knowledge does not get rid of all the terms of self-knowledge, but unifies and harmonises all things in God and in the divine nature. The intense religious ecstasy which knows only God and ourselves and shuts out all else, is only to it an intimate experience which prepares it for sharing in the embrace of the divine Love and Delight around all creatures. A heavenly bliss which unites God and ourselves and the blest, but enables us to look with a remote indifference on the unblest and their sufferings is not possible to the perfect soul; for these also are its selves; free individually from suffering and ignorance, it must naturally turn to draw them also towards its freedom. On the other hand, any absorption in the relations between self and others and the world to the exclusion of God and the Beyond is still more impossible, and therefore it cannot be limited by the earth or even by the highest and most altruistic relations of man with man. Its activity or its culmination is not to efface and utterly deny itself for the sake of others, but to fulfil itself in God-possession, freedom and divine bliss that in and by its fulfilment others too may be fulfilled. For it is in God alone, by the possession of the Divine only that all the discords of life can be resolved, and therefore the raising of men towards the Divine is in the end the one effective way of helping mankind. All the other activities and realisations of our self-experience have their use and power, but in the end these crowded side-tracks or these lonely paths must circle round to converge into the wideness of the integral way by which the liberated soul transcends all, embraces all and becomes the promise and the power of the fulfilment of all in their manifested being of the Divine.

2.19 - THE MASTER AND DR. SARKAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Kli Thou art, and Tara, and Thou the Ultimate Prakriti; Thou art the Fish, the Turtle, the Boar, and all other Avatars Earth, water, air, and fire art Thou, and Thou the sky, O Mother of the Absolute!
  The Samkhya, Patanjala, Mimamsaka, and Nyaya

2.19 - The Planes of Our Existence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1:If the Purusha in us has thus to become by union with its highest self, the Divine Purusha, the knower, lord, free enjoyer of its Prakriti, it cannot be done, evidently, by dwelling on the present plane of our being; for that is the material plane in which the reign of Prakriti is complete; there the divine Purusha is entirely hidden in the Minding surge of her activities, in the gross pomp of her workings, and the individual soul emerging from her involution of spirit in matter, subject in all its activities to its entangling in the material and vital instruments is unable to experience the divine freedom. What it calls its freedom and mastery, is only the subtle subjection of mind to Prakriti which is lighter indeed, nearer to the possibility of liberty and rule than the gross subjection of vital and material things like the animal, plant and metal, but is still not real freedom and mastery. Therefore we have had to speak of different planes of our consciousness and of the spiritual planes of the mental being; for if these did not exist, the liberation of the embodied being would have been impossible here on earth. He would have had to wait and at most to prepare himself for seeking it in other worlds and in a different kind of physical or spiritual embodiment less obstinately sealed in its shell of material experience.
  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.
  4:But first we must understand what we mean by planes of consciousness, planes of existence. We mean a general-settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature. For anything that we can call world is and can be nothing else than the working out of a general relation which an universal existence has created or established between itself, or let us say its eternal fact or potentiality and the powers of its becoming. That existence in its relations with and its experience of the becoming is what we call soul or Purusha, individual soul in the individual, universal soul in the cosmos; the principle and the powers of the becoming are what we call Nature or Prakriti. But since being, conscious-force and delight of being are always the three constituent terms of existence, the nature of a world is really determined by the way in which Prakriti is set to deal with these three primary things and the forms which it is allowed to give to them. For existence itself is and must always be the stuff of its own becoming; it must be shaped into the substance with which Force has to deal. Force again must be the power which works out that substance and works with it to whatever ends; Force is that which we ordinarily call Nature. Again the end, the object with which the worlds are created must be worked out by the consciousness inherent in all existence and all force and all their workings, and the object must be the possession of itself and of its delight of existence in the world. To that all the circumstances and aims of any world-existence must reduce themselves; it is existence developing its terms of being, its power of being, its conscious delight of being; if these are involved, their evolution; if they are veiled, their self-revelation.
  5:Here the soul lives in a material universe; of that alone it is immediately conscious; the realisation of its potentialities in that is the problem with which it is concerned. But Matter means the involution of the conscious delight of existence in self-oblivious force and in self-dividing, infinitesimally disaggregated form of substance. Therefore the whole principle and effort of a material world must be the evolution of what is involved and the development of what is undeveloped. Here everything is shut up from the first in the violently working inconscient sleep of material force; therefore the whole aim of any material becoming must be the waking of consciousness out of the inconscient; the whole consummation of a material becoming must be the removal of the veil of Matter and the luminous revelation of the entirely self-conscient Being to its own imprisoned soul in the becoming. Since Man is such an imprisoned soul, this luminous liberation and coming to self-knowledge must be his highest object and the condition of his perfection.
  6:But the limitations of a material universe seem to be hostile to the proper accomplishment of this object which is yet so inevitably the highest aim of a mental being born into a physical body. First existence has formed itself here, fundamentally, as Matter; it has been objectivised, made sensible and concrete to its own self-experiencing conscious-force in the form of self-dividing material substance, and by the aggregation of this Matter there has been built up for man a physical body separate, divided from others and subject to the fixed habits of process or, as we call them, the laws of inconscient material Nature. His force of being too is nature or Force working in Matter, which has waked slowly out of inconscience to life and is always limited by form, always dependent on the body, always separated by it from the rest of Life and from other living beings, always hampered in its development, persistence, self-perfectioning by the laws of the Inconscience and the limitations of bodily living. Equally, his consciousness is a mentality emerging in a body and in a sharply individualised life; it is therefore limited in its workings and capacities and dependent on bodily organs of no great competence and on a very restricted vital force; it is separated from the rest of cosmic mind and shut out from the thoughts of other mental beings whose inner workings are a sealed book to man's physical mind except in so far as he can read them by the analogy of his own mentality and by their insufficient bodily signs and self-expressions. His consciousness is always falling back towards the inconscience in which a large part of it is always involved, his life towards death, his physical being towards disaggregation. His delight of being depends on the relations of this imperfect consciousness with its environment based upon physical sensations and the sense-mind, in other words on a limited mind trying to lay hold on a world external and foreign to it by means of a limited body, limited vital force, limited organs. Therefore its power for possession is limited, its force for delight is limited, and every touch of the world which exceeds its force, which that force cannot bear, cannot seize on, cannot assimilate and possess must turn to something else than delight, to pain, discomfort or grief. Or else it must be met by non-reception, insensibility, or, if received, put away by indifference. Moreover, such delight of being as it possesses, is not possessed naturally and eternally like the self-delight of Sachchidananda, but by experience and acquisition in Time, and can therefore only be maintained and prolonged by repetition of experience and is in its nature precarious and transient. All this means that the natural relations of Purusha to Prakriti in the material universe are the complete absorption of conscious being in the force of its workings, therefore the complete self-oblivion and self-ignorance of the Purusha, the complete domination of Prakriti and subjection of the soul to Nature. The soul does not know itself, it only knows, if anything, the workings of Prakriti. The emergence of the individual self-conscious soul in Man does not of itself abrogate these primary relations of ignorance and subjection. For this soul is living on a material plane of existence, a poise of Prakriti in which matter is still the chief determinant of its relations to Nature, and its consciousness being limited by Matter cannot be an entirely self-possessing consciousness. Even the universal soul, if limited by the material formula, could not be in entire possession of itself; much less can the individual soul to which the rest of existence becomes by bodily, vital and mental limitation and separation something external to it, on which it is yet dependent for its life and its delight and its knowledge. These limitations of his power, knowledge, life, delight of existence are the whole cause of man's dissatisfaction with himself and the universe. And if the material universe were all and the material plane the only plane of his being, then man the individual Purusha could never arrive at perfection and self-fulfilment or indeed to any other life than that of the animals. There must be either worlds in which he is liberated from these incomplete and unsatisfactory relations of Purusha with Prakriti, or planes of his own being by ascending to which he can transcend them, or at the very least planes, worlds and higher beings from which he can receive or be helped to knowledge, powers, joys, a growth of his being otherwise impossible. All these things, the ancient knowledge asserts, exist, -- other worlds, higher planes, the possibility of communication, of ascension, of growth by contact with and influence from that which is above him in the present scale of his realised being.
  7:As there is a poise of the relations of Purusha with Prakriti in which Matter is the first determinant, a world of material existence, so there is another just above it in which Matter is not supreme, but rather Life-force takes its place as the first determinant. In this world forms do not determine the conditions of the life, but it is life which determines the form, and therefore forms are there much more free, fluid, largely and to our conceptions strangely variable than in the material world. This life-force is not inconscient material force, not even, except in its lowest movements, an elemental subconscient energy, but a conscious force of being which makes for formation, but much more essentially for enjoyment, possession, satisfaction of its own dynamic impulse. Desire and the satisfaction of impulse are therefore the first law of this world of sheer vital existence, this poise of relations between the soul and its nature in which the life-power plays with so much greater a freedom and capacity than in our physical living; it may be called the desire-world, for that is its principal characteristic. Moreover, it is not fixed in one hardly variable formula as physical life seems to be, but is capable of many variations of its poise, admits many sub-planes ranging from those which touch material existence and, as it were, melt into that, to those which touch at the height of the life-power the planes of pure mental and psychic existence and melt into them. For in Nature in the infinite scale of being there are no wide gulfs, no abrupt chasms to be overleaped, but a melting of one thing into another, a subtle continuity; out of that her power of distinctive experience creates the orderings, the definite ranges, the distinct gradations by which the soul variously knows and possesses its possibilities of world-existence. Again, enjoyment of one kind or another being the whole object of desire, that must be the trend of the desire-world; but since wherever the soul is not free, -- and it cannot be free when subject to desire, -- there must be the negative as well as the positive of all its experience, this world contains not only the possibility of large or intense or continuous enjoyments almost inconceivable to the limited physical mind, but also the possibility of equally enormous sufferings. It is here therefore that there are situated the lowest heavens and all the hells with the tradition and imagination of which the human mind has lured and terrified itself since the earliest ages. All human imaginations indeed correspond to some reality or real possibility, though they may in themselves be a quite inaccurate representation or couched in too physical images and therefore inapt to express the truth of supraphysical realities.
  8:Nature being a complex unity and not a collection of unrelated phenomena, there can be no unbridgeable gulf between the material existence and this vital or desire-world. On the contrary, they may be said in a sense to exist in each other and are at least interdependent to a certain extent. In fact, the material world is really a sort of projection from the vital, a thing which it has thrown out and separated from itself in order to embody and fulfil some of its desires under conditions other than its own, which are yet the logical result of its own most material longings. Life on earth may be said to be the result of the pressure of this life-world on the material, inconscient existence of the physical universe. Our own manifest vital being is also only a surface result of a larger and profounder vital being which has its proper seat on the life-plane and through which we are connected with the life-world. Moreover, the life-world is constantly acting upon us and behind everything in material existence there stand appropriate powers of the life-world; even the most crude and elemental have behind them elemental life-powers, elemental beings by which or by whom they are supported. The influences of the life-world are always pouring out on the material existence and producing there their powers and results which return again upon the life-world to modify it. From that the life-part of us, the desire-part is being always touched and influenced; there too are beneficent and malefic powers of good desire and evil desire which concern themselves with us even when we are ignorant of and unconcerned with them. Nor are these powers merely tendencies, inconscient forces, nor, except on the verges of Matter, subconscient, but conscious powers, beings, living influences. As we awaken to the higher planes of our existence, we become aware of them as friends or enemies, powers which seek to possess or which we can master, overcome, pass beyond and leave behind. It is this possible relation of the human being with the powers of the life-world which occupied to so large an extent European occultism, especially in the Middle Ages, as well as certain forms of Eastern magic and spiritualism. The "superstitions" of the past, -- much superstition there was, that is to say, much ignorant and distorted belief, false explanations and obscure and clumsy dealing with the laws of the beyond, -- had yet behind them truths which a future Science, delivered from its sole preoccupation with the material world, may rediscover. For the supra-material is as much a reality as the existence of mental beings in the material universe.
  --
  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 supramental 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.

2.2.01 - The Problem of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This theory arose when physical Science concentrated on the operations of Matter, saw only Matter and energy of Matter everywhere; it persists even after that seeing of things has been severely shaken. For now we are driven to see and say that there is no such thing as Matter in itself; what we call Matter is only a mass of phenomena of Energy, events of energy, which our senses regard as objects and our minds classify under the general name of Matter. But we can still hold that all phenomena are phenomena of Energy acting in the forms or sensible events which we call Matter and the phenomena of consciousness are of that character. There is nothing else to it, nothing but the mobile and executive Energy, Nature, Prakriti; there is no soul, no Purusha. Consciousness would still be a general name for a brain-record and notation of these events of material Energy and this will still be the true character of thought, perception, will, speech, act. All these events are separate phenomena which may act and react on each other or group themselves together, but they are not the result or manifestations of any one general force or power of being that we can call Consciousness.
  86

2.2.01 - Work and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What I had in view when I spoke [in the preceding letter] of a systematic sadhana was the adoption of a method which would generalise the whole attitude of the consciousness so as to embrace all its movements at a time instead of working only upon detailsalthough that working is always necessary. I may cite as an example the practice of the separation of the Prakriti and the Purusha, the conscious being standing back detached from all the movements of Nature and observing them as witness and knower and finally as the giver (or refuser) of the sanction and at the highest stage of development, the Ishwara, the pure will, master of the whole nature.
  By intensive sadhana I meant the endeavour to arrive at one of the great positive realisations which would be a firm base for the whole movement. I observe that he speaks of sometimes getting a glimpse of some wide calm when he feels the leading of Vyasa. A descent of this wide calm permanently into the consciousness is one of the realisations of which I was thinking. That he feels it at such times seems to indicate that he may have the capacity of receiving and retaining it. If that happened or if the Prakriti-Purusha realisation came, the whole sadhana would proceed on a strong permanent base with a new and entirely Yogic consciousness instead of the purely mental endeavour which is always difficult and slow. I do not however want to press these things upon him; they come in their own time and to press towards them prematurely does not always hasten their coming. Let him continue with his primary task of self-purification and self-preparation; I shall always be ready to give him what silent help I can.
  ***

2.2.02 - Becoming Conscious in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For the actions to be psychic, the psychic must be in front. The observing Purusha can separate himself, but cannot change the Prakriti. But to be the observing Purusha is a first step. Afterwards there must be the action of the Purusha Will as an instrument of the Mothers force. This Will must be founded on a right consciousness which sees what is wrong, ignorant, selfish, egoistic, moved by desire in the nature and puts it right.
  ***

2.2.02 - Consciousness and the Inconscient, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Force or Energy or Power that has created it, whether it be mere unconscious Energy, Prakriti, or an energy of deceptive consciousness, Maya.
  What we actually experience here is an energy inconscient or seemingly inconscient which is in constant motion and in that motion takes on forms or produces forms and in these forms it enters into many kinds of activity and engenders a multitude of active relations. Energy and action and the results of action,
  --
  The Sankhya philosopher affirmed an original indiscriminate Matter which evolves from Prakriti, from the eternal Energy, - is, we might say, its first state of manifestation. But as it is indiscriminate, it is not likely to be in any way determinable by our senses. And, after all, this too is only a creation of Energy, an evolution out of itself or a state which it assumes; we do not get away from the original formula, Energy and its actions and results, Prakriti and Karma.
  99

2.2.02 - The True Being and the True Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  nature is a surface creation of Prakriti, it is not the true being;
  however persistent it seems, it is only a temporary combination
  --
  identified with the surface Prakriti. Afterwards it will be much
  easier to change, by the force of the psychic perception and the

2.2.03 - The Psychic Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The ego is quite different - it is a creation of Prakriti and part of Prakriti, which centralises the thoughts, desires, passions etc. of the nature and is involved in them entirely. The ego is not a real and eternal existence, but only a formation of Nature. It has to disappear by the coming of knowledge and be replaced by the true psychic and spiritual self.
  The psychic is the soul in evolution; the Atman is the self above the evolution.
  --
  Ignorance, it is the mental, vital, physical Prakriti that acts and the Purusha is disfigured, as it were, in the action of Prakriti.
  It is not our true mental being, our true vital being, our true physical being even that we are aware of; these remain behind,
  --
  Again it depends on what is meant by Ahambhava. But the psychic is not a "bhava"; it is a being, a Purusha. Ahambhava is a formation of Prakriti, it is not a being or a Purusha. Ahambhava can disappear and yet the Purusha will be there.
  By liberated psychic being, I mean that it is no longer obliged to express itself under the conditions of the obscure and ignorant instruments, from behind a veil, but is able to come forward,
  --
  - for the composite is composed of Prakriti. It is described as manomaya by the Upanishad because the psychic being is behind the veil and man being the mental being in the life and body lives in his mind and not in his psychic, so to him the manomaya purus.a is the leader of the life and body, - of the psychic behind supporting the whole he is not aware or dimly aware in his best moments. The psychic is represented in man by the Prime Minister, the manomaya, itself being a mild constitutional king; it is the manomaya to whom Prakriti refers for assent to her actions. But still the statement of the Upanishad gives only the apparent truth of the matter, valid for man and the human stage only - for in the animal it would be rather the
  114
  --
  Purusha Prakriti is the Kshara Purusha - standing back from it is the Akshara Purusha.
  Ego-sense and Purusha are two quite different things - ego-sense is a mechanism of Prakriti, Purusha is the conscious being.
  The psychic being evolves, so it is not the immutable.
  The psychic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is that spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical as the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge. These things are not in the Gita, but we cannot limit our knowledge by the points in the Gita.
  The Soul and the Psychic Being

2.20 - Nov-Dec 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: A says that the Gita's idea of Moksha demands freedom from Prakriti. Therefore, so long as man follows Buddhi he is not free.
   Sri Aurobindo: Does the Gita say that he can't be free?

2.20 - The Lower Triple Purusha, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We may seek this knowledge on two sides separately, the side of Purusha, the side of Prakriti; and we may combine the two for the perfect possession of the various relations of Purusha and Prakriti in the light of the Divine. There is, says the Upanishad, a fivefold soul in man and the world, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The physical soul, self or being, -- Purusha, Atman, -- is that of which we are all at first conscious, a self which seems to have hardly any existence apart from the body and no action vital or even mental independent of it. This physical soul is present everywhere in material Nature, it pervades the body, actuates obscurely its movements and is the whole basis of its experiences; it informs all things even that are not mentally conscious. But in man this physical being has become vitalised and mentalised; it has received something of the law and capacities of the vital and mental being and nature. But its possession of them is derivative, superimposed, as it were, on its original nature and exercised under subjection to the law and action of the physical existence and its instruments. It is this dominance of our mental and vital parts by the body and the physical nature which seems at first sight to justify the theory of the materialists that mind and life are only circumstances and results of physical force and all their operations explicable by the activities of that force in the animal body. In fact, entire subjection of the mind and the life to the body is the characteristic of an undeveloped humanity, as it is in an even greater degree of the infra-human animal. According to the theory of reincarnation those who do not get beyond this stage in the earthly life, cannot rise after death to the mental or higher vital worlds, but have to return from the confines of a series of physical planes to increase their development In the next earthly existence. For the undeveloped physical soul is entirely dominated by material nature and its impressions and has to work them out to a better advantage before it can rise in the scale of being.
  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.
  --
  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.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER; "The devotee looking on himself as Prakriti likes to embrace and kiss God, whom he regards as the Purusha. I am telling this just to you. Ordinary people should not hear these things."
  M: "God sports in various ways. Even this illness of ours is one of His sports. Because you are ill new devotees are coming to you."

2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: Jainism believes in the multiplicity of Prakritis and in one Purusha.
   Disciple: It is like the Sankhya system.

2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Manindra has an element of Prakriti, of womanliness. He has read the life of Chaitanya and understood the attitude of the gopis. He has also realized that God is Purusha and man is Prakriti, and that man should worship God as His handmaid. How remarkable!"
  M: "It is true, sir."

2.21 - The Ladder of Self-transcendence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  All is determined by the Spirit, for all from subtlest existence to grossest matter is manifestation of the Spirit. But the Spirit, Self or Being determines the world it lives in and the experiences of its consciousness, force and delight in that world by some poise -- among many possible -- of the relations of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature, -- some basic poise in one or other of its own cosmic principles. Poised in the principle of Matter, it becomes the physical self of a physical universe in the reign of a physical Nature; Spirit is then absorbed in its experience of Matter; it is dominated by the ignorance and inertia of the tamasic Power proper to physical existence. In the individual it becomes a materialised soul, annamaya purusa, whose life and mind have developed out of the ignorance and inertia of the material principle and are subject to their fundamental limitations. For life in Matter works in dependence on the body; mind in Matter works in dependence on the body and on the vital or nervous being; spirit itself in Matter is limited and divided in its self-relation and its powers by the limitations and divisions of this matter-governed and life-driven mind. This materialised soul lives bound to the physical body and its narrow superficial external consciousness, and it takes normally the experiences of its physical organs, its senses, its matter-bound life and mind, with at most some limited spiritual glimpses, as the whole truth of existence.
  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.

2.21 - The Order of the Worlds, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There are, no doubt, several possible originations of cosmic existence by which such an extreme and rigid world-balancement could have conceivably come into being. There could have been a conception of this kind and a fiat in an All-Will, or an idea, a movement of the soul towards an egoistic material life of the Ignorance. The eternal individual soul urged by some inexplicable desire arising within it can be supposed to have sought the adventure of the darkness and taken a plunge from its native Light into the depths of a Nescience out of which arose this world of Ignorance; or a collectivity of souls may have been so moved, the Many: for an individual being cannot constitute a cosmos; a cosmos must be either impersonal or multipersonal or the creation or self-expression of a universal or infinite Being. This desire may have drawn down an All-Soul with it to build a world based upon the power of the Inconscient. If not that, then the eternally omniscient All-Soul itself may have abruptly plunged its self-knowledge into this darkness of the Inconscience, carrying the individual souls within it to begin their upward evolution through an ascending scale of life and consciousness. Or, if the individual is not pre-existent, if we are only a creation of the All-consciousness or a fiction of the phenomenal Ignorance, either creatrix may have conceived all these myriads of individual beings by the evolution of names and forms out of an original indiscriminate Prakriti; the soul would be a temporary product of the indiscriminate stuff of inconscient force-substance which is the first appearance of things in the material universe.
  On that supposition, or on any of them, there could be only two planes of existence: on one side there is the material universe created out of the Inconscient by the blind nescience of Force or Nature obedient perhaps to some inner unfelt Self which governs its somnambulist activities; on the other side there is the superconscient One to which we return out of the Inconscience and Ignorance. Or else we may imagine that there is one plane only, the material existence; there is no superconscient apart from the Soul of the material universe. If we find that there are other planes of conscious being and that there already exist other worlds than the material universe, these ideas might become difficult to substantiate; but we can escape from that annulment if we suppose that these worlds have been subsequently created by or for the evolving Soul in the course of its ascent out of the Inconscience. In any of these views the whole cosmos would be an evolution out of the Inconscient, either with the material universe as its sole and sufficient stage and scene or else with an ascending scale of worlds, one evolving out of the other, helping to grade our return to the original Reality. Our own view has been that the cosmos is a self-graded devolution out of the superconscient Sachchidananda; but in this idea it would be nothing but an evolution of the Inconscience towards some kind of knowledge sufficient to allow, by the annihilation of some primal ignorance or some originating desire, the extinction of a misbegotten soul or an escape out of a mistaken world-adventure.

2.21 - Towards the Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If we ask why this reservation, why this indulgence to the dynamic principle when our object is to become the pure self and the pure self is described as inactive, akarta, the answer is that that inactivity and divorce of self from Nature are not the whole truth of our spiritual release. Self and Nature are in the end one thing; a total and perfect spirituality makes us one with all the Divine in self and in nature. In fact this becoming Brahman, this assumption into the self of eternal silence, brahma-bhuya, is not all our objective, but only the necessary immense base for a still greater and more marvellous divine becoming, madbhava. And to get to that greatest spiritual perfection we have indeed to be immobile in the self, silent in all our members, but also to act in the power, Shakti, Prakriti, the true and high force of the Spirit. And if we ask how a simultaneity of what seem to be two opposites is possible, the answer is that that is the very nature of a complete spiritual being; always it has this double poise of the Infinite. The impersonal self is silent; we too must be inwardly silent, impersonal, withdrawn into the spirit.
  The impersonal self looks on all action as done not by it but by Prakriti; it regards with a pure equality all the working of her qualities, modes and forces: the soul impersonalised in the self must similarly regard all our actions as done not by itself but by the qualities of Prakriti; it must be equal in all things, sarvatra.
  And at the same time in order that we may not stop here, in order that we may eventually go forward and find a spiritual rule and direction in our works and not only a law of inner immobility and silence, we are asked to impose on the intelligence and will the attitude of sacrifice, all our action inwardly changed and turned into an offering to the Lord of Nature, to the Being of whom she is the self-power, sva prakr.tih., the supreme Spirit. Even we have eventually to renounce all into his hands, to abandon all personal initiation of action, sarvarambhah., to keep our natural selves only as an instrument of his works and his purpose. These things have been already explained fully and the Gita does not here insist, but uses simply without farther qualification the common terms, sannyasa and nais.karmya.
  --
  All Nature becomes the power of the one Divine and all action his action through the individual as channel and instrument. In place of the ego there comes forward conscious and manifest the true spiritual individual in the freedom of his real nature, in the power of his supernal status, in the majesty and splendour of his eternal kinship to the Divine, an imperishable portion of the supreme Godhead, an indestructible power of the supreme Prakriti, mamaivamsah. sanatanah., para prakr.tir jva-bhuta. The soul of man then feels itself to be one in a supreme spiritual impersonality with the Purushottama and in its universalised personality a manifest power of the Godhead. Its knowledge is a light of his knowledge; its will is a force of his will; its unity with all in the universe is a play of his eternal oneness. It is in this double realisation, it is in this union of two sides of an ineffable Truth of existence by either and both of which man can approach and enter into his own infinite being, that the liberated man has to live and act and feel and determine or rather have determined for him by a greatest power of his supreme self his relations with all and the inner and outer workings of his spirit. And in that unifying realisation adoration, love and devotion are not only still possible, but are a large, an inevitable and a crowning portion of the highest experience. The One who eternally becomes the Many, the Many who in their apparent division are still eternally one, the Highest who displays in us this secret and mystery of existence, not dispersed by his multiplicity, not limited by his oneness, - this is the integral knowledge, this is the reconciling experience which makes one capable of liberated action, muktasya karma.
  This knowledge comes, says the Gita, by a highest bhakti.
  --
  Nothing can be more positive than the Gita's statement in this matter. "And by doing also all actions always lodged in Me he attains by my grace the eternal and imperishable status." This liberating action is of the character of works done in a profound union of the will and all the dynamic parts of our nature with the Divine in ourself and the cosmos. It is done first as a sacrifice with the idea still of our self as the doer. It is done next without that idea and with a perception of the Prakriti as the sole doer. It is done last with the knowledge of that Prakriti as the supreme power of the Divine and a renunciation, a surrender of all our actions to him with the individual as a channel only and an instrument. Our works then proceed straight from the Self and Divine within us, are a part of the indivisible universal action, are initiated and performed not by us but by a vast transcendent Shakti. All that we do is done for the sake of the Lord seated in the heart of all, for the Godhead in the individual and for the fulfilment of his will in us, for the sake of the Divine in the world, for the good of all beings, for the fulfilment of the world action and the world purpose, or in one word for the sake of the Purushottama and done really by him through his universal Shakti. These divine works, whatever their form or outward character, cannot bind, but are rather a potent means for rising out of this lower Prakriti of the three gunas to the perfection of the supreme, divine and spiritual nature. Disengaged from these mixed and limited dharmas we escape into the immortal Dharma which comes upon us when we make ourselves one in all our consciousness and action with the Purushottama. That oneness here brings with it the power to rise there into the immortality beyond Time. There we shall exist in his eternal transcendence.
  Thus these eight verses carefully read in the light of the knowledge already given by the Teacher are a brief, but still a comprehensive indication of the whole essential idea, the entire central method, all the kernel of the complete Yoga of the Gita.

2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But we have first to observe that a law or chain of Karma is only an outward machinery and cannot be elevated to a greater position as the sole and absolute determinant of the life-workings of the cosmos, unless the cosmos is itself entirely mechanical in its character. It is indeed held by many that all is Law and Process and there is no conscious Being or Will in or behind the cosmos; if so, here is a Law and Process that satisfies our human reason and our mental standards of right and justice and it has the beauty and truth of a perfect symmetry and a mathematical accuracy of working. But all is not Law and Process, there is also Being and Consciousness; there is not only a machinery but a Spirit in things, not only Nature and law of cosmos but a cosmic Spirit, not only a process of mind and life and body but a soul in the natural creature. If it were not so, there could be no rebirth of a soul and no field for a law of Karma. But if the fundamental truth of our being is spiritual and not mechanical, it must be ourself, our soul that fundamentally determines its own evolution, and the law of Karma can only be one of the processes it uses for that purpose: our Spirit, our Self must be greater than its Karma. There is Law, but there is also spiritual freedom. Law and Process are one side of our existence and their reign is over our outer mind, life and body, for these are mostly subject to the mechanism of Nature. But even here their mechanical power is absolute only over body and matter; for Law becomes more complex and less rigid, Process more plastic and less mechanical when there comes in the phenomenon of life, and yet more is this so when mind intervenes with its subtlety; an inner freedom already begins to intervene and, the more we go within, the soul's power of choice is increasingly felt: for Prakriti is the field of law and process, but the soul, the Purusha, is the giver of the sanction, anumanta, and even if ordinarily it chooses to remain a witness and concede an automatic sanction, it can be, if it wills, the master of its nature, Ishwara.
  It is not conceivable that the spirit within is an automaton in the hands of Karma, a slave in this life of its past actions; the truth must be less rigid and more plastic. If a certain amount of results of past Karma is formulated in the present life, it must be with the consent of the psychic being which presides over the new formation of its earth-experience and assents not merely to an outward compulsory process, but to a secret Will and Guidance. That secret Will is not mechanical, but spiritual; the guidance comes from an Intelligence which may use mechanical processes but is not their subject. Self-expression and experience are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body; whatever is necessary for the self-expression and experience of this life, whether it intervenes as an automatic outcome of past lives or as a free selection of results and a continuity or as a new development, whatever is a means of creation of the future, that will be formulated: for the principle is not the working out of a mechanism of Law, but the development of the nature through cosmic experience so that eventually it may grow out of the Ignorance. There must therefore be two elements, Karma as an instrument, but also the secret Consciousness and Will within working through the mind, life and body as the user. Fate, whether purely mechanical or created by ourselves, a chain of our own manufacture, is only one factor of existence; Being and its consciousness and its will are a still more important factor.

