classes ::: attribute, parts of the being, plane, parts of the being,
children :::
branches ::: Subtle.Physical

bookmarks: Instances - Definitions - Quotes - Chapters - Wordnet - Webgen


object:Subtle.Physical
object:Subtle Physical
object:Subtle-Physical
class:attribute
class:parts of the being
class:plane
class:parts of the being

Sri Aurobindo is constantly in the subtle physical, very active there. I see him almost daily, and last night I spent many hours with him. If you become conscious in the subtle physical you will surely meet him, it is what he called the true physical - it has nothing to do with the psychic. 21 December 1969 ~ The Mother Words Of The Mother - I

Last night, we (you and I and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling-place of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo called the true physical). 1 February 1963 * ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother - I

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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


AUTH

BOOKS
Letters_On_Yoga
Letters_On_Yoga_I
Letters_On_Yoga_III
Life_without_Death
On_Thoughts_And_Aphorisms
Questions_And_Answers_1950-1951

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
0_1960-05-28_-_death_of_K_-_the_death_process-_the_subtle_physical
1951-03-31_-_Physical_ailment_and_mental_disorder_-_Curing_an_illness_spiritually_-_Receptivity_of_the_body_-_The_subtle-physical-_illness_accidents_-_Curing_sunstroke_and_other_disorders

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.05_-_Letters_to_a_Child
0.08_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Captain
0.13_-_Letters_to_a_Student
0_1958-01-01
0_1958-02-03b_-_The_Supramental_Ship
0_1958-05-01
0_1958-08-08
0_1958-09-16_-_OM_NAMO_BHAGAVATEH
0_1958-10-25_-_to_go_out_of_your_body
0_1960-01-28
0_1960-05-28_-_death_of_K_-_the_death_process-_the_subtle_physical
0_1960-11-12
0_1961-02-18
0_1961-03-21
0_1961-06-24
0_1961-06-27
0_1961-08-05
0_1961-10-15
0_1961-11-07
0_1961-12-23
0_1962-01-12_-_supramental_ship
0_1962-01-15
0_1962-02-27
0_1962-03-11
0_1962-05-15
0_1962-06-27
0_1962-07-14
0_1962-08-04
0_1962-08-08
0_1962-08-14
0_1962-08-18
0_1962-08-28
0_1962-09-05
0_1962-09-08
0_1962-10-12
0_1962-11-03
0_1962-12-22
0_1963-01-18
0_1963-02-15
0_1963-02-23
0_1963-07-06
0_1963-09-25
0_1963-11-20
0_1963-11-30
0_1963-12-25
0_1964-02-05
0_1964-08-26
0_1964-09-30
0_1964-10-07
0_1964-10-10
0_1964-10-17
0_1965-03-10
0_1965-06-18_-_supramental_ship
0_1965-07-21
0_1965-07-24
0_1965-09-15a
0_1965-10-27
0_1966-01-22
0_1966-03-26
0_1966-07-09
0_1966-09-14
0_1966-10-29
0_1966-11-15
0_1966-12-31
0_1967-01-25
0_1967-04-12
0_1967-08-02
0_1967-08-30
0_1967-10-30
0_1967-12-06
0_1968-06-15
0_1968-06-29
0_1968-07-10
0_1968-07-13
0_1968-09-04
0_1968-10-09
0_1968-10-26
0_1968-12-21
0_1969-02-05
0_1969-03-19
0_1969-04-09
0_1969-05-17
0_1969-05-21
0_1969-05-31
0_1969-07-12
0_1969-07-19
0_1969-07-23
0_1969-07-26
0_1969-07-30
0_1969-08-27
0_1969-09-17
0_1969-10-08
0_1970-03-14
0_1970-04-04
0_1970-04-18
0_1970-04-22
0_1970-05-09
0_1970-05-13
0_1970-05-27
0_1971-09-14
0_1972-03-25
03.02_-_The_Gradations_of_Consciousness__The_Gradation_of_Planes
05.03_-_Bypaths_of_Souls_Journey
05.04_-_The_Immortal_Person
05.09_-_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience
05.12_-_The_Soul_and_its_Journey
05.31_-_Divine_Intervention
06.12_-_The_Expanding_Body-Consciousness
07.20_-_Why_are_Dreams_Forgotten?
08.13_-_Thought_and_Imagination
09.18_-_The_Mother_on_Herself
10.14_-_Night_and_Day
1.03_-_Eternal_Presence
1.03_-_Preparing_for_the_Miraculous
1.03_-_The_House_Of_The_Lord
1.04_-_The_Silent_Mind
1.06_-_Psychic_Education
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.08_-_Independence_from_the_Physical
1.09_-_Sleep_and_Death
1.1.1.01_-_Three_Elements_of_Poetic_Creation
1.1.2.02_-_Poetry_of_the_Material_or_Physical_Consciousness
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.1.5_-_Thought_and_Knowledge
1.16_-_Man,_A_Transitional_Being
1.2.1.04_-_Mystic_Poetry
1.23_-_The_Double_Soul_in_Man
1.26_-_The_Ascending_Series_of_Substance
1.28_-_Supermind,_Mind_and_the_Overmind_Maya
1.3.04_-_Peace
14.02_-_Occult_Experiences
15.03_-_A_Canadian_Question
1951-02-15_-_Dreams,_symbolic_-_true_repose_-_False_visions_-_Earth-memory_and_history
1951-02-19_-_Exteriorisation-_clairvoyance,_fainting,_etc_-_Somnambulism_-_Tartini_-_childrens_dreams_-_Nightmares_-_gurus_protection_-_Mind_and_vital_roam_during_sleep
1951-02-24_-_Psychic_being_and_entity_-_dimensions_-_in_the_atom_-_Death_-_exteriorisation_-_unconsciousness_-_Past_lives_-_progress_upon_earth_-_choice_of_birth_-_Consecration_to_divine_Work_-_psychic_memories_-_Individualisation_-_progress
1951-03-19_-_Mental_worlds_and_their_beings_-_Understanding_in_silence_-_Psychic_world-_its_characteristics_-_True_experiences_and_mental_formations_-_twelve_senses
1951-03-31_-_Physical_ailment_and_mental_disorder_-_Curing_an_illness_spiritually_-_Receptivity_of_the_body_-_The_subtle-physical-_illness_accidents_-_Curing_sunstroke_and_other_disorders
1951-04-14_-_Surrender_and_sacrifice_-_Idea_of_sacrifice_-_Bahaism_-_martyrdom_-_Sleep-_forgetfulness,_exteriorisation,_etc_-_Dreams_and_visions-_explanations_-_Exteriorisation-_incidents_about_cats
1951-04-17_-_Unity,_diversity_-_Protective_envelope_-_desires_-_consciousness,_true_defence_-_Perfection_of_physical_-_cinema_-_Choice,_constant_and_conscious_-_law_of_ones_being_-_the_One,_the_Multiplicity_-_Civilization-_preparing_an_instrument
1953-05-06
1953-07-22
1954-05-26_-_Symbolic_dreams_-_Psychic_sorrow_-_Dreams,_one_is_rarely_conscious
1954-06-23_-_Meat-eating_-_Story_of_Mothers_vegetable_garden_-_Faithfulness_-_Conscious_sleep
1954-09-08_-_Hostile_forces_-_Substance_-_Concentration_-_Changing_the_centre_of_thought_-_Peace
1954-10-20_-_Stand_back_-_Asking_questions_to_Mother_-_Seeing_images_in_meditation_-_Berlioz_-Music_-_Mothers_organ_music_-_Destiny
1955-03-02_-_Right_spirit,_aspiration_and_desire_-_Sleep_and_yogic_repose,_how_to_sleep_-_Remembering_dreams_-_Concentration_and_outer_activity_-_Mother_opens_the_door_inside_everyone_-_Sleep,_a_school_for_inner_knowledge_-_Source_of_energy
1955-04-06_-_Freuds_psychoanalysis,_the_subliminal_being_-_The_psychic_and_the_subliminal_-_True_psychology_-_Changing_the_lower_nature_-_Faith_in_different_parts_of_the_being_-_Psychic_contact_established_in_all_in_the_Ashram
1955-04-27_-_Symbolic_dreams_and_visions_-_Curing_pain_by_various_methods_-_Different_states_of_consciousness_-_Seeing_oneself_dead_in_a_dream_-_Exteriorisation
1955-05-18_-_The_Problem_of_Woman_-_Men_and_women_-_The_Supreme_Mother,_the_new_creation_-_Gods_and_goddesses_-_A_story_of_Creation,_earth_-_Psychic_being_only_on_earth,_beings_everywhere_-_Going_to_other_worlds_by_occult_means
1955-07-06_-_The_psychic_and_the_central_being_or_jivatman_-_Unity_and_multiplicity_in_the_Divine_-_Having_experiences_and_the_ego_-_Mental,_vital_and_physical_exteriorisation_-_Imagination_has_a_formative_power_-_The_function_of_the_imagination
1956-08-08_-_How_to_light_the_psychic_fire,_will_for_progress_-_Helping_from_a_distance,_mental_formations_-_Prayer_and_the_divine_-_Grace_Grace_at_work_everywhere
1956-09-05_-_Material_life,_seeing_in_the_right_way_-_Effect_of_the_Supermind_on_the_earth_-_Emergence_of_the_Supermind_-_Falling_back_into_the_same_mistaken_ways
1956-09-26_-_Soul_of_desire_-_Openness,_harmony_with_Nature_-_Communion_with_divine_Presence_-_Individuality,_difficulties,_soul_of_desire_-_personal_contact_with_the_Mother_-_Inner_receptivity_-_Bad_thoughts_before_the_Mother
1956-10-03_-_The_Mothers_different_ways_of_speaking_-_new_manifestation_-_new_element,_possibilities_-_child_prodigies_-_Laws_of_Nature,_supramental_-_Logic_of_the_unforeseen_-_Creative_writers,_hands_of_musicians_-_Prodigious_children,_men
1956-10-24_-_Taking_a_new_body_-_Different_cases_of_incarnation_-_Departure_of_soul_from_body
1956-12-12_-_paradoxes_-_Nothing_impossible_-_unfolding_universe,_the_Eternal_-_Attention,_concentration,_effort_-_growth_capacity_almost_unlimited_-_Why_things_are_not_the_same_-_will_and_willings_-_Suggestions,_formations_-_vital_world
1957-05-15_-_Differentiation_of_the_sexes_-_Transformation_from_above_downwards
1957-06-26_-_Birth_through_direct_transmutation_-_Man_and_woman_-_Judging_others_-_divine_Presence_in_all_-_New_birth
1958-01-01_-_The_collaboration_of_material_Nature_-_Miracles_visible_to_a_deep_vision_of_things_-_Explanation_of_New_Year_Message
1958-01-08_-_Sri_Aurobindos_method_of_exposition_-_The_mind_as_a_public_place_-_Mental_control_-_Sri_Aurobindos_subtle_hand
1958-02-19_-_Experience_of_the_supramental_boat_-_The_Censors_-_Absurdity_of_artificial_means
1960_07_13
1962_01_12
1962_02_27
1962_10_12
1966_07_06
1970_02_12
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Case_of_Charles_Dexter_Ward
2.05_-_The_Cosmic_Illusion;_Mind,_Dream_and_Hallucination
2.07_-_The_Mother__Relations_with_Others
2.09_-_Memory,_Ego_and_Self-Experience
2.10_-_Knowledge_by_Identity_and_Separative_Knowledge
2.11_-_The_Boundaries_of_the_Ignorance
2.12_-_On_Miracles
2.15_-_On_the_Gods_and_Asuras
2.15_-_Reality_and_the_Integral_Knowledge
2.16_-_The_15th_of_August
2.1.7.07_-_On_the_Verse_and_Structure_of_the_Poem
2.18_-_January_1939
2.19_-_Out_of_the_Sevenfold_Ignorance_towards_the_Sevenfold_Knowledge
2.2.01_-_The_Outer_Being_and_the_Inner_Being
2.2.02_-_The_True_Being_and_the_True_Consciousness
2.2.03_-_The_Psychic_Being
2.21_-_1940
2.22_-_Rebirth_and_Other_Worlds;_Karma,_the_Soul_and_Immortality
2.25_-_The_Triple_Transformation
2.26_-_The_Ascent_towards_Supermind
2.3.01_-_The_Planes_or_Worlds_of_Consciousness
2.3.02_-_The_Supermind_or_Supramental
2.3.03_-_Integral_Yoga
2.3.03_-_The_Mother's_Presence
2.3.04_-_The_Higher_Planes_of_Mind
2.3.06_-_The_Mother's_Lights
2.3.07_-_The_Mother_in_Visions,_Dreams_and_Experiences
2.3.07_-_The_Vital_Being_and_Vital_Consciousness
2.3.08_-_The_Physical_Consciousness
2.3.10_-_The_Subconscient_and_the_Inconscient
2.3.2_-_Desire
2.4.02.09_-_Contact_and_Union_with_the_Divine
2.4.02_-_Bhakti,_Devotion,_Worship
24.04_-_Notes_on_Savitri_III
24.05_-_Vision_of_Dante
3.1.04_-_Transformation_in_the_Integral_Yoga
3.2.3_-_Dreams
3.2.4_-_Sex
33.09_-_Shyampukur
3.4.1_-_The_Subconscient_and_the_Integral_Yoga
4.4.1.03_-_Both_Ascent_and_Descent_Necessary
4.4.1.05_-_Ascent_and_Descent_of_the_Kundalini_Shakti
4.4.2.07_-_Ascent_and_Going_out_of_the_Body
5.02_-_Perfection_of_the_Body
5.03_-_The_Divine_Body
5.1.01_-_Terminology
5.1.03_-_The_Hostile_Forces_and_Hostile_Beings
5.4.01_-_Occult_Knowledge
5.4.02_-_Occult_Powers_or_Siddhis
7_-_Yoga_of_Sri_Aurobindo
Conversations_with_Sri_Aurobindo
r1912_12_11
r1917_03_17
r1918_05_14
r1919_07_08
r1919_07_16
r1919_07_18
r1919_08_02
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
The_Riddle_of_this_World

PRIMARY CLASS

attribute
parts_of_the_being
plane
SIMILAR TITLES
Subtle.Physical

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH


TERMS ANYWHERE

— as experienced by the outward sense-mind and senses. But this is not the whole of Matter. There is a subtle physical also with a subtler consciousness in it which can, for instance, go to a distance from the body and yet feel and be aware of things in a not merely mental or vital way.

:::   ". . . a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies, — all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic, — for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.” The Life Divine

“… a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies,—all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic,—for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.” The Life Divine

A true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its energies,—all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence. In the spiritual domain, which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic,—for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 678


Being or a Presence — sometimes one of these, sometimes several of them or all together. The movement of ascension has diffe- rent results ; it may liberate the consciousness so that one feels no longer in he body, but above it or else spread in wideness with the body whether almost non-existent or only a point in one’s free expanse. It may enable the being or some part of the being to go out from the body and move elsewhere, and this action is usually accompanied by some kind of partial Samadhi or else a complete trance. Or, it may result in empowering the cons- ciousness, no longer limited by the body and the habits of the external nature, to go within, to enter the inner mental depths, the inner vital, the inner (subtle) physical, the psychic, to become aware of its inmost psychic self or its inner mental, vital, and subtle physical being, and it may be, to move and live in the domains, the planes, the worlds that correspond to these parts of the nature. It is the repeated and constant ascent of the lower consciousness that enables the mind, the vital, the physical to come into touch with the higher planes up to the Supramental and get impregnated with their light and power and influence.

Intermediate Zone ::: a zone of formations, a borderland where all the worlds meet, mental, vital, subtle physical, pseudo-spiritual, but there is no order or firm foothold; this zone is a passage between the physical and the true spiritual realms.

Madhav: “The brilliant courtyard is the realm of the subtle-physical Matter that Aswapathy is leaving behind in his upward climb. He sees that with all its brilliant glow, this region is limited on all sides and it is only a courtyard—not yet the entrance proper—of the Mansion of Light, where the Light of God is ever manifest. Day in the spiritual symbolism signifies the reign of Light. Aswapathy seeks to enter the Order (symbolised by House) where the Light shines uninterrupted.” The Book of the Divine Mother

MEDIUMS. ::: They are most of them in contact with the vital-physical or subtle physical worlds and do not receive any- thing higher at aii.

Nolini: “Amber colour representing a particular plane of consciousness. Yellow + red + touch of brown—physico-vital or even subtle physical plane—the New Creation come down on that plane. Mother India—Nolini’s reply to a question from Huta.

Occultism ::: Occultism means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul, mind, life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness to bring about results on their own or on the material plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and result in human or earthly mind and life and body or in objects and events in the world of Matter.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 548


OCCULT. ::: Occult forces are the forces that can only be known by going behind the veil of apparent phenomena, especially the forces of the subtle physical and supraphysical planes.

Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold for instance, in the subtle physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from mani- festing in the body.

Our subliminal self is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting-place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature,—and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being’s direct consciousness of things than its informants: the subliminal is not dependent on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to its direct experience of objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind’s documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience. It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw from the surface activities whether by sleep or inward-drawn concentration or by the inner plunge of trance. Our waking state is unaware of its connection with the subliminal being, although it receives from it—but without any knowledge of the place of origin—the inspirations, intuitions, ideas, will-suggestions, sense-suggestions, urges to action that rise from below or from behind our limited surface existence. Sleep like trance opens the gate of the subliminal to us; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of the limited waking personality and it is behind this veil that the subliminal has its existence. But we receive the records of our sleep experience through dream and in dream figures and not in that condition which might be called an inner waking and which is the most accessible form of the trance state, nor through the supernormal clarities of vision and other more luminous and concrete ways of communication developed by the inner subliminal cognition when it gets into habitual or occasional conscious connection with our waking self. The subliminal, with the subconscious as an annexe of itself,—for the subconscious is also part of the behind-the-veil entity,—is the seer of inner things and of supraphysical experiences; the surface subconscious is only a transcriber. It is for this reason that the Upanishad describes the subliminal being as the Dream Self because it is normally in dreams, visions, absorbed states of inner experience that we enter into and are part of its experiences...
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 236


rent regard for the other members of the great series. Thus, if we regard the vital or the subtle physical plane, we see great ranges of it, (most of it), existing in themselves, without any relation with the material world and with no movement to affect or influence it, still less to precipitate a corresponding manifes- tation in the physical formula. At most we can say that the existence of anything in the vital, subtle physical or any other plane creates a possibility for a corresponding movement of manifestation in the physical world. But something more is needed to turn that static or latent possibility into a dynamic potentiality or an actual urge towards a material creation. That something may be a call from the material plane, e.g., some force or some one on the physical existence entering into touch with a supraphysical power or world or part of it and moved to bring it down into the earth-life. Or it may be an impulse in the vital or other plane itself, e.g., a vital being moved to extend his action towards the earth and establish there a kingdom for himself or the play of the forces for which he stands in his own domain.

SEEING. ::: Seeing is of many kinds. There is the superficial seeing which only erects or receim momentarily or for some time an image of the Being seen ; that brings no change unless the inner bhakti makes it a means of change. There is also the reception of the living image in one of its forms into oneself — let us say, in the heart ; that can have an immediate effect or initiate a period of spiritual growth. There is also the seeing outside oneself in a more or less objective and subtle-physical or physical way.

*Sri Aurobindo: "There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly — that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world — but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone — . . . .” Letters on Yoga

  "The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul"s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds.” Letters on Yoga

“The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds.” Letters on Yoga

“There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly—that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world—but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone—….” Letters on Yoga

The world of the Asuras is prior to the evolution, so are the worlds of the mental, vital or subtle-physical Devas — but these beings are different from each other. The great Gods belong to the Overmind plane ::: in the Supennind they are unified as aspects of the Divine, in the Overmind they appear as separate personali- ties. Any godhead can descend by emanation to the physical plane and associate himself with the evolution of a human being with whose line of manlfestion he is in affinity.

This movement as it proceeds opens up the six centres of the subtle nervous system and by the opening one escapes from the limitations of the surface consciousness bound to the gross body and great ranges of experiences proper to the subliminal self, mental, vitalj subtle physical, are shown to the sadhaka. When the Kundalini meets the higher Consciousness as it ascends through the summit of the head, there is an opening of the higher superconscient reaches above the normal mind. It is by ascend- ing through these in our consciousness and receiring a descent of their energies that it is possible ultimately to reach the Super- mind. This is the method of the Tantra. In our Yoga it is not necessary to go through the sysiemaihed method. It takes place spontaneously according to the need by the force of the aspira- tion. As soon as (here is an openmg the Divine Power descends and conducts the necessary working, does what is needed, each thing in its time and the Consciousness begins to be bom

True Being ::: The true being mental, vital or subtle physical has always the greater qualities of its plane—it is the Purusha and like the psychic, though in another way, the projection of the Divine, th
   refore in connection with the Higher Consciousness and
   reflects something of it, though it is not altogether that—it is also in tune with the cosmic Truth.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 126


ūks.ma deha (sukshmadeha; sukshma deha) ::: the subtle body which is the "subtle-physical support of the inner being" (antah.karan.a) and contains the cakras or centres of the inner consciousness; it "penetrates and is interfused with the gross body" (sthūla deha), being tied to it by the pran.a with its two connected forms, the sūks.ma pran.a and sthūla pran.a. ssuksma ūks.ma dr drsti

ū ::: the subtle physical world, a loka in which the Spirit bases its manifestation "on a subtler and more plastic, more conscious principle of Matter".