2.22 - The Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For Purusha veils himself in this round, veils his divine and immortal being in ignorance and is subject to the law of an insistent limiting Prakriti. That law is the compelling rule of the three gunas. It is a triple stair that stumbles upward towards the divine light but cannot reach it. At its base is the law or dharma of inertia: the tamasic man inertly obeys in a customary mechanical action the suggestions and impulses, the round of will of his material and his half-intellectualised vital and sensational nature. In the middle intervenes the kinetic law or dharma; the rajasic man, vital, dynamic, active, attempts to impose himself on his world and environment, but only increases the wounding weight and tyrant yoke of his turbulent passions, desires and egoisms, the burden of his restless self-will, the yoke of his rajasic nature. At the top presses down upon life the harmonic regulative law or dharma; the sattwic man attempts to erect and follow his limited personal standards of reasoning knowledge, enlightened utility or mechanised virtue, his religions and philosophies and ethical formulas, mental systems and constructions, fixed channels of idea and conduct which do not agree with the totality of the meaning of life and are constantly being broken in the movement of the wider universal purpose.
  The dharma of the sattwic man is the highest in the circle of the gunas; but that too is a limited view and a dwarfed standard.
  --
   of these things alone, neither a mechanical routine execution of the first crude law of Nature, nor the struggle of a kinetic soul of action, nor a victorious emergence of conscious light and reason and good and knowledge. There is a mixture of all these dharmas out of which our will and intelligence make a more or less arbitrary construction to be realised as best it can, but never in fact realised except by compromise with other compelling things in the universal Prakriti. The sattwic ideals of our enlightened will and reason are either themselves compromises, at best progressive compromises, subject to a constant imperfection and flux of change, or if absolute in their character, they can be followed only as a counsel of perfection ignored for the most part in practice or successful only as a partial influence.
  And if sometimes we imagine we have completely realised them, it is because we ignore in ourselves the subconscious or halfconscious mixture of other powers and motives that are usually as much or more than our ideals the real force in our action. That self-ignorance constitutes the whole vanity of human reason and self-righteousness; it is the dark secret lining behind the spotless white outsides of human sainthood and alone makes possible the specious egoisms of knowledge and virtue. The best human knowledge is a half knowledge and the highest human virtue a thing of mixed quality and, even when most sincerely absolute in standard, sufficiently relative in practice. As a general law of living the absolute sattwic ideals cannot prevail in conduct; indispensable as a power for the betterment and raising of personal aspiration and conduct, their insistence modifies life but cannot wholly change it, and their perfect fulfilment images itself only in a dream of the future or a world of heavenly nature free from the mixed strain of our terrestrial existence. It cannot be otherwise because neither the nature of this world nor the nature of man is or can be one single piece made of the pure stuff of sattwa.
  --
  Not this natural but that divine and central being in us is the eternal Jiva. It is the Ishwara, Vasudeva who is all things, that takes up our mind and life and body for the enjoyment of the lower Prakriti; it is the supreme Prakriti, the original spiritual nature of the supreme Purusha that holds together the universe and appears in it as the Jiva. This Jiva then is a portion of the
  Purushottama's original divine spiritual being, a living power of the living Eternal. He is not merely a temporary form of lower
  --
   Prakriti, an eternal conscious ray of the divine existence and as everlasting as that supernal Prakriti. One side of the highest perfection and status of our liberated consciousness must then be to assume the true place of the Jiva in a supreme spiritual
  Nature, there to dwell in the glory of the supreme Purusha and there to have the joy of the eternal spiritual oneness.
  --
   is very obvious. And she has formed and directs the action too, hardly less mechanical as things now are, of our sense-mind and will and intelligence. Only, while in the animal the mind workings are a wholly mechanical obedience to Prakriti, man has this distinction that he embodies a conscious development in which the soul more actively participates, and that gives to his outward mentality the sense, useful to him, indispensable, but very largely a misleading sense, of a certain freedom and increasing mastery of his instrumental nature. And it is especially misleading because it blinds him to the hard fact of his bondage and his false idea of freedom prevents him from finding a true liberty and lordship. For the freedom and mastery of man over his nature are hardly even real and cannot be complete until he becomes aware of the Divinity within him and is in possession of his own real self and spirit other than the ego, atmavan. It is that which Nature is labouring to express in mind and life and body; it is that which imposes on her this or that law of being and working, Swabhava; it is that which shapes the outward destiny and the evolution of the soul within us. It is therefore only when he is in possession of his real self and spirit that his nature can become a conscious instrument and enlightened power of the godhead.
  For then, when we enter into that inmost self of our existence, we come to know that in us and in all is the one Spirit and Godhead whom all Nature serves and manifests and we ourselves are soul of this Soul, spirit of this Spirit, our body his delegated image, our life a movement of the rhythm of his life, our mind a sheath of his consciousness, our senses his instruments, our emotions and sensations the seekings of his delight of being, our actions a means of his purpose, our freedom only a shadow, suggestion or glimpse while we are ignorant, but when we know him and ourselves a prolongation and effective channel of his immortal freedom. Our masteries are a reflection of his power at work, our best knowledge a partial light of his knowledge, the highest most potent will of our spirit a projection and delegation of the will of this Spirit in all things who is the
  --
  The secret thing, guhyam, that all deep spiritual knowledge reveals to us, mirrored in various teachings and justified in the soul's experience, is for the Gita the secret of the spiritual self hidden within us of which mind and external Nature are only manifestations or figures. It is the secret of the constant relations between soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, the secret of an indwelling Godhead who is the lord of all existence and veiled from us in its forms and movements. These are the truths taught in many ways by Vedanta and Sankhya and Yoga and synthetised in the earlier chapters of the Gita. And amidst all their apparent distinctions they are one truth and all the different ways of
  Yoga are various means of spiritual self-discipline by which our unquiet mind and blinded life are stilled and turned towards this many-aspected One and the secret truth of self and God made
  --
  The more secret thing, guhyataram, developed by the Gita is the profound reconciling truth of the divine Purushottama, at once self and Purusha, supreme Brahman and a sole, intimate, mysterious, ineffable Godhead. That gives to the thought a larger and more deeply understanding foundation for an ultimate knowledge and to the spiritual experience a greater and more fully comprehending and comprehensive Yoga. This deeper mystery is founded on the secret of the supreme spiritual Prakriti and of the Jiva, an eternal portion of the Divine in that eternal and this manifested Nature and of one spirit and essence with him in his immutable self-existence. This profounder knowledge escapes from the elementary distinction of spiritual experience between the Beyond and what is here. For the Transcendent beyond the worlds is at the same time Vasudeva who is all things in all worlds; he is the Lord standing in the heart of every creature and the self of all existences and the origin and supernal meaning of everything that he has put forth in his
   Prakriti. He is manifested in his Vibhutis and he is the Spirit in

2.22 - Vijnana or Gnosis, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In our perfect self-transcendence we pass out and up from the ignorance or half-enlightenment of our mental conscious-being into a greater wisdom-self and truth-power above it, there to dwell in the unwalled light of a divine knowledge. The mental man that we are is changed into the gnostic soul, the truth-conscious godhead, the vijnanamaya purusa. Seated on that level of the hill of our ascension we are in a quite different plane from this material, this vital, this mental poise of the universal spirit, and with this change changes too all our view and experience of our soul-life and of the world around us. We are born into a new soul-status and put on a new nature; for according to the status of the soul is the status of the Prakriti. At each transition of the world-ascent, from matter to life, from life to mind, from mind bound to free intelligence, as the latent, half-manifested or already manifest soul rises to a higher and higher level of being, the nature also is elevated into a superior working, a wider consciousness, a vaster force and an intenser or larger range and joy of existence. But the transition from the mind-self to the knowledge-self is the great and the decisive transition in the Yoga. It is the shaking off of the last hold on us of the cosmic ignorance and our firm foundation in the Truth of things, in a consciousness infinite and eternal and inviolable by obscurity, falsehood, suffering or error.
  This is the first summit which enters into the divine perfection, sadharmaya, sadrsya; for all the rest only look up to it or catch some rays of its significance. The highest heights of mind or of overmind come still within the belt of a mitigated ignorance; they can refract a divine Light but not pass it on in undiminished power to our lower members. For so long as we are within the triple stratum of mind, life and body, our active nature continues to work in the force of the ignorance even when the soul in Mind possesses something of the knowledge. And even if the soul were to reflect or to represent all the largeness of the knowledge in its mental consciousness, it would be unable to mobilise it rightly in force of action. The truth in its action might greatly increase, but it would still be pursued by a limitation, still condemned to a divisibility which would prevent it from working integrally in the power of the infinite. The power of a divinely illumined mind may be immense compared with ordinary powers, but it will still be subject to incapacity and there can be no perfect correspondence between the force of the effective will and the light of the idea which inspires it. The infinite Presence may be there in status, but dynamis of the operations of nature still belongs to the lower Prakriti, must follow its triple modes of working and cannot give any adequate form to the greatness within it. This is the tragedy of ineffectivity, of the hiatus between ideal and effective will, of our constant incapacity to work out in living form and action the truth we feel in our inner consciousness that pursues all the aspiration of mind and life towards the divinity behind them. But the vijnana or gnosis is not only truth but truth-power, it is the very working of the infinite and divine nature; it is the divine knowledge one with the divine will in the force and delight of a spontaneous and luminous and inevitable self-fulfilment. By the gnosis, then, we change our human into a divine nature.
  What then is this gnosis and how can we describe it? Two opposite errors have to be avoided, two misconceptions that disfigure opposite sides of the truth of gnosis. One error of intellect-bounded thinkers takes vijnana as synonymous with the other Indian term buddhi and the buddhi as synonymous with the reason, the discerning intellect, the logical intelligence. The systems that accept this significance, pass at once from a plane of pure intellect to a plane of pure spirit. No intermediate power is recognised, no diviner action of knowledge than the pure reason, is admitted; the limited human means for facing truth is taken for the highest possible dynamics of consciousness, its topmost force and original movement. An opposite error, a misconception of the mystics identifies vijnana with the consciousness of the Infinite free from all ideation or else ideation packed into one essence of thought, lost to other dynamic action in the single and invariable idea of the One. This is the caitanyaghana of the Upanishad and is one movement or rather one thread of the many-aspected movement of the gnosis. The gnosis, the Vijnana is not only this concentrated consciousness of the infinite Essence, it is also and at the same time an infinite knowledge of the myriad play of the Infinite. It contains all ideation (not mental but supramental), but it is not limited by ideation, for it far exceeds all ideative movement. Nor is the gnostic ideation in its character an intellectual thinking; it is not what we call the reason, not a concentrated intelligence. For the reason is mental in its methods, mental in its acquisitions, mental in its basis, but the ideative method of the gnosis is self-luminous, supramental, its yield of thought-light spontaneous, not proceeding by acquisition, its thought-basis a rendering of conscious identities, not a translation of the impressions born of indirect contacts. There is a relation and even a sort of broken identity between the two forms of thought; for one proceeds covertly from other. Mind is born from that which is beyond mind. But they act on different planes and reverse each other's process.
  --
  If we would describe the gnosis as it is in its own awareness, not thus imperfectly as it is to us in contrast with our own reason and intelligence, it is hardly possible to speak of it except in figures and symbols. And first we must remember that the gnostic level, Mahat, Vijnana, is not the supreme plane of our consciousness but a middle or link plane. Interposed between the triune glory of the utter Spirit, the infinite existence, consciousness and bliss of the Eternal and our lower triple being and nature, it is as if it stood there as the mediating, formulated, organising and creative wisdom, power and joy of the Eternal. In the gnosis Sachchidananda gathers up the light of his unseizable existence and pours it out on the soul in the shape and power of a divine knowledge, a divine will and a divine bliss of existence. It is as if infinite light were gathered up into the compact orb of the sun and lavished on all that depends upon the sun in radiances that continue for ever. But the gnosis is not only light, it is force; it is creative knowledge, it is the self-effective truth of the divine Idea. This idea is not creative imagination, not something that constructs in void, but light and power of eternal substance, truth-light full of truth-force; and it brings out what is latent in being, it does not create a fiction that never was in being. The ideation of the gnosis is radiating light-stuff of the consciousness of the eternal Existence; each ray is a truth. The will in the gnosis is a conscious force of eternal knowledge; it throws the consciousness and substance of being into infallible forms of truth-power, forms that embody the idea and make it faultlessly effective, and it works out each truth-power and each truth-form spontaneously and rightly according to its nature. Because it carries this creative force of the divine Idea, the Sun, the lord arid symbol of the gnosis, is described in the Veda as the Light which is the father of all things, Surya Savitri, the Wisdom-Luminous who is the bringer-out into manifest existence. This creation is inspired by the divine delight, the eternal Ananda; it is full of the joy of its own truth and power, it creates in bliss, creates out of bliss, creates that which is blissful. Therefore the world of the gnosis, the supramental world is the true and the happy creation, rtam, bhadram, since all in it shares in the perfect joy that made it. A divine radiance of undeviating knowledge, a divine power of unfaltering will and a divine ease of unstumbling bliss are the nature or Prakriti of the soul in supermind, in vijnana. The stuff of the gnostic or supramental plane is made of the perfect absolutes of all that is here imperfect and relative and its movement of the reconciled interlockings and happy fusions of all that here are opposites. For behind the appearance of these opposites are their truths and the truths of the eternal are not in conflict with each other; our mind's and life's opposites transformed in the supermind into their own true spirit link together and are seen as tones and colourings of an eternal Reality and everlasting Ananda. supermind or gnosis is the supreme Truth, the supreme Thought, the supreme Word, the supreme Light, the supreme Will-Idea; it is the inner and outer extension of the Infinite who is beyond Space, the unfettered Time of the Eternal who is timeless, the supernal harmony of all absolutes of the Absolute.
  To the envisaging mind there are three powers of the Vijnana. Its supreme power knows and receives into it from above all the infinite existence, consciousness and bliss of the ' Ishwara; it is in its highest height the absolute knowledge and force of eternal Sachchidananda. Its second power concentrates the Infinite into a dense luminous consciousness, caitanyaghana or cidghana, the seed-state of the divine consciousness in which are contained living and concrete all the immutable principles of the divine being and all the inviolable truths of the divine conscious-idea and nature. Its third power brings or looses out these things by the effective ideation, vision, au thentic identities of the divine knowledge, movement of the divine will-force, vibration of the divine delight-intensities into a universal harmony, an illimitable diversity, a manifold rhythm of their powers, forms and interplay of living consequences. The mental Purusha rising into the vijnanamaya must ascend into these three powers. It must turn by conversion of its movements into the movements of the gnosis, its mental perception, ideation, will, pleasure into radiances of the divine knowledge, pulsations of the divine will-force, waves and floods of the divine delight-seas. It must convert its conscious stuff of mental nature into the cidghara or dense self-luminous consciousness. It must transform its conscious substance into a gnostic self or Truth-self of infinite Sachchidananda. These three movements are described in the lsha Upanishad, the first as vyuha, the marshalling of the rays of the Sun of gnosis in the order of the Truth-consciousness, the second as samuha, the gathering together of the rays into the body of the Sun of gnosis, the third as the vision of that Sun's fairest form of all in which the soul most intimately possesses its oneness with the infinite Purusha.467 The Supreme above, in him, around, everywhere and the soul dwelling in the Supreme and one with it, -- the infinite power and truth of the Divine concentrated in his own concentrated luminous soul nature, -- a radiant activity of the divine knowledge, will and joy perfect in the natural action of the Prakriti, -- this is the fundamental experience of the mental being transformed and fulfilled and sublimated in the perfection of the gnosis.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

2.2.3 - Depression and Despondency, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As for the causes of the dejection, there were causes, partly general in the shape of a resistance to a great descending force which was not personal to you at all, and, so far as there was a response to it in you, it was not from your conscious being, otherwise you would not have had it in this way, but from the part in us which keeps things for a long time that have been suppressed or rejected by the conscious will. It is the conscious will that matters, for it is that that prevails in the end, the will of the Purusha and not the more blind and obstinate parts of Prakriti. Keep the conscious will all right and it will carry on to the goal,just as the resistance in universal Nature will yield in the end before the Divine Descent.
  ***

2.23 - Man and the Evolution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  All these are conclusions that can be arrived at even from the observation of the outward phenomena of Nature's progression, her surface evolution of being and of consciousness in the physical birth and the body. But there is the other, the invisible factor; there is rebirth, the progress of the soul by ascent from grade to grade of the evolving existence, and in the grades to higher and higher types of bodily and mental instrumentation. In this progression the psychic entity is still veiled, even in man the conscious mental being, by its instruments, by mind and life and body; it is unable to manifest fully, held back from coming to the front where it can stand out as the master of its nature, obliged to submit to a certain determination by the instruments, to a domination of Purusha by Prakriti. But in man the psychic part of the personality is able to develop with a much greater rapidity than in the inferior creation, and a time can arrive when the soul entity is close to the point at which it will emerge from behind the veil into the open and become the master of its instrumentation in Nature. But this will mean that the secret indwelling spirit, the Daemon, the Godhead within is on the point of emergence; and, when it emerges, it can hardly be doubted that its demand will be, as indeed it already is in the mind itself when it undergoes the inner psychic influence, for a diviner, a more spiritual existence. In the nature of the earth life where the mind is an instrument of the Ignorance, this can only be effected by a change of consciousness, a transition from a foundation in Ignorance to a foundation in Knowledge, from the mental to a supramental consciousness, a supramental instrumentation of Nature.
  There is no conclusive validity in the reasoning that because this is a world of Ignorance, such a transformation can only be achieved by a passage to a heaven beyond or cannot be achieved at all and the demand of the psychic entity is itself ignorant and must be replaced by a merger of the soul in the Absolute. This conclusion could only be solely valid if Ignorance were the whole meaning, substance and power of the world-manifestation or if there were no element in worldNature itself through which there could be an exceeding of the ignorant mentality that still burdens our present status of being.

2.23 - The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Thus the being of Vijnana is in all its activities a play of perfected knowledge-power, will-power, delight-power, raised to a higher than the mental, vital and bodily level. All-pervasive, universalised, freed from egoistic personality and individuality, it is the play of a higher Self, a higher consciousness and therefore a higher force and higher delight of being. All that acts in the Vijnana in the purity, in the right, in the truth of the superior or divine Prakriti. Its powers may often seem to be what are caned in ordinary Yogic parlance Siddhis, by the Europeans occult powers, shunned and dreaded by devotees and by many Yogins as snares, stumbling-blocks, diversions from the true seeking after the Divine. But they have that character and are dangerous here because they are sought in the lower being, abnormally, by the ego for an egoistic satisfaction. In the Vijnana they are neither occult nor Siddhis, but the open, unforced and normal play of its nature. The Vijnana is the Truth-power and Truth-action of the divine Being in its divine identities, and, when this acts through the individual lifted to the gnostic plane, it fulfils itself unperverted, without fault or egoistic reaction, without diversion from the possession of the Divine. There the individual is no longer the ego, but the free Jiva domiciled in the higher divine nature of which he is a portion, paraf prakrtir jivabhita, the nature of the supreme and universal Self seen indeed in the play of multiple individuality but without the veil of ignorance, with self-knowledge, in its multiple oneness, in the truth of its divine shakti.
  In the Vijnana the right relation and action of Purusha and Prakriti are found, because there they become unified and the Divine is no longer veiled in Maya. All is his action. The Jiva no longer says, "I think, I act, I desire, I feel"; he does not even say like the Sadhaka striving after unity but before he has reached it, "As appointed by Thee seated in my heart, I act". For the heart, the centre of the mental consciousness is no longer the centre of origination but only a blissful channel. He is rather aware of the Divine seated above, lord of all, adhisthita, as well as acting within him. And seated himself in that higher being, parardhe, paramasyam paravati, he can say truly and boldly, "God himself by his Prakriti knows, acts, loves, takes delight through my individuality and its figures and fulfils there in its higher and divine measures the multiple lila which the Infinite for ever plays in the universality which is himself for ever."
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

2.23 - THE MASTER AND BUDDHA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "This 'existence' and 'non-existence' are attributes of Prakriti. The Reality is beyond both."
  The devotees remained silent a few moments.
  --
  DR. SREENATH (to his friends): "Everything is under the control of Prakriti. Nobody can escape the fruit of past action. This is called prarabdha."
  MASTER: "Why, if one chants the name of God, meditates on Him, and takes refuge in Him —"

2.24 - Gnosis and Ananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The very physical consciousness in man, the annamaya purusa, can without this supreme ascent and integral descent yet reflect and enter into the self of Sachchidananda. It can do it either by a reflection of the Soul in physical Nature, its bliss, power and infinity secret but still present here, or by losing its separate sense of substance and existence in the Self within or without it. The result is a glorified sleep of the physical mind in which the physical being forgets itself in a kind of conscious Nirvana or else moves about like a thing inert in the hands of Nature jadavat, like a leaf in the wind, or otherwise a state of pure happy and free irresponsibility of action, balavat, a divine childhood. But this comes without the higher glories of knowledge and delight which belong to the same status upon a more exalted level. It is an inert realisation of Sachchidananda in which there is neither any mastery of the Prakriti by the Purusha nor any sublimation of Nature into her own supreme power, the infinite glories of the Para shakti. Yet these two, this mastery and this sublimation, are the two gates of perfection, the splendid doors into the supreme Eternal.
  The life-soul and life-consciousness in man, pranamaya purusa, can in the same way directly reflect and enter into the self of Sachchidananda by a large and splendid and blissful reflection of the Soul in universal Life or by losing its separate sense of life and existence in the vast Self within or without it. The result is either a profound state of sheer self-oblivion or else an action driven irresponsibly by the life nature, an exalted enthusiasm of self-abandonment to the great world-energy in its vitalistic dance. The outer being lives in a God-possessed frenzy careless of itself and the world, inmattavat, or with an entire disregard whether of the conventions and proprieties of fitting human action or of the harmony and rhythms of a greater Truth. It acts as the unbound vital being, pisacavat, the divine maniac or else the divine demoniac. Here too there is no mastery or supreme sublimation of nature. There is only a joyful static possession by the Self within us and an unregulated dynamic possession by the physical and the vital Nature without us.
  --
  But the gnostic soul, the vijnanammaya purusa, is the first to participate not only in the freedom, but in the power and sovereignty of the Eternal. For it receives the fullness, it has the sense of plenitude of the Godhead in its action; it shares the free, splendid and royal march of the Infinite, is a vessel of the original knowledge, the immaculate power, the inviolable bliss, transmutes all life into the eternal Light and the eternal Fire and the eternal Wine of the nectar. It possesses the infinite of the Self and it possesses the infinite of Nature. It does not so much lose as find its nature self in the self of the Infinite. On the other planes to which the mental being has easier access, man finds God in himself and himself in God; he becomes divine in essence rather than in person or nature. In the gnosis, even the mentalised gnosis, the Divine Eternal possesses, changes and stamps the human symbol, envelops and partly finds himself in the person and nature. The mental being at most receives or reflects that which is true, divine and eternal; the gnostic soul reaches a true identity, possesses the spirit and power of the truth-Nature. In the gnosis the dualism of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature, two separate powers complementary to each other, the great truth of the Sankhyas founded on the practical truth of our present natural existence, disappears in their biune entity, the dynamic mystery of the occult Supreme. The Truth-being is the Hara-Gauri481 of the Indian iconological symbol; it is the double Power masculine-feminine born from and supported by the supreme shakti of the Supreme.
  Therefore the truth-soul does not arrive at self-oblivion in the Infinite; it comes to an eternal self-possession in the Infinite. Its action is not irregular; it is a perfect control in an infinite freedom. In the lower planes the soul is naturally subject to Nature and the regulating principle is found in the lower nature; all regulation there depends on the acceptance of a strict subjection to the law of the finite. If the soul on these planes withdraws from that law into the liberty of the infinite, it loses its natural centre and becomes centreless in a cosmic infinitude, it forfeits the living harmonic principle by which its external being was till then regulated and it finds no other. The personal nature or what is left of it merely continues mechanically for a while its past movements, or it dances in the gusts and falls of the universal energy that acts on the individual system rather than in that system, or it strays in the wild steps of an irresponsible ecstasy, or it remains inert and abandoned by the breath of the Spirit that was within it. If on the other hand the soul moves in its impulse of freedom towards the discovery of another and divine centre of control through which the Infinite can consciously govern its own action in the individual, it is moving towards the gnosis where that centre pre-exists, the centre of an eternal harmony and order. It is when he ascends above mind and life to the gnosis that the Purusha becomes the master of his own nature because subject only to supreme Nature. For there force or will is the exact counterpart, the perfect dynamis of the divine knowledge. And that knowledge is not merely the eye of the Witness, it is the immanent and compelling gaze 'of the Ishwara. Its luminous governing power, a power not to be hedged in or denied, imposes Its self-expressive force on all the action and makes true and radiant and au thentic and inevitable every movement and impulse.
  --
  And what then is the necessity of a still higher step and what difference is there between the soul in gnosis and the soul in the Bliss? There is no essential difference, but yet a difference, because there is a transfer to another consciousness and a certain reversal in position, -- for each step of the ascent from Matter to the highest Existence there is a reversal of consciousness. The soul no longer looks up to something beyond it, but is in it and from it looks down on all that it was before. On all planes indeed the Ananda can be discovered because everywhere it exists and is the same. Even there is a repetition of the Ananda plane on each lower world of consciousness. But in the lower planes not only is it reached by a sort of dissolution into it of the pure mind or the life-sense or the physical awareness, but it is, as it were, itself diluted by the dissolved form of mind, life or matter held in the dilution and turned into a poor thinness wonderful to the lower consciousness but not comparable to its true intensities. The gnosis has on the contrary a dense light of essential consciousness483a in which the intense fullness of the Ananda can be. And when the form of gnosis is dissolved into the Ananda, it is not annulled altogether, but undergoes a natural change by which the soul is carried up into its last and absolute freedom; for it casts itself into the absolute existence of the spirit and is enlarged into its own entirely self-existent bliss infinitudes. The gnosis has the infinite and absolute as the conscious source, accompaniment, condition, standard, field and atmosphere of all its activities, it possesses it as its base, fount, constituent material, indwelling and inspiring Presence; but in its action it seems to stand out from it as its operation, as the rhythmical working of its activities, as a divine Maya483b or Wisdom-Formation of the Eternal. Gnosis is the divine Knowledge-Will of the divine Consciousness-Force; it is harmonic consciousness and action of Prakriti-Purusha -- full of the delight of the divine existence. In the Ananda the knowledge goes back from these willed harmonies into pure self-consciousness, the will dissolves into pure transcendent force and both are taken up into the pure delight of the Infinite. The basis of the gnostic existence is the self-stuff and self-form of the Ananda.
  This in the ascension takes place because there is here completed the transition to the absolute unity of which the gnosis is the decisive step, but not the final resting-place. In the gnosis the soul is aware of its infinity and lives in it, yet it lives also in a working centre for the individual play of the Infinite. It realises its identity with all existences, but it keeps a distinction without difference by which it can have also the contact with them in a certain diverseness. This is that distinction for the joy of contact which in the mind becomes not only difference, but in its self-experience division from our other selves, in its spiritual being a sense of loss of self one with us in others and a reaching after the felicity it has forfeited, in life a compromise between egoistic self-absorption and a blind seeking out for the lost oneness. In its infinite consciousness, the gnostic soul creates a sort of voluntary limitation for its own wisdom-purposes; it has even its particular luminous aura of being in which it moves, although beyond that it enters into all things and identifies itself with all being and all existences. In the Ananda all is reversed, the centre disappears. In the bliss nature there is no centre, nor any voluntary or imposed circumference, but all is, all are one equal being, one identical spirit. The bliss soul finds and feels itself everywhere; it has no mansion, is ahiketa, or has the all for its mansion, or, if it likes, it has all things for its many mansions open to each other for ever. All other selves are entirely its own selves, in action as well as in essence. The joy of contact in diverse oneness becomes altogether the joy of absolute identity in innumerable oneness. Existence is no longer formulated in the terms of the Knowledge, because the known and knowledge and the knower are wholly one self here and, since all possesses all All in the gnostic existence is real, spiritually concrete, eternally verifiable. in an intimate identity beyond the closest closeness, there is no need of what we call knowledge. All the consciousness is of the bliss of the Infinite, all power is power of the bliss of the Infinite, all forms and activities are forms and activities of the bliss of the Infinite. In this absolute truth of its being the eternal soul of Ananda lives, here deformed by contrary phenomena, there brought back and transfigured into their reality.
  --
  The Purusha in mind, life and body is divided from Nature and in conflict with her. He labours to control and coerce what he can embody of her by his masculine force and is yet subject to her afflicting dualities and in fact her plaything from top to bottom, beginning to end. In the gnosis he is biune with her, finds as master of his own nature their reconciliation and harmony by their essential oneness even while he accepts an infinite blissful subjection, the condition of his mastery and his liberties, to the Supreme in his sovereign divine Nature. In the tops of the gnosis and in the Ananda he is one with the Prakriti and no longer solely biune with her. There is no longer the baffling play of Nature with the soul in the Ignorance; all is the conscious play of the soul with itself and all its selves and the Supreme and the divine shakti in its own and the infinite bliss nature. This is the supreme mystery, the highest secret, simple to our experience, however difficult and complex to our mental conceptions and the effort of our limited intelligence to understand what is beyond it. In the free infinity of the self-delight of Sachchidananda there is a play of the divine Child, a rasa lila of the infinite Lover, and its mystic soul-symbols repeat themselves in characters of beauty and movements and harmonies of delight in a timeless forever.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