Visions do not come from the spiritual plane ; they come from the subtle physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from the planes above the Mind. What comes from the spiritual plane are experiences of the Dirae, c.g. the experience of Self every- where. of the Divine in all etc.

WORLDS. ::: The physical is not the only world ; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, Intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds ; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds ; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home ; others above with which we have littfe contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as w’cll as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the cons- ciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into conoeciion with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a sub- conscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds. In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happen- ings, come across formations, influences, suggestions which belong to these planes. Even when we are awake, part of us moves in these planes, but their activity goes on behind the veil ; our waking minds are not aware of it. Dreams are often only incoherent constructions of our subcooscient, but others are records (often much mixed and distorted) or transcripts of experiences in these supraphystcal planes. When we do sadbana, this kind of dream becomes very common ; then subconscious dreams cease to predominate.



QUOTES [12 / 12 - 43 / 43]


KEYS (10k)

   8 The Mother
   2 Sri Aurobindo
   1 M Alan Kazlev
   1 A B Purani

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   27 Frederick Lenz
   8 The Mother
   3 Sri Aurobindo

1:Rely on the Mother always. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Experiences on the Subtle.Physical, Vital and Mental Planes,
2:Sri Aurobindo is in the subtle physical, you can meet him when you sleep, if you know how to go there.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T1],
3:Last night, we (you and I and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling-place of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo called the true physical).
   1 February 1963 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T1],
4:Sri Aurobindo is constantly in the subtle physical, very active there. I see him almost daily, and last night I spent many hours with him.
   If you become conscious in the subtle physical you will surely meet him, it is what he called the true physical - it has nothing to do with the psychic. 21 December 1969
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T1],
5:the joy of progress :::
It is the will for progress and self-purification which lights the [psychic] fire. The will for progress. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress and purification, automatically light the fire within themselves.
And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one wants to make - if all that is thrown into the fire, it burns with a new intensity. And this is not an image, it is a fact in the subtle physical. One can feel the warmth of the flame, one can see in the subtle physical the light of the flame. And when there is something in the nature which prevents one from advancing and one throws it into this fire, it begins to burn and the flame becomes more intense....
How can one feel sweetness and joy when one is in difficulty?
Exactly, when the difficulty is egoistic or personal, if one makes an offering of it and throws it into the fire of purification, one immediately feels the joy of progress. If one does it sincerely, at once there is a welling up of joy.
That is obviously what ought to be done instead of despairing and lamenting. If one offers it up and aspires sincerely for transformation and purification, one immediately feels joy springing up in the depths of the heart. Even when the difficulty is a great sorrow, one may do this with much success. One realises that behind the sorrow, no matter how intense it may be, there is divine joy. ~ The Mother,
6:subtle ::: In Vedanta (Mandukya Upanishad and later teachings - e.g. Advaita - based on it) "subtle" is used to designate the "dream state" of consciousness, and in Advaita this also includes the Prana, Manas, and Vijnana koshas (= the vehicles of vital force, mind, and higher consciousness) re-interpreted from of the Taittiriya Upanishad.

In Tibetan and Tantric Buddhism it refers to an intermediate grade between the "gross" and "very subtle" "minds" and "winds" (vayu = prana).

The Sukshma Sthula or Subtle Body is one of the seven principles of man in Blavatskian Theosophy; it is also called the "astral body" (this has little similarity with the astral body of Out of Body experience, because it cannot move far from the gross physical vehicle, it seems to correspond to what Robert Monroe calls the "second body", and identified with the Double or Ka

In Sant Mat / Radhasoami cosmology - the Anda (Cosmic Egg) / Sahans-dal Kanwal (Crown Chakra) is sometimes called the Subtle; hence Subtle = Astral

The term Subtle.Physical is used somewhat generically by Sri Aurobindo (in Letters on Yoga) to refer to a wider reality behind the external physical.

Ken Wilber uses the term Subtle to indicate the yogic and mystic holonic-evolutionary level intermediate between "Psychic" (in his series = Nature Mysticism) and "Causal" (=Realisation"); it includes many psychic and occult experiences and can be considered as pertaining to the Subtle as defined here (although it also includes other realities and experiences that might also be interpreted as "Inner Gross" - e.g. Kundalini as a classic example). ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, planes/subtle,
7:Contact and Union with the Divine;
Seeing is of many kinds. There is a superficial seeing which only erects or receives momentarily or for some time an image of the Being seen; that brings no change, unless the inner bhakti makes it a means for change. There is also the reception of the living image of the Divine in one of his forms into oneself, - say, in the heart, - that can have an immediate effect or initiate a period of spiritual growth. There is also the seeing outside oneself in a more or less objective and subtle physical or physical way. As for milana, the abiding union is within and that can be there at all times; the outer milana or contact is not usually abiding. There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly - that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world - but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone - and this does not exclude such specific personal manifestations as those vouchsafed to Krishnaprem and his guru. The more ways there are of the union, the better. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T4],
8:Disciple: If the Asuras represent the dark side of God on the vital plane - does this dark side exist on every plane? If so, are there beings on the mental plane which correspond to the dark side?
   Sri Aurobindo: The Asura is really the dark side of God on the mental plane. Mind is the very field of the Asura. His characteristic is egoistic strength, which refuses the Higher Law. The Asura has got Self-control, Tapas, intelligence, only, all that is for his ego.
   On the vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshashas which represent violent passions and impulses. There are other beings on the vital plane which we call pramatta and piśacha and these; manifest, more or less, on the physico-vital plane.
   Distiple: What is the corresponding being on the higher plane?
   Sri Aurobindo: On the higher plane there are no Asuras - there the Truth prevails. There are "Asuras" there in the Vedic sense,- "beings with divine powers". The mental Asura is only a deviation of that power.
   The work of the Asura has all the characteristics of mind in it. It is mind refusing to submit to the Higher Law; it is the mind in revolt. It works on the basis of ego and ignorance.
   Disciple: What are the forces that correspond to the dark side of God on the physical plane?
   Sri Aurobindo: They are what may be called the "elemental beings", or rather, obscure elemental forces - they are more "forces" than "beings". It is these that the Theosophists call the "Elementals". They are not individualised beings like the Asura and the Rakshasas, they are ignorant forces working oh the subtle physical plane.
   Disciple: What is the word for them in Sanskrit;?
   Sri Aurobindo: What are called bhūtas seem most nearly to correspond to them.
   Disciple: The term "Elemental" means that these work through the elements.
   Sri Aurobindo: There are two kinds of "elementals": one mischievous and the other innocent. What the Europeans call the gnomes come under this category. ~ A B Purani, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, 15-06-1926,
9:The capacity for visions, when it is sincere and spontaneous, can put you in touch with events which you are not capable of knowing in your outer consciousness.... There is a very interesting fact, it is that somewhere in the terrestrial mind, somewhere in the terrestrial vital, somewhere in the subtle physical, one can find an exact, perfect, automatic recording of everything that happens. It is the most formidable memory one could imagine, which misses nothing, forgets nothing, records all. And if you are able to enter into it, you can go backward, you can go forward, and in all directions, and you will have the "memory" of all things - not only of things of the past, but of things to come. For everything is recorded there.

   In the mental world, for instance, there is a domain of the physical mind which is related to physical things and keeps the memory of physical happenings upon earth. It is as though you were entering into innumerable vaults, one following another indefinitely, and these vaults are filled with small pigeon-holes, one above another, one above another, with tiny doors. Then if you want to know something and if you are conscious, you look, and you see something like a small point - a shining point; you find that this is what you wish to know and you have only to concentrate there and it opens; and when it opens, there is a sort of an unrolling of something like extremely subtle manuscripts, but if your concentration is sufficiently strong you begin to read as though from a book. And you have the whole story in all its details. There are thousands of these little holes, you know; when you go for a walk there, it is as though you were walking in infinity. And in this way you can find the exact facts about whatever you want to know. But I must tell you that what you find is never what has been reported in history - histories are always planned out; I have never come across a single "historical" fact which is like history.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951, 109 [T7],
10:"Will it take long for the Supermind which is involved in material Nature to emerge into the outer consciousness and bring visible results?"
   That depends on the state of consciousness from which one answers, for... For the human consciousness, obviously, I think it will take quite a long time. For another consciousness it will be relatively very fast, and for yet another consciousness, it is already accomplished. It is an accomplished fact. But in order to become aware of this, one must be able to enter into another state of consciousness than the ordinary physical consciousness.
   Sri Aurobindo has spoken - I believe I have read it to you, I think it's in The Synthesis of Yoga - of the true mind, the true vital and the true physical or subtle physical, and he has said that they co-exist with the ordinary mind, vital and physical, and that in certain conditions one may enter into contact with them, and then one becomes aware of the difference between what really is and the appearances of things.
   Well, for a developed consciousness, the Supermind is already realised somewhere in a domain of the subtle physical, it already exists there visible, concrete, and expresses itself in forms and activities. And when one is in tune with this domain, when one lives there, one has a very strong feeling that this world would only have to be condensed, so to say, for it to become visible to all. What would then be interesting would be to develop this inner perception which would put you into contact with the supramental truth which is already manifested, and is veiled for you only for want of appropriate organs to enter into relation with it.
   It is possible that those who are conscious of their dreams may have dreams of a new kind which put them into contact with that world, for it is accessible to the subtle physical of all those who have the corresponding organs in themselves. And there is necessarily a subtle influence of this physical on outer matter, if one is ready to receive impressions from it and admit them into one's consciousness. That's all.
   Now, if nobody has any questions to ask, well, we shall remain silent.
   Something to say, over there? (Mother looks at a disciple.) Oh! he is burning to speak! ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,
11:
   Why do we forget our dreams?


Because you do not dream always at the same place. It is not always the same part of your being that dreams and it is not at the same place that you dream. If you were in conscious, direct, continuous communication with all the parts of your being, you would remember all your dreams. But very few parts of the being are in communication.

   For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five o'clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentive - quietly attentive - and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is established - very rarely is there no communication.

   Now, dreams are mostly forgotten because you have a dream while in a certain state and then pass into another. For instance, when you sleep, your body is asleep, your vital is asleep, but your mind is still active. So your mind begins to have dreams, that is, its activity is more or less coordinated, the imagination is very active and you see all kinds of things, take part in extraordinary happenings.... After some time, all that calms down and the mind also begins to doze. The vital that was resting wakes up; it comes out of the body, walks about, goes here and there, does all kinds of things, reacts, sometimes fights, and finally eats. It does all kinds of things. The vital is very adventurous. It watches. When it is heroic it rushes to save people who are in prison or to destroy enemies or it makes wonderful discoveries. But this pushes back the whole mental dream very far behind. It is rubbed off, forgotten: naturally you cannot remember it because the vital dream takes its place. But if you wake up suddenly at that moment, you remember it. There are people who have made the experiment, who have got up at certain fixed hours of the night and when they wake up suddenly, they do remember. You must not move brusquely, but awake in the natural course, then you remember.

   After a time, the vital having taken a good stroll, needs to rest also, and so it goes into repose and quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of adventures. Then something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering, seeing the rooms and... why, this thing that was there, but it has come here and that other thing which was in that room is now in this one, and so on. If you wake up without stirring, you remembeR But this has pushed away far to the back of the consciousness all the stories of the vital. They are forgotten and so you cannot recollect your dreams. But if at the time of waking up you are not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long as you wish, you need not even open your eyes; you keep your head exactly where it was and you make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of the tail of your dream. You catch it and start pulling gently, without stirring in the least. You begin pulling quite gently, and then first one part comes, a little later another. You go backward; the last comes up first. Everything goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole dream reappears: "Ah, there! it was like that." Above all, do not jump up, do not stir; you repeat the dream to yourself several times - once, twice - until it becomes clear in all its details. Once that dream is settled, you continue not to stir, you try to go further in, and suddenly you catch the tail of something else. It is more distant, more vague, but you can still seize it. And here also you hang on, get hold of it and pull, and you see that everything changes and you enter another world; all of a sudden you have an extraordinary adventure - it is another dream. You follow the same process. You repeat the dream to yourself once, twice, until you are sure of it. You remain very quiet all the time. Then you begin to penetrate still more deeply into yourself, as though you were going in very far, very far; and again suddenly you see a vague form, you have a feeling, a sensation... like a current of air, a slight breeze, a little breath; and you say, "Well, well...." It takes a form, it becomes clear - and the third category comes. You must have a lot of time, a lot of patience, you must be very quiet in your mind and body, very quiet, and you can tell the story of your whole night from the end right up to the beginning.

   Even without doing this exercise which is very long and difficult, in order to recollect a dream, whether it be the last one or the one in the middle that has made a violent impression on your being, you must do what I have said when you wake up: take particular care not even to move your head on the pillow, remain absolutely still and let the dream return.

   Some people do not have a passage between one state and another, there is a little gap and so they leap from one to the other; there is no highway passing through all the states of being with no break of the consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not remember. It is like a precipice across which one has to extend the consciousness. To build a bridge takes a very long time; it takes much longer than building a physical bridge.... Very few people want to and know how to do it. They may have had magnificent activities, they do not remember them or sometimes only the last, the nearest, the most physical activity, with an uncoordinated movement - dreams having no sense.

   But there are as many different kinds of nights and sleep as there are different days and activities. There are not many days that are alike, each day is different. The days are not the same, the nights are not the same. You and your friends are doing apparently the same thing, but for each one it is very different. And each one must have his own procedure.

   Why are two dreams never alike?

Because all things are different. No two minutes are alike in the universe and it will be so till the end of the universe, no two minutes will ever be alike. And men obstinately want to make rules! One must do this and not that.... Well! we must let people please themselves.

   You could have put to me a very interesting question: "Why am I fourteen years old today?" Intelligent people will say: "It is because it is the fourteenth year since you were born." That is the answer of someone who believes himself to be very intelligent. But there is another reason. I shall tell this to you alone.... I have drowned you all sufficiently well! Now you must begin to learn swimming!

   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 36?,
12:[The Gods and Their Worlds]

   [...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.

   This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.

   There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.

   All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.

   One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.

   Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.

   But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.

   When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.

   Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!

   I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.

   Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!

   These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.

   In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.

   If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.

   If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958

   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:If there are problems with the subtle physical body, it's very hard for the kundalini to flow. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
2:There are seven primary centers, junctions, within the subtle physical body. These are called the seven chakras. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
3:Your heart chakra is not in your physical body. It is in your subtle physical body, but it comes in contact with your physical body in this location. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
4:The subtle physical body protects the body's physical health. It is the radiant life force that is you. When you get sick, it is because there is a problem with your subtle physical body. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
5:The kundalini is raised or brought down. It can be done in several different ways, and as it moves to the different chakras or energy centers in the subtle physical body, it endows one with various powers. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
6:When the subtle physical body is damaged you will begin to notice changes in your skin, you skin starts to get gnarly or dry. I'm not speaking of acne. Acne means you have a lot of kundalini, which stimulates hormones. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
7:When something goes wrong with the body of energy that surrounds and protects your physical body, it will later show up in your physical body. The problem always starts in the subtle physical, and then manifests in the physical. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:All disease and aging occurs as the subtle physical body breaks down. ~ Frederick Lenz,
2:If it's not true love, then that energy will gradually wear the subtle physical down. ~ Frederick Lenz,
3:If there are problems with the subtle physical body, it's very hard for the kundalini to flow. ~ Frederick Lenz,
4:When you focus on a chakra, it's very easy to bring subtle physical energies into your consciousness. ~ Frederick Lenz,
5:Rely on the Mother always. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Experiences on the Subtle.Physical, Vital and Mental Planes,
6:There are seven primary centers, junctions, within the subtle physical body. These are called the seven chakras. ~ Frederick Lenz,
7:Beyond the subtle physical body, is the causal body, the part of your being that lives from one lifetime to another. ~ Frederick Lenz,
8:Just as the subtle physical body holds together the physical body, the causal body holds together the body of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz,
9:Sri Aurobindo is in the subtle physical, you can meet him when you sleep, if you know how to go there.
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T1],
10:These energies when directed towards the subtle physical body cause the subtle physical body to break down, to lose its lumonisity. ~ Frederick Lenz,
11:Just as your physical body is composed of tissue, organs, bones, and different parts, so your subtle physical body has many different parts. ~ Frederick Lenz,
12:It is much easier for a woman to meditate than it is for men, innately. Their subtle physical bodies pick up the kundalini much more quickly. ~ Frederick Lenz,
13:Your heart chakra is not in your physical body. It is in your subtle physical body, but it comes in contact with your physical body in this location. ~ Frederick Lenz,
14:There are seven primary chakras located in the subtle physical body, the body of light and energy that is our awareness and that surrounds the physical. ~ Frederick Lenz,
15:Meditation erases conditioning. It allows a person to channel the kundalini energy through their subtle physical body and reach enlightened states of awareness. ~ Frederick Lenz,
16:Your very success is what's going to destroy you. The survival mechanism that you've developed is the very thing which will cause the downfall of your subtle physical body. ~ Frederick Lenz,
17:When you see someone's aura, it is an outer reflection of the subtle physical body. It is about the same shape as the physical body, although it can become thousands of things. ~ Frederick Lenz,
18:Women tend to open themselves up more during sex. Because their subtle physical bodies are so much more sensitive they tend to pick up the total energy of the man they have sex with. ~ Frederick Lenz,
19:The subtle physical body is made up of strands of luminous energy, and the energies are flowing through them constantly in the etheric plane. Above the subtle body is the causal body. ~ Frederick Lenz,
20:The subtle physical body protects the body's physical health. It is the radiant life force that is you. When you get sick, it is because there is a problem with your subtle physical body. ~ Frederick Lenz,
21:The Kundalini resides in the base of the spine. It's a bit of a misnomer because the kundalini really is not so much in the physical body, as in what we call the subtle physical body, the body of energy. ~ Frederick Lenz,
22:The kundalini is raised or brought down. It can be done in several different ways, and as it moves to the different chakras or energy centers in the subtle physical body, it endows one with various powers. ~ Frederick Lenz,
23:When the subtle physical body is damaged you will begin to notice changes in your skin, you skin starts to get gnarly or dry. I'm not speaking of acne. Acne means you have a lot of kundalini, which stimulates hormones. ~ Frederick Lenz,
24:When you develop your psychic vision after some meditation, you will be able to see the subtle physical of others, or perhaps yourself. At first you will see it as an aura; eventually you can see the whole subtle physical. ~ Frederick Lenz,
25:It seems strange, since the aspect of a woman is power and that her subtle physical body conducts light very well, that more women don't attain enlightenment than men. I would suggest that the reason this is so, is cultural. ~ Frederick Lenz,
26:When something goes wrong with the body of energy that surrounds and protects your physical body, it will later show up in your physical body. The problem always starts in the subtle physical, and then manifests in the physical. ~ Frederick Lenz,
27:We have a body, but we also have a subtle body, a body of energy that looks like our physical body. The subtle physical body is made up of energy, of light that vibrates at a very high rate so the human physical eyes can't see it. ~ Frederick Lenz,
28:A lot of people trash their subtle physical body with psychedelic drugs. While they do certainly give you experiences in altered levels of attention, you pay a price for it. They definitely screw up the subtle physical. Hatha Yoga can be good for that. ~ Frederick Lenz,
29:Last night, we (you and I and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling-place of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the subtle physical (what Sri Aurobindo called the true physical).
   1 February 1963 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T1],
30:Many men have deep rooted problems regarding the status of women, and during sex these problems come out. They consciously or unconsciously project anger and hate towards women they have sex with. This energy enters a woman's subtle physical body and damages it. ~ Frederick Lenz,
31:Sri Aurobindo is constantly in the subtle physical, very active there. I see him almost daily, and last night I spent many hours with him.
   If you become conscious in the subtle physical you will surely meet him, it is what he called the true physical - it has nothing to do with the psychic. 21 December 1969
   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T1],
32:Every one of our conscious brains is woven from subtle physical ingredients that somehow enable us to take advantage of the profound organization of our mathematically underpinned universe-so that we, in turn, are capable of some kind of direct access, through that Platonic quality of 'understanding', to the very ways in which our universe behaves at many different levels. ~ Roger Penrose,
33:YOU NEVER THINK about the weight of your organs inside you. Your heart is a half-pound clapper hanging off the end of your aorta. Your arms burden your shoulders like buckets on a yoke. The colon uses the uterus as a beanbag chair. Even the weight of your hair imparts a sensation on your scalp. In weightlessness, all this disappears. You organs float inside your torso.* The result is a subtle physical euphoria, an indescribable sense of being freed from something you did not realize was there. ~ Mary Roach,
34:But then there are other cases… Cases in which the narrative of disease strays off the expected path, where the usual suspects all seem to have alibis, and the diagnosis is elusive. For these, the doctor must don her deerstalker cap and unravel the mystery. It is in these instances where medicine can rise once again to the level of an art and the doctor-detective must pick apart the tangled strands of illness, understand which questions to ask, recognize the subtle physical findings, and identify which tests might lead, finally, to the right diagnosis. ~ Lisa Sanders,
35:...below even our most obscure physical consciousness is a subconscious being in which as in a covering and supporting soil are all manner of hidden seeds that sprout up, unaccountably to us, on our surface and into which we are constantly throwing fresh seeds that prolong our past and will influence our future,--a subconscious being, obscure, small in its motions, capriciously and almost fantastically subrational, but of an immense potency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness,--there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more subtle physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the connecting soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the material, the motive-forces, the impulsions of our developing surface existence. For in each of us here there may be one central person, but also a multitude of subordinate personalities created by the past history of its manifestation or by expressions of it on these inner planes which support its present play in this external material cosmos... ~ Sri Aurobindo,
36:the joy of progress :::
It is the will for progress and self-purification which lights the [psychic] fire. The will for progress. Those who have a strong will, when they turn it towards spiritual progress and purification, automatically light the fire within themselves.
   And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one wants to make - if all that is thrown into the fire, it burns with a new intensity. And this is not an image, it is a fact in the subtle physical. One can feel the warmth of the flame, one can see in the subtle physical the light of the flame. And when there is something in the nature which prevents one from advancing and one throws it into this fire, it begins to burn and the flame becomes more intense....
How can one feel sweetness and joy when one is in difficulty?
Exactly, when the difficulty is egoistic or personal, if one makes an offering of it and throws it into the fire of purification, one immediately feels the joy of progress. If one does it sincerely, at once there is a welling up of joy.
   That is obviously what ought to be done instead of despairing and lamenting. If one offers it up and aspires sincerely for transformation and purification, one immediately feels joy springing up in the depths of the heart. Even when the difficulty is a great sorrow, one may do this with much success. One realises that behind the sorrow, no matter how intense it may be, there is divine joy. ~ The Mother,
37:subtle ::: In Vedanta (Mandukya Upanishad and later teachings - e.g. Advaita - based on it) "subtle" is used to designate the "dream state" of consciousness, and in Advaita this also includes the Prana, Manas, and Vijnana koshas (= the vehicles of vital force, mind, and higher consciousness) re-interpreted from of the Taittiriya Upanishad.

In Tibetan and Tantric Buddhism it refers to an intermediate grade between the "gross" and "very subtle" "minds" and "winds" (vayu = prana).

The Sukshma Sthula or Subtle Body is one of the seven principles of man in Blavatskian Theosophy; it is also called the "astral body" (this has little similarity with the astral body of Out of Body experience, because it cannot move far from the gross physical vehicle, it seems to correspond to what Robert Monroe calls the "second body", and identified with the Double or Ka

In Sant Mat / Radhasoami cosmology - the Anda (Cosmic Egg) / Sahans-dal Kanwal (Crown Chakra) is sometimes called the Subtle; hence Subtle = Astral

The term Subtle.Physical is used somewhat generically by Sri Aurobindo (in Letters on Yoga) to refer to a wider reality behind the external physical.

Ken Wilber uses the term Subtle to indicate the yogic and mystic holonic-evolutionary level intermediate between "Psychic" (in his series = Nature Mysticism) and "Causal" (=Realisation"); it includes many psychic and occult experiences and can be considered as pertaining to the Subtle as defined here (although it also includes other realities and experiences that might also be interpreted as "Inner Gross" - e.g. Kundalini as a classic example). ~ M Alan Kazlev, Kheper, planes/subtle,
38:Contact and Union with the Divine;
Seeing is of many kinds. There is a superficial seeing which only erects or receives momentarily or for some time an image of the Being seen; that brings no change, unless the inner bhakti makes it a means for change. There is also the reception of the living image of the Divine in one of his forms into oneself, - say, in the heart, - that can have an immediate effect or initiate a period of spiritual growth. There is also the seeing outside oneself in a more or less objective and subtle physical or physical way. As for milana, the abiding union is within and that can be there at all times; the outer milana or contact is not usually abiding. There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship, the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, subtle-physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room, but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly - that is also a kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world - but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone - and this does not exclude such specific personal manifestations as those vouchsafed to Krishnaprem and his guru. The more ways there are of the union, the better. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T4],
39:Disciple: If the Asuras represent the dark side of God on the vital plane - does this dark side exist on every plane? If so, are there beings on the mental plane which correspond to the dark side?
   Sri Aurobindo: The Asura is really the dark side of God on the mental plane. Mind is the very field of the Asura. His characteristic is egoistic strength, which refuses the Higher Law. The Asura has got Self-control, Tapas, intelligence, only, all that is for his ego.
   On the vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshashas which represent violent passions and impulses. There are other beings on the vital plane which we call pramatta and piśacha and these; manifest, more or less, on the physico-vital plane.
   Distiple: What is the corresponding being on the higher plane?
   Sri Aurobindo: On the higher plane there are no Asuras - there the Truth prevails. There are "Asuras" there in the Vedic sense,- "beings with divine powers". The mental Asura is only a deviation of that power.
   The work of the Asura has all the characteristics of mind in it. It is mind refusing to submit to the Higher Law; it is the mind in revolt. It works on the basis of ego and ignorance.
   Disciple: What are the forces that correspond to the dark side of God on the physical plane?
   Sri Aurobindo: They are what may be called the "elemental beings", or rather, obscure elemental forces - they are more "forces" than "beings". It is these that the Theosophists call the "Elementals". They are not individualised beings like the Asura and the Rakshasas, they are ignorant forces working oh the subtle physical plane.
   Disciple: What is the word for them in Sanskrit;?
   Sri Aurobindo: What are called bhūtas seem most nearly to correspond to them.
   Disciple: The term "Elemental" means that these work through the elements.
   Sri Aurobindo: There are two kinds of "elementals": one mischievous and the other innocent. What the Europeans call the gnomes come under this category. ~ A B Purani, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, 15-06-1926,
40:The capacity for visions, when it is sincere and spontaneous, can put you in touch with events which you are not capable of knowing in your outer consciousness.... There is a very interesting fact, it is that somewhere in the terrestrial mind, somewhere in the terrestrial vital, somewhere in the subtle physical, one can find an exact, perfect, automatic recording of everything that happens. It is the most formidable memory one could imagine, which misses nothing, forgets nothing, records all. And if you are able to enter into it, you can go backward, you can go forward, and in all directions, and you will have the "memory" of all things - not only of things of the past, but of things to come. For everything is recorded there.

   In the mental world, for instance, there is a domain of the physical mind which is related to physical things and keeps the memory of physical happenings upon earth. It is as though you were entering into innumerable vaults, one following another indefinitely, and these vaults are filled with small pigeon-holes, one above another, one above another, with tiny doors. Then if you want to know something and if you are conscious, you look, and you see something like a small point - a shining point; you find that this is what you wish to know and you have only to concentrate there and it opens; and when it opens, there is a sort of an unrolling of something like extremely subtle manuscripts, but if your concentration is sufficiently strong you begin to read as though from a book. And you have the whole story in all its details. There are thousands of these little holes, you know; when you go for a walk there, it is as though you were walking in infinity. And in this way you can find the exact facts about whatever you want to know. But I must tell you that what you find is never what has been reported in history - histories are always planned out; I have never come across a single "historical" fact which is like history.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951, 109 [T7],
41:"Will it take long for the Supermind which is involved in material Nature to emerge into the outer consciousness and bring visible results?"
   That depends on the state of consciousness from which one answers, for... For the human consciousness, obviously, I think it will take quite a long time. For another consciousness it will be relatively very fast, and for yet another consciousness, it is already accomplished. It is an accomplished fact. But in order to become aware of this, one must be able to enter into another state of consciousness than the ordinary physical consciousness.
   Sri Aurobindo has spoken - I believe I have read it to you, I think it's in The Synthesis of Yoga - of the true mind, the true vital and the true physical or subtle physical, and he has said that they co-exist with the ordinary mind, vital and physical, and that in certain conditions one may enter into contact with them, and then one becomes aware of the difference between what really is and the appearances of things.
   Well, for a developed consciousness, the Supermind is already realised somewhere in a domain of the subtle physical, it already exists there visible, concrete, and expresses itself in forms and activities. And when one is in tune with this domain, when one lives there, one has a very strong feeling that this world would only have to be condensed, so to say, for it to become visible to all. What would then be interesting would be to develop this inner perception which would put you into contact with the supramental truth which is already manifested, and is veiled for you only for want of appropriate organs to enter into relation with it.
   It is possible that those who are conscious of their dreams may have dreams of a new kind which put them into contact with that world, for it is accessible to the subtle physical of all those who have the corresponding organs in themselves. And there is necessarily a subtle influence of this physical on outer matter, if one is ready to receive impressions from it and admit them into one's consciousness. That's all.
   Now, if nobody has any questions to ask, well, we shall remain silent.
   Something to say, over there? (Mother looks at a disciple.) Oh! he is burning to speak! ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956,
42:
   Why do we forget our dreams?


Because you do not dream always at the same place. It is not always the same part of your being that dreams and it is not at the same place that you dream. If you were in conscious, direct, continuous communication with all the parts of your being, you would remember all your dreams. But very few parts of the being are in communication.

   For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five o'clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentive - quietly attentive - and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is established - very rarely is there no communication.

   Now, dreams are mostly forgotten because you have a dream while in a certain state and then pass into another. For instance, when you sleep, your body is asleep, your vital is asleep, but your mind is still active. So your mind begins to have dreams, that is, its activity is more or less coordinated, the imagination is very active and you see all kinds of things, take part in extraordinary happenings.... After some time, all that calms down and the mind also begins to doze. The vital that was resting wakes up; it comes out of the body, walks about, goes here and there, does all kinds of things, reacts, sometimes fights, and finally eats. It does all kinds of things. The vital is very adventurous. It watches. When it is heroic it rushes to save people who are in prison or to destroy enemies or it makes wonderful discoveries. But this pushes back the whole mental dream very far behind. It is rubbed off, forgotten: naturally you cannot remember it because the vital dream takes its place. But if you wake up suddenly at that moment, you remember it. There are people who have made the experiment, who have got up at certain fixed hours of the night and when they wake up suddenly, they do remember. You must not move brusquely, but awake in the natural course, then you remember.

   After a time, the vital having taken a good stroll, needs to rest also, and so it goes into repose and quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of adventures. Then something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering, seeing the rooms and... why, this thing that was there, but it has come here and that other thing which was in that room is now in this one, and so on. If you wake up without stirring, you remembeR But this has pushed away far to the back of the consciousness all the stories of the vital. They are forgotten and so you cannot recollect your dreams. But if at the time of waking up you are not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long as you wish, you need not even open your eyes; you keep your head exactly where it was and you make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of the tail of your dream. You catch it and start pulling gently, without stirring in the least. You begin pulling quite gently, and then first one part comes, a little later another. You go backward; the last comes up first. Everything goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole dream reappears: "Ah, there! it was like that." Above all, do not jump up, do not stir; you repeat the dream to yourself several times - once, twice - until it becomes clear in all its details. Once that dream is settled, you continue not to stir, you try to go further in, and suddenly you catch the tail of something else. It is more distant, more vague, but you can still seize it. And here also you hang on, get hold of it and pull, and you see that everything changes and you enter another world; all of a sudden you have an extraordinary adventure - it is another dream. You follow the same process. You repeat the dream to yourself once, twice, until you are sure of it. You remain very quiet all the time. Then you begin to penetrate still more deeply into yourself, as though you were going in very far, very far; and again suddenly you see a vague form, you have a feeling, a sensation... like a current of air, a slight breeze, a little breath; and you say, "Well, well...." It takes a form, it becomes clear - and the third category comes. You must have a lot of time, a lot of patience, you must be very quiet in your mind and body, very quiet, and you can tell the story of your whole night from the end right up to the beginning.

   Even without doing this exercise which is very long and difficult, in order to recollect a dream, whether it be the last one or the one in the middle that has made a violent impression on your being, you must do what I have said when you wake up: take particular care not even to move your head on the pillow, remain absolutely still and let the dream return.

   Some people do not have a passage between one state and another, there is a little gap and so they leap from one to the other; there is no highway passing through all the states of being with no break of the consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not remember. It is like a precipice across which one has to extend the consciousness. To build a bridge takes a very long time; it takes much longer than building a physical bridge.... Very few people want to and know how to do it. They may have had magnificent activities, they do not remember them or sometimes only the last, the nearest, the most physical activity, with an uncoordinated movement - dreams having no sense.

   But there are as many different kinds of nights and sleep as there are different days and activities. There are not many days that are alike, each day is different. The days are not the same, the nights are not the same. You and your friends are doing apparently the same thing, but for each one it is very different. And each one must have his own procedure.

   Why are two dreams never alike?

Because all things are different. No two minutes are alike in the universe and it will be so till the end of the universe, no two minutes will ever be alike. And men obstinately want to make rules! One must do this and not that.... Well! we must let people please themselves.

   You could have put to me a very interesting question: "Why am I fourteen years old today?" Intelligent people will say: "It is because it is the fourteenth year since you were born." That is the answer of someone who believes himself to be very intelligent. But there is another reason. I shall tell this to you alone.... I have drowned you all sufficiently well! Now you must begin to learn swimming!

   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 36?,
43:[The Gods and Their Worlds]

   [...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.

   This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.

   There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.

   All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.

   One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.

   Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.

   But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.

   When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.

   Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!

   I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.

   Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!

   These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.

   In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.

   If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.

   If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958

   ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
,

IN CHAPTERS [226/226]



  183 Integral Yoga
   1 Fiction
   1 Education


  137 The Mother
  103 Satprem
   51 Sri Aurobindo
   16 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   5 A B Purani


   17 Agenda Vol 03
   14 Agenda Vol 10
   13 Letters On Yoga I
   12 The Life Divine
   9 Agenda Vol 01
   8 Agenda Vol 09
   8 Agenda Vol 04
   8 Agenda Vol 02
   7 Record of Yoga
   7 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   7 Agenda Vol 11
   7 Agenda Vol 07
   6 Questions And Answers 1956
   6 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   6 Agenda Vol 08
   6 Agenda Vol 06
   6 Agenda Vol 05
   5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   5 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   5 Questions And Answers 1955
   5 Letters On Yoga IV
   5 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   4 Questions And Answers 1954
   4 Letters On Yoga II
   4 Letters On Poetry And Art
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   3 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   3 Some Answers From The Mother
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   2 Words Of The Mother I
   2 Questions And Answers 1953
   2 Letters On Yoga III
   2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05


0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  the "plane" from which they come, it is surely the Subtle.Physical, where the memory of all the conceptions and works of art
  realised on earth is stored.

0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  What is meant by "a Subtle.Physical prolongation
  of the superficial form of the mental envelope"?
  --
  a photographic imprint) left in the Subtle.Physical by the superficial mental form, an image that can become visible under
  certain conditions. These images can move about (like cinema

0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  in the Subtle.Physical or the mental. There are any number of
  different possibilities in dreams.

0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   And suddenly, as if resounding from every corner of the earth, I heard these great notes which are sometimes heard in the Subtle.Physicalra ther like those of Beethovens Concerto in Dwhich come at moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras were bursting forth all at once without a single discordant note, to sound the joy of this new communion of Nature and Spirit, the meeting of old friends who, after a long separation, find each other once more.
   Then came these words: O Nature, Material Mother, thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate, and there is no limit to the splendor of this collaboration.

0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I found myself upon an immense ship, which is the symbolic representation of the place where this work is being carried out. This ship, as big as a city, is thoroughly organized, and it had certainly already been functioning for quite some time, for its organization was fully developed. It is the place where people destined for the supramental life are being trained. These people (or at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental transformation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither material nor Subtle.Physical, neither vital nor mental: it was a supramental substance. This substance itself was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance nearest the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a blend of red and gold, forming a uniform substance of luminous orange. Everything was like that the light was like that, the people were like thateverything had this color, in varying shades, however, which enabled things to be distinguished from one another. The overall impression was of a shadowless world: there were shades, but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything worked smoothly and silently. At the same time, I could see all the details of the education, the training in all domains by which the people on board were being prepared.
   This immense ship had just arrived at the shore of the supramental world, and a first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the supramental world were about to disembark. Everything was arranged for this first landing. A certain number of very tall beings were posted on the wharf. They were not human beings and never before had they been men. Nor were they permanent inhabitants of the supramental world. They had been delegated from above and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge of all this since the beginning and throughout. I myself had prepared all the groups. I was standing on the bridge of the ship, calling the groups forward one by one and having them disembark on the shore. The tall beings posted there seemed to be reviewing those who were disembarking, allowing those who were ready to go ashore and sending back those who were not and who had to continue their training aboard the ship. While standing there watching everyone, that part of my consciousness coming from here became extremely interested: it wanted to see, to identify all the people, to see how they had changed and to find out who had been taken immediately as well as those who had to remain and continue their training. After awhile, as I was observing, I began to feel pulled backwards and that my body was being awakened by a consciousness or a person from here1and in my consciousness, I protested: No, no, not yet! Not yet! I want to see whos there! I was watching all this and noting it with intense interest It went on like that until, suddenly, the clock here began striking three, which violently jerked me back. There was the sensation of a sudden fall into my body. I came back with a shock, but since I had been called back very suddenly, all my memory was still intact. I remained quiet and still until I could bring back the whole experience and preserve it.

0 1958-05-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   To do the divine Will I have been doing the sadhana for a long time, and I can say that not a day has passed that I have not done the Divines Will. But I didnt know what it was! I was living in all the inner realms, from the Subtle.Physical to the highest regions, yet I didnt know what it was I always had to listen, to refer things, to pay attention. Now, no morebliss! There are no more problems, and everything is done in such harmony! Even if I had to leave my body, I would be in bliss! And it would happen in the best possible way.
   Only now am I beginning to understand what Sri Aurobindo has written in The Synthesis of Yoga! And the human mind, the physical mind, appears so stupid, so stupid!

0 1958-08-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   We know nothing. We believe we know, but as soon as it is a question of that (the body), we know nothing. As soon as we are in the Subtle.Physical, we know everything, we live in bliss but here, we know nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing.
   ***

0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   That is the normal state. It creates an atmosphere of an intensity almost more material than the Subtle.Physical; its like almost like the phosphorescent radiations from a medium. And it has a great action, a very great action: it can prevent an accident. And it accompanies you all the time, all the time.
   But it is up to you to know what you want to do with it.

0 1958-10-25 - to go out of your body, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   I had a Danish friend, an artist, to whom this happened. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of his body. He had interesting dreams so he thought it might be worthwhile to go there consciously. I helped him to go out but it was frightful! When he dreamed, a part of his mind indeed remained conscious, active, and a kind of link remained between this active part and his outer being, so he remembered some of his dreams, but it was only a very partial phenomenon. To go out of your body means that you must gradually pass through ALL the states of being, if you are to do it systematically. But already in the Subtle.Physical it was almost non-individualized, and as soon as he went a bit further, there was no longer anything! It was unformed, nonexistent.
   So they sit down (they are told to interiorize, to go within themselves), and they panic!Naturally they feel that they that they are disappearing: there is nothing! There is no consciousness!

0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Of course, things are now going better, especially since Sri Aurobindo became established in the Subtle.Physical, an almost material Subtle.Physical.2 But there are still plenty of question marks The body understands once, and then it forgets. The Enemys opposition is nothing, for I can see clearly that it comes from outside and that its hostile, so I do whats necessary. But where the difficulty lies is in all the small things of daily material lifesuddenly the body no longer understands, it forgets.
   Yet its HAPPY. It loves doing the work, it lives only for thatto change, to transform itself is its reason for being. And its such a docile instrument, so full of good will! Once it even started wailing like a baby: O Lord, give me the time, the time to be transformed It has such a simple fervor for the work, but it needs timetime, thats it. It wants to live only to conquer, to win the Lords Victory.3

0 1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the subtle physical, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
  object:0_1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the Subtle.Physical
  author class:The Mother
  --
   But as he was accustomed to going out of his body, he didnt know! He even used to make experimentshe would go out, circle around in his room, see his body from outside, observe the difference between the Subtle.Physical and the material physical, etc. So he didnt know. And its only when they burned his body
   I tried to delay the moment, but he was in the hospital, so it was difficult. I was in my room when they burned his body, and then suddenly I saw him arrivesobbingsaying, But But I m dead. I DIDNT WANT to die! Why am I dead, I DIDNT WANT to die! It was dreadful. So I kept him and held him against me to quiet him down.

0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   But three times now, Ive really felt that I was on the verge of falling apart. The first time it brought a fever, a fever so I dont know, as if I had at least 115!I was roasting from head to toe; everything became red hot, and then it was over. That was the day when suddenlysuddenly I was You see, I had said to myself, All right, you must be peaceful, lets see what happens, so then I brought down the Peace, and immediately I was able to pass into a second of unconsciousness and I woke up in the Subtle.Physical, in Sri Aurobindos abode.4 There he was. And then I spent some time with him, explaining the problem.
   But that was really an experience, a decisive experience (it was many months ago, perhaps more than a year ago).