2.24 - The Message of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In its outer appearance the truth of existence is solely what we call Nature or Prakriti, a Force that operates as the whole law and mechanism of being, creates the world which is the object of our mind and senses and creates too the mind and senses as a means of relation between the creature and the objective world in which he lives. In this outer appearance man in his soul, his mind, his life, his body seems to be a creature of Nature differentiated from others by a separation of his body, life and mind and especially by his ego-sense - that subtle mechanism constructed for him that he may confirm and centralise his consciousness of all this strong separateness and difference. All in him, his soul of mind and its action as well as the functioning of his life and body, is very evidently determined by the law of his nature, cannot get outside of it, cannot operate otherwise. He attributes indeed a certain freedom to his personal will, the will of his ego; but that in reality amounts to nothing, since his ego is only a sense which makes him identify himself with the creation that Nature has made of him, with the varying mind and life and body she has constructed. His ego is itself a product of her workings, and as is the nature of his ego, so will be the nature of its will and
  574
  --
  There is, however, something in man's consciousness which does not fall in with the rigidity of this formula; he has a faith, which grows greater as his soul develops, in another and an inner reality of existence. In this inner reality the truth of existence is no longer Nature but Soul and Spirit, Purusha rather than Prakriti. Nature herself is only a power of Spirit, Prakriti the force of the Purusha. A Spirit, a Self, a Being one in all is the master of this world which is only his partial manifestation.
  That Spirit is the upholder of Nature and her action and the giver of the sanction by which alone her law becomes imperative and her force and its ways operative. That Spirit within her is the
  --
   your labour. Cease to regard your works as your own; as you have abandoned the fruits of your work, so you must surrender the work also to the Lord of action and sacrifice. Recognise that your nature determines your action; your nature rules the immediate motion of your Swabhava and decides the expressive turn and development of your spirit in the paths of the executive force of Prakriti. Bring in no longer any self-will to confuse the steps of your mind in following the Godward way. Accept the action proper to your nature. Make of all you do from the greatest and most unusual effort to the smallest daily act, make of each act of your mind, each act of your heart, each act of your body, of every inner and outer turn, of every thought and will and feeling, of every step and pause and movement, a sacrifice to the Master of all sacrifice and Tapasya.
  "Next know that you are an eternal portion of the Eternal and the powers of your nature are nothing without him, nothing if not his partial self-expression. It is the Divine Infinite that is being progressively fulfilled in your nature. It is the supreme power-to-be, it is the Shakti of the Lord that shapes and takes shape in your swabhava. Give up then all sense that you are the doer; see the Eternal alone as the doer of the action. Let your natural being be an occasion, an instrument, a channel of power, a means of manifestation. Offer up your will to him and make it one with his eternal will: surrender all your actions in the silence of your self and spirit to the transcendent Master of your nature. This cannot be really done or done perfectly so long as there is any ego sense in you or any mental claim or vital clamour. Action done in the least degree for the sake of the ego or tinged with the desire and will of the ego is not a perfect sacrifice. Nor can this great thing be well and truly done so long as there is inequality anywhere or any stamp of ignorant shrinking and preference. But when there is a perfect equality to all works, results, things and persons, a surrender to the Highest and not to desire or ego, then the divine Will determines without stumbling or deflection and the divine Power executes freely without any nether interference or perverting reaction all works in the purity and safety of your transmuted nature. To allow
  --
  "The real truth of all this action of Prakriti is, however, less outwardly mental and more inwardly subjective. It is this that man is an embodied soul involved in material and mental nature, and he follows in it a progressive law of his development determined by an inner law of his being; his cast of spirit makes out his cast of mind and life, his swabhava. Each man has a swadharma, a law of his inner being which he must observe, find out and follow. The action determined by his inner nature, that is his real Dharma. To follow it is the true law of his development; to deviate from it is to bring in confusion, retardation and error. That social, ethical, religious or other law and ideal is best for him always which helps him to observe and follow out his Swadharma.
  "All this action however is even at its best subject to the

2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   | 27-12-23 | Athavale: Purusha, Prakriti, psychic, will, celibacy, obstacles, receiving Guru's help |
   | 01-01-24 | Visitors: Spiritism, medium, Karmayoga |
  --
   | 14-12-40 | A.B. Roy on the Gita and The Life Divine, Para Prakriti |
   | 1942 | Pralaya, Creation, Lila |

2.25 - The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Secondly, it is to put on the divine being and the divine nature. And since God is Sachchidananda, it is to raise our being into the divine being, our consciousness into the divine consciousness, our energy into the divine energy, our delight of existence into the divine delight of being. And it is not only to lift ourselves into this higher consciousness, but to widen into it in all our being, because it is to be found on all the planes of our existence and in all our members, so that our mental, vital, physical existence shall become full of the divine nature. Our intelligent mentality is to become a play of the divine knowledge-will, our mental soul-life a play of the divine love and delight, our vitality a play of the divine life, our physical being a mould of the divine substance. This God-action in us is to be realised by an opening of ourselves to the divine gnosis and divine Ananda and, in its fullness, by an ascent into and a permanent dwelling in the gnosis and the Ananda. For though we live physically on the material plane and in normal outwardgoing life the mind and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with Prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of the inner life we can transform our whole outward-going existence; instead of a life dominated by matter we shall then have a life dominated by spirit with all its circumstances moulded and determined by the purity of being, the consciousness infinite even in the finite, the divine energy, the divine joy and bliss of the spirit.
  This is the goal; we have seen also what are the essentials of the method. But here we have first to consider briefly one side of the question of method which we have hitherto left untouched. In the system of an integral Yoga the principle must be that all life is a part of the Yoga; but the knowledge which we have been describing seems to be not the knowledge of what is ordinarily understood as life, but of something behind life. There are two kinds of knowledge, that which seeks to understand the apparent phenomenon of existence externally, by an approach from outside, through the intellect, -- this is the lower knowledge, the knowledge of the apparent world; secondly, the knowledge which seeks to know the truth of existence from within, in its source and reality, by spiritual realisation. Ordinarily, a sharp distinction is drawn between the two, and it is supposed that when we get to the higher knowledge, the God-knowledge, then the rest, tile world-knowledge, becomes of no concern to us: but in reality they are two sides of one seeking. All knowledge is ultimately the knowledge of God, through himself, through Nature, through her works. Mankind has first to seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller.

2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  One effective way often used to facilitate this entry into the inner self is the separation of the Purusha, the conscious being, from the Prakriti, the formulated nature. If one stands back from the mind and its activities so that they fall silent at will or go on as a surface movement of which one is the detached and disinterested witness, it becomes possible eventually to realise oneself as the inner Self of mind, the true and pure mental being, the Purusha; by similarly standing back from the life activities, it is possible to realise oneself as the inner Self of life, the true and pure vital being, the Purusha; there is even a Self of body of which, by standing back from the body and its demands and activities and entering into a silence of the physical consciousness watching the action of its energy, it is possible to become aware, a true and pure physical being, the Purusha. So too, by standing back from all these activities of nature successively or together, it becomes possible to realise one's inner being as the silent impersonal self, the witness Purusha. This will lead to a spiritual realisation and liberation, but will not necessarily bring about a transformation; for the Purusha, satisfied to be free and himself, may leave the Nature, the Prakriti, to exhaust its accumulated impetus by an unsupported action, a mechanical continuance not renewed and reinforced or vivified and prolonged by his consent, and use this rejection as a means of withdrawing from all nature. The Purusha has to become not only the witness but the knower and source, the master of all the thought and action, and this can only be partially done so long as one remains on the mental level or has still to use the ordinary instrumentation of mind, life and body. A certain mastery can indeed be achieved, but mastery is not transformation; the change made by it cannot be sufficient to be integral: for that it is essential to get back, beyond mind-being, life-being, body-being, still more deeply inward to the psychic entity inmost and profoundest within us - or else to open to the superconscient highest domains. For this penetration into the luminous crypt of the soul one has to get through all the intervening vital stuff to the psychic centre within us, however long, tedious or difficult may be the process. The method of detachment from the insistence of all mental and vital and physical claims and calls and impulsions, a concentration in the heart, austerity, self-purification and rejection of the old mind movements and life movements, rejection of the ego of desire, rejection of false needs and false habits, are all useful aids to this difficult passage: but the strongest, most central way is to found all such or other methods on a self-offering and surrender of ourselves and of our parts of nature to the Divine Being, the Ishwara. A strict obedience to the wise and intuitive leading of a Guide is also normal and necessary for all but a few specially gifted seekers.
  As the crust of the outer nature cracks, as the walls of inner separation break down, the inner light gets through, the inner fire burns in the heart, the substance of the nature and the stuff of consciousness refine to a greater subtlety and purity, and the deeper psychic experiences, those which are not solely of an inner mental or inner vital character, become possible in this subtler, purer, finer substance; the soul begins to unveil itself, the psychic personality reaches its full stature. The soul, the psychic entity, then manifests itself as the central being which upholds mind and life and body and supports all the other powers and functions of the Spirit; it takes up its greater function as the guide and ruler of the nature. A guidance, a governance begins from within which exposes every movement to the light of Truth, repels what is false, obscure, opposed to the divine realisation: every region of the being, every nook and corner of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, mute, recondite, is lighted up with the unerring psychic light, their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentangled, their obscurities, deceptions, self-deceptions precisely indicated and removed; all is purified, set right, the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order. This process may be rapid or tardy according to the amount of obscurity and resistance still left in the nature, but it goes on unfalteringly so long as it is not complete. As a final result the whole conscious being is made perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind, turned towards spiritual truth of thought, feeling, sense, action, tuned to the right responses, delivered from the darkness and stubbornness of the tamasic inertia, the turbidities and turbulences and impurities of the rajasic passion and restless unharmonised kinetism, the enlightened rigidities and sattwic limitations or poised balancements of constructed equilibrium which are the character of the Ignorance.

2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is a first condition of this change that the mental Man we now are should become inwardly aware and in possession of his own deeper law of being and its processes; he must become the psychic and inner mental being master of his energies, no longer a slave of the movements of the lower Prakriti, in control of it, seated securely in a free harmony with a higher law of Nature.
  An increasing control of the individual over his own action of nature, a more and more conscious participation in the action of universal Nature, is a marked character, it is indeed a logical consequence, of the evolutionary principle and process. All action, all mental, vital, physical activities in the world are the operation of a universal Energy, a Consciousness-Force which is the power of the Cosmic Spirit working out the cosmic and individual truth of things. But since this creative Consciousness assumes in Matter a mask of inconscience and puts on the surface appearance of a blind universal Force executing a plan or organisation of things without seeming to know what it is doing, the first result is kin to this appearance; it is the phenomenon of an inconscient physical individualisation, a creation not of beings but of objects. These are formed existences with their own qualities, properties, power of being, character of being; but Nature's plan in them and organisation of them have to be worked out mechanically without any beginning of participation, initiation or conscious awareness in the individual object which emerges as the first dumb result and inanimate field of her action and creation. In animal life the Force begins to become slowly conscious on the surface and puts forth the form, no longer of an object, but of an individual being; but this imperfectly conscious individual, although it participates, senses, feels, yet only works out what the Force does in it without any clear intelligence or observation of what is being done; it seems to have no other choice or will than that which is imposed on it by its formed nature. In human mind there is the first appearance of an observing intelligence that regards what is being done and of a will and choice that have become conscious; but the consciousness is still limited and superficial: the knowledge also is limited and imperfect, it is a partial intelligence, a half understanding, groping and empirical in great part or, if rational, then rational by constructions, theories, formulas. There is not as yet a luminous seeing which knows things by a direct grasp and arranges them with a spontaneous precision according to the seeing, according to the scheme of their inherent truth; although there is a certain element of instinct and intuition and insight which has some beginning of this power, the normal character of human intelligence is an inquiring reason or reflective thought which observes, supposes, infers, concludes, arrives by labour at a constructed truth, a constructed scheme of knowledge, a deliberately arranged action of its own making. Or rather this is what it strives to be and partly is; for its knowledge and will are constantly invaded, darkened or frustrated by forces of the being which are half-blind instruments of the mechanism of Nature.
  --
  But this highest condition is difficult and must evidently take long to bring about; for the participation and consent of the Purusha to the transition is not sufficient, there must be also the consent and participation of the Prakriti. It is not only the central thought and will that have to acquiesce, but all the parts of our being must assent and surrender to the law of the spiritual Truth; all has to learn to obey the government of the conscious Divine Power in the members. There are obstinate difficulties in our being born of its evolutionary constitution which militate against this assent. For some of these parts are still subject to the inconscience and subconscience and to the lower automatism of habit or so-called law of the nature, - mechanical habit of mind, habit of life, habit of instinct, habit of personality, habit of character, the ingrained mental, vital, physical needs, impulses, desires of the natural man, the old functionings of all kinds that are rooted there so deep that it would seem as if we had to dig to abysmal foundations in order to get them out: these parts refuse to give up their response to the lower law founded in the Inconscient; they continually send up to the conscious mind and life the old reactions and seek to reaffirm them there as the eternal rule of Nature. Other parts of the being are less obscure and mechanical and rooted in inconscience, but all are imperfect and attached to their imperfection and have their own obstinate reactions; the vital part is wedded to the law of selfaffirmation and desire, the mind is attached to its own formed movements, and both are willingly obedient to the inferior law of the Ignorance. And yet the law of participation and the law of surrender are imperative; at each step of the transition the assent of the Purusha is needed and there must be too the consent of each part of the nature to the action of the higher power for its change. There must be then a conscious self-direction of the mental being in us towards this change, this substitution of Supernature for the old nature, this transcendence. The rule of conscious obedience to the higher truth of the spirit, the surrender of the whole being to the light and power that come from the Supernature, is a second condition which has to be accomplished slowly and with difficulty by the being itself before the supramental transformation can become at all possible.
  It follows that the psychic and the spiritual transformation must be far advanced, even as complete as may be, before there can be any beginning of the third and consummating supramental change; for it is only by this double transmutation that the self-will of the Ignorance can be totally altered into a spiritual obedience to the remoulding truth and will of the greater Consciousness of the Infinite. A long, difficult stage of constant effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, tapasya, has ordinarily to be traversed before a more decisive stage can be reached in which a state of self-giving of all the being to the Supreme Being and the Supreme Nature can become total and absolute. There has to be a preliminary stage of seeking and effort with a central offering or self-giving of the heart and soul and mind to the Highest and a later mediate stage of total conscious reliance on its greater Power aiding the personal endeavour; that integral reliance again must grow into a final complete abandonment of oneself in every part and every movement to the working of the higher Truth in the nature.
  --
  A supramental change of the whole substance of the being and therefore necessarily of all its characters, powers, movements takes place when the involved supermind in Nature emerges to meet and join with the supramental light and power descending from Supernature. The individual must be the instrument and first field of the transformation; but an isolated individual transformation is not enough and may not be wholly feasible. Even when achieved, the individual change will have a permanent and cosmic significance only if the individual becomes a centre and a sign for the establishment of the supramental Consciousness-Force as an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings of Nature, - in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness-Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body, - for the body consciousness also must become sufficiently awake to be a fit instrument of the workings of the new supramental Force and its new order. Till then any intermediate change could be only partial or insecure; an overmind or intuitive instrumentation of Nature could be developed, but it would be a luminous formation imposed on a fundamental and environmental Inconscience. A supramental principle and its cosmic operation once established permanently on its own basis, the intervening powers of Overmind and spiritual Mind could found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection; they would become in the earth-existence a hierarchy of states of consciousness rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme spiritual level. Mind and mental humanity would remain as one step in the spiritual evolution; but other degrees above it would be there formed and accessible by which the embodied mental being, as it became ready, could climb into the gnosis and change into an embodied supramental and spiritual being. On this basis the principle of a divine life in terrestrial Nature would be manifested; even the world of ignorance and inconscience might discover its own submerged secret and begin to realise in each lower degree its divine significance.

2.27 - The Gnostic Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The individual nature would be nothing separate, it would be a current of the Supernature. All antinomy of the Purusha and the Prakriti, that curious division and unbalance of the Soul and Nature which afflicts the Ignorance, would be entirely removed; for the nature would be the outflowing of the self-force of the Person and the Person would be the outflowing of the supreme Nature, the supramental power of being of the Ishwara. It is this supreme truth of his being, an infinitely harmonic principle, that would create the order of his spiritual freedom, an au thentic, automatic and plastic order.
  In the lower existence the order is automatic, the binding of Nature complete, her groove firm and imperative: the cosmic Consciousness-Force evolves a pattern of Nature and its habitual mould or fixed round of action and obliges the infrarational being to live and act according to the pattern and in the mould or round made for it. Mind in man starts with this prearranged pattern and routine, but, as it evolves, it enlarges the design and expands the mould and tries to replace this fixed unconscious or half-conscious law of automatism by an order based on ideas and significances and accepted life-motives, or it attempts an intelligent standardisation and a framework determined by rational purpose, utility and convenience. There is nothing really binding or permanent in man's knowledgestructures or his life-structures; but still he cannot but create standards of thought, knowledge, personality, life, conduct and, more or less consciously and completely, base his existence on them or, at least, try his best to frame his life in the ideative cadre of his chosen or accepted dharmas. In the passage to the spiritual life the supreme ideal held up is, on the contrary, not law, but liberty in the spirit; the spirit breaks through all formulas to find its self and, if it has still to be concerned with expression, it must arrive at the liberty of a free and true instead of an artificial expression, a true and spontaneous spiritual order. "Abandon all dharmas, all standards and rules of being and action, and take refuge in Me alone", is the summit rule of the highest existence held up by the Divine Being to the seeker. In the seeking for this freedom, in the liberation from constructed law into law of self and spirit, in the casting away of the mental control in order to substitute for it the control of the spiritual Reality, an abandonment of the lower constructed truth of mind for the higher essential truth of being, it is possible to pass through a stage in which there is an inner freedom but a lack of outer order, - an action in the flux of nature childlike or inert like a leaf lying passive or driven by the wind or even incoherent or extravagant in outer semblance. It is possible also to arrive at a temporary ordered spiritual expression of the self which is sufficient for the stage one can reach for a time or in this life; or it may be a personal order of self-expression valid according to the norm of what one has already realised of the spiritual truth but afterwards changing freely by the force of spirituality to express the yet larger truth that one goes on to realise.

2.2.9.02 - Plato, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Of course not. It is obvious that they are thinking of the mental and vital Prakriti or that part of the being which is involved in Prakriti, not of the Purusha.
  The idea that the soul has to get knowledge at all would seem to us to be without meaning unless we take it in the sense that one has to develop the intuition as an instrumental faculty.

2.2.9.04 - Plotinus, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Plotinus says [according to Weber, p. 171]: Intelligence is the first divine emanation. Creation is a fall, a progressive degeneration of the divine. In the intelligence, the absolute unity of God splits up into intelligence proper and the intelligible world. Does he mean the separation that begins to take place at Overmind or the Para and Apara Prakriti?
  He was speaking of the cosmic mind, I suppose. In these philosophies there is no distinction made between different grades of mind or between intellect and the consciousness beyond the intellectual.

2.3.01 - Concentration and Meditation, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If the difficulty in meditation is that thoughts of all kinds come in, that is not due to hostile forces but to the ordinary nature of the human mind. All sadhaks have this difficulty and with many it lasts for a very long time. There are several ways of getting rid of it. One of them is to look at the thoughts and observe what is the nature of the human mind as they show it but not to give any sanction and to let them run down till they come to a standstill - this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in hisa Rajayoga. Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction - the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this way it usually happens that after a time the mind divides into two, a part which is the mental witness watching and perfectly undisturbed and quiet and a part which is the object of observation, the Prakriti part in which the thoughts cross or wander. Afterwards one can proceed to silence or quiet the Prakriti part also. There is a third, an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before they enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence.
  If you try to apply everything you read, there will be no end to your new beginnings. One can stop thinking by rejecting the thoughts and in the silence discover oneself. One can do it by letting the thoughts run down while one detaches oneself from them. There are a number of other ways. This one related in Brunton's book seems to me the Adwaita-jnani method of separating oneself from body, vital, mind, by viveka, discrimination, "I am not the body, I am not the life, I am not the mind" till he gets to the self, separate from mind, life and body. That also is one way of doing it. There is also the separation of Purusha from Prakriti till one becomes the witness only and feels separate from all the activities as the Witness Consciousness. There are other methods also.
  The method of gathering of the mind is not an easy one. It is better to watch and separate oneself from the thoughts till one becomes aware of a quiet space within into which they come from outside.
  --
  The first thing to do is to realise that this thought-flow is not yourself, it is not you who are thinking, but thought that is going on in the mind. It is Prakriti with its thought-energy that is raising all this whirl of thought in you, imposing it on the Purusha. You as the Purusha must stand back as the witness observing the action, but refusing to identify yourself with it.
  The next thing is to exercise a control and reject the thoughts - though sometimes by the very act of detachment the thoughthabit falls away or diminishes during the meditation and there is a sufficient silence or at any rate a quietude which makes it easy to reject the thoughts that come and fix oneself on the object of meditation. If one becomes aware of the thoughts as coming from outside, from the universal Nature, then one can throw them away before they reach the mind; in that way the mind finally falls silent. If neither of these things happens, a persistent practice of rejection becomes necessary - there should be no struggle or wrestling with the thoughts, but only a quiet selfseparation and refusal. Success does not come at first, but if consent is constantly withheld, the mechanical whirl eventually lessens and begins to die away and one can then have at will an inner quietude or silence.

2.3.02 - Opening, Sincerity and the Mother's Grace, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Divine's only. Now, if the whole being were sincere in that sense even to every cell of the body, what could prevent the most rapid transformation? People cannot be like that, however much the enlightened part of them may want to, because of the nature of the Ignorance out of which the ordinary Prakriti has been built
  - hence the necessity of a long and laborious working.

2.3.02 - The Supermind or Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  One can of course realise Sachchidananda in relation to the mind, life, body also - but then it is something stable, supporting by its presence the lower Prakriti, but not transforming it.
  The supermind alone can transform the lower nature.

2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Prakriti that makes them do it - if the Purusha does not refuse his consent. The Mother here is not this lower Prakriti, but the
  Divine Shakti and it is her work to press on this lower Nature to change. You can say that under the pressure, the Prakriti stumbles and is unable to reply perfectly and makes mistakes.
  But it is not the Mother who makes you do wrong movements or does the wrong movements in you - if you think that, you

2.3.05 - Sadhana through Work for the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If you think all your actions come from the Mother, then of course it will have that effect - the actions come from Prakriti.
  Work is a different matter, for it is the Mother's work you are
  --
  So long as one is not conscious of the Force working through one, one is moved by the Prakriti. The Prakriti may be used sometimes by the Divine for some work to be done, but that is not what is meant in the Yoga by being an "instrument".
  I do not know to what you refer as regards X, - his poetry was inspired by us and he felt it and it certainly helped several people; to that extent he was an effective instrument for the work so long as he was in the right attitude. Naturally, it is for the work that one can be an instrument, not for things like sex which have nothing to do with the Yoga or the work. But the real instrumentality begins when the consciousness of the Force

2.3.07 - The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The true vital is in the inner consciousness, the external is that which is instrumental for the present play of Prakriti in the surface personality. When the change comes, the true vital rejects what is out of tune with its own truth from the external and makes it a true instrument for its expression, a means of expression of its inner will, not a thing of responses to the suggestions of the lower Nature. The strong distinction between the two practically disappears.
  The higher and lower [vital] are divisions of the ordinary vital and equally ignorant. It is the true vital that is in contact with the Divine.

2.3.1 - Ego and Its Forms, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  No, it need not.1 It is so thought because the old Yogas did not care about the liberation of the body and other instruments, and thought only of the separation of the soul from the Prakriti. If you do not liberate the Prakriti, ego and other forms of bondage will naturally remain so long as there is any action of Prakriti.
    The correspondent asked whether egoism remains, at least in the physical being, as long as the body remains.Ed.
  --
  The sense of ego can disappear into that of the Self or the Purusha but that of itself does not bring about the disappearance of the old ego reactions in the Prakriti. The Purusha has to get rid of these by a process of constant rejection and remoulding. The remoulding consists in throwing everything into a consecration to the Mother and doing all for her without regard to oneself, ones desires, opinions, vital reactions as if they were the things to be fulfilled. This is most easily done if the psychic being becomes quite awake.
  ***

2.3.2 - Desire, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Most men are, like animals, driven by the forces of Nature: whatever desires come, they fulfil them, whatever emotions come they allow them to play, whatever physical wants they have, they try to satisfy. We say then that the activities and feelings of men are controlled by their Prakriti, and mostly by the vital and physical nature. The body is the instrument of the Prakriti or Natureit obeys its own nature or it obeys the vital forces of desire, passion, etc.
  But man has also a mind and, as he develops, he learns to control his vital and physical nature by his reason and by his will. This control is very partial: for the reason is often deluded by vital desires and the ignorance of the physical and it puts itself on their side and tries to justify by its ideas, reasonings or arguments their mistakes and wrong movements. Even if the reason keeps free and tells the vital or the body, Do not do this, yet the vital and the body often follow their own movement in spite of the prohibitionmans mental will is not strong enough to compel them.
  --
  All the ordinary vital movements are foreign to the true being and come from outside; they do not belong to the soul nor do they originate in it but are waves from the general Nature, Prakriti.
  The desires come from outside, enter the subconscious vital and rise to the surface. It is only when they rise to the surface and the mind becomes aware of them, that we become conscious of the desire. It seems to us to be our own because we feel it thus rising from the vital into the mind and do not know that it came from outside. What belongs to the vital, to the being, what makes it responsible is not the desire itself, but the habit of responding to the waves or the currents of suggestion that come into it from the universal Prakriti.
  ***
  --
  When one lives in the true consciousness one feels the desires outside oneself, entering from outside, from the universal lower Prakriti, into the mind and the vital parts. In the ordinary human condition this is not felt; men become aware of the desire only when it is there, when it has come inside and found a lodging or a habitual harbourage and so they think it is their own and a part of themselves. The first condition for getting rid of desire is, therefore, to become conscious with the true consciousness; for then it becomes much easier to dismiss it than when one has to struggle with it as if it were a constituent part of oneself to be thrown out from the being. It is easier to cast off an accretion than to excise what is felt as a parcel of our substance.
  When the psychic being is in front, then also to get rid of desire becomes easy; for the psychic being has in itself no desires, it has only aspirations and a seeking and love for the Divine and all things that are or tend towards the Divine. The constant prominence of the psychic being tends of itself to bring out the true consciousness and set right almost automatically the movements of the nature.

28.01 - Observations, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Vedantin seeks to cut away the vital urge - the Purusha separating itself and keeping apart and aloof from the movements of Prakriti, - to push them away from or outside your field of consciousness. It is the path after all of rejection and forgetfulness.
   The Tantric is a hero, he does not avoid or bypass the difficulty, he faces the vital urge but not in his own strength, his own individual capacity but invokes the Mother's help; he calls the Mother; the Divine Prakriti into himself so that she fights the battle for him; he simply lies quiet behind, perhaps like the Lord Shiva at her feet. The battle is fought by the Divine herself, the victory he enjoys - even like the victory of the gods given to them by the Divine U ma.
   But the Vaishnava has followed the safer and a more pleasant line of approaching the problem seeking refuge in Balakrishna.

30.09 - Lines of Tantra (Charyapada), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   maya.Akin to this line of Vedantic thought is the doctrine of Sankhya which makes the Purusha or Conscious Being separate from Prakriti or Nature, places Purusha outside or above Prakriti, declares the Purusha as entirely conscious whereas Prakriti is unconscious. Tantra on the other hand places Purusha not outside or above Prakriti, but rather brings Him down into the heart of Prakriti and establishes Him there; Shakti is not transcended by Shiva, Shiva is within Shakti. Not even satisfied with that, Tantra reverses the position altogether by placing Shiva under the feet of Shakti.
   The Vedantic discipline is in a sense comparatively simple and easy. For it takes one straight path to the heights by rejecting all with its formula of "not this", "not that", neti, neti,its method is to fix the consciousness in the head, at the centre of knowledge, and from there to move to the higher levels with the Purusha-consciousness as the mainstay. Tantra has clung to Mother-Nature, that is, it has not sought to reject and deny the existence of the vital and physical movements. Its aim has been to establish on a sound basis these so-called lower but stronger movements, by controlling them and purifying them into their true elements. The ordinary man, every man in fact, has to live with his body and vital being, with the physical life and the vital force as his main supports. Since these things exist, they must have a purpose. They alone can delve into the mystery of the ordinary life who have been living the ordinary life. That is why this line of discipline is described as the line of the natural man; this is the Natural Path, the Way of Sahajiya. This Path has had greater attractions for the commonalty of men than for the learned men of intellect with their education and culture. It is among the lowest classes that it has found most votaries; there its influence has spread, there it has been best known.