0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Completely. (Mother reflects a moment) Well, completely material, noonly through me. He is conscious of material things through me, not directly. He is very conscious in the Subtle.Physical, but thats not quite the same, not quite (Mother makes a vague gesture), there is a difference.
   To give a rather curious example, there was a kind of spell of illness over the Ashram, stemming mainly from peoples thoughts, from their way of thinking. It was quite widespread and it was horrible, gloomy, full of fear, pettiness, blind submission, oh! Everyone was in a state of expectation.1 In short, the atmosphere was such that there was an attempt to prevent me from leaving my room I had to sneak out! It was disgusting! Well, on the very night I saw the spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was lying sick in his bed, just as I had seen him in 1950. Normally, we spend almost every night together, doing this, seeing that, arranging things, talkingits a kind of second life behind this one, and it makes existence pleasant. But that night when I had to sneak out of my room (in my nightgown!), and people were trying to find me to (laughing) force me back into bed, he was lying sick in bedand this struck me hard, for it means these things still affect him in his consciousness. He was in a kind of trance and not at all well. It didnt last, but nonetheless.

0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Then I woke up (I always wake up three or four times during the night) and when I went back to bed I had an attack of what the doctor and I have taken to be filariasis but a strange type of filariasis, for as soon as I master it in one spot it appears in another, and when I master it there it reappears somewhere else. Last night it was in the arms (it lasted quite a while, between 2:30 and 4 a.m.); but I was fully conscious, and each time the attack came, I went like this (gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material Subtle.Physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in my room there (an immense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didnt pay attention, presuming it was one of the people usually around me. Then suddenly I had such an unpleasant sensation in my body that I raised my head and looked, and I saw someone there. Do you know how the magicians in Europe dress, in short satin breeches and a shirt? He was wearing something like that. He was Indian, tall and rather dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young man. He seemed to have been drawn1 there becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the moment I saw him, there was the same sensation in all my cells as I have with what Ive been calling filariasis (its a special, minute kind of pain) and simultaneously all the cells felt disgusta tremendous will of rejection. Then I sat up straight (I didnt stand up) and said to him as forcefully as possible, How do you dare to come in here! I said it so loudly that the noise woke me up! I dont know what happened then, but things went much better afterwards.
   The moment I saw this person I knew he was only an instrument, but a well-paid instrumentsomeone paid a great deal to have him do that! I would recognize him again among hundreds I can still see him I see him more clearly than with physical eyes. He is an unintelligent man with no personal animosity, merely a very well-paid instrumentsomeone is hiding behind him, using him as a screen.

0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Have I told you about the experience I had the day I suddenly found myself in Sri Aurobindos home in the Subtle.Physical?7Well, its as if I took a step and entered a far more concrete world than the physicalmore concrete because things contain more truth. I spent a good while there with Sri Aurobindo and then, when it was over, I took another step and I found myself back here slightly dumbfounded. It took me quite some time to regain my bearings here, because it was this world that seemed unreal to me, not the other.
   But its simply thatyou take a step, and you enter another room. And when you live in your soul there is a continuity, because the soul remembers, it keeps the whole memory; it remembers all occurrences, even outer occurrences, all the outer movements it has been associated with. So its a continuous, uninterrupted movement, here and there, from one room to another, from one house to another, from one life to another.

0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have had an oft repeated experience of reliving the past1 (its a phenomenon of consciousness, possible because everything is preserved and continues to exist somewhere), with a kind of willwhich would be the sign of a powerto change it. I dont know, but at the moment of reliving it, instead of reliving the past just as it had been preserved, a power to make it different was introduced. I am not speaking of the power to change the consequences of the past (that is obvious and functions all the time)it wasnt that; it was the power to change the circumstances themselves (circumstances not quite material but of the Subtle.Physical, with a predominantly psychological content). And since the will was there, from the standpoint of consciousness it actually happened that is, instead of circumstances developing in one direction, they developed in another. So it must correspond to something real, otherwise I would not have had the experience. It wasnt a product of the imagination; it wasnt something one thinks of and would really like to be differentit wasnt that; it was a phenomenon of consciousness: my consciousness was reliving certain circumstances (which are still quite living and obviously continue to exist within their own domain), but reliving them with the power and the knowledge acquired between that past moment and the present, and with a power to change the past moment. A new power entered the scene and turned the circumstance being relived in a new direction. I have had this experience many times and it has always surprised meits not a phenomenon of mental imagination, which is something else entirely.
   It opens the door to everything.

0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Another detail. In several places, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the circumconscient or environmental consciousness through which we enter into contact with the external world. Is this the same as the Subtle.Physical, the subtle envelope? What is this circumconscient?
   Its the encircling consciousness. Isnt it called the milieu in French?
  --
   You see, the Subtle.Physical extends a long way beyond the body.
   Then comes what Theon called the nervous sub-level, which lies between this Subtle.Physical and the vital. And it acts as a protection: if it is stable, harmonious and strong, it protects youit protects you even physicallyfrom contagious diseases, for instance, and even from accidents. I experienced it when I was living at Val-de-Grce. It was the year I resolved to attain union with the psychic being and I was concentrated on this from morning to night and night to morning. Every day I spent some time in the Luxembourg Gardens. They were right near the house, but to get there I had to go all the way down Rue du Val-de-Grce and cross Boulevard Saint Michel, where there were streetcars, automobiles, buses the whole circus. I would remain in my concentration the whole time, and once, while crossing the boulevard, I felt a shock about this far from my body [slightly more than arms length], so spontaneously I jumped backjust enough for the streetcar to pass by. I hadnt heard anything; I was totally absorbed, and without that warning I would surely have been run over; instead, I jumped back just in time, and the streetcar sped by. I understood then that this nervous sheath was something entirely concrete, because what I had felt was not an idea of danger but a shocka material SHOCK.
   So its true that as long as this envelope is strong and undamaged, you are protected. But for instance, if you are over-tired or worried or flusteredanything that brings disorder into the atmosphere seems to make holes in this envelope, and all kinds of things can enter.
  --
   But isnt this the Subtle.Physical?
   It surrounds the Subtle.Physical.
   First there is the Subtle.Physical and then the circumconscient?
   Yes; the Subtle.Physical is visiblevisible. You have seen heat vibrations when its very hot, havent you? Thats the Subtle.Physicalone form of it.
   The Subtle.Physical is right here (gesture on the surface of the skin). Some people are sensitive in the Subtle.Physical; you move your hand near them and they feel it immediately. Others dont even noticeit depends on the Subtle.Physicals sensitivity. And the circumconscient surrounds it like an envelope. If there are no tears in it, this envelope is a magnificent protection.4 And its not dependent on any spiritual or intellectual rationale, but on a harmony with Nature and life, a kind of stability in the material being. People with strong envelopes are almost always in good health and succeed in what they do. It isnt something mentalwhen they do a work it comes out nicely, if they want to meet someone, they meet him. Things of this nature.
   The circumconscient must be that.

0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The first time you read your manuscript, I called Sri Aurobindo to hear it. He was in the Subtle.Physical and he listened. Yesterday when I sat down to listen, I thought, It would be much better if he entered my brain because that way. In fact, I called him; he entered my brain. It took some time; all through the beginning of the reading we were still two; then he came in more and more, more and more, more and more. My headmy physical headseemed to be swelling up! There was no longer space for anyone but him. It was the light that dark blue light of mental power (but true mental power) in the physical the tantrics use it, you always see it with Xs action, but Ive never seen it this way before! My head was full, you knowfull, full, not an atom of space to spare I could feel it swelling up!
   And this light was absolutely immobilevibrationless, totally compact and coherent. When I see Xs light, for example, there are always vibrations in it; it vibrates, vibrates, things are shifting about; out with this, not a single vibration, not one movement: a MASS that seemed eternally immobile but which was (how to put it?) attentive, listening. It was a volume with the form of the head, as if that had wholly taken over the head. It was full, so full, yet with no feeling of tension or of anything resisting, none at all; there was only a kind of immobile eternity and COMPACT, compact, absolutely coherent, no vibrations. And it increased, increased more and more, it became heavy, but with a very particular heavinessnot a weight, the feeling of a mass.

0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   When one has these experiences, like the ones Ive had in the Subtle.Physical, for example, the body is certainly in trance but the part having the experience doesnt AT ALL feel deprived or lacking in anything. The experience comes with a fullness of life, consciousness, independence, individuality. Its not like going out in trance to accomplish a work and feeling linked to the body its not that: the body no longer exists nor has any reason to! Its simply not there. And its a nuisance to go back into itwhat is this useless burden! you wonder. As a result, if this experience becomes permanent, you live in a world thats just as concrete, just as real and just as TANGIBLE as our physical world, with the same qualities of duration, permanence and stability.
   Its very difficult to express, because as soon as we notice it.

0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is something deeper. And within this deeper thing there was: quiet, quiet, quiet, we will wait; and the impression (but vague, distant and uncertain) of some attempt being made to introduce a very good possibility into the atmosphere. I never see on the purely physical plane, you know (its always on the Subtle.Physical, the plane of possibilities thats more real to me; the purely physical generally eludes me, but I see the Subtle.Physical clearly), and I was seeing I dont know, it was like something higher, from above, trying to make someone enter the field of possibilities, a brain that would suddenly be touched by the book and reverse the situation. I dont know who, I dont know what, I dont know how. Ah, you know that yellow rose I just gave you? Its fringed in pink. Well, what came was like a slender pink fringe winding through the atmosphere of this situation.
   Its possibleall is possible!

0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was taking place in the Subtle.Physical. The people who had patches on their bodies and had to be sent back were always the ones who lacked the plasticity those two movements required. But the main thing was the movement of expansion; the progressive movement, the movement of following the Becoming, seemed to be a subsequent preoccupation for those who had landed. The preparation on the boat concerned that capacity for expansion.
   Another thing I didnt mention to you when I related the experience was that the ship had no engine. Everything was set in motion through will powerpeople, things (even the clothes people wore were a result of their will). And this gave all things and every persons shape a great suppleness, because there was an awareness of this willwhich is not a mental will but a will of the Self, what could be called a spiritual will or a soul-will (to give the word soul that particular meaning). I have that experience right here when theres an absolute spontaneity in action, I mean when the action for instance, an utterance or a movementis not determined by the mind, and not even (not to mention thought or intellect), not even by the mind that usually sets us in motion. Generally, when we do something, we can perceive in ourselves a will to do it; when you watch yourself, you see this: there is always (it can happen in a flash) the will to do. When you are conscious and watch yourself doing something, you see in yourself the will to do itthis is where the mind intervenes, its normal intervention, the established order in which things happen. But the supramental action is decided by a leap over the mind. The action is direct, with no need to go through the mind. Something enters directly into contact with the vital centers and activates them without going through the mindyet in full consciousness. The consciousness doesnt function in the usual sequence, it functions from the center of spiritual will straight to matter.

0 1962-01-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   He stopped at the Subtle.Physicalhe refused to go any farther. It was Satan, the Asura1 of Light who, in cutting himself off from the Supreme, fell into Unconsciousness and Darkness (Ive told the story many times). But anyway, when I was with Thon, I summoned that being and asked him if he wanted to enter into contact with the earth. Its worth mentioning that Thon himself was an incarnation of the Lord of Death Ive had good company in my life! And the other one [Richard] was an incarnation of the Lord of Falsehood but it was only partial. With Thon too it was partial. But with Satan it was the central being; of course, he had millions of emanations in the world, but this was the central being in person. The others lets keep that for another time.
   He agreed to take on a body. Theon wanted to keep him there: Dont let him go, he told me. I didnt answer. This being told me he didnt want to be more material than that, it was sufficientyou could feel him move the way you feel a draft, it was that concrete.

0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Anyway, to go back to what I was saying, depending on the plane of ones vision, one can judge approximately how much time it will take to be realized. Immediate things are already realized, they are self-existent and can be seen in the Subtle.Physical they already exist there, and the reflection (not even transcription) or projection of this image is what will take place in the material world the next day or a few hours later. In this case you see the thing accurately, in all its details, because its already there. Everything hinges on the precision and power of your vision: if your vision is objective and sincere, you will see the thing as it is; if you add personal sentiments or impressions, it gets colored. Accuracy in the Subtle.Physical depends exclusively on the instrument, the one who sees.
   But as soon as you move into a subtler realm, like the vital (and the mental even more so), there is a narrow margin of possibilities. You can see the rough outlines of what is going to take place, but in the details it can be this way or that way: it is possible for certain wills or influences to interfere and create discrepancies.
  --
   Take the case of someone you know well and are used to seeing materially: seeing him in the Subtle.Physical, certain aspects become more prominent, more visible, more marked; physically they went unseen because in the material grayness they had blended with many other things. Certain character traits that never showed up physically now become so marked as to be quite visible. When you look at someone physically, you see the color of his complexion, the shape of his features, his expression. Seeing him at the same moment in the Subtle.Physical, you suddenly notice different colors on different parts of the face, in the eyes an expression or a particular light you hadnt seen beforea strong impression of a very different overall appearance, which to our physical eyes would seem rather outlandish. But for the subtle vision its all very expressive and revealing of the persons character, or even of the influences hes under (what I am talking about is something I observed a few days ago).
   So, according to the plane where you are conscious and can see, you perceive images and see events from varying distances and with varying degrees of accuracy. The only true and sure vision is the vision of the Divine Consciousness. The problem, therefore, is to become conscious of the Divine Consciousness and constantly maintain it in all lifes details.
  --
   Im tempted to ask one question. Once events are already prepared in the Subtle.Physical and one sees them, is it too late to alter their course? Can one still act?
   Theres one very interesting example I always give. The man involved told me about it himself. A long time ago (you must have been a baby), every day the newspaper Le Matin published a small cartoon of a boy dressed like a lift attendant (he told me the story in English), or a sort of bellboy, pointing with his finger to the date or whatever. This man was traveling and staying at a big hotel in some city (I dont remember which), a big city. And he told me that one night or early one morning he had a dream: he saw this bellboy showing him a hearse (you know, what they use in Europe for taking people to the cemetery) and inviting him to step inside! He saw that. And when he got ready that morning and left his room (which was on the top floor) there on the landing was the same boy, identically dressed, inviting him to go down in the elevator. It gave him a shock. He refused: No, thanks! The elevator fell to the ground. It was smashed to pieces, and the people inside were all killed.
  --
   He asked me about it and my explanation was that an entity had forewarned him. The image of the bellboy indicates an intelligent, conscious intermediaryit doesnt seem to come from the mans subconscient.1 Or else he had seen it in the Subtle.Physical and his subconscient knew but then why did it present him with such an image? I dont know. Perhaps something in his subconscient knew, because the accident already existed in the Subtle.Physical. Before it occurred here, the accident the law of the accidentexisted.
   Of course, in every case there is invariably a time-lag, sometimes a few hours (thats the maximum), sometimes a few seconds. Quite frequently things announce their presence, but to come in contact with your consciousness, it may take them a couple of minutes or just seconds. I am constantly, constantly aware of whats going to happenutterly uninteresting things, as a matter of fact; knowing them in advance changes nothing. But they exist all around us, and with a wide enough consciousness we can know it all. For example, I know that so and so is going to bring me a parcel, that someone is about to come, and so forth. And its like this every day. Because my consciousness is spread far and wideit comes into contact with things.

0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The other day, didnt I tell you the story of those entities working for me? (It wasnt you? Id had a vision.) In fact, I very often see entities like Nature spirits when I enter the Subtle.Physical and work there (usually for people here and the Ashram, and for the world at large), I very, very often have them with me, or else I meet them in the course of my work. They are forces, generally feminine in appearance, that do some work and have a great deal of power. They are usually the ones that respond to Tantric invocations (I dont mean the Tantrics who call on Kali or Durga, thats something else altogether, those belong to a totally different world). Most of the time these Nature forces are very willing to helpat any rate, they are wonderfully obliging with me! But they are limited beings, with their own ideas and laws, their own volition, and when vexed they can do unpleasant things. Yet they are not hostile beings, nor are they vital beings: they are personified forces of physical Nature, in the Subtle.Physical.
   A world of things could be said.

0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Night of July 24-25, 59: first penetration of the supramental force into the body. Sri Aurobindo alive in a concrete and permanent Subtle.Physical body.
   I told you about that experience of meeting Sri Aurobindo (the true Sri Aurobindo) in the Subtle.Physical. This is the exact dateearly that morning I jotted it down on this paper. And it gives me the approximate date of the other vision: that is, I must have had my first experience with those people somewhere around the end of June or the beginning of July, 1959.
   Did I tell you about it? It was a sort of vision that I took for a beginning of work on the subconscient. I had come to a place where Sri Aurobindo was staying and found him closeted in his room. There was a sort of large hall, an immense hall with rooms opening onto it, and his apartment was off to one side (gesture). I asked to see him. I was told it wasnt possible and I had to wait. I was astonished. Then certain things happened in the hall concerning A. and M. (rather interesting things, but concerning them personally). And at the same time, I was waiting. When it was all over, I asked once again to go into the room. Then through the doorway I saw I saw a tall Sri Aurobindomuch taller than he actually wasstrong but rather thin, thin in a way that not the way he really wasit was rather a gauntness, very harsh, very cold; and he was somewhat darker than he used to be. I saw him there, walking up and down; and when he was told I was asking to see him, I saw him in the distance saying, No, I dont want to see her. I wont acknowledge her and I dont want anything to do with hershe has betrayed me. Something like that (I couldnt hear the actual words, but the gestures were plain enough). Well, that was the very first timenothing of the kind had ever occurred before.
  --
   So it was in 59 that I first saw them, and it must have been the end of June or the beginning of July. This note [the desk-calendar page] is what gave me the clue, because I know that the other experience [of Sri Aurobindo in the Subtle.Physical] came a few weeks later.
   You say there was a whole group organized around that asuric beingpeople, ceremonies.
  --
   But what I would like to ask is whether those people exist in the Subtle.Physical or in our physical world.
   No, nomy visions are in the Subtle.Physical, but those people exist here on earth, although I dont know who they are. As I said, I knew only one of them. But its certain that a physical organization corresponding to these visions does exist. I dont know the details they just havent been given to me. But it corresponds to a group of PHYSICAL people.
   Powerful?
  --
   (Somewhat later, Mother gives Satprem the old desk-calendar page on which she had noted the experience of July 24-25, 59the first meeting with Sri Aurobindo in the Subtle.Physicalalong with another sheet of paper on which she had written: I am only realizing what He has conceived. I am only the protagonist and the continuator of His work.6 Mother explains.)
   Some people wanted to get me nominated for the Nobel peace prize; I was asked for a statement and thats what I wrote. I wanted to say that it wasnt this person who did thingsit was all Sri Aurobindo.

0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It is a Subtle.Physical beingnot a vital but a Subtle.Physical being, and I am tall and strong.
   Tell her shes not the only one who sees me this waymany do. When I see myself at night, thats how I see myself. Perhaps well, this (Mother touches her body) would have to yield. But when? I dont know.
  --
   And it is Subtle.Physical. You can tell her.
   Its peculiar, she says, since March I have been seeing Mother taller.

0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have seen you very often in visions, symbolic visions in the mental realm, but thats not what it was. It was in the Subtle.Physical, this close (same gesture); you came deliberately, and you looked at me. Oh, I told you, how nice!
   I had a dream about you, but I felt the subconscient made it up.
  --
   Looking at it now (1979), this "dream" doesn't seem to be from the subconscient but actually from the Subtle.Physical, with that whole crowd of people relentlessly assailing Mother and exhausting her (and pushing Satprem away, besides). But DESPITE the crowd, Satprem crossed through and came up "very close" to Mother, which concurs with her vision. "Dressed as a Sannyasin" means in his essentiality, divested of day-to-day material circumstances.
   When one goes out of the body (and probably at death), there is always the impression of moving "upwards," or "inwards," which means into a deeper plane (either way, it is simply the expression of a change of dimension). What is striking about Mother's experience is this LEVEL movement, indicating that she had not left the physical world. We are faced with a strange enigma: a physical world WITHIN the physical worldano ther world, or the same one lived differently? A physical world where death no longer exists: one has died unto death. The world to come?...

0 1962-08-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Ive been observing all this in a neuro-physical realm, Subtle.Physical, that is but its still physical and in a complete mental silence where all judgments (you know, judgments) have disappeared, along with a certain way of observing things. Thats why I cant talk about it.
   These vibrations have various qualities; if they were expressed through a mental observation, it would be done through such things as taste, color, and so forth, everything Ive just mentioned1but thats not how theyre expressed. They come almost exclusively as sensations, but those sensations some, I mean some vibrations, have rounded edges. Some come horizontally (I was in fact studying everything that comes horizontally), others result from the state of consciousness (vertical gesture from top to bottom). While at the same time, others are. Yes, its like looking through a high-powered microscope: some are rounded, others pointed; some are darker, some brighter. Some are very upsetting to the body, and some even feel dangerous. On the other hand, certain ones make the body receptive to the vibration, which we might call the Lords Vibration, the supreme Vibration. You see, all this is the outcome of a discipline, a tapasya, for preparing the body to receive the Lords Vibrations (the first step is receiving, being able to receive them; afterwards you have to hold on to and then manifest them). Those vibrations are unmistakable, they are something else entirely. But other vibrations are helpful, beneficial, while still others are disruptive, contradictory.