3.1.01 - Distinctive Features of the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It happens that people may get the descent without noticing that it is a descent because they feel the result only. The ordinary Yoga does not go beyond the spiritual mindpeople feel at the top of the head the joining with the Brahman, but they are not aware of a consciousness above the head. In the same way in the ordinary Yoga one feels the ascent of the awakened inner consciousness (Kundalini) to the brahmarandhra where the Prakriti joins the Brahman-consciousness, but they do not feel the descent. Some may have had these things, but I dont know that they understood their nature, principle or place in a complete sadhana. At least I never heard of these things from others before I found them out in my own experience. The reason is that the old Yogins when they went above the spiritual mind passed into samadhi, which means that they did not attempt to be conscious in these higher planes their aim being to pass away into the Superconscient and not to bring the Superconscient into the waking consciousness, which is that of my Yoga.
  ***

3.1.02 - Spiritual Evolution and the Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - the Daivic nature would predominate, the Asuro-RakshasoPishachic Prakriti which now holds so large a place would more and more recede and lose its power. A principle of greater unity, harmony and light would emerge everywhere. It is not that the creation in the Ignorance would be altogether abolished, but it would begin to lose much of its elements of pain and falsehood and would be more a progression from lesser to higher Truth, from a lesser to a higher harmony, from a lesser to a higher Light, than the reign of chaos and struggle, of darkness and error that we now perceive. For according to all occult teaching the evolutionary creation could have been such but for the intervention of the Powers of Darkness - all traditions including that of the
  Veda and Upanishads point under different figures to the same thing. In the Upanishads it is the Daityas that smite with evil all that the gods create, in the Zoroastrian tradition it is Ahriman coming across the work of Ahura Mazda, the Chaldean tradition uses a different figure. But the significance is the same; it is the perception of something that has struck across the harmonious development of creation and brought in the principle of darkness and disorder. The occult tradition also foresees the elimination of this disturbing element by the descent of a divine Principle or

31.02 - The Mother- Worship of the Bengalis, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   If we want our nature to blossom and be fruitful, if human life has to be purified and moulded into the image of a greater truth, then we must worship Prakriti or Nature by committing ourselves and our all to the care of the Primal Power. Otherwise, who will establish law and order in our nature? Nature herself can formulate her own laws, can manifest the Law of her true Being. Man's personal efforts can hardly do that, nor can the static and passive Supreme Being by Himself do that.
   ***

3.1.04 - Transformation in the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Light of realisation is not the same thing as Descent. Realisation by itself does not necessarily transform the being as a whole; it may bring only an opening or heightening or widening of the consciousness at the top so as to realise something in the Purusha part without any radical change in the parts of Prakriti. One may have some light of realisation at the spiritual summit of the consciousness but the parts below remain what they were. I have seen any number of instances of that. There must be a descent of the light not merely into the mind or part of it but into all the being down to the physical and below before a real and total transformation can take place. A light in the mind may spiritualise or otherwise change the mind or part of it in one way or another, but it need not change the vital nature; a light in the vital may purify and enlarge the vital movements or else silence and immobilise the vital being, but leave the body and the physical consciousness as it was, or even leave it inert or shake its balance. And the descent of Light is not enough, it must be the descent of the whole higher consciousness, its Peace, Power, Knowledge, Love, Ananda. Moreover, the descent may be enough to liberate, but not to perfect, or it may be enough to make a great change in the inner being, while the outer remains an imperfect instrument, clumsy, sick or unexpressive. Finally, the transformation effected by the sadhana cannot be complete unless it is a supramentalisation of the being. Psychisation is not enough, it is only a beginning; spiritualisation and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by the individual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definitive stride forward it must take at one time or another.
  I have never said that my Yoga was something brand new in all its elements. I have called it the integral Yoga and that means that it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogasits newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method. In the earlier stages which is all I deal with in books like the Riddle or the Lights1 there is nothing in it that distinguishes it from the old Yogas except the aim underlying its comprehensiveness, the spirit in its movements and the ultimate significance it keeps before italso the scheme of its psychology and its working, but as that was not and could not be developed systematically or schematically in these letters, it has not been grasped by those who are not already acquainted with it by mental familiarity or some amount of practice. The detail or method of the later stages of the Yoga which go into little known or untrodden regions, I have not made public and I do not at present intend to do so.
  --
  Sri Aurobindo1 has no remarks to make on Huxleys comments with which he is in entire agreement. But in the phrase to its heights we can always reach very obviously we does not refer to humanity in general but to those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life.2 It is probable that Sri Aurobindo was thinking of his own experience. After three years of spiritual effort with only minor results he was shown by a Yogi the way to silence his mind. This he succeeded in doing entirely in two or three days by following the method shown. There was an entire silence of thought and feeling and all the ordinary movements of consciousness except the perception and recognition of things around without any accompanying concept or other reaction. The sense of ego disappeared and the movements of the ordinary life as well as speech and action were carried on by some habitual activity of Prakriti alone which was not felt as belonging to oneself. But the perception which remained saw all things as utterly unreal; this sense of unreality was overwhelming and universal. Only some undefinable Reality was perceived as true which was beyond space and time and unconnected with any cosmic activity but yet was met wherever one turned. This condition remained unimpaired for several months and even when the sense of unreality disappeared and there was a return to participation in the world-consciousness, the inner peace and freedom which resulted from this realisation remained permanently behind all surface movements and the essence of the realisation itself was not lost. At the same time an experience intervened; something else than himself took up his dynamic activity and spoke and acted through him but without any personal thought or initiative. What this was remained unknown until Sri Aurobindo came to realise the dynamic side of the Brahman, the Ishwara, and felt himself moved by that in all his sadhana and action. These realisations and others which followed upon them, such as that of the Self in all and all in the Self and all as the Self, the Divine in all and all in the Divine, are the heights to which Sri Aurobindo refers and to which he says we can always rise; for they presented to him no long or obstinate difficulty. The only real difficulty which took decades of spiritual effort to carry out towards completeness was to apply the spiritual knowledge utterly to the world and to the surface psychological and outer life and to effect its transformation both on the higher levels of Nature and on the ordinary mental, vital and physical levels down to the subconscience and the basic Inconscience and up to the supreme Truth-consciousness or Supermind in which alone the dynamic transformation could be entirely integral and absolute.
    In this letter to a disciple living outside the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo refers to himself in the third person.Ed.

3.1.3 - Difficulties of the Physical Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What you describe is what the Gita means by the realisation that all action is done by the Prakriti. You feel it mechanical because you are in the physical consciousness where all is mechanism. On the mental and vital plane one can have the same experience, but of the actions as a play of forces. What is lacking at present to you is the other side of the experience, viz. that of the silent Atman or else of the witness Purusha calm, tranquil, free, pure and undisturbed by the play of the Prakriti. It tries to come and you are on the point of going into it, but the tendency of externalisation is still too strong. This tendency took you when you came down into the physical for it is the nature of the ordinary physical consciousness to precipitate itself into the action of the external personality. You have to get back the power of the internal consciousness, above as Atman, below as Purusha first witness and then master of the nature.
  ***

3.2.01 - On Ideals, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   material working in which the Prakriti, the executive Power, is veiled by its works, by the facts it produces, and itself veils the consciousness which originates and supports all its workings.
  In Life the force emerges and becomes vibrant in the very surface of its works; last, in Mind the underlying consciousness reveals itself. So too man is at first subject in his mentality to the facts which his senses envisage, cannot go behind and beyond them, knows only the impressions they make on his receptive mind. The animal is executive, not creative; a passive tool of Matter and Life he does not seek in his thought and will to react upon and use them: the human being too in his less developed state is executive rather than creative; he limits his view to the present and to his environment, works so as to live from day to day, accepts what he is without reaching forward in thought to what he may be, has no ideals. In proportion as he goes beyond the fact and seeks to anticipate Nature, to catch the ideas and principles behind her workings and finally to seize the idea that is not yet realised in fact and himself preside over its execution, he becomes originative and creative and no longer merely executive. He begins thus his passage from subjection to mastery.

3.2.02 - The Veda and the Upanishads, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I doubt whether the condition of which you speak is that of the realised Vedantin1except of course the loss of the sense of personality and the non-identification with desire and the movements of Prakriti. Still perhaps the condition of the jaavat Paramhansa (like Jada Bharata) may resemble it. The theory of prrabdha karma goes farther than thatit assumes that even if there are vital movements, that is also only the continuance of the machine of Prakriti and will drop off at death. They may, perhaps. I dont base the gospel of the transformation of Nature on an impossibility of taking a static release as final the static release is necessary, but I dont consider that to take it as final is the object of coming into world-existence. I hold that the static release is only a beginning, a first step in the Divine. If anyone is satisfied with the first step as all that is possible for him, I have no objection to his taking it like that.
    The correspondent wrote that he felt dull, sleepy and mechanical, with no sense of desire or personality; therefore he could easily imagine why the realised Vedantin could say that with the static realisation of Brahman one's past karma would fall off at death.Ed.

3.2.04 - Sankhya and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the spiritual thought of India during the time of the Rishis and even before, the Sankhya and Vedanta elements were always combined. The Sankhya account of the constitution of the being (Purusha, Prakriti, the elements, Indriyas, Buddhi etc.) was universally accepted and Kapila was mentioned with veneration everywhere. In the Gita he is mentioned among the great Vibhutis; Krishna says, I am Kapila among the sages.
  ***

3.2.05 - The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Gita does not speak expressly of the Divine Mother; it speaks always of surrender to the Purushottamait mentions her only as the Para Prakriti who becomes the Jiva, i.e., who manifests the Divine in the multiplicity and through whom all these worlds are created by the Supreme and he himself descends as the Avatar. The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishwara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it; the Tantrik tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishwari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother, because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it. This Yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the Yoga.
  In regard to the Purushottama the Divine Mother is the supreme divine Consciousness and Power above the worlds, Adya Shakti; she carries the Supreme in herself and manifests the Divine in the worlds through the Akshara and the Kshara. In regard to the Akshara she is the same Para Shakti holding the Purusha immobile in herself and also herself immobile in him at the back of all creation. In regard to the Kshara she is the mobile cosmic Energy manifesting all beings and forces.

3.2.06 - The Adwaita of Shankaracharya, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But philosophically this is what your Gurus teaching comes to and it is obviously a completer truth and a wider knowledge than that given by the Shankara formula. It is already indicated in the Gitas teaching of the Purushottama and the Parashakti (Adya Shakti) who becomes the Jiva and upholds the universe. It is evident that Purushottama and Parashakti are both eternal and are inseparable and one in being; the Parashakti manifests the universe, manifests too the Divine in the universe as the Ishwara and herself appears at his side as the Ishwari Shakti. Or, one may say, it is the Supreme Consciousness-Power of the Supreme that manifests or puts forth itself as Ishwara Ishwari, Atma Atmashakti, Purusha Prakriti, Jiva Jagat. That is the truth in its completeness as far as the mind can formulate it. In the Supermind these questions do not even arise for it is the mind that creates the problem by erecting oppositions between aspects of the Divine which are not really opposed to each other but are one and inseparable.
  This supramental knowledge has not yet been attained, because the supermind itself has not been attained, but the reflection of it in intuitive spiritual consciousness is there and that was what was evidently realised in experience by your Guru and what he was expressing in mental terms in the quoted passage. It is possible to go towards this knowledge by beginning with the experience of dissolution in the One, but on condition that you do not stop there, taking it as the highest Truth, but proceed to realise the same One as the supreme Mother, the Consciousness Force of the Eternal. If on the other hand you approach through the supremeMo ther, she will give you the liberation in the silent One also as well as the realisation of the dynamic One and from that it is easier to arrive at the Truth in which both are one and inseparable. At the same time the gulf created by Mind between the Supreme and his Manifestation is bridged and there is no longer a fissure in the truth which makes all incomprehensible. If in the light of this you examine what your Guru taught, you will see that it is the same thing in less metaphysical language.

3.2.09 - The Teachings of Some Modern Indian Yogis, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I think Ramatirthas realisations were more mental than anything else. He had opening of the higher mind and a realisation there of the cosmic Self, but I find no evidence of a transformed mind and vital; that transformation is not a result or object of the Yoga of Knowledge. The realisation of the Yoga of Knowledge is when one feels that one lives in the wideness of something silent, featureless and universal (called the Self) and all else is seen as only forms and names; the Self is real, nothing else. The realisation of my self in other forms is a part of this or a step towards it, but in the full realisation the my should drop so that there is only the one Self or rather only the Brahman. For the Self is merely a subjective aspect of the Brahman, just as the Ishwara is its objective aspect. That is the Vedantic Knowledge. Its result is peace, silence, liberation. As for the active Prakriti, (mind, vital, body), the Yoga of Knowledge does not make it its aim to transform them that would be no use as the idea is that if the liberation has come, it will all drop off at death. The only change wanted is to get rid of the idea of ego and realise as true only the supreme Self, the Brahman.
  ***

3.2.3 - Dreams, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the waking state you are conscious only of a certain limited field and action of your nature. In sleep you can become vividly aware of things beyond this fielda larger mental or vital nature behind the waking state or else a subtler physical or a subconscient nature which contains much that is there in you but not distinguishably active in the waking state. All these obscure tracts have to be cleared or else there can be no change of the Prakriti. You should not allow yourself to be disturbed by the press of vital or subconscient dreams for these two make up the larger part of dream-experience but aspire to get rid of these things and of the activities they indicate, to be conscious and reject all but the divine Truth; the more you get that Truth and cling to it in the waking state, rejecting all else, the more all this inferior dream-stuff will get clear.
  ***
  --
  The last three dreams described by you are of this character. The figures are supplied from the old social life in England,though the place is not England; in the first, with some attempt at structure, in the others in a more haphazard inconsequent way; but so far as that goes, all seem trivial and unmeaning and, as one might say, not worth dreaming. The strong significant power and purposefulness and quite intelligible symbolism of the higher vital, the psychic or the mental dream-experiences is not there. But still there are in the first dream three points de repre, the railway-journey, the meeting with the father and mother, the communion, and these all are suggestive symbols. The railway-journey is always in vital dreams a symbol of a journey or progress of the inner being; here it is in the vital consciousness that some movement of progress is under way and it is in the course of it that you get down at a station, that is to say in some particular region of the lower vital where you meet your father and mother. A meeting of this kind by itself might simply be an actual encounter on the vital plane with some contact or interchange there for in the vital one can meet thus both those who have passed beyond and those who are still in the body. But once the presence of a symbolism is established, it is probable that the father and mother are also part of the symbolism and, as they very often do, represent what might be called the Purusha and Prakriti of that particular kingdom. If it is an actual encounter, it must be with some part of their vital selves which is in sympathy with or representative of this domain, not with the actual persons, not with their whole selves. But the assistant here is clearly not any earthly person, but a being of this world who embodies one of its characteristic forces, the zeal of a dogmatic and ritual religious traditionalism without any deeper spirit or experience behind it; it is with this external ritualism that you clash in the dream, he insisting on the form, you careless of the form and admitting it only as a means for contact with the original spiritual truth behind it. That would justify our taking the whole thing as symbolism, representing a special lower vital worldone which plays a large part in moulding this external human life as it is now. It is a world of social forms, social and domestic feelings, social intercourse; whatever appearance of spiritual life there is, is traditional and formal: this is what you felt in the blessing of your father. The last part of the dream is more obscure there is evidently a meaning in the luggage and the lost trunk, but the clue is insufficient; if one could catch it, it would probably explain why you got down at all in this province of the lower vital world instead of continuing your journey.
  This is a very good example of the nature of these dreams and their indications and that is why I have dealt with it at a greater length than its importance seems to warrant. The other two are of the same world, but the third is ambiguous and in the second the clue is missing. The second, if taken as only an encounter with ordinary beings of the human world met on the vital plane seems merely absurd and trivial; but if the people represent forces or movements of this particular vital province, then some meaning is there for I have always found that there is something which even the most casual or insignificant dreams of this kind are trying to indicate. If we take the two dreams together, the elderly lady would represent the interest certain beings in this kind of world take in some kind of pseudo-spiritual stuff of the lower occultist kind, e.g. Steiners anthroposophytaken by her more as a fad than anything else, a fad which she imposes on her guests. That would explain her wanting to sit in the rain for the rain is a symbol of a descent from some other consciousness, and it would explain also the remark of the guest who had been in India, that is to say in some hot-air province of this world where the contact with occultist spirituality or pseudo-spirituality could be had more abundantly than here! To the physical mind the working out of the imagery is absurd and illogical, but this kind of dream cares only to get its symbols through and, not addressing itself to the mind, it disregards logical coherence. The whiskey would be the image of the dram drinking which this kind of occultism can be; along with the rain it would be the clue image.

3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I spoke of the personal Overselfmeaning the realisation of something in us (the Purusha) that is not the Prakriti, not the movements of mind, vital or physical, but something that is the Thinker, etc. This Purusha can give assent to any movement of nature or withhold it or it can direct the Prakriti what to do or not to do. It can allow it to indulge sex or withhold indulgence. It is usually the mental Purusha (Manomaya Purusha) that one thus realises, but there is also the Pranamaya or vital Purusha. By the word Overself they probably mean this Purusha they take it as a sort of personal Atman.
  ***
  --
  Pranayama and other physical practices like asana do not necessarily root out sexual desire sometimes by increasing enormously the vital force in the body they can even exaggerate in a rather startling way the force too of the sexual tendency, which, being at the base of the physical life, is always difficult to conquer. The one thing to do is to separate oneself from these movements, to find ones inner self and live in it; these movements will not then any longer appear as belonging to oneself but as surface impositions of the outer Prakriti upon the inner self or Purusha. They can then be more easily discarded or brought to nothing.
  ***
  --
  Hurting the flesh is no remedy for the sex-impulse, though it may be a temporary diversion. It is the vital and mostly the vital-physical that takes the sense-perception as pleasant or otherwise. If by the real Being you mean the silent Atman, that does not identify itself [with the sex-sensation], but is felt as standing aloof. If you mean the Purusha, the sensation is a movement of Prakriti and the Purusha can stand back from it and reject it or identify and accept it.
  Reduction of diet has not usually a permanent effect; it may give a greater sense of physical or vital-physical purity, lighten the system and reduce certain kinds of tamas. But the sex-impulse can very well accommodate itself to a reduced diet. It is not by physical means but by a change in the consciousness that these things can be surmounted.
  --
  I meant by cutting off [the sex-impulse] a determined rejection of the inward as well as the outward movement whenever it comes. Something in the nature accepts and lets itself go helplessly and something in the mind allows it to do so. The mind does not seem to believe in its power to say No definitely to inward movements as it would to an outer contactand yet the Purusha is there and can put its definite No, maintaining it till the Prakriti has to submitor else till the confirming touch from above makes its determination perfectly effective.
  ***

33.08 - I Tried Sannyas, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We were indeed well on the way to sannyasain that life of Brahmacharya and single blessedness. The first time it had been myself, my own self or soul, who rejected sannyasa.The second time the veto was pronounced by the Supreme Soul, the Lord - Sri Aurobindo himself. And the third time it was the Supreme Prakriti, the Universal Mother who it seems scented the danger and hastened as if personally to intervene and. bar that way of escape for ever, by piling up against us the heaven-kissing thorny hedge of wedlock. Three of us got caught in this manner, although the other two did find a way of escape.
   ***

34.07 - The Bride of Brahman, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   It is the story of Redemption of Maya, the Lower Nature (Apara Prakriti), its purification or uplifting into the higher Divine Nature (Para Prakriti). The question is always asked how did Maya enter into and possess Brahman, how did darkness envelope and eclipse Light? It was the result of a separation, a rift between Brahman and his Shakti. Originally it was one unique indivisible Reality. But this rift came and the Supreme Prakriti was thrown down into the ignorance of densest matter (and the Supreme Brahman went off into mere Sator Asat,Shunyam).
   The Rishi says here that this fall and eclipse was for a greater Rising, this eclipse was for a supreme Revelation. It is for a sovereign Fulfilment, a mighty Enjoyment (urjam prthivya bhaktvaya)of earth, upon earth. The Rishi speaks of how the ignorant dark material nature is raised, transmuted step by step into the supreme nature and unified with the Supreme Reality, Brahman. The agents, the powers that help and operate the process are the high Gods who belong to the Super-nature, God's own pure nature. The principal Gods mentioned here are Varuna which means Infinite Consciousness, Mitra, Supreme Harmony and Love, Agni, the Fiery Force of ascension or Tapas, Soma, the supreme Delight and Vayu, the Lord of the vital who breaks down all barriers and difficulties and forges on. Now the process of redemption is a sacrificial journey, the image of the progressive forward and upward march of the consciousness profusely described in the Vedas and so dear to the Rishis. The process here described is also a process of re-marriage.Brahman's dark bride is the fallen dark Nature: She is being taken back to him led by the Gods, each bringing his own gift and pouring into and securing the ascent and Redemption. In secular marriage seven steps are spoken of which the couple has to take and go forward towards the complete union. Here the bride is made to take three major steps, and at each step she is married to a higher and diviner mode of being. The first transformation is done when she is united with Brahmana.

3.4.1 - The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  You cannot begin again; it would be too difficult a thing in this confusion. You have to get back to the point at which you deviated. If you can get back to the Peace that was coming and with it aspire to the freedom and wideness of the Purusha consciousness forming a point dappui of detachment and separation from all this confusion of the subconscient Prakriti, then you will have a firm ground to stand upon and proceed. But for that you must make your choice firmly and refuse to be upset at every moment and diverted from it.
  ***

3.6.01 - Heraclitus, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We must put each of Heraclitus' apophthegms into its right place if we would understand his thought. "It is wise to admit that all things are one,"-not merely, be it noted, that they came from oneness and will go back to oneness, but that they are one, now and always,-all is, was and ever will be the ever-living Fire. All seems to our experience to be many, an eternal becoming of manifold existences; where is there in it any principle of eternal identity? True, says Heraclitus, so it seems; but wisdom looks beyond and does see the identity of all things; Night and Day, Life and Death, the good and the evil, all are one, the eternal, the identical; those who see only a difference in objects, do not know the truth of the objects they observe. "Hesiod did not know day and night; for it is the One,"-esti gar hen, asti hi ekam. Now, an eternal and identical which all things are, is precisely what we mean by Being; it is precisely what is denied by those who see only Becoming. The Nihilistic Buddhists1 insisted that there were only so many ideas, vijñānāni, and impermanent forms which were but the combination of parts and elements: no oneness, no identity anywhere; get beyond ideas and forms, you get to self-extinction, to the Void, to Nothing. Yet one must posit a principle of unity somewhere, if not at the base or in the secret being of things, yet in their action. The Buddhists had to posit their universal principle of Karma which, when you think of it, comes after all to a universal energy as the cause of the world, a creator and preserver of unchanging measures. Nietzsche denied Being, but had to speak of a universal Will-to-be; which again, when you come to think of it, seems to be no more than a translation of the Upanishadic tapo brahma, "Will-Energy is Brahman." The later Sankhya denied the unity of conscious existences, but asserted the unity of Nature, Prakriti, which is again at once the original principle and substance of things and the creative energy, the phusis of the Greeks. It is indeed wise to agree that all things are one; for vision drives at that, the soul and the heart reach out to that, thought comes circling round to it in the very act of denial.
  Heraclitus saw what all must see who look at the world with any attention, that there is something in all this motion and change and differentiation which insists on stability, which goes back to sameness, which assures unity, which triumphs into eternity. It has always the same measures; it is, was and ever will be. We are the same in spite of all our differences; we start from the same origin, proceed by the same universal laws, live, differ and strive in the bosom of an eternal oneness, are seeking always for that which binds all beings together and makes all things one. Each sees it in his own way, lays stress on this or that aspect of it, loses sight of or diminishes other aspects, gives it therefore a different name-even as Heraclitus, attracted by its aspect of creative and destructive Force, gave it the name of Fire. But when he generalises, he puts it widely enough; it is the One that is All, it is the All that is One,-Zeus, eternity, the Fire. He could have said with the Upanishad, "All this is the Brahman", sarvaṁ khalu idaṁ brahma, though he could not have gone on and said, "This Self is the Brahman", but would have declared rather of Agni what a Vedantic formula says of Vayu, tvaṁ pratyakṣaṁ brahmāsi, "Thou art manifest Brahman."
  --
  But the Greeks failed to go forward to that final discrimination which India attributed to Kapila, the supreme analytical thinker,-the discrimination between Prakriti and her cosmic principles, her twenty-four tattwas forming the subjective and objective aspects of Nature, and between Prakriti and Purusha, Conscious-Soul and Nature-Energy. Therefore while in the Sankhya ether, fire and the rest are only principles of the objective evolution of Prakriti, evolutionary aspects of the original phusis, the early Greeks could not get back beyond these aspects of Nature to the idea of a pure energy, nor could they at all account for her subjective side. The Fire of Heraclitus has to do duty at once for the original substance of all Matter and for God and Eternity. This preoccupation with Nature-Energy and the failure to fathom its relations with Soul has persisted in modern scientific thought, and we find there too the same attempt to identify some primary principle of Nature, ether or electricity, with the original Force.
  However that may be, the theory of the creation of the world by some kind of evolutionary change out of the original substance or energy, by pariṇāma, is common to the early Greek and the Indian systems, however they may differ about the nature of the original phusis. The distinction of Heraclitus among the early Greek sages is his conception of the upward and downward road, one and the same in the descent and the return. It corresponds to the Indian idea of nivṛtti and pravṛtti, the double movement of the Soul and Nature,-pravṛtti, the moving out and forward, nivṛtti, the moving back and in. The Indian thinkers were preoccupied with this double principle so far as it touches the action of the individual soul entering into the procession of Nature and drawing back from it; but still they saw a similar, a periodic movement forward and back of Nature itself which leads to an ever-repeated cycle of creation and dissolution; they held the idea of a periodic pralaya. Heraclitus' theory would seem to demand a similar conclusion. Otherwise we must suppose that the downward tendency, once in action, has always the upper hand over the upward or that cosmos is eternally proceeding out of the original substance and eternally returning to it, but never actually returns. The Many are then eternal not only in power of manifestation, but in actual fact of manifestation.

36.08 - A Commentary on the First Six Suktas of Rigveda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   The diversity in the creation is a profound and sublime Truth. So the sadhaka also has to manifest in his being and nature this immensely diverse play. The manifoldness of Form is revealed consciously through the mind. When the true mental being awakes, all the formations lose their divided and mortal nature and appear as immortal, cadences and expressions of the Truth. That is why the mental Purusha or Indra is called Purutamam Purunam. Noother god has so many diversified forms as Indra. It is because he is at the root of all manifold diversities. Indra comes with plenitude; he conquers for the sadhaka sahasrinam vajam(a thousandfold plenitude). Vajamis the fullness-which is indivisible; it is the vessel of a thousandfold movement of creation; Indra is the eldest of all, because the primal form of the external manifestation appears first in the heart of the mental being. Later on it becomes manifest in the outward nature. After his very birth Indra wants to be the eldest of all, i.e.,as soon as the pure mental being awakes in the aspirant, it becomes the master and guide of his sadhana and his new spiritual creation. For this reason Indra is called Isana(Lord) and Sukratu(the all-accomplishing Power of action). It is in him that all the masculine powers of God are manifest. In accordance with the Will of the Purusha all the forms of Prakriti take shape. The vessel and foundation which Indra is shaping anew in the aspirant is firmly established on Truth and Knowledge.
   Pure mental being is endowed with knowledge which makes an object stand revealed to the knower. This knowledge of Indra is many-sided. The real function of Indra is to harmonise the hidden truth of all objects and movements. Hence he is called Purarmdhihor Purudhi, i.e.,a city made of comprehensive intelligence as it were. Indra does not want dissolution in the One Existent, but he wants a diverse and many-sided manifestation. In unfolding or blossoming alone is his joy. He seeks for a vibrant cadence of the Truth. The Bliss of Indra is founded on Truth. That is why this Bliss is pure and tranquil and yet dynamic. The joy of sensuous pleasure of an ordinary man is emotional and fleeting, Man cannot hold it and an aspirant cannot build anything on it. That joy flows out and man spills it away in trying to hold it. That is the reason why this joy of the senses has to be purified and made noble with the light of pure mind, intellect and knowledge. Then alone that joy will be beneficial, capable of doing works and yielding fruit. When the pure mental being, immortal in this Bliss and supported by the pure vital energy, marches forward driving his two luminous horses of knowledge and power to the battlefield to advance in spirituality, the dumb material forces of Ignorance fail to oppose them. Cutting asunder all limitations of the earthly consciousness and the powers of Death, Indra founds a full-fledged bliss of immortality in the aspirant. He enables the creative genius of the aspirant to blossom in the untrammelled expanse of the infinite consciousness.

3.7.1.02 - The Reincarnating Soul, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The changing personality is not this mental person; it is a composite of various stuff of Nature, a formation of Prakriti and is not at all the Purusha. And it is a very complex composite with many layers; there is a layer of physical, a layer of nervous, a layer of mental, even a final stratum of supramental personality; and within these layers themselves there are strata within each stratum. The analysis of the successive couches of the earth is a simple matter compared with the analysis of this wonderful creation we call the personality. The mental being in resuming bodily life forms a new personality for its new terrestrial existence; it takes material from the common matter-stuff, life-stuff, mind-stuff of the physical world and during earthly life it is constantly absorbing fresh material, throwing out what is used up, changing its bodily, nervous and mental tissues. But this is all surface work; behind is the foundation of past experience held back from the physical memory so that the superficial consciousness may not be troubled or interfered with by the conscious burden of the past but may concentrate on the work immediately in hand Still that foundation of past experience is the bedrock of personality; and it is more than that It is our real fund on which we can always draw even apart from our present superficial commerce with our surroundings. That commerce adds to our gains, modifies the foundation for a subsequent existence.
  Moreover, all this is, again, on the surface It is only a small part of ourselves which lives and acts in the energies of our earthly existence. As behind the physical universe there are worlds of which ours is only a last result, so also within us there are worlds of our self-existence which throw out this external form of our being. The subconscient, the superconscient are oceans from which and to which this river flows. Therefore to speak of ourselves as a soul reincarnating is to give altogether too simple an appearance to the miracle of our existence; it puts into too ready and too gross a formula the magic of the supreme Magician. There is not a definite psychic entity getting into a new case of flesh; there is a metempsychosis, a reinsouling, a rebirth of new psychic personality as well as a birth of a new body. And behind is the Person, the unchanging entity, the Master who manipulates this complex material, the Artificer of this wondrous artifice.

3.7.1.05 - The Significance of Rebirth, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  All this is to the mind that lives in the figures of the present, as it must be to the careful sceptical mind of positive inquiry, no more than a hypothesis; for if evolution is an acknowledged idea, rebirth itself is only a supposition. Take it so, but still it is a better hypothesis than the naive and childlike religious solutions which make the world an arbitrary caprice and man the breathing clay puppet of an almighty human-minded Creator, and at least as good a hypothesis as the idea of a material inconscient Force somehow stumbling into a precarious, ephemeral, yet always continued phenomenon of consciousness, or a creative Life labouring in the Bergsonian formula oppressed but constant in the midst of a universal death, as good too as the idea of a mechanical working of Prakriti, Maya, Shakti into which or in which a real or unreal individual stumbles and wanders, dandramyamo andhena nyamno yathndha,2 until he can get out of it by a spiritual liberation. To a large philosophical questioning it will not seem in disagreement with the known lines of existence or out of tune with the facts and necessities of being or the demands of reason and intuition, even though it admits a yet unrealised factor, things yet to be; for that is implied in the very idea of evolution. It may modify, but does not radically contradict any religious experience or aspiration,for it is not inconsistent either with a union with Superconscience or bliss in heavens beyond or any personal or impersonal relation with the Divine, since these may well be heights of the spiritual unfolding. Its truth will depend on spiritual experience and effectuation; but chiefly on this momentous issue, whether there is anything in the soul-powers of man which promises a greater term of being than his present mentality and whether that greater term can be made effective for his embodied existence. That is the question which remains over to be tested by psychological inquiry and the problem to be resolved in the course of the spiritual evolution of man.
  There are transcendental questions of the metaphysical necessity, possibility, final reality of an evolutionary manifestation of this kind, but they do not need to be brought in now and here; for the time we are concerned only with its reality to experience and with the processional significance of rebirth, with the patent fact that we are a part of some kind of manifestation and move forward in the press of some kind of evolution. We see a Power at work and seek whether in that power there is a conscious Will, an ordered development and have first to discover whether it is the blind result of an organised Chance or inconscient self-compelled Law or the plan of a universal Intelligence or Wisdom. Once we find that there is a conscious Spirit of which this movement is one expression, or even admit that as our working hypothesis, we are bound to go on and ask whether this developing order ceases with what man now is or is laden with something more towards which it and he have to grow, an unfinished expression, a greater unfound term, and in that case it is evidently towards that greater thing that man must be growing; to prepare it and to realise it must be the stage beyond in his destiny. Towards that new step in the evolution his history as a race must be subconsciently tending and the powers of the highest individuals half consciently striving to be delivered of this greater birth; and since the ascending order of rebirth follows always the degrees of the evolution, that too cannot be meant to stop short or shoot off abruptly into the superconscient without any regard to the intended step. The relation of our birth to life on other levels of consciousness and to whatever transcendent Superconscience there may be, are important problems, but their solution must be something in harmony with the intention of the Spirit in the universe; all must be part of a unity, and not an imbroglio of spiritual incoherences and contradictions. Our first bridge from the known to the unknown on this line of thought must be to discover how far the yet unfinished ladder of evolution can mount in the earth series. The whole processional significance of rebirth may be wrapped up in that one yet unattempted discovery.

3.7.1.07 - Involution and Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   against Nature, the spirit against his creative energy. But Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, are two eternal lovers who possess their perpetual unity and enjoy their constant difference, and in the unity abound in the passion of the multitudinous play of their difference, and in every step of the difference abound in the secret sense or the overt consciousness of unity. Nature takes the Soul into herself so that he falls asleep in a trance of union with her absorbed passion of creation and she too seems then to be asleep in the whirl of her own creative energy; and that is the involution in Matter. Above, it may be, the Soul takes Nature into himself so that she falls asleep in a trance of oneness with the absorbed self-possession of the spirit and he too seems to be asleep in the deep of his own self-locked immobile being. But still above and below and around and within all this beat and rhythm is the eternity of the spirit who has thus figured himself in soul and nature and enjoys with a perfect awareness all that he creates in himself by this involution and evolution. The soul fulfils itself in Nature when it possesses in her the consciousness of that eternity and its power and joy and transfigures the natural becoming with the fullness of the spiritual being. The constant self-creation which we call birth finds there the perfect evolution of all that it held in its own nature and reveals its own utmost significance. The complete soul possesses all its self and all Nature.
  Therefore all this evolution is a growing of the Self in material nature to the conscious possession of its own spiritual being. It begins with form - apparently a form of Force - in which a spirit is housed and hidden; it ends in a spirit which consciously directs its own force and creates or assumes its own forms for the free joy of its being in Nature. Nature holding her own self and spirit involved and suppressed within herself, an imprisoned master of existence subjected to her ways of birth and action, - yet are these ways his and this spirit the condition of her being and the law of her workings, - commences the evolution: the spirit holding Nature conscious in himself, complete by his completeness, liberated by his liberation, perfected in his perfection, crowns the evolution. All our births are the

3.7.1.09 - Karma and Freedom, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But still there is here something which we may call a relative freedom. It does not really belong to our outward mind and will or that shadow of myself which I have put forth in my mental ego; for these things are instruments and they work in the roads of the successions of Karma. But they still feel a power constantly coming forth and either assenting to or intervening in the action of the nature, and that power they attribute to themselves. They are aware of a relative freedom in their disposition of action and of at least a potential absolute freedom behind it, and mixing these two things confusedly together mind, will and ego cry out in unison I am free. But this freedom and power are influences from the soul. To use a familiar metaphysical language, they type the assent and will of the Purusha without which the Prakriti cannot move on her way. The first and the greater part of this soul-influence is in the form of an assent to Nature, an acquiescence; and for good reason. For I start with the action of the universal Energy which the Spirit has set in motion and as I rise from the ignorance towards knowledge, the first thing demanded from me is to gather experience of its law and of my relations to the law and partly therefore to acquiesce, to allow myself to be moved, to see and to come to know the nature of the motions, to suffer and obey the law, to understand and know Karma.
  This obedience is forcibly imposed on the lower ignorant creation. But thinking man who experiences increasingly from generation to generation and from life to life the nature of things and develops reflective knowledge and the sense of his soul in Nature, delivers in her a power of initiating will. He is not bound to her set actualities; he can refuse assent, and the thing in Nature to which it is refused goes on indeed for a time and produces its results by impetus of Karma, but as it runs, it loses power and falls into impotence and desuetude. He can do more, he can comm and a new action and orientation of his nature. The assent was a manifestation of the power of the soul as giver of the sanction, anumant, but this is a power of the soul as active lord of the nature, vara. Then Nature still insists more or less on her old habitual way by reason of her past impetus or the right of previous sanctions and may even, in proportion as she is unaccustomed to control, resist and call in hostile powers, our own creations, the children of our past willings; then is there a battle in the house of our being between the lord and his spouse or between old and new nature and a defeat of the soul or its victory. And this is certainly a freedom, but only a relative freedom, and even the greatest mental self-mastery a relative and precarious thing at the best. This liberty when we look down at it from a higher station, is not well distinguishable from a lightened bondage.

3.7.2.01 - The Foundation, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The practical and the efficient base of Karma is all the relation of the soul to the energies of Nature, the use by Purusha of Prakriti. It is the soul's demand on, consent to or use of the energies of Nature and the return and reflex of her energies on the soul that must determine the steps of our progress in
  384

3.7.2.06 - Appendix II - A Clarification, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The mental being spoken of by the Upanishad is not part of the mental-nervous-physical compositeit is the manomaya purusha prana-sharira-neta, the mental being leader of the life and body. It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can the composite or part of it be the Purusha,for the composite is composed of Prakriti. It is described as manomaya by the Upanishads because the psychic being is behind the veil and man being a mental being in the life and body lives in his mind and not in his psychic, so to him the manomaya purusha is the leader of the life and body,of the psychic behind supporting the whole he is not aware or dimly aware in his best moments. The psychic is represented in man by the Prime Minister, the manomaya, itself being a mild constitutional king; it is the manomaya to whom Prakriti refers for assent to her actions. But still the statement of the Upanishads gives only the apparent truth of the matter, valid for man and the human stage only for in the animal it would be rather the pranamaya purusha that is the net, leader of mind and body. It is one reason why I have not yet allowed the publication of Rebirth and Karma because this had to be corrected and the deeper truth put in its place. I had intended to do it later on, but had not time to finish the remaining articles.
    See page 275.

38.05 - Living Matter, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   Is there no purusa for this Prakriti?"
   Rejected, as if through fear, thought returns
  --
   "Look back, understand the hope of Prakriti,
   Understand the dead prison-house is a mother's heart,

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  adhama gati to Prakriti. The Vedic Aryans sought to overcome
  the Daityas or Dasyus by the aid of the gods; afterwards the
  --
  born of the Chichchhakti (Shakti, Devi, Kali, Prakriti) is full of
  the ecstatic movement of the Sat or Mahasatyam manifesting
  --
  merely Prakriti or Shakti in motion, it comes to mean substance.
  The word and the meaning are among the oldest in Sanscrit. By
  --
  the Lila, and disappear into some principle of Oneness, Prakriti,
  Mandala One
  --
  old recognised that divine consciousness on whatever level always creates for itself through Prakriti or Chit, its active creative
  knowledge, a world to live in & a body for its habitation in
  --
  vigour, children of one universal mother Prakriti, are as seven
  women with a common child; all of them, that is to say, enjoy
  --
  this sevenfold stream of the workings of Prakriti with all its
  riches; he knows at once where to go for the enrichment of
  --
  & Prakriti, Agni bears & brings to man, all this higher fruit
  of their union upon the levels of purified mind. Agni, alone
  --
  or self-being and Prakriti or natural working; as soon as thing
  in itself gets its nama, it gets also its swaha & swadha - swaha,

4.03 - The Psychology of Self-Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This is the nature of spirit and its instruments. But to understand its operations and to get at a knowledge which will give to us a power of leverage in uplifting them out of the established groove in which our life goes spinning, we have to perceive that the Spirit has based all its workings upon two twin aspects of its being. Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti. We have to treat them as different and diverse in power, -- for in practice of consciousness this difference is valid, -- although they are only two sides of the same reality, pole and pole of the one conscious being. Purusha or soul is spirit cognisant of the workings of its nature, supporting them by its being, enjoying or rejecting enjoyment of them in its delight of being. Nature is power of the spirit, and she is too working and process of its power formulating name and form of being, developing action of consciousness and knowledge, throwing itself up in will and impulsion, force and energy, fulfilling itself in enjoyment. Nature is Prakriti, Maya, shakti. If we look at her on her most external side where she seems the opposite of Purusha, she is Prakriti, an inert and mechanical self-driven operation, inconscient or conscient only by the light of Purusha, elevated by various degrees, vital, mental, supramental, of his soul-illumination of her workings. If we look at her on her other internal side where she moves nearer to unity with Purusha, she is Maya, will of being and becoming or of cessation from being and becoming with all their results, apparent to the consciousness, of involution and evolution, existing and non-existing, self-concealment of spirit and self-discovery of spirit. Both are sides of one and the same thing, shakti, power of being of the spirit which operates, whether superconsciously or consciously or subconsciously in a seeming inconscience, -- in fact all these motions co-exist at the same time and in the same soul, --as the spirit's power of knowledge, power of will, power of process and action, jnana-sakti, iccha-sakti, kriya-sakti. By this power the spirit creates all things in itself, hides and discovers all itself in the form and behind the veil of its manifestation.
  Purusha is able by this power of its nature to take whatever poise it may will and to follow the law and form of being proper to any self-formulation. It is eternal soul and spirit in its own power of self-existence superior to and governing its manifestations; it is universal soul and spirit developed in power of becoming of its existence, infinite in the finite; it is individual soul and spirit absorbed in development of some particular course of its becoming, in appearance mutably finite in the infinite. All these things it can be at once, eternal spirit universalised in cosmos, individualised in its beings; it can too found the consciousness rejecting, governing or responding to the action of Nature in any one of them, put the others behind it or away from it, know itself as pure eternity, self-supporting universality or exclusive individuality. Whatever the formulation of its nature, soul can seem to become that and view itself as that only in the frontal active part of its consciousness; but it is never only what it seems to be; it is too the so much else that it can be; secretly, it is the all of itself that is yet hidden. It is not irrevocably limited by any particular self-formulation in Time, but can break through and beyond it, break it up or develop it, select, reject, new-create, reveal out of itself a greater self-formulation. What it believes itself to be by the whole active will of its consciousness in its instruments, that it is or tends to become, yo yacchraddhah sa eva sah what it believes it can be and has full faith in becoming, that it changes to in nature, evolves or discovers.
  --
  But whatever his aim, however exalted his aspiration, he has to begin from the law of his present imperfection, to take full account of it and see how it can be converted to the law of a possible perfection. This present law of his being starts from the inconscience of the material universe, an involution of the soul in form and subjection to material nature; and, though in this matter, life and mind have developed their own energies, yet they are limited and bound up in the action of the lower material, which is to the ignorance of his practical surface consciousness his original principle. Mind in him, though he is an embodied mental being, has to bear the control of the body and the physical life and can only by some more or less considerable effort of energy and concentration consciously control life and body. It is only by increasing that control that he can move towards perfection, -and it is only by developing soul-power that he can reach it. Nature-power in him has to become more and more completely a conscious act of soul, a conscious expression of all the will and knowledge of spirit. Prakriti has to reveal itself as shakti of the Purusha.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

4.07 - Purification-Intelligence and Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To arrive then at the whole truth of our self and Spirit and the knowledge, greatness, bliss of our free and complete bring must be the object of the purification, liberation and perfection of the Buddhi. But it is a common idea that this means not the full possession of Nature by the Purusha, but a rejection of Nature. We are to get at self by the removal of the action of Prakriti. As the Buddhi, coming to the knowledge that the sense-mind only gives us appearances in which the soul is subject to Nature, discovers more real truths behind them, the soul must arrive at this knowledge that the Buddhi too, when turned upon Nature, can give us only appearances and enlarge the subjection, and must discover behind them the pure truth of the Self. The Self is something quite other than Nature and the Buddhi must purify itself of attachment to and preoccupation with natural things; so only can it discern and separate from them the pure Self and Spirit: the knowledge of the pure Self and Spirit is the only real knowledge, Ananda of the pure Self and Spirit is the only spiritual enjoyment, the consciousness and being of the pure Self and Spirit are the only real consciousness and being. Action and will must cease because all action is of the Nature; the will to be pure Self and Spirit means the cessation of all will to action.
  But while the possession of the being, consciousness, delight, power of the Self is the condition of perfection, -- for it is only by knowing and possessing and living in the truth of itself that the soul can become free and perfect-we hold that Nature is an eternal action and manifestation of the Spirit, Nature is not a devil's trap, a set of misleading appearances created by desire, sense, life and mental will and intelligence, but these phenomena are hints and indications and behind all of them is a truth of Spirit which exceeds and uses them. We hold that there must be an inherent spiritual gnosis and will by which the secret Spirit in all knows its own truth, wills, manifests and governs its own being in Nature; to arrive at that, at communion with it or participation in it, must be part of our perfection. The object of the purification of the Buddhi will then be to arrive at the possession of our own truth of self-being, but also at the possession of the highest truth of our being in Nature. For that purpose we must first purify the Buddhi of all that makes it subject to the sense-mind and, that once done, purify it from its own limitations and convert its inferior mental intelligence and will into the greater action of a spiritual will and knowledge.

4.1.01 - The Intellect and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A distinction, the distinction very keenly made here, between the plane of phenomenal process, of externalised Prakriti, and the plane of Divine Reality ranks among the first words of the inner wisdom. The turn given to it in these pages is not merely an ingenious explanation; it expresses very soundly one of the clear certainties you meet when you step across the border and look at the outer world from the standing-ground of the inner spiritual experience. The more you go inward or upward, the more the view of things changes and the outer knowledge
  Science organises takes its real and very limited place. Science, like most mental and external knowledge, gives you only truth of process. I would add that it cannot give you even the whole truth of process; for you seize some of the ponderables, but miss the all-important imponderables; you get, hardly even the how, but the conditions under which things happen in Nature. After all the triumphs and marvels of Science the explaining principle, the rationale, the significance of the whole is left as dark, as mysterious and even more mysterious than ever. The scheme it has built up of the evolution not only of this rich and vast and variegated material world, but of life and consciousness and mind and their workings out of a brute mass of electrons, identical and varied only in arrangement and number, is an irrational magic more baffling than any the most mystic imagination could conceive. Science in the end lands us in a paradox effectuated, an organised and rigidly determined accident, an impossibility that has somehow happened, - it has shown us a new, a material Maya, aghat.ana-ghat.ana-pat.yas, very clever at bringing about the impossible, a miracle that cannot logically be and yet somehow is there actual, irresistibly organised, but still irrational and inexplicable. And this is evidently because Science

4.10 - The Elements of Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There will remain, because it will then only be entirely possible, the perfect action and enjoyment of being on the gnostic basis. The Purusha enters into cosmic manifestation for the variations of his infinite existence, for knowledge, action and enjoyment; the gnosis brings the fullness of spiritual knowledge and it will found on that the divine action and cast the enjoyment of world and being into the law of the truth, the freedom and the perfection of the spirit. But neither action nor enjoyment will be the lower action of the gunas and consequent egoistic enjoyment mostly of the satisfaction of rajasic desire which is our present way of living. Whatever desire will remain, if that name be given, will be the divine desire, the will to delight of the Purusha enjoying in his freedom and perfection the action of the perfected Prakriti and all her members. The Prakriti will take up the whole nature into the law of her higher divine truth and act in that law offering up the universal enjoyment of her action and being to the Anandamaya Ishwara, the Lord of existence and works and Spirit of bliss, who presides over and governs her workings. The individual soul will be the channel of this action and offering, and it will enjoy at once its oneness with the Ishwara and its oneness with the Prakriti and will enjoy all relations with Infinite and finite, with God and the universe and beings in the universe in the highest terms of the union of the universal Purusha and Prakriti.
  All the gnostic evolution opens up into the divine principle of Ananda, which is the foundation of the fullness of spiritual being, consciousness and bliss of Sachchidananda or eternal Brahman. Possessed at first by reflection in the mental experience, it will be possessed afterwards with a greater fullness and directness in the massed and luminous consciousness, cidghana, which comes by the gnosis. The Siddha or perfected soul will live in union with the Purushottama in this Brahmic consciousness, he will be conscious in the Brahman that is the All, sarvam brahma, in the Brahman infinite in being and infinite in quality, anantam jnanam brahma, in Brahman as self-existent consciousness and universal knowledge, jnanam brahma, in Brahman as the selfexistent bliss and its universal delight of being, anandam brahma. He will experience all the universe as the manifestation of the One, all quality and action as the play of his universal and infinite energy, all knowledge and conscious experience as the outflowing of that consciousness, and all in the terms of that one Ananda. His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will be changed to him in that unity and revealed in the secret of its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be one with That which is the origin and continent and inhabitant and spirit and constituting power of all existence. This will be the highest reach of self-perfection.

4.1.1.05 - The Central Process of the Yoga, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Adwaita process of the way of knowledge - one rejects from oneself the identification with the mind, vital, body, saying continually "I am not the mind", "I am not the vital", "I am not the body", seeing these things as separate from one's real self - and after a time one feels all the mental, vital, physical processes and the very sense of mind, vital, body becoming externalised, an outer action, while within and detached from them there grows the sense of a separate self-existent being which opens into the realisation of the cosmic and transcendent Spirit. There is also the method - a very powerful method - of the Sankhyas, the separation of the Purusha and the Prakriti. One enforces on the mind the position of the Witness - all action of mind, vital, physical becomes an outer play which is not myself or mine, but belongs to Nature and has been enforced on an outer me. I am the witness Purusha who am silent, detached, not bound by any of these things. There grows up in consequence a division in the being; the sadhak feels within him the growth of a calm silent separate consciousness which feels itself quite apart from the surface play of the mind and the vital and physical Nature.
  Usually when this takes place, it is possible very rapidly to bring down the peace of the higher consciousness and the action of the higher Force and the full march of the Yoga. But often the

4.14 - The Power of the Instruments, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Prana is not only a force for the action of physical and vital energy, but supports also the mental and spiritual action. Therefore the full and free working of the pranic shakti is required not only for the lower but still necessary use, but also for the free and full operation of mind and supermind and spirit in the instrumentality of our complex human nature. That is the main sense of the use of exercises of Pranayama for control of the vital force and its motions which is so important and indispensable a part of certain systems of Yoga. The same mastery must be got by the seeker of the integral Yoga; but he may arrive at it by other means and in any case he must not be dependent on any physical or breathing exercise for its possession and maintenance, for that will at once bring in a limitation and subjection to Prakriti. Her instrumentation has to be used flexibly by the Purusha, but not to be a fixed control on the Purusha. The necessity of the pranic force, however, remains and will be evident to our self-study and experience. It is in the Vedic image the steed and conveyance of the embodied mind and will, vahana. If it is full of strength and swiftness and a plenitude of all its powers, then the mind can go on the courses of its action with a plenary and unhampered movement. But if it is lame or soon tired or sluggish or weak, then an incapacity is laid on the effectuation of the will and activity of the mind. The same rule holds good of the supermind when it first comes into action. There are indeed states and activities in which the mind takes up the pranic shakti into itself and this dependence is not felt at all; but even then the force is there, though involved in the pure mental energy. The supermind, when it gets into full strength, can do pretty well what it likes with the pranic shakti, and we find that in the end this life power is transformed into the type of a supramentalised Prana which is simply one motor power of that greater consciousness. But this belongs to a later stage of the siddhi of the Yoga.
  Then again there is the psychic Prana, pranic mind or desire soul; this too calls for its own perfection. Here too the first necessity is a fullness of the vital capacity in the mind, its power to do its full work, to take possession of all the impulsions and energies given to our inner psychic life for fulfilment in this existence, to hold them and to be a means for carrying them out with strength, freedom, perfection. Many of the things we need for our perfection, courage, will-power effective in life, all the elements of what we now call force of character and force of personality, depend very largely for their completest strength and spring of energetic action on the fullness of the psychic Prana. But along with this fullness there must be an established gladness, clearness and purity in the psychic life-being. This dynamis must not be a troubled, perfervid, stormy, fitfully or crudely passionate strength; energy there must be, rapture of its action it must have, but a clear and glad and pure energy, a seated and firmly supported pure rapture. And as a third condition of its perfection it must be poised in a complete equality. The desire-soul must get rid of the clamour, insistence or unequality of its desires in order that its desires may be satisfied with justice and balance and in the right way and eventually must rid them of the character of desire altogether and change them into impulsions of the divine Ananda. To that end it must make no demands nor seek to impose itself on heart, mind or spirit, but accept with a strong passive and active equality whatever impulsion and comm and come into it from the spirit through the channel of a still mind and a pure heart. And it must accept too whatever result of the impulse, whatever enjoyment more or less, full or nil, is given to it by the Master of our being. At the same time, possession and enjoyment are its law, function, use, Swadharma. It is not intended to be a slain or mortified thing, dull in its receptive power, dreary, suppressed, maimed, inert or null. It must have a full power of possession, a glad power of enjoyment, an exultant power of pure and divine passion and rapture. The enjoyment it will have will be in the essence a spiritual bliss, but one which takes up into itself and transforms the mental, emotional, dynamic, vital and physical joy; it must have therefore an integral capacity for these things and must not by incapacity or fatigue or inability to bear great intensities fail the spirit, mind, heart, will and body. Fullness, clear purity and gladness, equality, capacity for possession and enjoyment are the fourfold perfection of the psychic Prana.707 -
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  The normal instruments thus perfected will act each in its own kind without undue interference from each other and serve the unobstructed will of the Purusha in a harmonised totality of our natural being. This perfection must rise constantly in its capacity for action, the energy and force of its working and a certain greatness of the scope of the total nature. They will then be ready for the transformation into their own supramental action in which they will find a more absolute, unified and luminous spiritual truth of the whole perfected nature. The means of this perfection of the instruments we shall have to consider later on; but at present it will be enough to say that the principal conditions are will, self-watching and self-knowledge and a constant practice, abhyasa, of self-modification and transformation. The Purusha has that capacity; for the spirit within can always change and perfect the working of its nature. But the mental being must open the way by a clear and a watchful introspection, an opening of itself to a searching and subtle self-knowledge which will give it the understanding and to all increasing extent the mastery of its natural instruments, a vigilant and insistent will of self-modification and self-transformation-for to that will the Prakriti must with whatever difficulty and whatever initial or prolonged resistance eventually respond, -- and an unfailing practice which will constantly reject all defect and perversion and replace it by right state and a right and enhanced working. Askesis, Tapasya, patience and faithfulness and rectitude of knowledge and will are the things required until a greater Power than our mental selves directly intervenes to effect a more easy and rapid transformation.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

4.15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  All the action of man in life is a nexus of the presence of the soul arid the workings of Nature, Purusha and Prakriti. The presence and influence of the Purusha represents itself in nature as a certain power of our being which we may call for our immediate purpose soul-force; and it is always this soul-force which supports all the workings of the powers of the reason, the mind, life and body and determines the cast of our conscious being and the type of our nature. The normal ordinarily developed man possesses it in a subdued, a modified, a mechanised, submerged form as temperament and character; but that is only its most outward mould in which Purusha, the conscious soul or being, seems to be limited, conditioned and given some shape by the mechanical Prakriti. The soul flows into whatever moulds of intellectual, ethical, aesthetic, dynamic, vital and physical mind and type the developing nature takes and can act only in the way this formed Prakriti lays on it and move in its narrow groove or relatively wider circle. The man is then sattwic, rajasic or tamasic or a mixture of these qualities and his temperament is only a sort of subtler soul-colour which has been given to the major prominent operation of these fixed modes of his nature. Men of a stronger force get more of the soul-power to the surface and develop what we call a strong or great personality, they have in them something of the Vibhuti as described by the Gita, vibhutmiat sattvam sridam urjimam eva va, a higher power of being often touched with or sometimes full of some divine afflatus or more than ordinary manifestation of the Godhead which is indeed present in all, even in the weakest or most clouded living being, but here some special force of it begins to come out from behind the veil of the average humanity, and there is something beautiful, attractive, splendid or powerful in these exceptional persons which shines out in their personality, character, life and work. These men too work in the type of their nature-force according to its gunas, but there is something evident in them and yet not easily analysable which is in reality a direct power of the Self and spirit using to strong purpose the mould and direction of the nature. The nature itself thereby rises to or towards a higher grade of its being. Much in the working of the Force may seem egoistic or even perverse, but it is still the touch of the Godhead behind, whatever Daivic, Asuric or even Rakshasic form it may take, which drives the Prakriti and uses it for its own greater purpose. A still more developed power of the being will bring out the real character of this spiritual presence and it will then be seen as something impersonal and self-existent and self-empowered, a sheer soul-force which is other than the mind-force, life-force, force of intelligence, but drives them and, even while following to a certain extent their mould of working, Guna, type of nature, yet puts its stamp of an initial transcendence, impersonality, pure fire of spirit, a something beyond the gunas of our normal nature. When the spirit in us is free, then what was behind this soul-force comes out in all its light, beauty and greatness, the Spirit, the Godhead who makes the nature and soul of man his foundation and living representative in cosmic being and mind, action and life.
  The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna. But the executive or mechanical Prakriti is of the threefold Guna, Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas, and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these three gunas. And in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, caturvyuha, a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things. The ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold type of active human personality and nature, built out of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament, soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual shakti in which they find their culmination and unity beyond all modes. For the crude external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Sudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive shakti within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life. But they are more or less present in an men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power.
  The most outward psychological form of these things is the mould or trend of the nature towards certain dominant tendencies, capacities, characteristics, form of active power, quality of the mind and inner life, cultural personality or type. The turn is often towards the predominance of the intellectual element and the capacities which make for the seeking and finding of knowledge and an intellectual creation or formativeness and a preoccupation with ideas and the study of ideas or of life and the information and development of the reflective intelligence. According to the grade of the development there is produced successively the make and character of the man of active, open, inquiring intelligence, then the intellectual and, last, the thinker, sage, great mind of knowledge. The soul-powers which make their appearance by a considerable development of this temperament, personality, soul-type, are a mind of light more and more open to all ideas and knowledge and incomings of Truth; a hunger and passion for knowledge, for its growth in ourselves, for its communication to others, for its reign in the world, the reign of reason and right and truth and justice and, on a higher level of the harmony of our greater being, the reign of the spirit and its universal unity and light and love; a power of this light in the mind and will which makes all the life subject to reason and its right and truth or to the spirit and spiritual right and truth and subdues the lower members to their greater law; a poise in the temperament turned from the first to patience, steady musing and calm, to reflection, to meditation, which dominates and quiets the turmoil of the will and passions and makes for high thinking and pure living, founds the self-governed sattwic mind, grows into a more and more mild, lofty, impersonalised and universalised personality. This is the ideal character and soul-power of the Brahmana, the priest of knowledge. If it is not there in all its sides, we have the imperfections or perversions of the type, a mere intellectuality or curiosity for ideas without ethical or other elevation, a narrow concentration on some kind of intellectual activity without the greater needed openness of mind, soul and spirit, or the arrogance and exclusiveness of the intellectual shut up in his intellectuality, or an ineffective idealism without any hold on life, or any other of the characteristic incompletenesses and limitations of the intellectual, religious, scientific or philosophic mind. These are stoppings short on the way or temporary exclusive concentrations, but a fullness of the divine soul and power of truth and knowledge in man is the perfection of this Dharma or Swabhava, the accomplished Brahminhood of the complete Brahmana.