0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But I understand your question. You want to know if this has an effect on all identical vibratory modes in the world. In principle, yes. But the effects may not be immediately visible; in the first place, our field of observation is nothingmaterially, what do we know? Only our immediate surroundings thats nothing. In 1920, for example, I had an experience of that type, which resulted in a symbolic but terrestrial action. It was a vision (I dont remember enough details to make it interesting) where each nation was represented by a symbolic entity, and there was a certain type of horrorof terror, rather. A certain will of terror was trying to manifest in that gathering of all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the Subtle.Physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I dont remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could say with TOTAL conviction: Terror has been overcome in the world. Of course, its not literally true, plenty of people still feel terror, but a certain type of terror was as if UNDERMINED at the foundations. What had already manifested kept on and is gradually being exhausted, but the terror that was trying to increase and dominate the life of nations was stopped cold.
   I have had other similar experienceson Durgas day, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo was still here (you know, thats the day when Durga masters an asura; she doesnt kill him, she masters him). Well, each year one particular type of thing was undermined (and my experiences were never mental: the experience would suddenly come, and AFTERWARDS I would realize it was Durgas day), and each time I used to tell Sri Aurobindo, Looktoday this (or that) thing has been cut off at the roots. Thats how it works with the adverse forcesyes, like something being uprooted from the world. Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its karma, but the SOURCE is dried up. Thats also what happened (it was in 1904, I believe) when the Asura of Consciousness and Darkness made his surrender and was converted; he told me, I have millions and millions of emanations, and these will keep on living, but their source has now run dry.4 How much time will it take to exhaust it all? We cant say, but the source has dried up and that is something extremely important. In 1920, that terror was trying to spread all over the world and to become really catastrophic; and then in my inner vision I could see that a whole movement had dried up at its source. This means that little by little, little by little, little by little the karma is being exhausted.

0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   For all the states of being, the mental, the vital, and even the Subtle.Physical, that sense of separation has long been gone. But now I am speaking of the body. I say I, of course but what says I is its something as vast as the universe. And it CANNOT be otherwise. Its not that I want it this way, or because I insist on it, its not the result of a tapasya or not at all: it CANNOT BE OTHERWISE, thats how it is. Its my spontaneous way of being. The experience has become completely (how to put it?) externalized.
   And thats what makes the ESSENTIAL difference for this body. Thats why it feels different from other bodies. Its (Mother shakes her head) no, its not the same thing, it distinctly feels its not the samebecause its reactions are different!

0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Mon petit, we had a meditation here on the 15th, at ten oclock.2 At a quarter to ten, I was sitting here at the table in a total silence. And then I cant say Sri Aurobindo came, for he is always here, but he manifested in a special way. Concretely, in the Subtle.Physical, he became so tall that, sitting cross-legged as they do here, he covered the whole compoundeven extended a bit beyond it! He was literally sitting upon the compound; so to the extent that the people meditating were not closed, they were all inside him. He was sitting like that (not on their heads!), and I could feel (I was here, you see) the FRICTION of his presence in the Subtle.Physicalan utterly physical friction! And I saw him (as you well know, I am not shut up in here [the body]), I saw him sitting there, very tall and perfectly proportioned; and then he started gently, gently descendingthis descent is what caused the frictiongently, very gently, so as not to give people a shock. Then he settled there and stayed for a little more than half an hour, a few minutes more, like that, absolutely still, but fully concentrated on all the people they were inside him.
   I was sitting here smiling, almost almost laughing, really; you could feel him like that everywhere (Mother touches her whole body), everywhere. And with such peace! Such peace, such force, such power. And a sense of eternity, immensity, and absoluteness. A sense of absoluteness, as if all were fulfilled, so to speak, and one lived in Eternity.

0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (It is extremely unfortunate that the beginning of this conversation, which would have thrown a clear light on what follows, was not kept. As far as Satprem remembers, the subject was his sleep. It seems Mother was saying that while his "strolls by the sea" took place during sleep and by passing into another state, for herand this is where the notes beginthere was no more "sleep" and no more "passing" into another state, from the ordinary physical to the Subtle.Physical, because everything seemed to have become or was becoming one and the same continuous Matter. The true Matter, probably.)
   Thats one thing thats happening. The two [the ordinary physical and the Subtle.Physical] seem to be fusing more and more.
   I have already explained this to you on several occasions: instead of SHIFTING from one to the other, its as if one were permeated by the other, like this (Mother slips the fingers of her right hand in between the fingers of her left hand), and you can almost feel both simultaneously. Its one of the results of whats going on these days. A very slight concentration, for example, is all it takes to feel both at the same time, which leads me to a near conviction that true change in the physical results from a kind of PENETRATION. The most material physical substance no longer has that unreceptive sort of density, a density that resists penetration: it is becoming porous, and thus can be penetrated. Several times, in fact, Ive had the experience of one vibration quite naturally changing the quality of the other the Subtle.Physical vibration was bringing about a sort of almost a transformation, or in any case a noticeable change in the purely physical vibration.
   That seems to be the process, or at least one of the most important processes.
  --
   You see, the Subtle.Physical seems to DOSE OUT its power and light and capacity of consciousness according to the amount of receptivity in the purely physical vibration. Thats why the effects stretch over a long period of time. Its being done very, very gradually. But its an almost continuous work. Only when theres some bodily activity and the consciousness must turn outwards (not in the same way as before, thats impossible, but still in a way that seems like a continuation of the old consciousness), then, if the work continues at all, its invisible and maybe it doesnt continue. I dont know. But as soon as all activity stops and the body is concentrated or immobileperhaps no more than simply passive that penetration is perceptible: its visible. Visible. And its not like something more subtle penetrating something less subtle without altering it; the essential point is that this penetration actually changes the composition. Its not merely a degree of subtlety, its a change in the internal composition. Ultimately, this action probably has an effect on the atomic level. And thats how the practical possibility of transformation can be accounted for.
   Its an experience I have all the time.

0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   (Then Satprem reads a passage relating to the Subtle.Physical and exteriorization; among other things, he cites the experience of D., who, when he exteriorized for the first time, was unable to get back into his body because he tried to reenter through the legs! Here is the story:)
   I was lying on my chaise longue in concentration when all at once I found myself in my friend Zs house. He and several others were playing music. I could see everything very clearly, even more clearly than in the physical, and I moved around very quickly, unimpeded. I stayed there watching for a while, and even tried to attract their attention, but they were unaware of me. Then suddenly something pulled me, a sort of instinct: I must go back. I felt pain in my throat. I remember that to get out of their room, which was all closed except for one small opening high up, my form seemed to vaporize (because I still had a form, though unlike our material onemore luminous, less opaque), and I went out like smoke through the open window. Then I found myself back in my room, next to my body, and I saw that my head was twisted and rigid against the cushion, and I was having trouble breathing. I wanted to get into my body: impossible. So I became afraid. I entered through the legs, and when I reached the knees I seemed to bounce back out; two, three times like that: the consciousness rose and then bounced back out like a spring. If I could only tip over this stool, I thought (there was a small stool under my feet), the noise would wake me up! But nothing doing. And I was breathing more and more heavily. I was terribly afraid. Suddenly I remembered Mother and cried out, Mother! Mother! and found myself back in my body, awake, with a stiff neck.
  --
   The other things, exteriorization and so forth, are innate, just as some people are born artists or painters or aviators. Its one of Natures special combinations. Ive known some downright stupid girls who could exteriorize remarkably well and be fully conscious of their experiences in the Subtle.Physical or the mind or the material vital (when one is undeveloped its more often in the material vital than the Subtle.Physical). And they would tell you all about what they saw. But incapable of yoga.
   Natures fancies, I tell you.

0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It doesnt touch me because that whole realm has been completely set in order, but it does touch the atmosphere and puts me in contact with things I usually dont deal with. And as its a difficult time for the body now. As I told you in our last conversations, the physical is being penetrated by the Subtle.Physical.
   The body obviously doesnt need any more difficulties than it already has.

0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have lived this in recent days. I have seen it. Last night or the night before, I spent at least two hours in a world the Subtle.Physical worldwhere the living mingle with the dead with no sense of difference, it makes absolutely no difference there. For instance, when Mridu1 was in her body I used to see her at night maybe once a year (maybe not even that much). For years she was utterly nonexistent in my consciousness but since she left her body, I see her almost every night! There she is, just as she was, you know (rotund gesture), but no longer troubled, thats all. No longer troubled. And there were both living and what we call the living and the deadthey were both there together, eating together, moving around together, having fun together; and all in a lovely, tranquil lightpleasant, very pleasant. There! I thought, and humans have drawn a sharp line, saying, Now hes dead! Dead! And what really takes the cake is the way they treat the body like an unconscious object, and its still conscious!
   Its treated like an object: Now then! Lets get rid of this just as quickly as we can: its a nuisance and it gets in the way. And even those who feel the most sorrow dont want to see it; its too painful for them.
  --
   One sometimes even goes to a great deal of trouble to explain things to Him: Its this way, You see, thats how it is. And when youre finished, you realize. Oh, that reminds me of an experience I had one night two years ago. It was the first time the Supermind entered the cells of my body, and it had risen up to the brain. So the brain found itself in the presence of something (laughing) considerably more powerful than it was used to receiving! And, like the idiot it is, it got worried. As for me (gesture above or beyond), I saw it all, I saw that the brain was getting worried, so I tried to tell it what a nitwit it was and to just keep still. It did keep still, but you know, it was really seething away in there, as if it were about to explode. So I said, All right now, lets go see Sri Aurobindo and ask him what to do. Immediately everything became utterly calm and I woke up in Sri Aurobindos house in the Subtle.Physicala very material sensation, with everything quite concrete. So I arrived, or rather not I but the body-consciousness arrived2 and started explaining to Sri Aurobindo what had happenedit was very excited, talking and talking. The response was a sort of inscrutable smile and then nothing. He simply looked. An inscrutable smilenot a word. All the excitement died away. A face out of eternity. The excitement died away. Then it was time for Sri Aurobindos lunch (people eat therein another way). So as not to disturb him, I went into the next room. He came in after some time and stood before me (Imy physical being, that is, my physical consciousness had had time to calm down). I knelt down and took his hand (a MUCH clearer sensation than anything physical, mon petit!); I kissed his hand. He simply said, Oh! This is better. (Mother laughs.)
   I am skipping all the details (it was a long thing, lasting an hour), but suddenly he went out of the room, leaving me alone (after expressing what he wanted to tell me with a gesture, which I understood). And then I simply seemed to take a step (gesture of crossing a threshold), and I found myself lying in my bed again. And at that moment I said to myself, Really! We make all kinds of complications, and its so simple: you just have to go like this (same gesture) and there you are; then you go like that (same gesture in the opposite direction) and youre back here.
  --
   Personally, you know, I have come to feel Him everywhere, all the time, all the time, to the point of actual physical contact (its Subtle.Physical, but physical): in things, in the air, in people, in like this (Mother presses her hands against her face). So I dont have far to go! I just have to do this (Mother turns her hands slightly inwards), one seconds concentration and there He is! Because He is here, you know, He is everywhere.
   He is far only if we think Hes far.

0 1962-11-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And sometimes it becomes terribly personal, as if you were being personally attacked. I have a whole theme of such things which cant even be spoken about because theyre too personalpersonal in that they appear to involve this body. Last night (ah, by the way, I remember noticing I was physically youngit was in the Subtle.Physical, of course, and I was quite young) but what a life I led, with so many oh, revolutions, battles; I was involved in everything, there was tremendous activity. But I was being personally harassed by four or five of the most vile and disgusting old swine, and I had to confront them, hold them in place, keep them under control and make them obey. Ohh, was I glad to wake up! (It was time to get up; these things always stop automatically because I make it a point to get out of there at four-thirty) But the images, the sensations that went along with it. Oh, how is it possible! And I was fully conscious of the usefulness of this work: I was keeping them under control.1 But the things it involves ugh! Because for me, all knowledge is through identityeven in the subconscient its a knowledge through identityso you can imagine what that means.
   Yes oh, there are some horrible beings there!

0 1962-12-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I have had some rather strange things have been happening. I dont know whether you understand the difference between the memory of an inner experience (from the Subtle.Physical, the subconscient, all the inner regions) and the memory of a physical fact. There is a very great difference in quality, the same difference that exists between inner vision and physical vision. Physical vision is precise, well defined, and at the same time flat I dont know how to explain it: its very flat, totally superficial, but very accurate, with the kind of accuracy and precision that defines things which are really not defined at all. Well, theres the same difference in quality between the two types of memory as between the two types of vision. And in the last few days Ive realized that I had the memory of having gone downstairs, of having seen certain people and things, spoken and organized certain thingsseveral different scenes of the PHYSICAL memory. Not at all things I saw with the inner vision while exteriorized, but the MATERIAL memory of having done certain things.
   Afterwards, I had to look into it: it really was a memory. It suddenly struck me, and I wondered, Did I really go downstairs physically? There are plenty of people here to prove that I didnt, that I didnt stir from here. And yet I have the physical memory of having done so, and of having done certain other things as well; I even remember going outside.
  --
   Could it be some exteriorization in the Subtle.Physical?
   Not at all! The memory of an exteriorization in the Subtle.Physical is VERY different. I have a lot of experience of it, you know! I have been familiar with the phenomenon for something like sixty yearsits completely different. But this is entirely the type of experience one has in the physical Falsehood, if you will, in the ordinary physical consciousness.
   I havent said anything because people here tend to think I am going off my rocker, and I dont want to add to their impression! But even for me, it left me it took me a little while (it didnt happen just once, but two or three times, for different things), I kept very still for a while to look into the phenomenon and try to analyze it.

0 1963-01-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Theres a practical question Id like to ask you regarding the Subtle.Physical. I understand the mind centers, which correspond to a particular world, the vital centers, which receive all sorts of influences, but which center corresponds to the Subtle.Physical, and what are the influences coming from the Subtle.Physical? Is there a center that corresponds to the Subtle.Physical?
   Where do you situate the center for the vital?
  --
   Well, for the Subtle.Physical it goes from the navel down to the last center,1 that whole region.
   And what are the influences that come from the Subtle.Physical?
   Generally they are of a far higher quality than material influences. I have noticed (I dont know whether its a personal or a general thing) that the Subtle.Physical I see is always of a somewhat higher quality than the physical proper. I mean somewhat more harmonious: things are smoother. All that comes from the vital is more often than not aggressive, quarrelsome and so on and difficult. But this realm is generally calmcalm, orderly, where things are more harmoniousGENERALLY (I cant say whether its the case with everybody, but in my own case its like that).
   As I told you, Sri Aurobindo lives there permanently, as though in a house of his own: you can see him, you can stay with him, he is busy. It is very much like the physical, but a physical that would be less grating, you understand, where things are more harmonious and satisfying, less excited. There is less of that feeling of haste and uncertainty. In that house where Sri Aurobindo lives, life unfolds very, very harmoniously: people come and go, there are meals even. But all that obeys more general laws, and a sense of security and certainty not to be found in physical life. And the symbolism is more exact (I dont know how to express it), the symbolic transcription of things is less distorted, more exact.
   This is the Subtle.Physical as I know it, I cant say if it is the same for everyone. Sri Aurobindo said, There is a true physical, well, I have a feeling that this is what he calls the true physicala subtler physical, the true physical which is behind.
   But does it influence the whole earth?
  --
   I think that as the Supramental descends, the Subtle.Physical will have a greater and greater action on earth, because it is the world where the new creation will be formed before it descends, before it becomes absolutely visible and concrete.
   I often have a sense that it would take only a very tiny thingwhich is hard to definea very tiny movement of materialization to make this new creation concrete to us as we are. And it is probablyit will probably be formed completely in that subtle world before it materializes.
   I think few people are able to make the distinction. They have rather an impression that its their dream way of seeing things; I mean they say, Oh, its just a dream. In most cases its like that. The Subtle.Physical has the character of a realm where things are more fluid and harmonious than physical things, but with the same concrete quality; its nature is not like that of vital things, which have vibrations of power but again not that very concrete and objective quality characteristic of material things. In the Subtle.Physical, things are very concrete. For instance, if someone stands in your way, you have to push him aside: he doesnt just vanish, you cant walk through him. If you see an object thats not in its place, you have to move it. Voil.
   The muladhara, at the base of the spine.

0 1963-02-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And naturally this time around, when I started translating it came back. At first there was a shudder (Mother makes a gesture of stiffening). Then I told myself, Havent you got beyond that! And I let myself flow into the thing. Then I had a series of nights with Sri Aurobindo so marvelous! You understand, I see him constantly and I go into that Subtle.Physical world where he has his abode; the contact is almost permanent (at any rate, thats how I spend all my nights: he shows me the work, everything), but still, after this translation of Savitri he seemed to be smiling at me and telling me, At last you have understood! (Mother laughs) I said, It isnt that I didnt understand, its that I didnt want it! I didnt want, I dont WANT things to be like that any more, for thousands of years I have wanted things to be otherwise!
   The night before last, he had put on a sari of mine. He told me (laughing), Why not? Dont you find it suits me! I answered, It suits you beautifully! A sari of brown georgette, lustrous bronze, with big golden braid! It was a very beautiful sari (I used to have it, it was one of my saris), and he was wearing it. Then he asked me to do his hair. I remember seeing that the nape of his neck and his hair had become almost luminoushis hair was never quite white, there was an auburn shimmer to it, it was almost golden, and it stayed that way, very fine, not at all like the hair people have here. His hair was almost like mine. So while I was doing his hair, I saw the luminous nape of his neck, and his hair, so luminous! And he said to me, Why shouldnt I wear a sari!

0 1963-02-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   She went to Sri Aurobindos home in the Subtle.Physical the thing is true, real, concrete, as concrete as here.
   As soon as I got her letter, I saw: thats where she went. Besides, I knew she had gone there. Plenty of people go there and are unaware of it! They forget. But she had a nice memory.

0 1963-07-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But I can still see Sri Aurobindo, a little taller than me, and myself bent forward and smiling, pointing to the left, and he said, Yes. And I could see I saw lots of people. Because its a strange thing, the eyesight is absolutely different (its in the Subtle.Physical), the sight is absolutely different from physical sight: you see thousands of miles away and very near at the same time, and distance is implied only by a given place in the atmosphere (I dont know how to explain this), but whats far away is as near from the standpoint of action as whats very close by. You see, the action is just as concrete and close, but it is as though differently placed (Mother shows different levels in the atmosphere). I never gave it a thought, but probably in that activity of the Subtle.Physical we are physically much taller, I think; yet the proportions remain the same; but things are smaller [than Mother or Sri Aurobindo]. Its the same for going up or down, it doesnt have the meaning it has here. And that country I was pointing to was to the left, a little not backward, a little forward and lower down, like this (gesture).
   Sri Aurobindo was very tall there. But I, too, was tall.

0 1963-09-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But the night before, I was with Sri Aurobindo, who gave me a revelation. I was with him, he was reclining (not stretched out but on a sort of chaise longue) and I was supposed to bring him something to eat (not at all like physical food, its something else I dont know what it is its rather different in that world the Subtle.Physical), and it was expressed to me (there were no words in my consciousness; I dont know why, no words), he told me something which I understood perfectly, not only understood but it made me very happy, a joy came into me, and I answered, Yes, exactly! It corresponds to the experience I had today and which is??? (Mother leaves her sentence hanging) You see, I was conscious while I was having all the activity, but it was expressed in words [there] that arent words [here], so I dont know what to do! And he told me in the tone you take when expressing a definitive and overwhelming experience (his tone was one of absolute power) something that was translated like this: Now, the nourishment (it wasnt nourishment but food) comes from the whole of Nature at once. (Mother utters those words like a riddle or an open sesame that has not yet opened the door) And he told me to bring it to him (that too was a translation): Yes, you will bring it (the it was that food coming from the whole Nature at onceits a seemingly silly transcription, but anyway), you will bring it in this translucent bowl. And I replied, Yes, I knew, I knew that I had to use this translucent bowl to bring you the food. But what on earth does that correspond to?? Yet it was so evident! There was such a joy! (Because as I was conscious, I thought, Well, all the same, I am still following him closely in his development, its going on as when he was here: when he wins a victory, it is materialized in me.) Thus I was perfectly conscious and I told him, Ah, I am glad! (I am faltering, of course, it wasnt that at allit was admirable.) Oh, I am glad, I knew that I had to bring you the food in this translucent bowl. And the translucent bowl was a marvel! I had it, you see, it was beautiful! It was like opaline, living glass, all luminous but with all the lights alive and moving, and what colors! Pink, mauve, silver and gold, oh, it was so very beautiful. And I brought it to him.
   It impressed me very strongly. Very strongly: I was under a spell, probably because the experience was still too strong and powerful for the material brain. And I saw it immediately; at the very moment of the experience, I saw it was a transcription, and an extraordinarily poor transcription, but nothing better could be done.

0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You must be having revelations without even noticing them! You have all this here (gesture above Satprems head), its full of revelations, mon petit! And there you are, trying to see with the eyes of the vital, to have experiences in the Subtle.Physical, all kinds of things, which cannot even come because you are here (gesture above), and that is the sediment.
   (silence)

0 1963-11-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was a being from the Subtle.Physical, she didnt seem human at all.
   And there were no letters: the words were ready-made, she took them and arranged them; then when there was a certain number of them on the paper, she would put the paper in front of you.

0 1963-12-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is a whole zone in the most material vital which penetrates, as it were, the Subtle.Physical thats where illnesses are formed. You see swarms of completely crooked formationsa lack of sincerity. And it expresses itself in images: I see all kinds of people and do all kinds of things in a special zone the same people who are elsewhere are here too under a special aspect. Its a mixture of the deformation of consciousness, the deformation of language, the deformation of formsswarms and swarms! For hours.
   But I was always accompanied by a form, not a very precise one, but which was the materialization in that realm of the Lords Presence. I remember having for the work entered a huge room, completely bare, without anything, in a half-light, when suddenly I felt something grabbing hold of me here (gesture at the nape of the neck), something I even felt physically (I was lying in my bed, but I felt it physically). So I pointed it out to that Form which was accompanying me everywhereso attentive, so closeto explain and show things to me; I complained, saying, Look, something has grabbed hold of me, it even hurts physically. So I saw a kind of arm come and take that thing on my neck, pull it away and present it to me: it was like one of those big bats that are called flying fox (there are some here, they eat little birds, chicks), it was clinging to my neck! He said, Oh, its nothing! Its only that. (Mother laughs) And it was a big thing like this (about three feet) which had grabbed hold of me here and had its two claws still out (he had wrenched it off my neck). It had become flat and almost inert, but it was still as vicious as anything.
  --
   It isnt a pleasant realm. Its the realm thats just like this (Mother places one hand over the other), immediately beyond (how can I put it? Its neither higher nor deeper inside) beyond the Subtle.Physical, and its the realm in which formations of illness MATERIALIZE. I spent more than three hours of the night in it.
   Its a kind of study a useful one, maybe. And I noticed, I remember having complained, Oh, it hurts! (Apparently I was sound asleep, but I was very conscious of my body.) So it interested me, and I turned to the Lord: It hurts quite a bit. So He extended his hand, took that thing away and presented it to me, saying, Oh, its only that! It wasnt pretty. But then, INSTANTLY, the pain went away. I had been feeling some pain in the evening before going to bed (the nerves ached, the neck muscles hurt, it was like something weighing down heavily and clinging to me painfully); I saw His hand take it and present that animal to me, and I heard the voice say, Oh, its only that (He speaks to me in English), its only thatgone!

0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Some time ago, I was saying to myself, Some people see physical things at a distance, but I have never seen anything of the sort. I have seen things in the Subtle.Physical (very close to the physical, with a very small difference), but that wasnt a physical vision: it was a vision in the Subtle.Physical. Some time ago I said to myself, Thats odd, physically I have no special capacities, I have never observed interesting phenomena! (Mother laughs) But that was in passing. And now this story! But, mon petit, it took me forty-eight hours to be convinced that it wasnt in the book! I havent yet got over it! Because my eyes have the eyes memory, a very precise memory; they were educated by painting and they see things very exactly as they are (well, as they pretend to be materially). You know, I could have sworn that it was in the book. And clearly it isnt. Four people, apart from me, have seen the book, and its not there!
   I found that interesting, its new.

0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So then, that would be the difference between the Subtle.Physical and the physicalimmortality in the Subtle.Physical is even perfectly obvious: its not only easy to imagine, its a fact; but the PASSAGE? The passage, which for most people is like passing from the waking consciousness to the sleep consciousness and from the sleep consciousness to the waking consciousness. The most concrete experience I have had was like taking a step here and then taking a step therethere is still a step; there is still this-that (gesture of reversal).
   But this Subtle.Physical is very, very concrete, in the sense that you find things again in the same place and in the same way: YEARS LATER, I found again some places where I had been, with certain little inner differences, if I may say so, but the thing, for instance a house or a landscape, remains the same, with little differences in the arrangementas there are in life. Anyway it has a continuity, a sort of permanence.
   (silence)

0 1964-09-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It is very material, its in the Subtle.Physical. And it always takes that form; it doesnt say, You should do this or You should do that, or You shouldnt do thisnothing like that: You SHALL do what the Lord wills, just like that, You SHALL do and, you know, you shall do it, so beware!
   It is a strong Light, with what looks like precise little details (which probably must be translated as details of action, I dont know): they are like lines that make little marks like this (gesture). Its a formation.

0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was clearly a phenomenon of a Subtle.Physical order (in its origin) or material vital (in its origin), but which manifested physically, and which may very well have come from other planets that are a little more subtle than the earth.
   There are many other experiences; this one I remember clearly.

0 1964-10-10, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   For a very long time, I used to seesee images, scenes and so on I used to see, but I didnt hear. Then, all of a sudden, I began to hear; and I would hear the slightest noise, I would hear in a perfectly coherent and natural way. It was as though the sense had suddenly developed. Well, there is a certain state of vision as a result of which I read I read written things; now that I no longer read physically, I read at night. Which means that all this inner development of the physical and Subtle.Physical is still a whole unknown world to be learned.
   I dont know its laws, I am only a spectator. And it obeys a will of an absolutely different order from the will at work in the physical world.

0 1964-10-17, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its very concrete: concrete like physical life (its in the Subtle.Physical). Concrete in the sense that when you eat, you have the taste of it; when you touch, you have the feel of it; you have the smell. And what stories! Stories fantastic inventions! I dont note all that down because it would take hours and anyway I dont find it worthwhile, but what stories it would make!
   Fantastic.

0 1965-03-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   While you were in hospital, I had a sort of I cant say it was a vision because it was very it was lived. It was lived in the Subtle.Physical world, which is symbolic of Reality (the forms are symbolic of Reality, they express Reality, and at the same time they are self-existent). Almost every night I spend some time with Sri Aurobindo in that world, and things are always happening that are indications.1 But that night, it was quite particular.
   Sri Aurobindo and I were in an extremely comfortable car, and we were both resting in an eternity of peace and blissquietly, next to each other. The car was driven by the eternal Driver. It was supreme Bliss, you know. Until suddenly, outside the car (I dont know how), two papers were thrown on the road, and one of the papers was a letter (it was an envelope that had come by mail, there were stamps on it), and the other was something written; and with a lightness (the car was still moving), quite a divine lightness, Sri Aurobindo leaps out of the car onto the road to pick up the letters. I said to myself, Ah, the Bliss is over (laughing) now well have to get back to work! And I also got out of the car (which disappeared).

0 1965-06-18 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Last night, for a long time, we went to all sorts of places unknown to me: towns, countrysides, forests, etc. It lasted a very long time. And once, we were there, near a forest (near a road that crossed the forest) and we were busy and talking when all of a sudden, he leaped to his feet. You know, he never wears any clothes, so to speak; when I saw him the first time in his house (his supramental house), in the Subtle.Physical, he was without clothes; but its a kind of vibrant matter: its very material, very concrete, and it has a sort of color that isnt a color, which is a bit golden and radiantit doesnt send out rays, but it vibrates with a radiant light. And at least nine times out of ten he is that way; generally, when we are together for some work, he is that way. Last night he was that way. So then I was busy (we had arranged something and I was busy) when, suddenly, I see him leap to his feet and run a hundred-meter sprint. At first I was shocked, I said to myself, Whats this?! And with great ease, you know: he darted off, then stopped a few minutes, and then ran back. Then he stopped again, and went off a third time on a sprint: like the 100-meter race they run. But the third time, he had grown tall, with a slim body. Grown tall as if to demonstrate to me: this is the way the body will be transformed. He had grown very tall, very strong.
   It was very interesting and absolutely unexpected.

0 1965-07-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And the last two nights, the activities of the morning, those that take place in the Subtle.Physical with Sri Aurobindo and all the people here, have suddenly become concerned with food! But in a very different form. Its always to give me indications about people, about things. The night before last, there was an amusing incident. You know that Mridu, the fat woman who used to cook for Sri Aurobindo, is in the Subtle.Physical. When she died, Sri Aurobindo (I didnt even know she had died), Sri Aurobindo went to fetch her in her house, then brought her to me and put her at my feet here: thats how I knew she had died (I was told the next morning). But I didnt understand what had happened; I saw Sri Aurobindo go into Mridus house, then come back (laughing) with a small bundle like this, and put it at my feet! I was flabbergasted, I saw it was Mridu, and I ran after Sri Aurobindo to ask him, What on earth does this mean?! Then everything vanished. The next day, I was told she was dead. And she lives like that, in the Subtle.Physical, and I see her very, very often, very often (she is a little better than she was physically, but not much more intelligent!). But the other night, she brought me big prunes (they were this big), and I ate a few, and found them very good; then Pavitra came along, looked at those poor prunes and told me, Oh, you shouldnt eat this, theres mold on it! I remembered it because it amused me. And I looked, saying (laughing), I dont see any mold, and anyway they are very good! And last night, there was a man (whom I know very well, but I cant remember his name) who told me I absolutely must drink milk! (For years and years I havent drunk a drop of milk.) And he showed me the milk saying, You see, you should mix the milk in soup, in this, in that. I wondered, Thats odd, why all of a sudden? I never, ever used to have dreams of food! (They arent dreams, by the way: I am not asleep, I am perfectly conscious.) It began two nights ago: first I ate prunesbig prunes like this then last night, I was told to take milk! But it was so insistent that for a moment this morning I wondered if I should start drinking milk!
   This is also new.

0 1965-07-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And usually my nightly activities are never in the material, they are always in the Subtle.Physical, its densest part, if I may say so. Maybe I havent even had in my life half a dozen visions with the material reality as it is: I saw the room as it is and heard the sound of Champaklals voice clearly. Then I understood it was this physical mind dreaming, having an activity, and that it was to show me that attraction You understand, the door opening abruptly, the man coming in and telling me (Mother takes on a tragic tone), I am bringing very bad news, and that tense atmosphere, and then, He has fallen down and broken his head. Then I tried to know who the he was, and little by little and so on.
   With this sort of work to establish perfect equality, I never drive something away immediately, saying, No, thats not possible. One must be calm and collected in the face of all things. I was calm and collected, thinking, Let us see, let me wait for two days, and if he has really broken his head (laughing), Ill find out! Of course, nothing happened. And when I got your letter, I had the feeling it was the same thing, but I thought, Let us see, let us wait. I looked, and didnt see anything. Through your letter and your words I looked, but didnt see anything. And I had the feeling it was this same physical mind that made contact with a formationa malicious formation, because such is the habit of the physical mind.

0 1965-09-15a, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And an indication. The place where I was was very large (larger than a house), and I went about: I tried to rest somewhere, but the noise and din was so dreadful that it was impossible, so I got up. There were three people, two of whom have a body and the third doesnt have a body (I know them), and they werent at the same place. The first person was with me, where I wanted to rest, but I said, Its impossible, so I left that place and went to the other end, and there I found the person who doesnt have a body, watching intensely through those glass walls, like that, quite tense (which would tend to prove that it is also taking place in the Subtle.Physical, or even in the most material vital). Oh, no one can ever imagine that. There, I watched for a while, then I left to go back to the place where I was resting (with a slight inner work, saying to myself, Its all right, I will still find the way to get some rest). And on my way, I saw someone (N., not to name him) who was standing in a sort of corridor (but not narrow: a wide corridor), also watching intensely.
   The hurricane didnt quite have the same color (how can I explain this?) in the large place where the person without a body was, and there, in that corridor; in the first place, it was very red, as if all the leaves were red, the trees were red (there were other colors, but red was the dominant color), while in the corridor, the color was muddier. But it was so strong! So strong that it was hard to get out of it.

0 1965-10-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I arrived where I always go to find him, in the Subtle.Physical, last night around 2: 30, and what a crowd there was! Thousands of people. When I arrived there, before going in I met someone, who must have been one of the former politicians, from the time of the revolution, when Sri Aurobindo was involved in politics; he is dead, naturally, but he was there and he told me (he was quite jubilant), he told me (in English), Sri Aurobindo has come out of meditation, he has started playing! And there was indeed a feeling that everyone was playing, playing. I crossed the courtyard (I even crossed a room where some people were still in meditation, and they looked surprised to see me come in like that, I told them, Dont worry, I dont want to disturb you!), then I found Sri Aurobindo, who was playingvery young and strong and amused and joyful, and he was playing. He was playing with something that cannot be described, and he was playing and playing. And then, the same gentleman whom I had seen at the entrance came and told me in my ear, He has played with that a lot it is worn-out, its a bit damaged, a bit worn-out. So I drew near, and Sri Aurobindo, who had heard, told me, Yes, it is worn-out, take it and bring me another. And he handed it to me I cant describe it, it didnt look like anything, it was something there was something black moving inside something and it did look a little broken down. So I left, I went back downstairs; and the symbol of the physical body was a pair of shoes I put my shoes on again and left.
   There were lots of details; it began after two-thirty, and it lasted till about four-thirty.

0 1966-01-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I saw Purani last night. Its the first time I have seen him since he went out of his body.1 There were other people too. I saw him in a Subtle.Physical world and he was all light blue and pink, and everything around him was pink and luminous (Mother makes a dancing gesture). He was pleased, oh, so pleased, he said, Now I am happy!
   (silence)

0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yesterday evening, after I had written that message (I wrote it in the evening, not in comfort but that was the only time I had; the light wasnt good, but anyway I did it), after I had written, I felt a strong pain here, in my temples. Ah, I said, now I know! Now and then, after having listened to lots of people and especially after having written lots of birthday cards, answers to letters there is a sort of strange heaviness in my temples (and Ive never had headaches in my life, thats not like me!), and I say to myself, Whats this new decrepitude?! Then I noticed it wasnt that: its my eyes. Its because I havent yet found the secret of how to use my eyes. As I said just before, at times I see with extraordinary precision: things seem to come towards me to show themselves its so clear that the minutest detail is perceived. Thats one extreme. The other extreme is what I have already told several times: a sort of veil. I know things, they are in my consciousness, but I see just clearly enough not to bump against them or knock them over; everything, everything seems to be behind a veil; only I know where things are, so I find them, or I dont bump against them or break them, but thats not because I see I see a picture behind a veil, as it were. Thats the other extreme. In between the two, there are all sorts of gradations. And I am convinced its to show me that my eyes are still capable of seeing accurately the instrument is still very good, but I dont know how to use it. I dont know how to use it, because previously I used it as everyone uses his eyes, his hands, his feet, out of a sort of habit, more or less consciously I was very proud of my consciousness! ([Laughing] We are always very proud!) Very proud to have such conscious hands; in the past, for instance, I would sometimes say, I want twelve sheets of paper, then I would stop bothering about itmy hand would go and take, and there were twelve of them. That had been happening for a long, a very long time, but it would happen AT CERTAIN TIMES: when I was in the required state, that is, when there wasnt the intrusion of an arbitrary will. So all this is a field of experiment and study in very small details, absolutely insignificant in themselves, but very instructive. And it goes on all the time, twenty-four hours a day, night and day (at night its on other planes), but all this takes place in the physical, a more or less Subtle.Physical.
   This morning, there was a very amusing story. I was rinsing my eyes and mouth; I do it before daybreak, that is, with electric light. And in my bathroom there is an emergency light. Its one of the latest inventions: its connected to the power and as long as there is power, the light remains off and a battery inside gets charged; as soon as the power fails, the light turns on and the battery is discharged to keep the light on. Its very well made, they invented it for hospitals and other places where any power failure must be avoided: as soon as the power goes, the light turns on instantaneously, and when the power returns, it goes off and gets recharged for the next time. They installed it for me in the bathroom. And this morning while I was washing my teeth, poff! the light went off. I continued, naturally, since I had that emergency light. But then, I did a study. The lights in C.s room (and everywhere) were on, it was only here, in this group of rooms. That was an odd phenomenon to begin with. Then I looked, and while I looked I noticed something I hadnt taken note of all these last few days: a will to disorganize all my personal life. And causing power failures is one of the known occult methods (I dont know how its done, in fact, but that man who wrote books and came here a very long time ago, Brunton, said it was one of the tricks known to those who practice occultism: a sudden failure of the lights). There are lots of other such tricks designed to disorganize peoples lives with the idea of frightening them or announcing catastrophes to them (I have always found this very childish). But then, I saw that there was (I think I know where, here, it comes from) a will for disorganization, and I saw the path it followed (winding gesture as if Mother were going back to the source). It had begun last night, in the middle of the night: when I got up around midnight, I saw a will wanting to preoccupy me with thoughts of money! And it was insisting: the thought that everything was going wrong, and so on. I saw that in the middle of the night. I was busy with other things, but I saw that will: formations; and naturally I dealt with them as they deserved. But I saw that it went on, trying to disturb people, to make them uncomprehending, and then to turn the power off, all sorts of silly things. Its not the first time it has happenedits not always the same people because generally, when they have tried and got a good knock in return, they dont try a second time, theyve had enough! But there are others who think they are very clever and want to prove to me (laughing) that they are right and I am wrongbecause ultimately it always comes to that! So I spent half an hour this morning, before they restored the power and I resumed my usual activities, half an hour having huge fun following the thread (same winding gesture going back to the source) wherever there was mischief, and then I very kindly answered.
  --
   But how is the transition made? The transition that materializes? What is the secret of the passage from that very Subtle.Physical to the physical proper? How is the passage made from one side to the other?
   Mon petit, I dont know what comparison I should use, but I am certain there are some things that are invisible this way (Mother rotates her wrist in one direction), and visible that way (gesture in the other direction). My impression is that what we see as a considerable difference between the tangible, the material, and the invisible or the fluid, is only a change of position. Perhaps an internal change of position because it isnt a physical, material change of position, but it is a change of position. Because I have experienced this I dont know how many times, hundreds of times: like this (gesture in one direction), everything is what we call natural, as we are used to seeing it, then all of a sudden, like that (gesture in the other direction), the nature of things changes. And nothing has happened, except something within, something in the consciousness: a change of position. Do you remember that aphorism in which Sri Aurobindo says that everything depends on a change in the relation of the sun-consciousness and the earth-consciousness?2 When I read it the first time, I didnt understand, I thought it was something in the very subtle realms; and then, very recently, in one of those experiences, I suddenly understood, I said, But thats it! It isnt a shift since nothing moves, yet it is shift, it is a change of relation. A change of position. Its no more tangible than that, thats what is so wonderful! Oh, the other day, I found another sentence of Sri Aurobindos: Now everything is different, yet everything has remained the same. (It was on one of my birthday cards.) I read that and said to myself, Oh, thats what it means! Its true, now everything is different, yet everything has remained the same. We understand it psychologically, but its not psychological: its HERE (Mother touches matter). But until one has a solid base From the standpoint of concrete, physical, material things, I dont think theres anyone more materialistic than I was, with all the practical common sense and positivism; and now I understand why it was like that: it gave my body a marvelous base of equilibrium. It prevented me from having the very sort of madness we were talking about earlier.3 The explanations I asked for were always material, I always sought the material explanation, and it seemed obvious to me theres no need of any mystery, nothing of the sortyou just explain things materially. Therefore I am certain this isnt a tendency to mystic dreaming in me, not at all, not at all, this body had nothing mystic! Nothing Thank God!

0 1966-07-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Every time I have been conscious of the Power, the experience has been similar. The Will from above is expressed by a vibration, which certainly gets clothed in vital power but acts in a Subtle.Physical. There is a perception of a certain quality of vibration, which is difficult to describe but gives a sense of something coagulated (not broken up), something that feels denser than air, extremely homogeneous, with a golden luminosity, an AWESOME power of propulsion, and which expresses a certain willit doesnt have the nature of human will but more the nature of vision than that of thought: its like a vision imposing itself in order to be realized, in a domain very close to material Matter, but invisible except to the inner vision. And That, that Vibration, exerts a pressure on people, on things, on circumstances, in order to fashion them according to its vision. And its irresistible. Even people who think the opposite, who want the opposite, do what is willed without wanting it; even things that are opposed in their very nature are turned around.
   For national events, relations between nations, terrestrial circumstances, thats how it acts, constantly, constantly, like an AWESOME Power. So then, if you are yourself in a state of union with the divine Will, without the thought and all the conceptions and ideas interfering, you follow, see, and know.

0 1966-09-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It must be in a Subtle.Physical, maybe a true physical. Sri Aurobindo said that the Subtle.Physical was a much truer physical than ours. Things are like that there, with a very clear symbol.
   And those birds (they were birds that werent birds, but they looked like birds), they came all luminous, luminous, with sometimes tiny darker traces here or there, but generally all luminous; their shape was very fluid. And the colors werent as we know them: it wasnt white, it wasnt pale blue, but as if the essence of white and blue, the essence of colors. I dont know how to explain it. And they came like that, then he sent them down, and when they went through his hands and flew down towards the earth (laughing) they became brown, blue, gray all possible colors! But those were opinions. Its amusing.