4.16 - The Divine Shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The relation between the Purusha and Prakriti which emerges as one advances in the Yoga of self-perfection is the next thing that we have to understand carefully in this part of the Yoga. In the spiritual truth of our being the power which we call Nature is the power of being, consciousness and will and therefore the power of self-expression and self-creation of the self, soul or Purusha. But to our ordinary mind in the ignorance and to its experience of things the force of Prakriti has a different appearance. When we look at it in its universal action outside ourselves, we see it first as a mechanical energy in the cosmos which acts upon matter or in its own created forms of matter. In matter it evolves powers and processes of life and in living matter powers and processes of mind. Throughout its operations it acts by fixed laws and in each kind of created thing displays varying properties of energy and laws of process which give its character to the genus or species and again in the individual develops without infringing the law of the kind minor characteristics and variations of a considerable consequence. It is this mechanical appearance of Prakriti which has preoccupied the modern scientific mind and made for it its whole view of Nature, and so much so that science still hopes and labours with a very small amount of success to explain all phenomena of life by laws of matter and all phenomena of mind by laws of living matter. Here soul or spirit has no place and nature cannot be regarded as power of spirit. Since the whole of our existence is mechanical, physical and bounded by the biological phenomenon of a brief living consciousness and man is a creature and instrument of material energy, the spiritual self-evolution of Yoga can be only a delusion, hallucination, abnormal state of mind or self-hypnosis. In any case it cannot be what it represents itself to be, a discovery of the eternal truth of our being and a passing above the limited truth of the mental, vital and physical to the full truth of our spiritual nature.
  But when we look, not at external mechanical Nature to the exclusion of our personality, but at the inner subjective experience of man, the mental being, our nature takes to us a quite different appearance. We may believe intellectually in a purely mechanical view even of our subjective existence, but we cannot act upon it or make it quite real to our self-experience. For we are conscious of an I which does not seem identical with our nature, but capable of a standing back from it, of a detached observation and criticism and creative use of it, and of a will which we naturally think of as a free will; and even if this be a delusion, we are still obliged in practice to act as if we were responsible mental beings capable of a free choice of our actions, able to use or misuse and to turn to higher or lower ends our nature. And even we seem to be struggling both with our environmental and with our own present nature and striving to get mastery over a world which imposes itself on and masters us and at the same time to become something more than we now are. But the difficulty is that we are only in command, if at all, over a small part of ourselves, the rest is subconscient or subliminal and beyond our control, our will acts only in a small selection of our activities; the most is a process of mechanism and habit and we must strive constantly with ourselves and surrounding circumstances to make the least advance or self-amelioration. There seems to be a dual being in us; Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, seem to be half in agreement, half at odds. Nature laying its mechanical control on the soul, the soul attempting to change and master nature. And the question is what is the fundamental character of this duality and what the issue.
  The Sankhya explanation is that our present existence is governed by a dual principle. Prakriti is inert without the contact of Purusha, acts only by a junction with it and then too by the fixed mechanism of her instruments and qualities; Purusha, passive and free apart from Prakriti, becomes by contact with her and sanction to her works subject to this mechanism, lives in her limitation of ego-sense and must get free by withdrawing the sanction and returning to its own proper principle. Another explanation that tallies with a certain part of our experience is that there is a dual being in us, the animal and material, or more widely the lower nature-bound, and the soul or spiritual being entangled by mind in the material existence or in world-nature, and freedom comes by escape from the entanglement, the soul returning to its native planes or the self or spirit to its pure existence. The perfection of the soul then is to be found not at all in, but beyond Nature.
  But in a higher than our present mental consciousness we find that this duality is only a phenomenal appearance. The highest and real truth of existence is the one Spirit, the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and it is the power of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all that we experience as universe. This universal Nature is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit. The mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance and the reality is the Spirit creating or manifesting its own being by its own power of being in all that is in Nature. Soul and Nature in us too are only a dual appearance of the one existence. The universal energy acts in us, but the soul limits itself by the ego-sense, lives in a partial and separate experience of her workings, uses only a modicum and a fixed action of her energy for its self-expression. It seems rather to be mastered and used by this energy than to use it, because it identifies itself with the ego-sense which is part of the natural instrumentation and lives in the ego experience. The ego is in fact driven by the mechanism of Nature of which it is a part and the ego-will is not and cannot be a free will. To arrive at freedom, mastery and perfection we have to get back to the real self and soul within and arrive too thereby at our true relations with our own and with universal nature.
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  The Purusha and Prakriti are on the mental level as in the rest of our being closely joined and much involved in each other and we are not able to distinguish clearly soul and nature. But in the purer substance of mind we can more easily discern the dual strain. The mental Purusha is naturally able in its own native principle of mind to detach itself, as we have seen, from the workings of its Prakriti and there is then a division of our being between a consciousness that observes and can reserve its will-power and an energy full of the substance of consciousness that takes the forms of knowledge, will and feeling. This detachment gives at its highest a certain freedom from the compulsion of the soul by its mental nature. For ordinarily we are driven and carried along in the stream of our own and the universal active energy partly floundering in its waves, partly maintaining and seeming to guide or at least propel ourselves by a collected thought and an effort of the mental will muscle; but now there is a part of ourselves, nearest to the pure essence of self, which is free from the stream, can quietly observe and to a certain extent decide its immediate movement and course and to a greater extent its ultimate direction. The Purusha can at last act upon the Prakriti from half apart, from behind or from above her as a presiding person or presence, adhyaksa, by the power of sanction and control inherent in the spirit.
  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 supramental 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.
  To reach this perfection we have to become aware of the divine shakti, draw her to us and call her in to fill the whole system and take up the charge of all our activities. There will then be no separate personal will or individual energy trying to conduct our actions, no sense of a little personal self as the doer, nor will it be the lower energy of the three gunas, the mental, vital and physical nature. The divine shakti will fill us and preside over and take up all our inner activities, our outer life, our Yoga. She will take up the mental energy, her own lower formation, and raise it to its highest and purest and fullest powers of intelligence and will and psychic action. She will change the mechanical energies of the mind, life and body which now govern us into delight-filled manifestations of her own living and conscious power and presence. She will manifest in us and relate to each other all the various spiritual experiences of which the mind is capable. And as the crown of this process she will bring down the supramental light into the mental levels, change the stuff of mind into the stuff of supermind, transform all the lower energies into energies of her supramental nature and raise us into our being of gnosis. The shakti will reveal herself as the power of the Purushottama, and it is the Ishwara who will manifest himself in his force of supermind and spirit and be the master of our being, action, life and Yoga.

4.17 - The Action of the Divine Shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This is the nature of the divine shakti that it is the timeless power of the Divine which manifests itself in time as a universal force creating, constituting, maintaining and directing all the movements and workings of the universe. This universal Power is apparent to us first on the lower levels of existence as a mental, vital and material cosmic energy of which all our mental, vital and physical activities are the operations. It is necessary for our sadhana that we should thoroughly realise this truth in order to escape from the pressure of the limiting ego-view and universalise ourselves even on these lower levels where ordinarily the ego reigns in full force. To see that we are not the originators of action but that it is rather this Power that acts in ourselves and in all others, not I and others the doers, but the one Prakriti, which is the rule of the Karmayoga, is also the right rule here. The ego-sense serves to limit, separate and sharply differentiate, to make the most of the individual form and it is there because it is indispensable to the evolution of the lower life. But when we would rise above to a higher divine life we must loosen the force of the ego and eventually get rid of it -- as for the lower life the development of ego, so for the higher life this reverse movement of elimination of the ego is indispensable. To see our actions as not our own but those of the divine shakti working in the form of the lower Prakriti on the inferior levels of the conscious being, helps powerfully towards this change. And if we can do this, then the separation of our mental, vital and physical consciousness from that of other beings thins and lessens; the limitations of its workings remain indeed, but they are broadened and taken up into a large sense and vision of the universal working; the specialising and individualising differentiations of Nature abide for their own proper purpose, but are no longer a prison. The individual feels his mind, life and physical existence to be one with that of others amid all differences and one with the total power of the spirit in Nature.
  This, however, is a stage and not the whole perfection. The existence, however comparatively large and free, is still subject to the inferior nature. The sattwic, rajasic and tamasic ego is diminished but not eliminated; or if it seems to disappear, it has only sunk in our parts of action into the universal operation of the gunas, remains involved in them and is still working in a covert, subconscient fashion and may force itself to the front at any time. The Sadhaka has therefore first to keep the idea and get the realisation of a one self or spirit in all behind all these workings. He must be aware behind Prakriti of the one Supreme and universal Purusha. He must see and feel not only that all is the self-shaping of the one Force, Prakriti or Nature, but that all her actions are those of the Divine in all, the one Godhead in all, however veiled, altered and as it were perverted -- for perversion comes by a conversion into lower forms -- by transmission through the ego and the gunas. This will farther diminish the open or covert insistence of the ego and, if thoroughly realised, it will make it difficult or impossible for it to assert itself in such a way as to disturb or hamper the farther progress. The ego-sense will become, so far as it interferes at all, a foreign intrusive element and only a fringe of the mist of the old ignorance hanging on to the outskirts of the consciousness and its action. And, secondly, the universal shakti must be realised, must be seen and felt and borne in the potent purity of its higher action, its supramental and spiritual workings. This greater vision of the shakti will enable us to escape from the control of the gunas, to convert them into their divine equivalents and dwell in a consciousness in which the Purusha and Prakriti are one and not separated or hidden in or behind each other. There the shakti will be in its every movement evident to us and naturally, spontaneously, irresistibly felt as nothing else but the active presence of the Divine, the shape of power of the supreme Self and Spirit.
  The shakti in this higher status reveals itself as the presence or potentiality of the infinite existence, consciousness, will, delight and when it is so seen and felt, the being turns towards it in whatever way, with its adoration or its will of aspiration or some kind of attraction of the lesser to the greater, to know it, to be full of and possessed by it, to be one with it in the sense and action of the whole nature. But at first while we still live in the mind, there is a gulf of division or else a double action. The mental, vital and physical energy in us and the universe is felt to be a derivation from the supreme shakti, but at the same time an inferior, separated and in some sense another working. The real spiritual force may send down its messages or the light and power of its presence above us to the lower levels or may descend occasionally and even for a time possess, but it is then mixed with the inferior workings and partially transforms and spiritualises them, but is itself diminished and altered in the process. There is an intermittent higher action or a dual working of the nature. Or we find that the shakti for a time raises the being to a higher spiritual plane arid then lowers it back into the inferior levels. These alternations must be regarded as the natural vicissitudes of a process of transformation from the normal to the spiritual being. The transformation, the perfection cannot for the integral Yoga be complete until the link between the mental and the spiritual action is formed and a higher knowledge applied to all the activities of our existence. That link is the supramental or gnostic energy in which the incalculable infinite power of the supreme being, consciousness, delight formulates itself as an ordering divine will and wisdom, a light and power in the being which shapes all the thought, will, feeling, action and replaces the corresponding individual movements.
  --
  It has been seen that a most effective way of purification is for the mental Purusha to draw back, to stand as the passive witness and observe and know himself and the workings of Nature in the lower, the normal being; but this must be combined, for perfection, with a will to raise the purified nature into the higher spiritual being. When that is done, the Purusha is no longer only a witness, but also the master of his Prakriti, isvara. At first it may not be apparent how this ideal of active self-mastery can be reconciled with the apparently opposite ideal of self-surrender and of becoming the assenting instrument of the divine shakti. But in fact on the spiritual plane there is no difficulty. The Jiva cannot really become master except in proportion as he arrives at oneness with the Divine who is his supreme Self. And in that oneness and in his unity with the universe he is one too in the universal self with the will that directs all the operations of Nature. But more directly, less transcendentally, in his individual action too, he is a portion of the Divine and participates in the mastery over his nature of that to which he has surrendered himself. Even as instrument, he is not a mechanical but a conscious instrument. On the Purusha side of him he is one with the Divine and participates in the divine mastery of the Ishwara. On the nature side of him he is in his universality one with the power of the Divine, while in his individual natural being he is an instrument of the universal divine shakti, because the individualised power is there to fulfil the purpose of the universal Power. The Jiva, as has been seen, is the meeting-place of the play of the dual aspect of the Divine, Prakriti and Purusha, and in the higher spiritual consciousness he becomes simultaneously one with both these aspects, and there he takes up and combines all the divine relations created by their interaction. This it is that makes possible the dual attitude.
  There is however a possibility of arriving at this result without the passage through the passivity of the mental Purusha, by a more persistently and predominantly kinetic Yoga. Or there may be a combination of both the methods, alternations between them and an ultimate fusion. And here the problem of spiritual action assumes a more simple form. In this kinetic movement there are three stages. In the first the Jiva is aware of the supreme shakti, receives the power into himself and uses it under her direction, with a certain sense of being the subordinate doer, a sense of minor responsibility in the action, -- even at first, it may be, a responsibility for the result; but that disappears, for the result is seen to be determined by the higher Power, and only the action is felt to be partly his own. The Sadhaka then feels that it is he who is thinking, willing, doing, but feels too the divine shakti or Prakriti behind driving and shaping all his thought, will, feeling and action: the individual energy belongs in a way to him, but is still only a form and an instrument of the universal divine Energy. The Master of the Power may be hidden from him for a time by the action of the shakti, or he may be aware of the Ishwara sometimes or continually manifest to him. In the latter case there are three things present to his consciousness, himself as the servant of the Ishwara, the shakti behind as a great Power supplying the energy, shaping the action, formulating the results, the Ishwara above determining by his will the whole action.
  In the second stage the individual doer disappears, but there is not necessarily any quietistic passivity; there may be a full kinetic action, only all is done by the shakti. It is her power of knowledge which takes shape as thought in the mind; the Sadhaka has no sense of himself thinking, but of the shakti thinking in him. The will and the feelings and action are also in the same way nothing but a formation, operation, activity of the shakti in her immediate presence and full possession of all the system. The Sadhaka does not think, will, act, feel, but thought, will, feeling, action happen in his system. The individual on the side of action has disappeared into oneness with universal Prakriti, has become an individualised form and action of the divine shakti. He is still aware of his personal existence, but it is as the Purusha supporting and observing the whole action, conscious of it in his self-knowledge and enabling by his participation the divine shakti to do in him the works and the will of the Ishwara. The Master of the power is then sometimes hidden by the action of the power, sometimes appears governing it and compelling its workings. Here too there are three things present to the consciousness, the shakti carrying on all the knowledge, thought, will, feeling, action for the Ishwara in an instrumental human form, the Ishwara, the Master of existence governing and compelling all her action, and ourself as the soul, the Purusha of her individual action enjoying all the relations with him which are created by her workings. There is another form of this realisation in which the Jiva disappears into and becomes one with the shakti and there is then only the play of the shakti with the Ishwara, Mahadeva and Kali, Krishna and Radha, the Deva and the Devi. This is the intensest possible form of the Jiva's realisation of himself as a manifestation of Nature, a power of the being of the Divine, para prakrtir jivabhuta.
  A third stage comes by the increasing manifestation of the Divine, the Ishwara in all our being and action. This is when we are constantly and uninterruptedly aware of him. He is felt in us as the possessor of our being and above us as the ruler of all its workings and they become to us nothing but a manifestation of him in the existence of the Jiva. All our consciousness is his consciousness, all our knowledge is his knowledge, all our thought is his thought, all our will is his will, all our feeling is his Ananda and form of his delight in being, all our action is his action. The distinction between the shakti and the Ishwara begins to disappear; there is only the conscious activity in us of the Divine with the great self of the Divine behind and around and possessing it; all the world and Nature is seen to be only that, but here it has become fully conscious, the Maya of the ego removed, and the Jiva is there only as an eternal portion of his being, amsa sanatana, put forth to support a divine individualisation and living now fulfilled in the complete presence and power of the Divine, the complete joy of the Spirit manifested in the being. This is the highest realisation of the perfection and delight of the active oneness; for beyond it there could be only the consciousness of the Avatara, the Ishwara himself assuming a human name and form for action in the Lila.

4.19 - The Nature of the supermind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Yoga of perfection necessary to this change has, so far as we have been considering it, consisted in a preparatory purification of the mental, vital and physical nature, a liberation from the knots of the lower Prakriti, a consequent replacement of the egoistic state always subject to the ignorant and troubled action of the desire-soul by a large and luminous static equality which quiets the reason, the emotional mind, the life mind and the physical nature and brings into us the peace and freedom of the spirit, and a dynamical substitution of the action of the supreme and universal divine shakti under the control of the Ishwara for that of the lower Prakriti, --an action whose complete operation must be preceded by the perfection of the natural instruments. And all these things together, though not as yet the whole Yoga, constitute already a much greater than the present normal consciousness, spiritual in its basis and moved by a greater light, power and bliss, and it might be easy to rest satisfied with so much accomplished and think that all has been done that was needed for the divine conversion.
  A momentous question however arises as light grows, the question, through what medium is the divine shakti to act in the human being? Is it to be always through the mind only and on the mind plane or in some greater supramental formulation which is more proper to a divine action and which will take up and replace the mental functions? If the mind is to be always the instrument, then although we shall be conscious of a diviner Power Initiating and conducting all our inner and outer human action, yet it will have to formulate its knowledge, will, Ananda and all things else in the mental figure, and that means to translate them into an inferior kind of functioning other than the supreme workings native to the divine consciousness and its shakti. The mind spiritualised, purified, liberated, perfected within its own limits may come as near as possible to a faithful mental translation, but we shall find that this is after all a relative fidelity and an imperfect perfection. The mind by its very nature cannot render with an entirely right rightness or act in the unified completeness of the divine knowledge, will and Ananda because it is an instrument for dealing with the divisions of the finite on the basis of division, a secondary instrument therefore and a sort of delegate for the lower movement in which we live. The mind can reflect the Infinite, it can dissolve itself into it, it can live in it by a large passivity, it can take its suggestions and act them out in its own way, a way always fragmentary, derivative and subject to a greater or less deformation, but it cannot be itself the direct and perfect instrument of the infinite Spirit acting in its own knowledge. The divine Will and Wisdom organising the action of the infinite consciousness and determining all things according to the truth of the spirit and the law of its manifestation is not mental but supramental and even in its formulation nearest to mind as much above the mental consciousness in its light and power as the mental consciousness of man above the vital mind of the lower creation. The question is how far the perfected human being can raise himself above mind, enter into some kind of fusing union with the supramental and build up in himself a level of supermind, a developed gnosis by the form and power of which the divine shakti can directly act, not through a mental translation, but organically in her supramental nature.

4.2.1.04 - The Psychic and the Mental, Vital and Physical Nature, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The soul is the witness, upholder, inmost experiencer, but it is master only in theory, in fact it is not-master, ansa, so long as it consents to the Ignorance. For that is a general consent which implies that the Prakriti gambols about with the Purusha and does pretty well what she likes with him. When he wants to get back his mastery, make the theoretical practical, he needs a lot of tapasya to do it.
  The psychic has always been veiled, consenting to the play of mind, physical and vital, experiencing everything through them in the ignorant mental, vital and physical way. How then can it be that they are bound to change at once when it just takes the trouble to whisper or say, "Let there be Light"! They have a tremendous negating power and can refuse and do refuse point-blank. The mind resists with an obstinate persistency in argument and a constant confusion of ideas, the vital with a fury of bad will aided by the mind's obliging reasonings on its side, the physical resists with an obstinate inertia and crass fidelity to old habit, and when they have done, the general Nature comes in and says, "What, you are going to get free from me so easily?

4.2.5 - Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  He can continue his endeavour and let us know if there is any result. The difficulties that have risen in him are quite normal and a natural reaction to the effort he is making. It is usual for these resistances to rise up, for they have to manifest themselves in order that they may be dealt with and thrown out. If he perseveres, that should happen sooner or later. But it is best not to struggle with the resistances but to stand back from them, observe as a witness, reject these movements and call on the Divine Power to remove them. Surrender of the nature is not an easy thing and may take a long time; surrender of the self, if one can do it, is easier and once that is done, that of the nature will come about sooner or later. But for that it is necessary to detach oneself from the action of the Prakriti and see oneself as separate. That is why I asked whether he had any (major) realisation from his previous sadhana. To observe the movements as a witness without being discouraged or disturbed is the best way to effect the necessary detachment and separation. This also would help to increase the receptivity to any aid that may be given to him and to bring about the reliance, nirbhara.
  If he turns to us, we will of course give him whatever help he can just now consciously or subconsciously receive.
  --
  Well, that [the quietude of death] is not the right kind of quietude. The peace of Nirvana would have some meaning in it, but death into the quietness of exhausted Prakriti is no release at all.
  ***

4.25 - Towards the supramental Time Vision, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The consciousness of the timeless Infinite can be brought home to us in various ways, but is most ordinarily imposed on our mentality by a reflection of it and a powerful impression or else made present to us as something above the mind, something of which it is aware, towards which it lifts, but into which it cannot enter because itself lives only in the time sense and in the succession of the moments. If our present mind untransformed by the supramental influence tries to enter into the timeless, it must either disappear and be lost in the trance of Samadhi or else, remaining awake, it feels itself diffused in an Infinite where there is perhaps a sense of supra-physical space, a vastness, a boundless extension of consciousness, but no time self, time movement or time order. And if then the mental being is still mechanically aware of things in time, it is yet unable to deal with them in its own manlier, unable to establish a truth relation between the timeless and things in time and unable to act and will out of its indefinite Infinite. The action that then remains possible to the mental Purusha is the mechanical action of the instruments of the Prakriti continuing by force of old impulsion and habit or continued initiation of past energy, prarabdha, or else an action chaotic, unregulated, uncoordinated, a confused precipitate from an energy which has no longer a conscious centre.
  The supramental consciousness, on the other hand, is founded upon the supreme consciousness of the timeless Infinite, but has too the secret of the deployment of the infinite Energy in time. It can either take its station in the time consciousness and keep the timeless infinite as its background of supreme and original being from which it receives all its organising knowledge, will and action, or it can, centred in its essential being, live in the timeless but live too in a manifestation in time which it feels and sees as infinite and as the same Infinite, and can bring out, sustain and develop in the one what it holds supernally in the other. Its time consciousness therefore will be different from that of the mental being, not swept helplessly on the stream of the moments and clutching at each moment as a stay and a swiftly disappearing standpoint, but founded first on its eternal identity beyond the changes of time, secondly on a simultaneous eternity of Time in which past, present and future exist together for ever in the self-knowledge and self-power of the Eternal, thirdly, in a total view of the three times as one movement singly and indivisibly seen even in their succession of stages, periods, cycles, last -- and that only in the instrumental consciousness -- in the step-by-step evolution of the moments. It will therefore have the knowledge of the three times, trikaladrsti, -- held of old to be a supreme sign of the seer and the Rishi, --not as an abnormal power, but as its normal way of time knowledge.

4.3.1.01 - Peace, Calm, Silence and the Self, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  And how is the outer nature to rise into the higher Prakriti
  before you realise the Self? The higher nature is that of the

4.3.1.04 - The Disappearance of the I Sense, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  movements in the Prakriti reactions, the Purusha within observes
  them as the continued running of an old mechanism and does not
  --
  the ego movements of Prakriti can also disappear gradually from
  one field after another till none is left. For this a perfect samata

4.3.1.09 - The Self and Life, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  separation of the mental Purusha and Prakriti which results in
  a knowledge that has no transforming effect on the life. But the

4.3.1 - The Hostile Forces and the Difficulties of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Free yourself from all exaggerated self-depreciation and the habit of getting depressed by the sense of sin, difficulty or failure. These feelings do not really help, on the contrary, they are an immense obstacle and hamper the progress. They belong to the religious, not to the Yogic mentality. The Yogin should look on all the defects of the nature as movements of the lower Prakriti common to all and reject them calmly, firmly and persistently with full confidence in the Divine Powerwithout weakness or depression or negligence and without excitement, impatience or violence.
  ***

4.4.2.02 - Ascension or Rising above the Head, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is the forces of the lower Prakriti rising to connect themselves with the higher spiritual consciousness above. The hearing of bells is usually a sign of an opening of the consciousness; it is mentioned in the Upanishads as one of such significant sounds and is well known to Yogis.
  (1) Freedom from cares, lightness of mind and body are very good results. They do not usually become permanent at once - it is sufficient if they are frequently or ordinarily there.

5.03 - The Divine Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But all recognition of the sex principle, as apart from the gross physical indulgence of the sex impulse, could not be excluded from a divine life upon earth; it is there in life, plays a large part and has to be dealt with, it cannot simply be ignored, merely suppressed or held down or put away out of sight. In the first place, it is in one of its aspects a cosmic and even a divine principle: it takes the spiritual form of the Ishwara and the Shakti and without it there could be no world-creation or manifestation of the world-principle of Purusha and Prakriti which are both necessary for the creation, necessary too in their association and interchange for the play of its psychological working and in their manifestation as soul and Nature fundamental to the whole process of the Lila. In the divine life itself an incarnation or at least in some form a presence of the two powers or their initiating influence through their embodiments or representatives would be indispensable for making the new creation possible. In its human action on the mental and vital level sex is not altogether an undivine principle; it has its nobler aspects and idealities and it has to be seen in what way and to what extent these can be admitted into the new and larger life. All gross animal indulgence of sex desire and impulse would have to be eliminated; it could only continue among those who are not ready for the higher life or not yet ready for a complete spiritual living. In all who aspired to it but could not yet take it up in its fullness sex will have to be refined, submit to the spiritual or psychic impulse and a control by the higher mind and the higher vital and shed all its lighter, frivolous or degraded forms and feel the touch of the purity of the ideal. Love would remain, all forms of the pure truth of love in higher and higher steps till it realised its highest nature, widened into universal love, merged into the love of the Divine. The love of man and woman would also undergo that elevation and consummation; for all that can feel a touch of the ideal and the spiritual must follow the way of ascent till it reaches the divine Reality. The body and its activities must be accepted as part of the divine life and pass under this law; but, as in the other evolutionary transitions, what cannot accept the law of the divine life cannot be accepted and must fall away from the ascending nature.
  Another difficulty that the transformation of the body has to face is its dependence for its very existence upon food, and here too are involved the gross physical instincts, impulses, desires that are associated with this difficult factor, the essential cravings of the palate, the greed of food and animal gluttony of the belly, the coarsening of the mind when it grovels in the mud of sense, obeys a servitude to its mere animal part and hugs its bondage to Matter. The higher human in us seeks refuge in a temperate moderation, in abstemiousness and abstinence or in carelessness about the body and its wants and in an absorption in higher things. The spiritual seeker often, like the Jain ascetics, seeks refuge in long and frequent fasts which lift him temporarily at least out of the clutch of the bodys demands and help him to feel in himself a pure vacancy of the wide rooms of the spirit. But all this is not liberation and the question may be raised whether, not only at first but always, the divine life also must submit to this necessity. But it could only deliver itself from it altogether if it could find out the way so to draw upon the universal energy that the energy would sustain not only the vital parts of our physicality but its constituent matter with no need of aid for sustenance from any outside substance of Matter. It is indeed possible even while fasting for very long periods to maintain the full energies and activities of the soul and mind and life, even those of the body, to remain wakeful but concentrated in Yoga all the time, or to think deeply and write day and night, to dispense with sleep, to walk eight hours a day, maintaining all these activities separately or together, and not feel any loss of strength, any fatigue, any kind of failure or decadence. At the end of the fast one can even resume at once taking the normal or even a greater than the normal amount of nourishment without any transition or precaution such as medical science enjoins, as if both the complete fasting and the feasting were natural conditions, alternating by an immediate and easy passage from one to the other, of a body already trained by a sort of initial transformation to be an instrument of the powers and activities of Yoga. But one thing one does not escape and that is the wasting of the material tissues of the body, its flesh and substance. Conceivably, if a practicable way and means could only be found, this last invincible obstacle too might be overcome and the body maintained by an interchange of its forces with the forces of material Nature, giving to her her need from the individual and taking from her directly the sustaining energies of her universal existence. Conceivably, one might rediscover and re-establish at the summit of the evolution of life the phenomenon we see at its base, the power to draw from all around it the means of sustenance and self-renewal. Or else the evolved being might acquire the greater power to draw down those means from above rather than draw them up or pull them in from the environment around, all about it and below it. But until something like this is achieved or made possible we have to go back to food and the established material forces of Nature.

5.1.01 - Terminology, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean on the other hand specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds
  450
  --
   all evolving formations here. There is and can be no psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura; there can be none in a God who does not need one for his existence. But what the God has is a Purusha and a Prakriti or Energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the typal worlds wants to evolve he has to come down to earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution. It is because they do not want to do this that the vital beings try to possess men so that they may enjoy the materialities of physical life without bearing the burden of the evolution or the process of conversion in which it culminates. I hope this is clear and solves the difficulty.
  The three stages you speak of 1 are stages not of evolution but of the involution of the Divine in Matter. The Devas and Asuras are not evolved in Matter; for the typal being only a Purusha with its Prakriti is necessary - this Purusha may put out a mental and vital Purusha to represent it and according as it is centred in one or another it belongs to the mental or vital world. That is all.
  There is no essential difference anywhere, for all is fundamentally the essential Divine; the difference is in the manifestation. Practically, we may say that the Jivatman is one of the divine Many and dependent on the One; the Atman is the One supporting the Many. The psychic being does not merge in the

5.1.02 - The Gods, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Purusha is an essential being supporting the play of Prakriti - the Godhead (Indra, Vayu) is a dynamic being manifested in
   Prakriti for the works of the plane to which he belongs. There is an immense difference.

5.1.03 - The Hostile Forces and Hostile Beings, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Europe also from old times. These things of course cannot be felt or known so long as one lives in the ordinary mind and its ideas and perceptions - for there there are only two categories of influences recognisable, the ideas and feelings and actions of oneself and others and the play of environment and physical forces. But once one begins to get the inner view of things, it is different. One begins to experience that all is an action of forces, forces of Prakriti psychological as well as physical which play upon our nature - and these are conscious forces or are supported by a consciousness or consciousnesses behind. One is in the midst of a big universal working and it is impossible any longer to explain everything as the result of one's own sole and independent personality. You yourself have at one time written that your crises of despair etc. came upon you as if thrown on you and worked themselves out without your being able to determine or put an end to them. That means an action of universal forces and not merely an independent action of your own personality, though it is something in your nature of which they make use. But you are not conscious, and others also, of this intervention and pressure at its source for the reason I state.
  Those in the Asram who have developed the inner view of things on the vital plane1 have plenty of experience of the hostile forces.

5.4.01 - Occult Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There is no such thing as "free" will, but there is the power of the Purusha to say "yes" or "no" to any particular pressure of Prakriti and there is the power of the mind, vital etc. to echo feebly or strongly the Purusha's "yes" or "no" or to resist it. A constant (not a momentary) Yes or No has its effect in the play of the forces and the selection by the Something.
  No, of course not [helpful synchronicities are not just accidents].
  --
  The force "created" is not yours - it is Prakriti's - your will sets it in motion, it does not really create it; but once set in motion, it tends to fulfil itself so far as the play of other forces will allow it. So, naturally, if you want to stop it, you have to set a contrary force in motion which will be strong enough to prevail against its momentum.
  There is one cosmic Force working in all and a vibration of that Force or any one of its movements can awake (it does not always) the same vibration in another.

9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
    guna: According to the Samkhya philosophy, Prakriti (nature), in contrast with Purusha (soul), consists of three gunas (qualities or strands) known as sattva, rajas, and tamas. Tamas stands for inertia or dullness, rajas for activity or restlessness, and sattva for balance or wisdom.
    guru(deva): Spiritual teacher.
  --
     Prakriti: Primordial Nature, which, in association with Purusha, creates the universe. It is one of the categories of the Samkhya philosophy.
    prana: The vital breath that sustains life in a physical body. See five vital forces.
  --
    Purusha: (Lit., a man) A term of the Samkhya philosophy, denoting the eternal Conscious Principle; the universe evolves from the union of Prakriti and Purusha. The word also denotes the soul and the Absolute.
  Q↑
  --
    twenty-four tattvas, or cosmic principles: According to the Samkhya philosophy the twenty-four tattvas, or cosmic principles, are: the five great elements in their subtle forms (ether, air, fire, water, earth); ego, or "I-consciousness"; buddhi, or intelligence; Avyakta, or the Unmanifested (in which sattva, rajas, and tamas remain in an undifferentiated state); the five organs of action (hands, feet, organ of speech, organ of generation, organ of evacuation); the five organs of knowledge (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin); manas, or mind; and the five sense-objects (sound, touch, form, taste, smell). They all belong to Prakriti, or Nature, and are different from Purusha, or Consciousness.
    twice-born: A man belonging to the brahmin, kshatriya (warrior), or vaisya (merchant) caste, who has his second, or spiritual, birth at the time of his investiture with the sacred thread.
  --
    Yogamaya: The union of Purusha, the male principle, and Prakriti, the female principle, of Reality; also Sakti, or Divine Power.
    yoga samadhi: The samadhi that results when the devotee is united with God.