0 1966-10-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Not last night but the night before, I spent a long time, almost two hours of our time here, with Sri Aurobindo. I have told you he has something that translates as an abode (its magnificent, magnificent!) in the Subtle.Physical. Its always immense, so clear, well-defined, yet fully open. And I get a sense of (Mother takes a deep breath) phew! open, luminousalways, in every case. He is there maybe not quite as he was here (but it makes no difference to me because the change has been very progressive: I have followed Sri Aurobindo almost from day to day, step by step), and he is perhaps rather taller, with perhaps a form that has greater perfection, I dont know, but to me, his expression (Mother smiles with her eyes closed) his expression is inexpressible. I spent a very, very long time with him. In those huge rooms (they are limitless, you know, you feel you could go indefinitely from one room to another, from one place to another), he was directing It was in a part of the place with a certain number of rooms (four, five or six, I dont know), large rooms where he was directing a pottery, just imagine! But it wasnt like here. There were objects made of clay. There wasnt any process of firing, painting or any like that (it wasnt like here), but there were shapes which looked like pottery shapes, and they had a power (Mother gestures downward) to manifest. And then, there was everything: animals, plants, people, things, everything, with all possible colors. I went from one to another, looking, explaining. I had spent a long time with him, and I knew exactly why and how it was done, and afterwards I went and studied the work and observed. Then the rooms were arranged, the things were put in their place: that was as if to show the result. And things charming in their simplicity, yet they contained an extraordinary power of manifestation! But they had a deep meaning. I took an object made of a very dark reddish brown earth, and it was badly put together, that is, the shape wasnt right and I showed it to the pottery foreman (there was a pottery foreman in each room, looking after the work). I showed it to him, and told him (it was fairly big at the bottom, with a small piece at the top [Mother draws a sort of vase with a neck], anyway it wasnt well done), I explained it to him, saying, You understand, its not properly balanced. And while I was holding it in my fingersit broke. Then he said to me, Oh, I am going to mend it. I answered, If you like, but its not as it should be. Of course, we say it with our words, but there, it had a very precise MEANING. Then, there were kinds of big openings between one room and another (they werent rooms, they were huge halls), and one went on to the place where they made fish! But the fish werent fish (!), they had another meaning. And there were fish this big, made of clay, colored and gleaming, magnificent: one was blue-green, another yellowish white, but pretty, so pretty! And they were kept on the floor as if it were water: the fish were kept on the floor, right in the way. So I thought, Thats not very convenient! (Mother laughs) And said like this, it all looks like childishness, but there it had a very deep meaning, very deep.
   It was very interesting.

0 1966-11-15, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Not last night but the night before, I again spent the whole night with Sri Aurobindo, at least four hours in that Subtle.Physical world. He has quite a beautiful abode there! Its magnificentmagnificent. And its not fluid: its very concrete, yet at the same time not fixed! It has a suppleness that adapts to all necessities. Its really interesting.
   But its still a phase of preparation and adaptation: its not final. Its not final: there are experiments, trials. Its extremely supple, its in a phase of formation, as though it were preparing for a manifestation, or rather, learning to be what it must be. Its very interesting.

0 1966-12-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I had always complained it was a realm in which I didnt see. I mostly saw (in the past), I mostly saw mentallymental visionsand also, naturally, I saw all the way up (but that was organized), and to some extent in the vital, especially at night, but anyway The vision was highly developed, very clear and precise, but physically (physically, I mean in the Subtle.Physical and physically), I had never seen with open eyes: I always saw the stark reality as it is, never anything else, and I had always complained about it. Until suddenly it came: one day I started seeing, and then! (Mother laughs) Now I am obliged to calm it down, because (laughing) its too much. But its unbelievableunbelievable how full of forms the air is, and such expressive forms! Its as if, yes, a humorist, a caricaturist, even, were constantly making the subtle representation of what goes on materially.
   And I think thats what people see when they have what medical science calls hallucinations, when they have a fever, for instance. But I already knew this because I once had such a high fever that I was in the state in which, according to doctors, you go off your head. Then I saw (with the material vision), I had the vision of all the hostile beings rushing to attack me from every sideit was frightful! You understand, its the support of the material consciousness thats no longer there, you are wholly in that vision, and thats why you generally get frightened, while others believe its a hallucination. I remember (Sri Aurobindo was there), at the time I told him, Ah, now I know what hallucinations caused by fever are.It has nothing to do with hallucinations! But its not pleasant, its the vision of a world thats not pretty.

0 1967-01-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I remember, some time ago, at night, I said to him (I see him almost every night, but for a few days I hadnt seen him, then I met him at night because he is always there (Mother makes a gesture enveloping her), but at night, in that Subtle.Physical world, I see him objectively, as if I were meeting him), and I said to him, I didnt see you for a few days, like that, in jest. Then he put on his most serious air, but with all his irony, Oh, I am very busy these days. And (laughing) the next day I learned they were shooting a film on Sri Aurobindos life!1 So I thought he must have been busy sending them good suggestions. But it was so comical! With straight-faced seriousness, Oh, I am very busy. (Mother laughs)
   Thats how injury came about.

0 1967-04-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I had only one instance of activity these last four days, one morning between two and four, that I spent absolutely conscious and active with Sri Aurobindo, who had made changes in his activities and his organization of the Subtle.Physical; he had made changes and wanted to show them to me, to let me know about them. And he showed it all to me for two hours. But that was the only thing, and as for the resteverything, going to see people, going here or there, doing this or that I have stopped it all. And things are better.
   So I wonder if this decision hasnt had an effect on your sleep? Thats quite possible.

0 1967-08-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The Subtle.Physical seems to be more and more transformed. There is still a mystery between the two. A mystery. They are coexistent (the physical and the Subtle.Physical bodies), and yet (gesture of a lack of connection), the Subtle.Physical doesnt appear to have an influence on this (the body).
   Something Something to be found something.

0 1967-08-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The last few nights, I have spent almost the whole night, several hours of it, in a place which must certainly belong to the Subtle.Physical and where material life is being reorganized. Its immenseimmense and the crowd innumerable; but they are individualities, not a crowd, which means that I deal with each one of them. And there are also types of documents and writing tables, but there are no walls! Its a strange place. A very strange place.
   I have often wondered if the memory of physical forms is what makes me see that world in that way, or IF IT IS really like that. Sometimes there is no doubt because it has its own specific character, but at other times I have a doubt and wonder if its not in the active memory. Because at that moment I am very conscious, everything is extremely natural, you understand; and its permanent: I find the same things in the same places again, sometimes with slight differences, but differences made necessary by action. That is to say, its a coherent world, not wild imaginings. But to what extent are those forms the reflection of material forms? To what extent ARE they really like that, or do we SEE them that way? I am not very sure yet. I had the same problem in the past when I used to go into the Overmind and see the Gods: I always had a kind of hesitation as to whether they really are like that, or whether we perceive them like that because of our physical habits. There, after a time I reached a conclusion, but here, physically?

0 1967-10-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And Sri Aurobindo himself was very insistent because To tell you the truth, I asked him (for that vision you would like to have, that state of vision), I asked him that it may be given to you, that you may have it since you aspire for it. Then he said to me (on one of the cards I wrote what he said), the vision you will have will be the vision of the Truth-Consciousness. Its the supreme vision, the true vision. (One may have visions in the Subtle.Physical, in the vital, many in the mind, but none of that is satisfying, one always gets a sense of a not quite accurate transcription.) But the true vision is the vision of the Consciousness, the supreme Consciousness. And he told me thats what you would have.
   The ship is the development, the means of advance towards that realization. It all came like that.

0 1967-12-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   We were in the Subtle.Physical. I saw lots of people: Purani (a departed disciple) and so on, people who are no longer on earth. It was in Sri Aurobindos not his house, but his domain. I saw and did lots of things. There were people who are on earth and people who are no longer on earth: they were all together. And at the end (for many details Sri Aurobindo was there, then he left), at the end I looked at all that, and for the first time in the Subtle.Physical, I said, Oh, how insipid and useless and without zest your life is, when you dont think of the Divine.
   The experience was so acute! So acute. Then I said (among the people there, there was Purani, and as I said people who are on earth), I told them, On earth, there is that intensity of aspiration, but here life is so easy, so easy! Look at all your activities and all that, oh, it has no zest, because there isnt that intense need to live for the Divine. And it was so strong that for hours in the morning it was like that (gesture of intense aspiration). Life anywhereanywhere, in any part of the world (of the universe) and in any conditions, even the easiest and harmonious, is not worth living without this intensity of aspiration, of the NEED to be divine.
  --
   In the past, when I went to all those regions, there were always very interesting things; and in the Subtle.Physical, as a rule I was always with Sri Aurobindo I was with Sri Aurobindo, but he withdrew to a part of his domain and I remained with all the others: they had an easy life, you know, carefree, and all they did seemed so meaningless. Why? Why all that, why keep oneself busy, why do all those things if its not for this aspiration, if its not for this need to be and become the Divine?
   But its the first time, and it lingered on: for hours this morning, I was like this (gesture of intense aspiration).
  --
   And its the PHYSICAL consciousness that has those experiences at night: the body remains in trance, its the physical consciousness; it was the physical consciousness, but in a Subtle.Physical freed from all difficultiesand it was no better. You know, it was like a reply to the ambition of people here on earth who want life to be pleasant, easy, without difficulties, without conflicts and clashes and diseases and they say, Oh, how charming all would be!Its not true: if THAT isnt there, empty.
   The experience was very interesting.

0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In our yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organized reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. For if these impressions rise up most in dream in an incoherent and disorganized manner, they can also and do rise up into our waking consciousness as a mechanical repetition of old thoughts, old mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure stimulus to sensations, actions, emotions which do not originate in or from our conscious thought or will and are even often opposed to its perceptions, choice or dictates. In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate Sanskaras [imprints or habits], impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or Subtle.Physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organized, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come.
   As for asserting ones will in sleep it is simply a matter of accustoming the subconscient to obey the will laid upon it by the waking mind before sleeping. It very often happens for instance that if you fix upon the subconscient your will to wake up at a particular hour in the morning, the subconscient will obey and you wake up automatically at that hour. This can be extended to other matters. Many have found that by putting a will against sexual dreams or emission on the subconscient before sleeping, there comes after a time (it does not always succeed at the beginning) an automatic action causing one to awake before the dream concludes or before it begins or in some way preventing the thing forbidden from happening. Also one can develop a more conscious sleep in which there is a sort of inner consciousness which can intervene.1

0 1968-06-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its like a studya really accelerated study, you cant imagine, one minute after another, like this (snowballing gesture)from the standpoint of the work, that is, the purpose of physical existence in a body, and the usefulness of physical presence. And the absolutely clear, precise vision, in minutes detail, of whats real and whats illusory, whats truly necessary and whats only imagination (that of others, but also, at times, ones own). But I would need hours to tell it all. With (is it a basis?) the perception in the consciousness (but a detailed perception I dont mean ideas, it has nothing to do with ideas or principles, etc.: theres no mental translation), the perception of what, in the work, demands or depends on the bodily presence (I am purposely not saying physical presence, because theres a Subtle.Physical presence thats independent of the body), the bodily presence. And then, at the same time, such a clear, precise, detailed vision of the relationship each one has with this body (a relationship which is thought, feelings and physical reactions all at once), and thats what gives the impression of the necessity of bodily presencegives its measure also. So there is, at the same time, the perception of the TRUE usefulness of physical presence and the perception of the reaction in individuals. Its a world! A world, because of the fantastic amount of details. A world unfolding every second. And accompanied by an inner perception, first, of the effect it has on the cells, and then that the cohesion has now really become, I may say, the result of a supreme Will, to the extent that its necessary for lets say for the experience, or the work (anythingwe can call it what we like). In other words, there is the aspect of progress of the cells as an aggregate. There is hardlyhardly, very weakly the sense of a personality or a physical individuality, its hardly that; neither is it a habit of being together, because its very fluid in there: its truly held together by a higher Will with a definite aim in view, but that too is fluidnothing is fixed.
   (silence)

0 1968-07-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   My whole life long, I complained that my visions werent more material than vital visions: they started from the vital and went up higher and higher, but below the vital, there was nothing. And now, its a continual vision of the Subtle.Physicalconstant, I see both together: the physical and the Subtle.Physical. Only, the physical, purely physical vision is much disturbed by the other vision. You understand, its more a CONSCIOUSNESS of things than purely and merely a vision. And Ive noticed, when I have someone in front of me, for instance, with some, when I look at them they grow more and more precise and clear; others become more and more blurred TO MY PHYSICAL VISION. It must depend on their state of consciousness. Some grow extremely precise, especially the eyes, and in their eyes I see the consciousness the eyes are perfectly visible. Others, on the contrary, become blurred like that; with some, even, in place of their eyes Ive seen two black plates. As if they wanted to put a veil. Its very interesting.
   Oh, physically I see clearly enough to do everything, but I cant read. Even my vision of pictures is a little I dont know if its deteriorated or transformed: what I see isnt the picture as it is exactly, but maybe as it wanted to be. A slight difference.

0 1968-07-13, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Id have liked to ask you a question on that vision of the Subtle.Physical that material vision which you have with open eyes. Id like to know what it corresponds to: does it correspond to a supramental vision, or is it the vision a skilled clairvoyant, for instance, might have?
   I dont think so.

0 1968-09-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Last night, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo came, I brought him a big drawing, like this, a drawing with writing on it, and I told him, See, I wanted to show you this, how interesting it is, how amusing! And it was When I am awake, I dont know what it is. It was something I had kept aside to show Sri Aurobindo, and as soon as he came I showed him, saying, See how interesting it is! And awake, I dont know what it is. There would seem to be a whole LIFE like thata whole life, a whole activity going on, yes, very near, probably in the Subtle.Physical, but very near. Very, very concrete, not at all the impression of a dream. Thoroughly concrete, with sensations. And a continuity: even when I am not conscious of it, it continues, and when I become conscious, the continuation is there: Ill become conscious of it again farther ahead, and it has changed while I wasnt conscious there.
   It looks like a material region (material, that is, physical) where the consciousness is more awake the consciousness is very clear, very clear, and sharp, you know: sharp perceptions.
  --
   It [this Subtle.Physical world] is like a lining, but a lining that would be more conscious.
   The light is very clear, the shapes very precise.

0 1968-10-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Oh, what a beautiful forest, mon petit! They must be the forests of Its between the Subtle.Physical and the vital, as if joining the two the Subtle.Physical to the vital. Trees as I have only seen in Japan; trees rising straight like columns, planted in rowsmagnificent! With light-colored grass, very light, pale green. Grass on the ground, airlots of airand at the same time nothing but trees: a forest. But not thick, not crowded. Well then, in that magnificent place, instead of rejoicing, the fool (Mother takes a wailing tone): I dont know what happened to me, I have no religion! (Mother laughs) So I told him, But you should rejoice! No religionyou are in a place much more beautiful than all religions! (In a whining tone)I dont understand.
   (silence)
  --
   (After a silence) All these vital worlds are worlds of suggestion. You are in one wave of suggestion: everything is frightening; you are in another wave of suggestion: everything is charming; you are in another wave: everything is magnificent. Like that. Its odd. Like worlds that exist through suggestion. And its between the Subtle.Physical and the material vital, like this (Mother presses her right hand against her left one), as close as can be.
   I have an idea that there also exists a world of medicines which is like that! Because the same medicine, given at different times for the same troubles, produces different results the same medicine. So if, from within, you make a resolve, if you say, You will agree with the medicine (to find out its precise action), then a sort of mischievous little spirit comes and says (in a mocking tone), Whats wrong with you?! But the medicine knows nothing about it, because depending on the case Ah, let me tell you, its a comedy!

0 1968-10-26, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Now, at any rate, I know. The work in the other states (even, even in a Subtle.Physical) is relatively childs play. The difficulty is here.
   (silence)

0 1968-12-21, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So there remains the question (this is something ahead, its probably coming): how is the experience to express itself materially? For the body itself, its perfectly obvious: for, say, an hour, or two, or three, it suffered a lot, very miserable (not a moral suffering: a wholly physical suffering), then all of a sudden, brrff! all gone. The body has apparently remained the same (Mother looks at her hands), in its appearance, but instead of an inner disorder that makes it suffer, everything is fine, and theres a great peace, a great tranquillityeverything is fine. But thats for ONE bodyhow does that act on others? Its beginning to perceive the possibility in other consciousnesses. On the moral level (that is to say, the level of attitudes, character, reactions), its very visible; even sometimes on the physical level: something suddenly disappearsas we had the experience when Sri Aurobindo would remove a pain (Mother shows a hand of the Subtle.Physical coming and taking away the pain), we would wonder Ah! Gone, vanished, like that. But its not constant, not general, its only to show it can be like that through the fact that it happens in one case or anotherto show that things CAN be like that.
   We might put it this way: the body has the sense of being shut inside somethingshut in, yesshut as if inside a box, but it can see through; it sees and can also have an action (though limited) THROUGH something thats still there and which must disappear. That something gives a sense of imprisonment. How is it to disappear? That I dont know yet.

0 1969-02-05, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It went on for several hours. It wasnt the conception of a work, it was THE work itself, like like when there are levers and things you move to set other things in motion (Mother draws a big control panel in an electronic room), it was something like that, but it wasnt that at all! It was the organization of those groups of figures that determined the events and the ORDER of events (especially the order of events) and their location on earth. And probably, while I was doing it, something wanted me to tell you, and left an impression that I had something to tell you; then everything went away. When I come back to this life, everything goes away; and its only because I now tried to remember that I could (gesture of contact with the memory) catch it: I tried, and it came back. But I realize (almost with surprise) that it must have lasted at least two hours, or moretwo to two and a half hours. I dont sleep at all, but I am active, absolutely active in the (Mother tries to situate the zone)whats being prepared to manifest on earth, I dont know if we should call it Subtle.Physical or Its the creative zone of the physical, its there. And as I cant run from one place to another, what I do is linked through figures, like thatliving figures. Living figures: I organize them, group them together, and I remember what I did the previous day; I say, No, yesterday it was that way, but now it has to be this way, and with the knowledge that it will have to be changed again tomorrow. And thats what determines events. But the consciousness (the waking or ordinary consciousness) MUST NOT know whats decided there; it must know only a part necessary to the execution. Thats why there is a breakit remains, it keeps on living there like that (gesture behind the head), but it doesnt come through. Its wholly because at that time [during the dream] I made the decision to tell you about it that I could catch the memory, otherwise Although I SEE; I see those figures, thats why I can describe them, but they no longer mean anything for me. And I am not sure whether they are figures or letters. They were figures, I know they were; some figures were golden, others were blue (but those arent our material colors, neither our substance nor our material colors), and I kept arranging them: one group like this, another group like that (gesture like a moving puzzle), then I would choose. Strange. And I must have been very tall, because the figures were big; I would take them and place them (it was on a large surface), and as I placed them, it established a communication and organized the events immediately ahead.
   Perhaps I do remember

0 1969-03-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But it was it was really amusing! And the objections of age, possibility, capacity, no longer existed. If this intermediary method is considered useful (I mean, practical), the possibility is there; this Consciousness was showing the body that the possibility is there. Foroh, for hours and hoursit insisted, it didnt want to go! It insisted until the body had completely understood. And there is no need of a material intervention: it can be done (thats known, there have been fully recognized cases), the physical intervention wasnt necessary, it was replaced by an intervention in the Subtle.Physical, which was sufficient. All that in every detail, with every explanation and everything. Then, when it was thoroughly done, it was over, the chapter was closed. But it was really unexpected, I had never thought of such a thing! And the way it was presented! It was so concrete and so simpleso simple, so concrete and all objections were resolved.
   So the body said, Very well, we shall see. (Mother laughs) Well see.

0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   At night, for instance, the body is taller, and its active, it does things (its this subtle body that does things, is active and has an existence of which it is wholly conscious), and its different from this (Mother touches the skin of her hands), but in the Subtle.Physical its a PHYSICAL body, and its already something permanent, in the sense that you REMAIN the same, you find things again as you left them (they exist permanently, though they arent visible with the ordinary vision, but they have a logical and continuous existence). So, there, the form is the true expression the true expression of the state of consciousness; while here, the form is the result of (Mother laughs) we could say of all the falsehood spread about in the consciousness.
   People who see me at night (those who have this vision in the subtle world) dont see me like this (Mother points to her body): they see me as I am, and they tell methey say, Oh, but you are like this, like that.