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  "Thou art that Prakriti (essence), infinite and subtile, which bore Brahma in its womb. Thou eternal
  being, comprising in thy substance the essence of all created things, wast identical with creation; thou
  --
  Purusha (Spirit) and Prakriti (matter). As the Adwaitees hold that an external object is
  merely the product of our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than an illusion, and
  Purusha is the only reality; it is the ONE existence which remains in the universe of
  --
  The light of life, as it were, seems to be refracted by the treble-faced prism of Prakriti, having the
  three Gunams for its three faces, and divided into seven rays, which develop in course of time the

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  The Seven Prakritis ... 335
  The Mystic Fire ... 339
  --
  root," and Prakriti, "nature"), or the unmanifested primordial matter -- called by Western alchemists
  Adam's Earth -- is applied by the Vedantins to Parabrahmam. Matter is dual in religious metaphysics,
  --
  (3.) Spirit-matter, LIFE; the "Spirit of the Universe," the Purusha and Prakriti, or the second Logos.
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-0-pr.htm (14 von 21) [06.05.2003 03:30:32]
  --
  in its totality has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both evolved and unevolved (Mula Prakriti), and
  also the aspect of Spirit and the aspect of Time. Spirit, O twice born, is the leading aspect of the
  Supreme Brahma.* The next is a twofold aspect, -- Prakriti, both evolved and unevolved, and is the
  time last." Kronos is shown in the Orphic theogony as being also a generated god or agent.
  --
  most eminent sages Pradhana, original base, which is subtile Prakriti, viz., that which is eternal, and
  which at once is (or comprehends) what is and what is not, or is mere process." " Prakriti," however, is
  an incorrect word, and Alaya would explain it better; for Prakriti is not the "uncognizable Brahma."*
  It is a mistake of those who know nothing of the Universality of the Occult doctrines from the very
  --
  acquainted with first principles call Pradhana and Prakriti, is the incognizable Brahma who was before
  all" (Vayu Purana); i.e., Brahma does not put forth evolution itself or create, but only exhibits various
  aspects of itself, one of which is Prakriti, an aspect of Pradhana.
  http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-02.htm (13 von 15) [06.05.2003 03:30:38]
  --
  and Matter, or Purusha and Prakriti are but the two primeval aspects of the One and Secondless," we
  are taught.
  --
  Anupadaka (as one with Brahmam) -- Prakriti, its phenomenon, is periodical and no better than a
  phantasm of the former, so Mahat, with the Occultists, the first-born of Gnana (or gnosis) knowledge,
  --
  manifestation of Prakriti, or Matter.
  (b) Therefore, the "last vibration of the Seventh Eternity" was "fore-ordained" -- by no God in
  --
  Purusha (spirit), but he is also Prakriti (matter). Therefore it is only after separating himself into two
  halves -- Brahma-vach (the female) and Brahma-Viraj (the male), that the Prajapati becomes the male
  --
  have been to call it "the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom." The
  atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by a
  --
  as something impotent unless he mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (matter), which, left alone, is -senseless. But in the secret philosophy they are viewed as graduated. Though one and the same thing in
  their origin, Spirit and Matter, when once they are on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them
  --
  Therefore, when the hour strikes for Purusha to mount on Prakriti's shoulders for the formation of the
  Perfect Man -- rudimentary man of the first 2 1/2 Races being only the first, gradually evolving into
  --
  flatly contradict the assertion. No Hindu has ever mistaken Prakriti -- the Astral Light being only
  above the lowest plane of Prakriti, the material Kosmos -- for the "immortal Spirit." Prakriti is ever
  called Maya, illusion, and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the gods included, at the hour of the
  --
  confused Akasa with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the visible Sky! It is true also that those who
  have invariably translated the term Akasa by "Ether" (Wilson, for instance), finding it called "the
  --
  differentiated Prakriti** -- the ever immaculate "Mother" of the fatherless Son, who becomes "Father"
  on the lower manifested plane. For MAHAT is the first product of Pradhana, or Akasa, and Mahat -Universal intelligence "whose characteristic property is Buddhi" -- is no other than the Logos, for he is
  --
  ** In the Sankhya philosophy, the seven Prakritis or "productive productions" are Mahat, Ahamkara,
  and the five tanmatras. See "Sankhya-karika," III., and the Commentary thereon.
  --
  concrete), for the Purana adds: "In this manner -- as were the seven forms (principles) of Prakriti
  reckoned from Mahat to Earth -- so at the time of pralaya (pratyahara) these seven successively reenter into each other. The egg of Brahma (Sarva-mandala) is dissolved with its seven zones (dwipa),
  --
  identical subject of the seven Prakritis or the seven zones of Brahma's egg, the two accounts differ
  totally. In Vol. 1, page 40, the egg is said to be externally invested by seven envelopes -- Wilson
  --
  * This (teaching) does not refer to Prakriti-Purusha beyond the boundaries of our small universe.
  ** The ultimate quiescent state: the Nirvana condition of the seventh Principle.

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  "force-substance" is the ever-active phenomenal positive aether -- Prakriti; while the omnipresent all
  pervading ether is the noumenon of the former, the substratum of all, or Akasa. Nevertheless, Stallo
  --
  It teaches that before evolution began, Prakriti (Nature) was in a condition of laya or absolute
  homogeneity, as "matter exists in two conditions, the sukshma, or latent and undifferentiated, and the
  --
  formed. That every particle or atom of Prakriti contains Jiva (divine life), and is the sarira (body) of
  that Jiva which it contains, while every Jiva is in its turn the sarira of the supreme spirit, as
  --
  secret meaning of the stanza: "Brahma has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both evolved and
  unevolved . . . . Spirit, O twice-born, (Initiate) is the leading aspect of Brahma. The next is a two-fold
  aspect -- of Prakriti and Purusha, both evolved and unevolved; and time is the last! Anu is one of the
  names of Brahma (as distinct from Brahma neuter), and it means "atom": Aniyamsam aniyasam, "the
  --
  endless cause, and Prakriti, or the manifested effect. Says the sloka; -"That which is the unevolved cause is emphatically called by the most eminent sages, pradhana,
  original base, which is subtile Prakriti, viz., that which is eternal, and which at once is, and is not, a
  mere process."*
  --
  essentially Prakriti (Nature) and Spirit. For the two aspects of Vishnu which are other than his
  supreme essential aspect are Prakriti and Spirit, and Brahman. When these two other ASPECTS of his
  no longer subsist, but are dissolved, then that aspect whence form and the rest, i.e., creation, proceed
  --
  -- Prakriti and Purusha, nature or matter in all its forms and Spirit -- "no longer subsist but are
  (absolutely) dissolved," we learn the conclusive scientific opinion of the great English chemist, who
  --
  not the Supreme Spirit, being subject to conditions, being a spiritual modification of Prakriti, and an
  effect; Atma alone is the one real and eternal substratum of all -- the essence and absolute knowledge -the Kshetragna.** It is called in the Esoteric philosophy "the One Witness,"
  --
  womb of the world. Pradhana (unmodified matter), that which is the first form of Prakriti, or material
  visible, as well as invisible nature, and Purusha, spirit, are eternally one; and they are Nirupadhi,
  --
  the MAHAT (mind) and Prakriti of the Puranas, there is but a step. After all, the admission of this by
  Science would be only the admission of a natural cause, whether it would or would not stretch its

BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  There is but one Brahma, "essentially Prakriti and Spirit," &c.
  Therefore, it is not Vishnu -- "the inert cause of creation" -- which exercised the functions of an active
  --
  of the universe is divided into two acts: called in India the Prakriti and Padma Creations. Before the
  warm rays pouring from the "Home of Brightness" awake life in the Great Waters of Space, the
  --
  about Purusha and Prakriti felt by the various writers on Vedantic philosophy. This
  Mula Prakriti is material to it (the Logos), as any material object is material to us. This
  --
  identified with the supreme, into Prakriti or matter alone." He prefers the verse in Padma Purana: "He
  who is called the male (spirit) of Prakriti . . . that same divine Vishnu entered into Prakriti." This
  "view" is certainly more akin to the plastic character of certain verses in the Bible concerning the

Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Then he manifests as the giver of sanctions: he approves or refuses his consent to a movement of Prakriti: desire or thought or even action. When such an order is given, as for instance, the refusal to take part in a certain emotion, though the past is yet strong, the being turns away from that emotion.
  Then, Purusha is the Knower and in him is the knowledge. This knowledge has several forms: the lowest is intuition, then comes the knowledge in unity. In any case, the senses are no longer avenues of knowledge: it comes directly.
  --
  This is true but there is yet a third thing, it is the mind in itself, different from the forms and ideas it produces. It is a principle which pervades the whole universe calm and transparent. Most people and you also identify yourself with the mind and its activities: you confuse the mind and its activities. You must succeed in separating yourself from Prakriti and knowing yourself as the Purusha.
  The method I was taught was to kill all thoughts when they appeared before me, quite simply by looking at them steadily.
  --
  Naturally, this is what many seek. The Absolute has two aspects as Purusha: the transcendent, immutable Purusha and the mutable Purusha, as the Gita says. The soul can realise its union with the first: Prakriti disappears and the soul escapes from the manifested world which it considered a falsehood, an illusion or a dangerous trap. But this cannot satisfy. For the Absolute contains also the mutable Purusha and the soul, if it wants integral union, must realise its unity with the Divine in the manifestation, as with the Transcendent.
  Besides, to say that the soul has become finally absorbed in the Absolute is only a way of speaking. Is this liberation final? I am far from granting this.
  --
  The will has three grades and it must be distinguished before all from the effort which is purely mental. The first grade is desire corresponding to the solar plexus. The second, isita or aisvarya is a kind of command, of order, which either sanctions or not the work of Prakriti. When it is known that a thing must or must not be, it ought to come into action. This is an indispensable power for the Yoga we follow. One can call it by a consecration and one becomes aware of its action. This action is disturbed and imperfect at the beginning, but in time it is perfected. Mental effort may succeed in time, but the action of the true will is infinitely more rapid.
  I have experienced this action when, by a call which is at the same time an offering, I reach the highest layers of my being. I have, physically, the sensation of an action descending above my head.
  --
  The third action of the will is a control, an absolute possession of Prakriti by the Purusha (vasita?).
  [1] The centre between the eyebrows.
  --
  This calm is at first mental; there are two parts in the mind, one which reflects the activity of Prakriti, the other which shares the calm of Purusha.
  I understand quite clearly. The only result reached so far is more calmness and a deeper peace, less easily disturbed by the little things of life, more intuitiveness and a greater facility in uniting myself with what is around me.
  --
  At first it is necessary to emphasise the division before making the synthesis. You will experience that it is not you who are thinking, but Prakriti; this is the first liberation. The faculty of thought has not been taken away from you; but thought seems to you to be outside yourself.
  There is no change in the consciousness and this state has nothing spiritual about it.
  --
  Master, there is something I don't understand very well. Suppose I am meditating. At first there is quite a large action of the semi-automatic mind, which continues the original movement. Little by little this action becomes calm and stops. I find myself then face to face with the quiet mind: but there is another activity of the mind, a kind of inner language which seems to be aroused by myself. It is with this thought that I tell myself, for instance: "Now I am observing my thoughts whence does this one come? now all is calm I must also stop talking to myself thus, etc. etc." It is possible to stop this activity also, absolutely. Where does it come from? Its laws are those of the mind, but it seems to reflect some purpose of the Purusha, or to serve him as an instrument of knowledge and action. If it were aroused by Prakriti, Prakriti would be struggling against herself. On the other hand, how can Purusha who is calm, immutable, bring about a change? If really there is no change in him, this would be impossible, wouldn't it?
  At first it so happens that Prakriti does struggle against herself certain parts against certain others. But Purusha is not totally inactive. This inactivity, reduced to the single role of passive witness, is that of Sankhya.[1] Purusha is Sakshi.[2] But even then he can either give or refuse his consent, he is the giver of sanction: anumanta. And Prakriti does not work only for herself, she works for Purusha also she executes. But Purusha is more than that. It is not he who executes, his activity is not effective, but he is also the Knower and Lord (Ishwara). And what he decides, Prakriti executes. In most people Purusha is hidden behind all mental action. There is certainly a consent to the Play of Prakriti. But Purusha is not free then: Prakriti casts her action on Purusha. Purusha must first recover his attitude of witness. Then he experiences that he has a certain power over the activities of Prakriti.
  Is this consent of the Purusha conscious? Or is it something much more profound?
  --
  There is the universal Purusha as there is the individual Purusha, and there is that which transcends them both. This individual Purusha is distinct, though not separate he does not feel himself separate from the whole. And when he is fully conscious, he has direct access to the transcendent. Without this individual Purusha, no organised action would be possible. For instance, there are many sadhaks who try to wipe out this action. The stage of Paramhamsa in which one is absolutely unconscious of one's activities, be it as a child or one inert, carried away as a leaf in the wind is a phase preparatory to the total cessation. When the given impulsion ceases, there is a final rejection, at the time of the dissolution of the body. But we, we want not cessation, but the replacing of limited action circumscribed by a limited consciousness, by the true action, governed by the knowledge of the truth. Thought is a means of knowledge, but it is the lowest. When Purusha is freed from Prakriti, he has all knowledge in him, direct. He knows directly by a sort of vision, a direct contact with the truth (for example, when you are angry you don't need to think "I am angry", you know it without that. Direct knowledge is like that). Even when, later, he translates this knowledge into mental terms, it remains independent of them. Besides, only a part, fragmentary and deformed, can be translated. That is why I find it so difficult to express myself in words. If you had developed this faculty in yourself, I could have shown you the truth directly without putting it in words.
  I am aware that I exist independently of my thoughts, but I am then weak and feeble, without knowledge and action.
  --
  So too, I do not see that thoughts are aroused in me by Prakriti. I know that the mind is not myself, but the thoughts seem to be born in the mind.
  Yes, but in the universal mind, which formulates them in you. So long as you are confined to the physical brain, naturally you cannot have this understanding. But later, you will be able to discern this action of the universal mind which projects them into your mental field

r1912 01 24, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Lipi of death of Gupta fulfilled, but he died apparently on the day of the lipi, or possibly the next day, not on the 25, of heart failure. There had been no previous news of illness etc. It is notable that the death of Sir J. Jenkins had been also foreseen, but in that case there was first the news of his illness.Exercise of utthapana 6.55 to 11.40; strong attack of non-anima and temporary failure of utthapana.The tendency to ratna in the bhoga continues and there is occasional ratha. The nirananda is mostly in the physical element of the higher anandas where the indriyas are touched. Motions of contact are now commencing in which, starting with the vishaya and the tivra, all the five physical anandas manifest together raudra, vaidyuta and kama following each other or rather developing out of each other. The same ratna of bhoga is being applied to events and happenings and even to the circumstances of roga. Satiety and dharananyunata interfere with the full consummation, but are being subjected to the general law. This movement is connected with a rapid deepening of the dasyam through which the realisation of all motions mental and bodily being inspired, conducted and imposed by Prakriti is being confirmed not only to Chit in buddhi, but also to Chit in sensation, mental nervous and physical. The movements of the body are being liberated from the shadow of emotional or affective intention and choice. Adverse movements are chiefly of the order of roga, a sore throat having taken hold after an interval of several years, and of bodily slackness and failure of utthapana.
   ***

r1912 01 27, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Progress, unclouded resumed this morning. The results of the last few days, so far as yet ascertained, may now be summed up. The first chatusthaya, denied by the assault of the triguna, has gained in strength by the ejection of the remnants of lower tejas; pravritti, prakasha & shama are arriving at a perfect harmony. The dasyam is being rendered firmer and firmer and combined with ananda is perfecting the shama and divesting it of all tamasic elements, perfecting also the pravritti and divesting it of all rajasic elements. The only tamas left is the physical and the asraddha of the Adesha, the latter the result of insufficient prakasha, the former of the imperfect conquest of the physical being by the vijnanam. The manifestation of the Kalibhava, harmonising the bala, raudra (karali) & shiva Kali, has perfected the second chatusthaya in all but intensity. The remnants of general asraddha in God & swashakti are disappearing and the only province of asraddha is the Adesha and the rapidity of the siddhi. This defect prevents the intensity of kalyanasraddha, and ishwarabhava etc. necessary to the perfection of the second chatusthaya. Jnanaprakasha is now strong and the mithyadharanas (asadgrahas) relating to the Yoga and Lila are disappearing. The Kalibhava and the realisation of self in all and all in the self are growing strong and persistent. The Master of the Yoga is more and more manifest in each detail of experience, but half-veiled by the Prakriti in the surroundings. Sahitya is once more hampered by the refusal of the annam to obey or even contain the vijnanamaya movements of the vak. On the other hand artha becomes more & more full and clear, powerful and luminous. Jnanam & Anandam Brahma are steadily deepening.
   The chief struggle is over the third & fourth chatusthayas where the annamaya obstruction has concentrated the best of its strength. Ananda has risen from the ratha of rasagrahana to the ratna of bhoga with a frequent emergence of rtha, which is especially strong in the sahaituka vishayabhoga & tivra & is spreading to the kama etc. Ananda, even ratha of the kamananda, is beginning definitely to emerge. The other bhogas (chidghana, prema, ahaituka, shuddha) are involved in the sharira and emerge out of it. It is here that the contradictions of ananda are occasionally strong. Ratha of the bhoga of events, conditions etc is prevailing. The contradictions are being overborne; pain & discomfort of heat & cold, contact etc are being dominated. The other field of struggle is the arogya; the sore throat was ejected after a struggle by siddhi. The rogas still capable of touching the surface of the system attack frequently, but cannot hold except for short intervals, coming, retiring, succeeding, failing without cause. The disturbances of assimilation are yielding perceptibly to the Arogya; when they come, they cannot hold or make only a brief & seldom violent visit. Three full days of avisrishti were attended with perfect ease and the remaining one and a half with only a vague tendency to disturbance. Two nominal visrishtis occurred on the fifth & sixth days, but with only parthiva pressure, no tejasic, vayavic or jalamaya. Only at the end of the sixth day (this morning) somewhat acute tejahkshobha produced a copious visrishti of the old type. The system, however, dismissed the kshobha in about fifteen minutes and it went leaving behind no acute results. The central arogya still advances slowly. Sarvasaundaryam is not yet continuously permanent.

r1912 02 05, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Personality of the Master in the vani more perfectly & continuously manifested. The Varahi in the Prakriti. The general ananda is liberated from nirananda in the common, expressionless and vulgar. Lipi predicting richness in rupas, finality of trikaldrishti not immediate; also visvagati. Sortilege.       and     , relating to the removal of the nidra, the release of the shakti of trikal (ahi) from the sushupti () and the perfection of the visvagati in the two regions of sukshma & sthula (Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar) After a strong revival of false tejas, false vijnan and general asiddhi, the annamaya atmosphere was finally cleared, tyaga enforced on the lower annamaya devatas and dasyam in the general bhava delivered from the last reserves of liberty. The denial of arogya in the assimilative processes due to retention of jalavisrishti & imperfect assimilation revived with power. There is no real parthiva pressure, but merely the habit of bhauta excess.
   ***

r1912 02 08, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The flight of some score of butterflies & many birds foretold in their turns, only two or three errors due to speculation or tejasic action. Usually siddhi of power & siddhi of knowledge seem to be one. Future movement of animals in rest can now be told with some exactitude, but error is easier because of stronger habit of tejasic speculation. Aishwarya & trikaldrishti have not yet been harmonised. Drishti of an eye, prakasha-chhaya-tejas, in the akasha, perfect but momentary,an indication of the richer drishti (dense & developed) perfect but not yet capable of stability. This is already developing. The vani strongly anandamaya, first of the vijnanamaya ananda, then of the others, reappears full of the Vishnu or Pradyumna personality, taking into it Rudra (Balarama), Shiva (Mahavira) and Aniruddha (Kama). The definite personality of the Master in his personal relations to this Yoga and the Jiva in the Yoga has to develop out of the laya; for Vishnu is the Ishwara who incarnates. The present method of the Yoga is a progressive replacement of buddha bhavas by vijnana & ananda bhavas, and of the lower of these by the higher. The firmness and clearness of the stable rupas is much interfered with [ ]1 by unsteady floating waves of the subtle-gross etheric material of which it is formed; these waves mix with the clear form and blur it by excess of material in the attempt to reinforce its distinctness. Perfect satisfaction has now been given to the Aniruddha element in the Jiva, so far as the Yoga is concerned, by the revelation of the scientific means & steady progress used in the siddhi, but the Balarama element awaits satisfaction. The Mahavira element has also been satisfied by the floods of knowledge that are being poured down, but the Pradyumna element awaits satisfaction. In the Adeshasiddhi there has as yet been no perfect satisfaction even to the Aniruddha element. Lipi (on Sultans back, chitra formed by the hairs). Satisfaction to Brihaspati, not yet to the other deities. Satisfaction to Bala (due). N.B. Bala is the Titanic force from the Mahat which must eventually conquer & replace Rudra, though conquered by him in the Buddha, because descending into the Buddha he becomes a Daitya disturbing evolution by a premature effort towards perfection. The same is true of all the greater Daityas who are not Rakshasic in temper (Asurim Rakshasincaiva Prakritim apaunah). Sahitya siddhi in ordinary poetical forms. Satiety of interest in what is old and familiar, staleness, is being overcome. Lipi zoology indicating a superior light on the science of life forms bringing zoology into harmony with the general satyam and getting rid of materialistic difficulties; immediately after while casually seeking a book to read, I picked up Haeckel, opened at the chapter on Worm forms ancestral to man and had the predicted illumination. Such detailed trikaldrishti is now becoming very frequent.
   MS it

r1912 07 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The three forms of dasyam are now distinct and well-marked. The simple dasyam is that obedience to the divine impulsion which is self-chosen & depends on the individuals intelligence of Gods will and his consent, his readiness to obey. The Purusha is still karta & anumanta, a servant of God, not His slave. The great step bridging the transition from the simple to the double dasyam is the renouncement of the kartritwa abhimana, by which we perceive that Prakriti is the only doer of all our actions voluntary or involuntary from the most deliberately concerted endeavour even to the simplest trifle and, in consciousness, are aware of the impulse of Prakriti in every movement physical or mental. At first the consciousness tends to make a false division claiming the movement itself to be our own although the determining impulse is felt as a driving or a pressure proceeding from infinite Nature above or around us. The wearing away of this division marks a farther attenuation of servanthood and deepening towards the divine servitude. But so long as the anumanta keeps his abhimana and reserves his right of individual lordship (Ishwara) over Prakriti, we have not passed the stage of simple dasyam. For between the various impulses of Prakriti, we have the sense of choosing, of an active & constant freedom, & although we choose what we understand to be Gods will, it is still our choice that determines the action in the adhara & not His direct and imperative Will. In the double dasyam on the contrary there is no active & constant freedom, but only a general & ultimate freedom which is used little or only exceptionally. We are aware of ourselves as Ishwara & anumanta, the individual ruling & sanctioning authority, but, although we still have the power of refusing our sanction to any particular impulse of Prakriti if we choose, we do not choose; we make no choice, we do not determine what is Gods will and act thereby or order Prakriti to act thereby, but leave everything to God to determine; the whole responsibility is His & a given impulse of Prakriti fulfils itself or not as He chooses without our interference. If the will is used, it is used by Prakriti. We are aware of it as being not our will, but the will in the adhar used by Prakriti. In the triple dasyam, even this potential freedom disappears. Whatever impulse of infinite Nature comes, we could not interfere with it if we wished, any more than the drifting leaf can deny itself to the storm or the engine to the force that works it. We are aware of our body as a whole & in its various parts being moved not by will in the body but by a will or force outside the body; our thoughts, feelings, will-power similarly. Each of these stands perfectly apart from the others & is worked separately by Nature. The will wills & has done; it does not try to determine action but leaves the action to happen or not as Nature pleases; the thought thinks & is done, it does not try to determine either the movement of the will or the movement of the action; the feelings equally live for themselves, atmatripta, not striving to compel action & emotion or thought & feeling to agree. What harmony is necessary is determined by the Para Shakti that drives us, which we feel always as a Force driving us. But this Force is itself only an instrument of a conscious Will driving it,the Will or Anumati of the Purushottama, who is Parameshwara & universal Anumanta.
   This consummation is also attended by a ripening realisation of the Divine Master. Formerly I realised the Impersonal God, Brahma or Sacchidan[an]dam separately from the Personal, Ishwara or Sacchidananda. Brahma has been thoroughly realised in its absolute infinity & as the material & informing presence of the world & each thing it contains, yat kincha jagatyam jagat. But the sense of the One has not been applicable utterly & constantly,there have been lacunae in the unitarian consciousness, partly because the Personality has not been realised with equal thoroughness or as one with the Impersonality. Hence while dwelling on the Paratman, the mind, whenever the Jivatman manifested itself in the sarvam Brahma, has been unable to assimilate it to the predominant realisation and an element of Dwaitabhava,of Visishtadwaita has entered into its perception. Even when the assimilation is partly effected, the Jiva is felt as an individual & local manifestation of the impersonal Chaitanya and not as the individual manifestation of Chaitanya as universal Personality. On the other hand the universal Sri Krishna or Krishna-Kali in all things animate or inanimate has been realised entirely, but not with sufficient constancy & latterly with little frequency. The remedy is to unify the two realisations & towards this consummation I feel the Shakti to be now moving.
   The action of this triple dasyam is now characterised by a harmony of shama & tapas. This harmony has been hitherto impossible owing to the excess of mental tejas which sought perpetually to energise the action & bring about a more rapid or a more perfect fruit, thus impairing the shama which consists in anarambha, shanti & the perfect realisation by the Jnata-Purusha of his own passivity. The state of action vacillated from tamasic vairagya or udasinata to rajasic heat & fervour of action. All this was an importation from outside, from the annamaya devatas, but a constant importation. With the greater perfection of the dasyam this pendulary vacillation between inertia & disturbance is sinking to rest and the hour of intense (chanda) activity in the Prakriti with perfect anarambha in the Purusha is drawing nearer. The third power of action, Prakasha, which is as a light on the path to the tapas, showing it its own works, is more & more active, but not perfect, although rounding towards perfection.
   This prakasha has been for the most part vijnanamaya, of the nature of discriminative & selective knowledge, acting directly by discrimination & selection as the first process of thought. For instance, I see a bird flying & I discriminate & select the farther course of its flight by an act of determining illumination I do not see the future flight with the self-vision as I see the present flight with the physical vision & so know about it. I see only the truth (ritam, satyam) about this flight, satyam of it, not sat, its truth of existence, not its existence. But this day I realised more certainly what I had previously perceived by fragmentary experience, that the basis of all knowledge is atmaprakasha of sat; by chit, that is to say, or sat luminous to itself. I began to see first the thing-in-itself in the Brahman (whether thing objective or thing subjective) and as part of that vision idea or truth of the thing self-manifest.
   The obstacles of vijnana-siddhi and of all subjective siddhi are no longer in myself but in the circumambient annamaya Prakriti, not that attached to myself as an atmosphere by my past karma (for that is purified), but the general Prakriti. It is from this besieging environment that imperfections expelled from myself reenter temporarily my system or the old regularised sanskaras of Nature which we miscall laws stand in the way of progress,eg illness, unease, thirst, limitation of power or knowledge, inactivity of power or knowledge. I feel, for instance, no thirst in the body but a sense of dryness around me & besieging me, but not clinging as it does when in the karmadeha or personal environment; I have sometimes to drink in order to satisfy these devatas. When I feel no bodily chill or discomfort in exposure, sleeping out uncovered in the cold wind at night, yet around me there is an unease & a shrinking which I cannot yet ignore. The obstruction & limitation, however, are no longer jealous & malignant, but the voluntary or involuntary expression of the natural incompetence or unwillingness of the annamaya devatas to new movements to which they are unaccustomed & which hurt their ease & their egoism.
   Notable Lipis today were these

r1912 07 03, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The barrier offered in the annamaya Prakriti to all decisive fulfilment of the vijnana-chatusthaya (the siddhis of knowledge & power incidental to the opening of the ideal faculty) [has]1 at last given way. The power of trikaldrishti in those movements which are nearest to the prakamya and vyapti (perception and reception of the truth about objects by sanyama on the objects or contact in consciousness with them), [has]2 triumphed over the obstruction. Instead of a difficult choice of the truth, past, present & future, about things & happenings, a choice hampered by a siege of false suggestions from the physical gods in the material environment, the suggestions themselves are coming to be automatically true. The vijnanam which is satyam ritam is conquering the last fields of mentality & imposing its satyadharma or law of self-existent truth which is necessary for perfect vision of things, satyadharmaya drishtaye. The movement is not yet entirely triumphant, for the enemy returns to the charge and clouds the siddhi with the anritam, but in the siddhi now there is fixity &, though not perfect continuity, yet a prevailing persistence. The enemy cannot prevent the persistence. The condition of success appears to be perfect passivity. If there is any arambha, any setting about to know, mental activity with its tangled web of error starts again; Truth, the satyam, is idea true in itself, self-revealing[,] atmaprakasha, not acquired, not in any way arrived at. The mind with all its guessing, inferring, discovering can only reach a marred & mutilated truth inevitably companioned by error. This breaking of the barrier was presaged by the lipi. The difficulty is conquered.
   The siddhis of power have also begun their decisive action but less perfectly than the trikaldrishti of prakamya and vyapti. There are four tendencies that prevent its proper action & effectuality; (1) the tendency to miss the object of the prayoga, as when Pallas Athene turns the shafts from the hero of her preference, so that the aishwarya or vashita does not act upon it at all; (2) the tendency because of habit, previous purpose or tendency or mere recalcitrance to a novel suggestion to pay no heed to it, to shake off the shaft of suggestion from the mental body & go on ones way, if one is in motion or remain firm, if static, as if the suggestion had not reached; by the sukshmadrishti or by some involuntary movement the hitting of the mark by the force aimed at it can be discerned; (3) the tendency to confusion in the mental current of suggestion & mechanical opposition in the body leading to delay of obedience or deviation from the time, place & circumstance enjoined; (4) the tendency for adverse circumstance to interfere & divert the faultless or generally successful fulfilment begun. However, the frequency of obedience & frequent exactness of the action show the emergence of the successful Shakti. It is notable that both these activities are confined in their success for the most part to the immediate happenings around me of a trifling nature. In the rest there is only a general pressure and ultimate success and a capricious success in details. The therapeutic power has evidently gained in force.
  --
   The lipi After dinner the siddhi will take a new turn, came in the afternoon & was fulfilled duly like the script of the morning. The new turn proved to be the final establishment of the first chatusthaya where it was still weak (in the hasyam or active atmaprasada) and its independence even in the annamaya Prakriti & its last outworks of favourable & unfavourable happening (mangalam & amangalam). There are a few recesses of environing material mind in which sensitiveness to the apriyam survives feebly, but these touches have only a brief persistence. The second chatusthaya is preparing its liberation in the defective points (kalyanasraddha, faith in the adesha, ishwarabhava, etc), but as yet only the sraddha in the yoga siddhi is decisively fulfilled. The reason in the annamaya mind opposes the perfect sraddha, the damyam in the annamaya temperament opposes the ishwarabhava.
   MS have

r1912 07 15, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The fifth has been immediately fulfilled; the personality of the balaka Krishna has taken possession of the sources of knowledge and communicates through the vani & vani script & even through the thought and the lipi; only the perceptions still belong to the Prakriti. The bala bhava (with a touch of the balaka) is established in the Shakti.
   The general tendency to kamananda & sharirananda is increased & more persistent but does not yet pervade & hold the body, but only moves about it in brief & rapid wave-movements. The weakness of the nabhi chakra is the chief obstacle

r1912 07 20, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The trikaldrishti is already stronger in its action, though the confused method of working out the details from uncertainty to partly approximate partly complete correctness still continues. The siddhis of power are evidently much stronger & are overbearing in the field of exercise all the resistance brought against them; the only defect is that time is needed &, if time is not given, the prayoga is apt to be fruitless. In the field of life there are plenty of instances of success, but the power of offering a strong & successful resistance still belongs to the annamaya Prakriti. Ananda is restored & force is coming to the bhava & the action.
   During the day the karma was streng thenedRodogune revised, prerana liberated from its shackles, nirukta strongly brought forward ( roots), the RV. proceeded with and, at night, the collection of materials for the R.V.. Bhasha and Sahitya were continued. The triple dasyam & madhura continue to be intensified. Ananda was made invariable & intenser even in touches of discomfort, but the nirvisesha was only increased in frequency. The third chatusthaya streng thens slowly, but lipi & drishti are at present under a cloud. Five hours sleep at night, a little in daytime.

r1912 07 23, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Today is the day long fixed for the fullness of the third chatusthaya apart from the two later chatusthayas, in so far as its action can be complete without being entirely effective in kama, karma & the body. It is also the day when the movement towards that effectiveness begins. Siddhi of power today is working instantaneously & in detail & the action of all the powers is normal, regular, effective, invariably employed as the chief & proper instrument, but not yet entirely perfect in detail. Bhautasiddhi is working, but still overpowered by adhogati, nor likely to be free till general utthapana overcomes adhogati. Samadhi is still deficient in continuity of visible record. It is supposed that it will round itself off today. The vijnana is now working with force & applying itself both in knowledge & shakti to things of moment. The physical siddhi is engaged in fighting down the tamasic obstruction. Yesterday only a little literary karma was done, as previously announced, nor will anything be done today. The activity of lipi & rupa, almost suspended for a time, is now reviving. In trailokyagati the mind seems to be standing on the doorstep of the pranamaya. Nirvisesha kama Ananda throughout the day was active & the general tendency continuous. The strength of the samadhi was increased & continuous coherent record established in the dream form, of speech, & communication with others on the plane of the Imagination, in the kalpanamayi Prakriti of which are the heavens & hells of subjective experience objectivised in sensation (to the sukshma indriyas) but not in annam.
   ***

r1912 12 05, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   [Note. This is now fulfilled. Prakriti is in perfect charge of these things, the Jiva interferes only a little in judgment.]3
   2) It will be found that then the siddhi will advance towards perfection of its own unaided motion.

r1912 12 09, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The trikaldrishti is now working normally with a surprising regularity and perfection in immediate things; but the haste of intellectual decision & error of intellectual hesitation,the Scylla & Charybdis of prophetic thought,are not yet eliminated; they recur whenever the trikaldrishti has to be done, though absent when the trikaldrishti is merely happening. Parasaras Suktas are being interpreted by the vijnana, but not yet perfectly, as the modern associations of the words still interfere. Historical trikaldrishti of the past is active.1 Both the trikaldrishti and the power (at first frustrated) have been acting for five or ten minutes in a host of instances with great & continual effectiveness. It is only now the minutiae that are wrong, & these are to be perfected; for sometimes the minutiae also are for a long time absolutely accurate. The guidance also is at present perfect in every detail, although it is that of one of the Shaktis, & not the Purushottamas. There are three forms of the power, (1) one which works the object through the universal Prakriti, giving the suggestion to the Prakriti which transfers it to the swabhava of the object; (2) one which works the object by direct unspoken suggestion to the object, as in hypnotism; (3) one which applies the force of Prakriti physically to the object and drives the unwilling object. All three are now active & frequently, even ordinarily successful; but all three still need time to work effectively on the object. If they do not get time, an effect or movement is produced, but not always or even usually the actual accomplishment or the full effect.
   During the rest of the day there was apparent suspension attended by loss of the Chandibhava, unreliability of the Vani and false suggestions through the outer swabhava. Health was also strongly attacked with great success in one detail and with temporary slight effect in others. The external suggestions are least effective at present in symptoms of phlegm & neuralgia which are obviously external, foreign to the system & unable to materialise in the sthula parts; they only affect the nerves with a suggestion of incipient cold or neuralgia.. The struggle over the visrishti still proceeds & the frequency of jalavisrishti maintains itself. However, the assimilation, although marred by excess of jala, seems to be more perfect with respect to prithivi, even though the maximum interval has been diminished from seven days to three or four.

r1912 12 14, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The trouble of depression lasted through the day & was attended with some confusion of knowledge especially on the point whether the vijnana chatusthaya could now be left to the unaided working of Prakriti, as had before seemed to be decided or needed more sadhan. It is notable that the rupadrishti is developing without sadhan; perfect images grow steadily more frequent & have more hold on the akasha, the old imperfections tend to be eliminated, eg the persistent recurrence of a single image, in this case, the bird; other forms are now forcing their way into the akash without any help from the system. Lipi has recovered vividness without losing its tendency to activity. Trikaldrishti develops greatly & it is noticeable that it is best when entirely spontaneous, almost indeed of an absolute & consistent perfection,when, that is to say, there is no attempt in the system to determine the truth or arrive at the knowledge. Examples. The servant went out at 8.27. As he was going out, the knowledge came that someone was about to enter & would come in as soon as he was gone. R [Ramaswamy] came. Previously, there was vyapti that either S [Saurin] or N [Nolini] was returning. Now the knowledge came (in answer to a doubt whether the vyapti was not merely the vyapti of an intention) that he would come before 8.30. S came at 8.29. Subsequently, it was decided that 9.10 would be the exact moment to cease walking & have meals, & the knowledge came that M [Moni] would return at 9.10. N returned exactly at 9.10; exactly at 9.10 the meal was served (without any spoken order or mental suggestion) & the triple knowledge was fulfilled to the minute. In this way every little circumstance has to the time of writing proved exactly correct. This is, undoubtedly, the beginning of the consistent & invariable perfect drishti, but it is not to be supposed that it will establish itself even in this restricted sphere without farther opposition.The truth of telepathy is now thoroughly established; the proofs of its correctness when received from persons in the house or town [occur]2 daily, as by it I know when one is coming from one room to another, what an animal is about to do, when someone is returning to the house & often who it is, (formerly, this knowledge was usual, but has temporarily diminished or been obscured). Also the proofs of it, when it comes from hundreds or thousands of miles away, are now coming in, eg. from M [Motilal] in Bengal that he intended to send more money, confirmed a few days afterward; the previous knowledge of the rumour that the Turks had asked to join the Balkan Confederacy, the knowledge of the Unionist conspiracy in Constantinople & a number of other instances relating to the Balkan war. This power, indeed, has been working for a long time, but it is only now regularised. It is, in fact, part of the vyapti. The proof of vyapti of express thoughts is also increasing in frequency; here, of course, the only proof is the expression of the thought immediately afterwards by the thinker. This now occurs.
   Physical exertion twelve hours (morning one hour + two hours 9.15 to 11.15; afternoon, three hours & a half; evening 4.40 to 9.10 & 9.40 to 10.40). In the morning there was pain in the soles of the feet when rising, but no appreciable stiffness in the limbs. Fatigue of adhogati, in the evening, was more persistent than usual, although not intense or powerful. Sleep, nearly seven hours. The last two nights, there has been a retrogression in samadhi; the dreams are, besides, not remembered, but the incoherent dream seems to prevail.

r1913 01 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   It is indicated in the lipi that from tonight the Master of the Yoga will exercise a perfect and apparent control over the subjectivity of the system in all its parts. The subjective-objectivity will still remain for some time imperfectly siddha & subject to a dual control of the old & new Prakriti, the old fading, the new increasing in force, brilliance and all-pervading sovereignty.
   ***

r1913 01 05, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The persistence of tapas is now assured in spite of opposition; the action proceeds in the face of difficulties, disappointments & errors of method without flagging for more than a moment and is itself tejaswi even when the system loses hold of active tejas and falls back on shama or dhairyam. The physical obstacle to continuous karma is overcome as well as the subjective obstacle, failure of physical dhairya as well as failure of mental tejas. Mental dhairya, physical dhairya & pranic tejas assured, mental tejas has to be rendered equally permanent and invincibly active so that the physical brain may not flag in its response to the stimulus from above. The quaternary, Tejo balam pravrittir mahattwam, will then be assured in all the parts of the system. Vijnana is now beginning to assert its constant activity, pausing only to test the state of the intellect; for when the intellect, even in its darkened or clouded state, refuses to rest in error and begins to respond only to the satya, then the pratistha in intellect of the vijnanamaya action will be assured. At present, it is so assured in all but the trikaldrishti, the action of mind on the objective field, & this is so because the trikaldrishti itself is still limited in its ordinary action, though already perfect in its best moments & in its extraordinary movements. It has been decided yesterday that the development of the Knowledge must be left to the unaided action of the Prakriti, the Power to its own self development and the Samadhi, physical siddhi and Karma alone left for the present field of the stimulative action of the Will aiding Prakriti.
   Trikaldrishti has to be liberated from the dregs of possibility; lipi from the remnants of the obstruction in the akasha; rupa from the denial of stability in the higher forms; prakamya-vyapti from the interference of elemental thought-images; samadhi from sleep & dream; power from the akashic obstruction to subjective reception and objective fulfilment; bhautasiddhi from defect of anima; primary utthapana from adhogati and the remnants of defect of anima; ananda from interruption and the obstruction by weaker nerve-elementals influencing the body; arogya from the habit of symptomatic recurrences. This field is almost conquered, subject to the last obstinate resistance.

r1913 01 07, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   It is indicated that today is a turning-point in the immediate movement that is being slowly effected. Dasya is already a fact in all parts of the activity, but it is not yet direct enough; the control through the Prakriti is felt rather than the direct impulse of the Purushottama. There must be identification with the Prakriti, possession of it and the sensation of its unimpeded use by the actual touch of Krishna. The shadow of intellectual consideration and hesitation over the act or the thought, the shadow of intellectual determination of the act or thought, the shadow of reflection & judgment over it when accomplished, or of the accompaniment or mediation of the intellect in the moment of accomplishment, all these glints of the lower humanity must be effaced from the movement of the Waters, apasi swasrnm. They must be utterly replaced by unchecked Force in the act and pure Sight in the vision, Sight & Force simultaneous in their activity and one in their substance, but not intermixed in their function. Then only will the Dasya be of the true nature of the relation between the Jiva & the Ishwara.
   The condition of the Viceroy answers to the trikaldrishti and aishwarya, in the circumstances of a rapid improvement. The Turkish affair is still uncertain but in several directions it is following the line laid down by the Will. In several directions, in Indian affairs, similar signs are evident; but as yet there is nothing decided.

r1913 01 11, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   In the evening perfect forms directly under the eye became numerous and a number of them stable, but these were not of the most lifelike perfection, the defect being insufficiently developed material; the perfection was in the circumstances. Will has relinquished the rupadrishti to the self-action of the Para Prakriti, and is only slightly active for the samadhi. Swapna-samadhi is attempting to develop continuity, but is obliged to have recourse to recurrence in order to stimulate the tendency, as the habit of the drishti withdrawing immediately from the thing once it is seen, still prevails. Kamananda chiefly sahaituka was resumed, but not yet with a sustained frequency. Power began to control the bodily siddhi, but not yet with entire success; the jalavisrishti at last revived its intensity and the relics of sensitiveness to cold with nirananda suddenly recovered intensity. Secondary utthapana, attempted, failed to progress sensibly; but the primary utthapana overcame easily an attempt to break it and continued strongly from about five to after half past eleven (walking all the time) with only a break for meals. Sleep at night fell from 7 or 8 hours to five. Trikaldrishti manifested a striking power and accuracy. The resistance to Power in the karma showed itself in a fresh outbreak of anaikya in the surroundings, known by trikaldrishti before it happened.
   ***

r1913 01 13, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Dasya is of four degrees,first, the dasya of the servant who obeys of his own free will or for a hire and can always refuse obedience; secondly, the dasya of the lover who might disobey, but does not & in a way cannot; thirdly, the dasya of the yantra, which cannot disobey, but is worked mechanically through an intermediate impulsion of Prakriti; fourthly, the dasya of the supreme degree which obeys helplessly the direct impulse of the Master and combines in itself, yet exceeds, the other three. It is this dasya which has to become the normal form of activity from today. It will be the dasya of the Mahakali bhava in the Mahasaraswati Prakriti. Although not yet justified by results,because of the old sanskara in the external nature which always reacted successfully against the asuddha Asuric force in the adhara,it is sanctioned, established and compelled to work, & will now begin to be justified by results.
   Programme.The trikaldrishti to widen still farther previous to getting rid of its variability & uncertainty, rupadrishti & samadhi to overcome the remnants of the obstacle still opposed to them, aishwarya to generalise success; health, secondary utthapana & kamananda to continue their struggle & prevail.

r1913 01 16, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Dasya of the fourth degree is now dominant; whenever the attention of the Chit follows the action, it is aware of the turiya dasyabuddhi, whether in motion, speech, emotion or thought, except for a slight intermixture of merely Prakritic impulse in the thinking powers. This is true even of such involuntary motions as the closing or blinking of the eyelids, nimishannapi or the direction of the gaze. The sixth or Brahma chatusthaya is similarly established; the general (samena samavasthita) sarvam anantam jnanam anandam Brahma is seen everywhere, when the attention is awake. The nitya anusmaran is not established as yet, nor can it be established unless there is the capacity of multiple sanyama, ie naturally and normally dividing the tapas of the Chit between several things at a time. Kamananda tends to return dully or intensely with the smarana, but has not yesterdays continuity, force and spontaneity. This afternoon it will recover its hold.
   Afternoon

r1913 01 31, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The second principle, which has also been long preparing, is the renunciation of nigraha or as it used to be called, tapasya. Not that the Tapas may not have to persist under difficulties, but no violence has to be done to the Prakriti. It has to work out its own defects. This is now possible, because of the growth of the supreme or quaternary dasya, by which the very thought & feeling comes only as things impelled by the divine hand of the Master & Sarathi. Absolute Samata & passivity are now possible.
   Therefore in action there will be no planning, only seeing of the way the thing to be done will develop under the shaping of the divine Tapas whether through myself or others; in writing no composition, only the record of the vak as it flows down from above and forms itself in the Sat of Mind; in Yoga no sadhan, but only the acceptance of the self-organising movements of the anandamaya vijnanamaya Prakriti as it progressively takes entire possession of this inferior mental & physical kingdom.
   Todays news are mostly confirmative of the trikaldrishti or aiswarya; the running down of a sailing-vessel, confirming yesterdays perception; the rumour of the Karachi bomb-find proving to be a fact and not a newspaper invention, though probably a police fraud; the fresh demands and threats of Roumania; the falsity of the Vienna rumour; the Moorish resistance in Marrakesh; the Suffragette recrudescence. Only in the Turkish War the trikaldrishti has not worked well; for the imminent denunciation of the armistice reported from Vienna is contrary to what was expected, viz that the Allies would wait for the Turkish reply. It has to be seen, however, whether the report is correct.
  --
   (1) She has to change her conception of life. (Sortilege, early in the morning; she being the Prakriti-Jiva; fulfilled at once.)
   (2) En dpit de lopposition le surhomme se dpeint dans lhomme actuel. (Lipi).

r1913 02 12, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The Balaram-Aniruddha Bhava suffused with Pradyumna and based on concealed Maheshwara now governs the Yoga; but in the Prakriti, the Maheshwara bhava is not yet concealed. In neither is there as yet a very powerful energy of the Balarama or Mahakali bhava. The vijnana has recovered its elasticity, the knowledge & sight of the sukshma world is increasing and the kamananda grows in intensity.
   This movement continued throughout the day, ceased in the evening. The movement is towards the purification of error out of the trikaldrishti & aishwarya and dream, incoherence & insufficiency out of the samadhi. But the resistance in the akasha is still strong enough to prevent an unhampered rapidity of improvement. Health improves & grows stronger, yet the abnormal symptomatic affections, which have no longer any coherence or raison dtre, still recur or cling. Adhogati is persistent & prevents the established utthapana from frequently manifesting. Saundarya is still limited to its one or two imperfect details. Karmasiddhi develops, but slowly & against a considerable obstruction.

r1913 05 21, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   All the vijnana siddhis are now permanently active and effective, but with defects and limitations & subject to the continued mental activity of mixed truth & falsehood which is still successfully maintained in the mental environment by the opposing tendencies of Prakriti and successfully thrust upon the mind in the form of suggestions. The rupa & samadhi formerly deficient have now a petty but sufficient regular fertility, which can be rapidly enlarged & eventually perfected. They still lack some of their old felicities, but when these return, they will no longer be fitful, uncertainly held & willed as formerly, but natural, spontaneous and a permanent possession. The rupas are principally embarrassed by the persistence of a few dominant images which shut out the others or replace them when they attempt to manifest. Another difficulty is the resistance obstinately offered to the emergence from the prana akasha of the perfect, as distinguished from the representative images.
   In the physical siddhi, Ananda is the most advanced. The vishayanandas of the senses are all perfected in type, seldom contradicted, but as yet insufficient in intensity, except in the taste, where even it is uneven. The higher mental anandas are all present (prema, chidghana, shuddha), but as yet imperfectly active. Ahaituka ananda is constant in shanti, but not yet in active santosha. The sahaituka sharira anandas are established and growing; the ahaituka manifest but infrequent. Ahaituka kamananda is alone well-established, and awakes whenever recalled, but is still too much a matter of the will and not a self-acting dharma of the body. It can manifest now in any state, jagrat or samadhistha. Thirst has almost disappeared, though it made an appearance for two or three days, mostly in a suppressed form; but does not now occur even in the unusual heat of this summer. Hunger makes its appearance fitfully and is never intense & seldom prolonged; it is being rapidly replaced by hungerless bhojanananda. Heat & cold are still slightly effective on the body. Pain has turned into some form of ananda except in extreme touches, eg burning by fire, blows touching the bone, etc; but here it is only the immediate contact that is painful, the after effect is always anandamaya; in some touches, eg mosquito bite the habit of discomfort still continues, but is now occasional and not a dharma of the body. Pain of events is the one asamata of mind still persisting & then only as asamata of failure; this too is occasional, largely artificial and no longer a dharma of the mind.

r1913 06 21, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   1) Aishwarya again partially effective, mainly through the Prakriti; trikaldrishti good in the broad result, but wanting in certainty, inspiration & ananda; occasionally perfect in circumstance, but with the same defects.
   2) Rupadrishti slightly emergent; samadhi without definite progress.

r1913 07 09, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The 9 has been a day of failure & recoil. The attempt to establish the avegamaya tejas & sraddha without reaction has broken down; the avega became manomaya and resulted in confusion of knowledge, misplacement of tejas & final return of asamata, ashanti, duhkha in strong & then violent touches (10th) which, at first violently expelled, again & successfully invaded the system, supported by the revolt of the Jiva against the asatya. The saundarya has broken down or gone back in the parts not irrevocably fixed & the violent return of asaundarya is successful everywhere. Aishwarya is not entirely ineffective, but subject to frequent failure & almost universal resistance. The touches of roga returned where they were on the point of evanescence and there has been some diminution in the force of continuity of the kamananda. The promises of finality held out to the mind in the first & second chatusthayas, as well as in some details of the third & fourth, have proved, as always, to be tejasic and deceptive. On the other side, there has been enforced a more general perception of the unity of all movements of the Prakriti and of the unity of the mover of the Prakriti & their unity also with the same Purusha & Prakriti in this adhara. The Jiva also is made to recognise its unity with the Prakriti, but not yet with the Purusha, except in occasional glimpses.
   The rounding of the fingers still progresses; the only definite trace of the sharp angles is in one corner of the third finger of the left hand where it is represented by a horn of dried & callous skin empty of flesh; otherwise they appear only in the excessive fullness of the curves or in slight unevennesses representing the lost angle (especially on one side of the right thumb). This fullness appears in all except the first fingers which were always pointed & the lefth and little finger which is now of the full pointed variety to which the righth and little finger has also progressed more than others. No other decisive improvement is noticeable in the saundarya, although there is a similar tendency in the feet.

r1913 09 05b, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   There are constant tejasic suggestions of immediate progress, but the Jiva refuses to lend credit to them. The dasya, however, instead of being hampered seems to grow by this struggle; the merely Prakritic forces diminish in their hold on the system. Ashanti has attempted to be acute at times, but has not succeeded in fastening on the system.
   In the evening lipi & rupa showed some signs of streng thening and the other siddhis attempted to liberate themselves, but nothing very definite has yet been accomplished. Some literary work was well accomplished. Dasya always increases.

r1913 09 18, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The day passed largely in a struggle ending in disturbance & reaction, owing to the old insistence of the mental tejas, which had been suffered to act, on overstress & exaggeration and a blind undiscriminating belief; but the disturbance was not acute nor very prolonged nor the reaction very obstinate or far-reaching. The chief loss was the enthusiasm & reach of the faith which returned to its normal belief in final success with an added disposition to accept the truth of a steady & increasingly rapid success in the Yoga, as distinct from the life-work. As usual circumstances apparent & real crowded to justify the element of unfaith, but also there were some that supported the faith. The balance was more even than formerly. Trikaldrishti continues to deal with the old intellectualities which still persist in external suggestion; it is usually correct when the mind is not in haste; the suggestions of the external mind are often precise & correct but are so interspersed, like most of the other movements of knowledge, with overstressed & misapplied truths, that uncertainty still reigns. Power grows in effectiveness. The rupa failed to preserve in the daytime the sudden advance made last evening. Rupas were non-lifelike, crude or dense of the crude tendency &, seldom, developed tendency, limited to a few forms and did not come easily & spontaneously or effect an assured union of clearness & stability. Lipi, on the other hand, after [having] become hesitating & infertile, recovered almost all its previous force and more than its previous frequency of comparative perfection. It is almost always intelligible, not always easily or perfectly legible. The reaction in the teeth grows in force. Saundarya makes no progress and weakness of the body continues. Dasya of the body has been perfected in the secondary stage of tertiary dasya, in which all physical action is done under visible compulsion of Krishna, but of Krishna through Prakriti, not direct. This dasya is extending to the mind & feelings. The progress of the personal relation has been troubled by false and simulative vani. Kamananda has been usually intense, & fairly continuous in intensity or subdued force, but not entirely continuous. Telepathy of thought etc has been much in abeyance in favour of telepathy of impulse & tendency. There is no certain progress in arogya. Sahitya has been for these two days suspended.
   Neither the faith nor the energy recovered its tone during the evening and night. Still, progress was made. Something like the full bhava of the personal relation was manifested, and the relation itself is now permanent and secured against successful attack. The simulative vanis attempt to persist, but they cannot prevail, endure or pervert. The bhavas permanently manifest are those of conqueror and master, playmate and guide & instructor. There was also progress in the samadhi, smell & touch manifesting vividly, both combined with sight & action &, in the latter case, with sound; but the attempt to confirm & extend continuity failed. Dream manifested again full ihabhava of form & association, which could not, however, disturb the continuity & intelligibility of the series of incidents portrayed. Both in samadhi & jagrat perfect intelligibility of even fragmentary, confused or ill-decipherable lipi was firmly & suddenly established; undecipherable lipi still offers a difficulty to the thought perception. Telepathy flowered freely, but is not yet perfect in range or precision. Kamananda reached a high intensity, but was suspended, as commonly, during the night. Roga showed some reaction, & the physical siddhi generally is passing through a stage of persistent & concentrated obstruction.

r1913 09 22, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The siddhi has now firm standing in knowledge, in spite of lapses & lacunae, and the guiding Script can be invested in a definite form. The guiding Script orders & indicates, it does not predict. Its movement must be entirely liberated from the shadow of control by the minds vigilance, suggestive & distrustful, which still subsists in the environmental outlook. The trikaldrishti has been reconstituted and needs only a greater illumination & decisive[ness] to get rid of the one positive defect that still clogs it from perfection, false distribution of stress by the masquerading of mental will-suggestions in the guise of knowledge-perceptions. That once cured, the range of practical knowledge will automatically increase. The willpower is as yet unable to act without a Prakritic resistance in the physical akasha. This habit of resistance must steadily be overborne and eliminated. It is especially active when continuous & detailed movements are dictated by the willpower to external objects, but this resistance has been overborne before and must now be overborne habitually. Finally, the actuality of the lipi, rupa & samadhi must prevail over the blind and inert, but stubborn refusal of the physical ether. This is the immediate work that yet remains in the third chatusthaya.
   In the fourth, it is now evident that what is being prepared by the apparent reaction towards asiddhi of continuity in the kamananda, is the ability of the body to bear the high intensity of maithunananda without emission and its distribution as ananda throughout the body. A stronger force of natural health and a more perfect habit of assimilation is being prepared by the suspension of the imperfect siddhi in arogya. Similar movements account for the long obstruction or renewed obstruction in utthapana & saundarya as in the samadhi and the adesha-siddhi. These movements must be helped by the will to work out more rapidly.

r1913 09 25, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The apparent movement of reaction has ended, even more than usual, in a strong advance. The basis of samata has been streng thened and widely confirmed in the fixed perception of all things as true & all events as destined and helpful; if asamata now comes, it must be a purely mechanical movement of memory in the physical parts, unless knowledge is forcibly taken away. This in future will not be allowed. With samata dasya, tejas, sraddha have attained a more perfect security. All that is now needed is the expulsion of the physical memory of adasya & nistejas and the perfection of effective tapas in the knowledge & the power to establish the sraddha of the Ishwari in the Prakriti; the mere human sraddha is now well founded except in the adeshasiddhi. The faith in rapidity is really part of the faith in the adeshsiddhi, its condition and foundation. The relics of the egoistic outlook & inlook in the physical mind have also to be expelled.
   The basis of effectiveness in knowledge has been laid, the centre of true sight, ritam in satyam, has been revealed in action perfectly removing anrita suggestions, suggesting and approving the ritam. The basis of effectiveness in action has not been revealed. This will now have to be done.

r1913 12 15, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The Ananda of cold is being increased by repeated & continued exposure to cold wind with the bare body. Only an almost subliminal part of the nervous system persists in the sanskara of discomfort & the reaction of rheum in the nose. This rheum just succeeds, so far, in materialising itself, but is unable to lay hold on the system. The discomfort of exposure to solar heat is also sinking down towards the subliminal Prakriti.
   Kamananda today, though intense at times, was much interrupted. Akasha rupa & samadhi steadily increase.

r1913 12 28, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   A movement has now taken place which marks the final liberation of the jiva from the fragments of dwandwa ragadwesha in the outward world-consciousness (priya-apriya, mangala-amangala) by the disappearance of the kartavya-akartavya, aptavya-anap-tavya. These things exist in the knowledge, but no longer in the emotional consciousness. The shadow of the old touches will fall for some time on the outer jada Prakriti, but they will not be accepted by the organised consciousness of the jiva. Universal ananda is now hampered only by deficient physical mukti.
   Clear & stable rupa is now establishing itself again with greater freedom in the Akasha, but as yet nothing entirely decisive has been attained. Perfect rupas are still transitory & rare, developed rare &, though not always transitory, fleeting in their momentary stability; in the stable forms the crude predominate & even the ghana is infrequent & less stable, nor are these stable crude forms plentiful in their variety.

r1913 12 29, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Tapas still grows in power, but its hold is still insufficient because not yet automatically effective, except occasionally; it is effective, usually, only by overcoming the resistance of the bhumayi Prakriti, a resistance which still fights, if no longer every inch of ground, yet all possible terrain and is still liable to revive even where it has been partially & seems to be entirely conquered. Its faculty of resistance is, however, visibly dwindling.
   The sthula human touch is today being felt in addition to other touches but still in an initial & sukshma form, although it has passed the stage when it could only be felt perfectly in the pranakosha & its effects alone reached the annakosha. Certain forms of the prana jagat, rain, cloud, insects, etc are nowadays once again commonly visible though still vague & more often seen in their image or chhaya than in their proper bodies. Shabdadrishti is still behindh and & remains except for an occasional elementary or distant sound in the avyakta. It is however tending to gain strength.
  --
   The chief activity of the siddhi is now to prepare the thirteenth siddhi in the adhara subjectively and physically; all that is deficient subjectively is the survival of certain old sanskaras of unalterable cause & effect, physical possibility & impossibility. These removed the physical siddhi will be facilitated. The other main activity is the manifestation of the personal Shaktis of the Alipur sadhana in the anandatattwa of the mind, the explanation & justification of many dubious features and abandoned assertions of that sadhana, the justification of the mental tejas against the mental inertia, the extension of the dasya by submission to those chosen & allowed by the Ishwara, the removal of the fragments of straining, desire, nirananda, doubt of siddhi etc in the jada Prakriti.
   ***

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