0 1969-05-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   When Sri Aurobindo left, I was standing near his bed (later on, when he was alone, when there was no one left), and all the supramental force he had concentrated in his body (what was left in his body), he passed on to me. I stood near his bed; he had been declared dead, but all that supramental consciousness which was there came out of his body, slowly, and directly entered mine. It was so material that I felt the friction of the force everywhere, all over. But it was slightly luminous. That was something different than with Pavitra. As for Sri Aurobindo, he (how can I put it?), he stayed mainly I found him everywhere: I found him all the way up, absolutely one with the Supreme Consciousness; I found him spread about in many places to see many people and do a lot of work; and I found him (but then, in a precise form, though NOT FIXEDA precise, rather supple form that looked like him, like what we knew of him, with more suppleness, without the fixity of the physical, but quite precise, a form in his likeness, quite in his likeness), I found him in the Subtle.Physical. There he has a dwelling, he is settled and stays permanently (which doesnt prevent him from being at many other places and), but there is a Sri Aurobindo there whom I see almost every night, who looks after the whole work, sees people, and who is almost constantly with me. In the Subtle.Physical, its a specific place, and very largehuge, you know, he is there, seeing people, doing all kinds of things.
   Apart from that, in Amritas case, it was something different again.6 Amrita used to come in spite of his illness, he used to come and see me every day; he would come upstairs in the morning and sit down here, and once again in the evening (you saw how much work it was to climb the stairs). In his case, when he left The doctor had told him, You cant go upstairs for a month, and its after that, later on that day, that he came: he didnt accept, he left his body and camehe came straight to me. But he was IN HIS OWN FORM, more subtle, but precisely defined (Mother draws an outline showing Amritas form), it was his form, in his likeness. And he remained there, now active and now at rest (he rests more than he is active, but now and then he is still active). Its like like a shadow, you understand, which is wholly in my atmosphere. And he has stayed therehe stays there, rests there. But in Pavitras case, it was something else altogether: its the entire conscious being which gave up (how can I put it?) its limits, the personal limit and form, so as to identify totallyhe entered like that, like a stream of consciousness and force, but very material, very material: it produced a friction, I felt a friction, and for three hours. I had never seen that before, it was the first time I had heard about it very often (its often mentioned), that knowledge the great yogis had: they would go like that deliberately.

0 1969-05-21, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   A case such as Sri Aurobindos is quite different: its as if he had been multiplied. He has a constant presence in the Subtle.Physical: he goes about, visits a number of people, and he is conscious of a lot of things, he intervenes in a lot of things, but a considerable numberit has multiplied his action. But thats exceptional.
   (silence)
  --
   Something has changed in the nights too. That is, the last two nights have been extremely active; I went to some places (if I went there before, I didnt stay long) where there were lots of people, but mingled, that is, the so-called living and the so-called dead together. Quite together, and used to being together, and finding it quite natural but CROWDS of people! Last night, I noticed Nolini therehe was there, he was used to being there and we arranged things, organized, made decisions. It seems to me to be in the Subtle.Physical.
   I remember that in both cases, yesterday and today, when I got up, I thought, Well! I told this and that person that I didnt use to see them at night, but I see them regularly! And to one of those people (in fact it was who was it?) I said, Of course, I see you constantly, and we constantly do things together. It seems to have opened in me the memory of a new activitynot new: a new memory of an old activity.4

0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So I told her that the whole artistic, athletic, even culinary organizations, and all others, are ready in the Subtle.Physicalready to descend and incarnate-and I said, All that is needed is a little soil (gesture in the hollow of the hand), a little soil to let the plant grow. I said that to her, I am telling you because we have to find a little soil to let it grow. I dont know if she understood!
   (silence)

0 1969-07-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The nights are beginning to be interesting! Very interesting, because I have a vision I dont know where it is, whether its in the Subtle.Physical (probably so)a symbolic vision, but active (its an action), a vision of whats happening, but then (Mother smiles) AS IT Is, not as people see it!
   Things here are always cloaked in a number of clothes, its never the exact thing, but there, it is the exact thing. Just now Last night, I had a long activity, and I wondered, But why am I seeing all this? A long activity (Ill tell you what it was), and just now, Z was here and started telling me the difficulties they have with the servants. Ah, I thought, here we are, its my vision, what I saw last night! And in my vision You know that here, its P. who looks after the servants, but in the night, it was Amrita, and Amrita as he is now, not as he was physically (because when he left his body, Amrita came to me, and in fact, he hasnt left me, but he is free: now he rests, now he goes about). Last night, he was very active, and he symbolized Rs activity, as if his influence was what guided R But it was (Mother seems very amused) the symbols were so clear and so amusing, with such an amusing sense of humor! (The nights have really become very interesting.) Oh, last night, I did gymnastics! (Mother laughs) It was because of that business with the servants: in the end, at one spot a wall was needed as a protection from the servants invasion, and they had built a small wall (a small wall to protect a doorway); so I entered the house, and when I wanted to go out the other way, they had removed the staircase to build that small wall! So (laughing) there was a gaping hole, and I had to go back down (I was very agile) by clinging to the wall! Things of that sort, thoroughly amusing. They had put up a kind of big partition as a protection from a crowd of servants who had swarmed into the street, a partition so they wouldnt sweep in here; then Amrita came, opened the partition, and started talking with the people outside! I told him (laughing), There, youre ruining all our work!
  --
   I remember having seen you not very long ago (Ill have to see that), and it must have been in the Subtle.Physical. So if thats where you want to become conscious, its easier for me.
   Its very interesting, you know! Very interesting Life stripped of its false appearance!
  --
   Oh, I see lots and lots of people, I do lots and lots of things. And then I can check:6 afterwards, without trying, without questioning, I can check; the next day I am told this or that So Ill try. I wasnt trying because I thought you were still going in the mind at night, in that higher region above (its just above the mind), and I no longer go there: I go (gesture all the way up). But I constantly work there, in this Subtle.Physical. And its becoming increasingly conscious and clear. So Ill try.
   Sri Aurobindo is therehe can be seen all the time; he is all the time doing one thing or another, he is VERY active, very active. You would meet him, that would be fine. You never see him at night?

0 1969-07-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Last time, you spoke about the Subtle.Physicalabout sleep and the Subtle.Physical.
   Yes.
  --
   Theres a new phenomenon during the night. One phenomenon was there before, but has grown more precise: its a place in the Subtle.Physical where those with a body and those without a body are mingled without difference. They have the same reality, the same density and the same conscious, independent existence. There I see Last night (or the night before, I dont know), there were things like that: Chandulal8 was there, Amrita too, they met and talked, made plans together, just as they would have done physically on earth. It wasnt the first time they were meeting, and they said to each other, Ill tell you tomorrow like that, regarding their ideal. Interesting things. Theres another (Mother tries to remember) Ah, yes, Purani9 also. They go about there. Theres an extraordinary likeness to material life, except that you can feel theyre freer in their movement. But thats not new, its just growing more concrete and precise. Whats new is what has taken place these last few nights
   My sleep is no longer sleep at all, I dont know, its a sort of (gesture as if Mother drew her energies within) withdrawal, that is, I go within, and then I am active. And those people are in that same state. Among them, some are with people who still have a body: its not just those who no longer have a body. So then, I am also there, and in the same kind of state. But the strange thing is that when I supposedly wake up and get up, I go on with something (laughing) thats not physical! You understand, the state of over there goes on, and its as real, as tangible as physical things; and after half an hour I realize that I have moved about here and done all kinds of things ENTIRELY in that consciousness!10 Whats that consciousness?

0 1969-07-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Well, I have gone once to that Subtle.Physical.
   Aah!
  --
   Last night (that was the first time), I was in a place (again in this Subtle.Physical), a place as if atop a rather barren mountain, but where people metthere were even kinds of seats. And I was there to see I dont know who (now I forget), but they were wise and well-known people of India. It seemed (in my vision) that I was there permanently and that those people had come to see me. And they came from every side: all of Indias spiritual sects were represented, and everyone came, sat down, and told me (laughing) the virtues of his creed. It was pricelessly funny! It was I spent a good while, but I really had great fun! Some wore big turbans and were dressed in white, very important people who had had special seats brought for them, and they were quite (Mother puffs herself up) they swaggered, they looked down on others from their lofty heights! Some were almost completely naked, some were there were all sorts, and they were all in a big group like this (gesture in a circle). As for me, I was wearing a little white dress, like that, quite plain (the same shape as this one, but in white); I was sitting in a corner, having great fun but I took up very little room! (Mother makes herself small) It was quite comical. Last night.
   A big circle: one group, another group, a third group, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth group and what fuss they made! It had to be seen.

0 1969-07-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   That may be. At any rate, that he is in the Subtle.Physical is certain. He is there all the time.
   But this body knows very well that it isnt endowed with exceptional capacities. It doesnt delude itself. All it has is a faith ardent, constant, intense, oh! A faith nothing can shake. But thats all.

0 1969-07-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yes, but its already like that in the Subtle.Physical.
   Yes-yes, but

0 1969-08-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Infinitely greater. And he didnt leave the work, you understand; he has never left me, never left the work. The amount of supramental force he had accumulated in his body he passed on to meand I received it. The rest went into the Subtle.Physical, where he has done the whole work. And he said, I will take on a body again only when it is a supramental body.
   (silence)

0 1969-09-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Then its in the Subtle.Physical.
   Did she look like someone he knows?

0 1969-10-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Last night I had a very interesting experience. I had a long visionan activitywhich I didnt remember because I didnt pay sufficient attention, but at the end, there was someone (that was certainly symbolic), a tall black man. It probably wasnt a human being, it must have been the symbol of something in my life, or something in the life of the people Ive lived with, or even the symbol of something Ive been fighting against in life. And then, after a lot, quite a lot of goings-on, I had withdrawn into a small place with a few people (those I always see, who are always there), I was there with them when that black man, or that black BEING There was no roof; it was a small place with walls, but without a roof (it was in the Subtle.Physical). So that black being came, ripped off a huge piece of wall (the wall was built with big bricks), a huge piece of wall, and from above (he was above me), he threw it at my stomach. I felt it. And at the same time, I heard a thunderclap was there a thunderclap last night? Just one. Early in the night?
   I dont think so.
   You dont know I saw a flash of lightning outside before going to sleep, so I thought maybe But I am not sure; the thunderclap too may have taken place in the Subtle.Physical. It fell like this (Mother strikes her stomach). I felt it fall (Mother smiles), I smiled and said, He cant! (Mother laughs) And it didnt hurt me in the least! Then he left. And it was as if to teach me I looked, wondering, How could I receive it? Then the answer was so clear: it was to teach my body that it can be attacked but wont feel anything.
   I felt it, but it didnt hurl! And theres no trace. And theres nothing there was enough to crush you! (Mother laughs) And there was nothing. The body was tranquil, tranquil, tranquil. It woke me up, and I wondered if Id been hurt, but there was nothing. And where it fell, I saw it, I felt the shock I felt it, thats what woke me up: a shock and a sort of weight, and a gap in the wall as big as a door. So then, the bodys reaction, but instantaneous (that is, without reflecting or anything), instantaneous, was Oh, Lord, like this (Mother opens her arms upward), smiling. Not at all frightened or Then I took a good look and wondered, Am I hurt anywhere? There was nothing. Because I kept the two together: the state of vision and the physical state at the same time; in the state of vision I wanted to know whether Id been hurt (it hadnt done anything), and in both states the reaction was the same, like this (same gesture, arms open), with a smile. So it shows that the thing is really done.
  --
   But it was interesting. Its the first time such a thing has happened to me; its the first time someone has managed to harm me in the Subtle.Physicalhe didnt harm me, but he pulled off his attack.
   (silence)

0 1970-03-14, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Now I see, I see how his departure and his work so so immense, you know, and constant in this Subtle.Physical, how much, how much it has helped! How much he has (Mother gestures as if kneading Matter) how much he has helped prepare things, change the structure of the physical.
   All the experiences others had had of making contact with the higher worlds, used to leave the physical here as it is. (How should I put it?) From the very beginning of existence up to Sri Aurobindos departure, I lived in the awareness that one may rise, one may know, one may have all experiences (and one did have them), but when one came back into this body it was those for-mid-able old laws of the mind that ruled everything. So then, all these years have been years spent preparing and preparingfreeing oneself and preparing and these last few days, it was ah! the body PHYSICALLY noting that things had changed.

0 1970-04-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Only, he isnt physical, so in the Subtle.Physical thats the way it is; but in the Subtle.Physical there are no bones.
   The transition between this and that is whats difficult.

0 1970-04-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I dont know if its a question, but I dont very well understand the working of the Subtle.Physical, or the relationship between the Subtle.Physical and the material physical. For instance, you say that Sri Aurobindo is in the Subtle.Physical, working to prepare the new world
   Yes.
  --
   I forget how it started, but I was very ill, seriously ill, and my body wasnt asleep, yet wasnt awake (thats a fairly normal state now: Ill be absorbed in a consciousness, which I think is the consciousness of the Subtle.Physical; at least I was there last night). So then, I was very ill, but I knew it wasnt this body (but it was this bodys consciousness), it was a family at the Ashram, and the father was seeking help, looking for a doctor (all the details with such precision!). And while that was going on, the body said to itself, So I am identified with this person, since he is treating this person (me, that is); and since I am identified, I must do in this person what needs to be done. Then I concentrated and called the forces of the Lord, and treated the person. All that down to the last detail. It lasted for two hours. At the same time, I saw people who were extraordinarily interested in the event, looking on; for instance, among them, not to name him, there was Nolini, bent over like that and looking (Mother opens her eyes wide) to try and understand what was going on. Which means it was taking place in a world that had the full appearancefull appearanceof the material world, but in which people were conscious.
   Im not recounting all the details, but my body FELT the battle of the illness. And at the same time it knew it wasnt its own body, you understand? It was like that, a very complex, very precise consciousness, with a great force. And all of it going on at the same time I wasnt asleep.
   This morning I expected to be told that something very serious had taken place in that family (there are three sick people in it, three women), that something had happened to one of them. And nothing has happened! But that was a FACT, I mean it was lived in every detail, with an absolutely clear consciousness, and it was in the Subtle.Physical. But but I tell you, I felt, the body felt very, very ill. Yet at the same time, it knew it was someone elses illness. And it took the attitude, it said, This is taking place so I take the necessary attitude for this person. And all of it fully conscious. It took the attitude and kept it like that for two hours.
   Theres only one possibility: it happened during the night, when those people were asleep, and they didnt realize. You understand, this bodys impression is that it has saved someones life.
  --
   Yes, nothing took place in the physical because you stopped the thing in the Subtle.Physical.
   Quite possible. But its Never, never have I lived so totally in the Subtle.Physical, fully conscious, WITHOUT SLEEPING (I was lying on my bed), and it lasted for two hours. Things were as real, as precise as they are here. And the same will: its not another will, its the same; its the divine Will through the psychic working in this body. So it acts there or here without difference. In other words, whether I am in this Subtle.Physical or in the material physical, its the same will, the same psychic will that acts the SAME, exactly in the same way. Which means that I dont know what the difference is. Theres a difference its thin, you dont feel its something thick or heavy: its thin. That union between the two, between the Subtle.Physical and the material physical, is taking place all the timeday and night and day and night. The work is You might almost say that there is an attempt to substitute one for the other.
   And, you know, the faces, expressions, gestures, movements, wordsas precise, as precise as they are here. It seems to be a response because I asked (it was yesterday, I think, sometime yesterday; in fact when I sit like that, as I was with you the other day, the two worlds are fused [Mother holds the fingers of her right hand between those of her left hand], you cant feel the difference), I asked Sri Aurobindo whether things are as precise and exact; so he told me yes, he answered yes, but said I had to experience it. And I had that experience last night, quite unexpectedly. It was around three in the morning (between two and three).
  --
   More and more, theres a sort of not exactly fusion [between the Subtle.Physical and the material physical], but how should I put it? For everything to hold together, this way of being of the material consciousness continues (the material, physical consciousness), but in it a permeation takes place (it really is a permeation), which doesnt drive away the other, but at length, it will probably transform it. It doesnt drive it [the material consciousness] away, but its there and it dominatesat times it doesnt dominate, its the other one that does; and so, depending on the case it changes external circumstances (its hard to explain).
   It changes external circumstances?
  --
   External. That permeation certainly intends (but this is probably a long way off) to effect a substitution, you understand? This Subtle.Physical is working (Mother gestures as if wearing away a dividing wall) to take the place of the other one, but not through eliminationthrough transformation. But I can see (as I perceive the two at the same time, I can see very clearly) that its a tremendous work.
   And it takes away some of the fixity: our physical is not only fixed, its crumbly, and the Subtle.Physical takes away that crumbly character: wherever it would break, now it bends, you understand? Wherever it would crumble, its fluid, it becomes (Mother makes a fluid gesture). Its very strange. Its hard to explain.
   I asked myself that question, I wondered, But how? How is it going to?1 So, with these experiences, I see. But, of course, its a colossal work.
   The body [Mothers] has certainly been chosen as a field of experiment for some reason, which must be a reason of plasticity of the substance (I dont know). There may be a reason, but in any case its a fact that it has been chosen to make the experiment. Because the experiment is under way: it starts with the more subtle, and you can see that it goes (Mother makes a gesture of progressive descent into Matter). For months and months it has started with the more subtle, and then, VERY slowly and progressively, it has descended into a more material field. Last night, it was really remarkable. One would have been unable to say, This is the Subtle.Physical, and that is the material physical. It was (Mother holds the fingers of her right hand tightly in those of her left hand), it was surprisingly one within the other. You dont get the impression of TWO things, yet its very differentit seems to be a modality rather than a difference (I dont know how to express it), a modality that comes exclusively from the consciousness. Its a phenomenon of consciousness.
   In last nights experience, it was everything at the same time: the body felt, acted, it was conscious, it observed, decidedeverything, just everything at the same time. There even was I dont know, I didnt have a vision of Sri Aurobindo, but I had the sensation of his presence (that often happens: at times Ill see him and he wont speak; at other times I wont see him but Ill hear him, hell speak to me the laws are no longer the same), and he made me notice, or rather I noted that although the body was suffering a lot (the situation was critical, you know), there wasnt the shadow of a fear in the body. Then he told me, Yes, its because it is able not to be afraid that you can do the work.
  --
   But on the level of the earth, how do things take place? For instance, you say that Sri Aurobindo, yourself and a number of us are working in this Subtle.Physical to prepare the new world: how is the permeation of this Subtle.Physical made?
   But in that way.
  --
   Yes, oh, I get letters from people who have astounding experiences, quite out of proportion with their degree of intelligence or developmentastounding experiences. They themselves are astounded. Experiences very different from one another, but I know them all. I know them to be experiences of the Subtle.Physical. People whom I know or not write to me (they come here, or they have read your book, or they have heard of Sri Aurobindo or), and they describe it as I might describe it myself, that is to say, with the full knowledge. And they know nothing! Its quite astounding, oh!
   Yes. And then, when you are in that Subtle.Physical consciousness, the laws changeyou can change the material law if you are in that consciousness.
   Yes, it doesnt at all work in the same way.

0 1970-04-22, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   How can one make conscious contact with this Subtle.Physical?
   That, mon petit, I have no idea, because I never did it deliberately! (Mother laughs) It came on its own.
  --
   For instance, there is a region (I went there exclusively for a time, a few months I dont remember, maybe a little more, maybe a year), a region where there are many scenes from Nature, like fields, gardens but all behind nets! There is a net of one color, another color And it has a meaning. Absolutely everything is behind a net, you are as if you moved about with nets. But its not a single net, it depends: for its form and color the net depends on whats behind. And it is the means of communication. You understand, its lucky I dont speak because theyd say I have taken leave of my senses! And I see that with my eyes open, during the day, can you imagine! So Ill see my room, for example Ill be here, seeing people and at the same time Ill see one landscape or another, and it all changes and moves about with a net between me and the landscapes, like that. The net seems to be (how can I explain?) what separates this Subtle.Physical from the ordinary physical. But what does this net represent? I dont know You see, there is no mentalization, there are no explanations, theres no thought, no reasoning, all that is clearly done away with. So, in fact, I see
   The sensation isnt the same either. Our way of feeling on the physical level isnt there, it doesnt work that way. Its more like a sense of proximity or non-communication, or indifference; but things belonging to the indifferent world do not show themselves when the dual vision is there.
  --
   Nights are very peculiar. And precisely because all that isnt mentalized, its hardly possible to describe or explain. But this Subtle.Physical very concretely has the sense or feeling or perception (I dont know) of the divine Presence the divine Presence in all things, everywhere. So then, this body is one might say, partly this way and partly that way (gesture of oscillation between two worlds). That was one thing I asked this morning: how (the body asked itself), why, how, how is it that, having this divine perception almost constantly (because, as I told you, that consciousness is in the process of being established), how is it that the body feels this anguish?It lives in a sort of constant anguish. So whats that anguish? And there are no explanations or But just when it asked that, there was something like Sri Aurobindos manner, so full of humor, as if it were he (but not visible), telling me, Look carefully: in this anguish, there is Bliss. And this morning, I was sitting on my bed about to get up, and there was this kind of I cant call it suffering, but it would be more like a discomfort, I dont know, as if at the thought of the whole day ahead (but thought, its not a thought: its as if the day were weighing down), and while I was feeling that discomfort (I had to make an effort to get up and resume activity), at the same time, there was something laughing deep down, all the way down, and saying, But! And it was in bliss. But then, the body has been (that was part of its formation) very careful to maintain commonsensenot to go off its rocker. You feel you are just on the borderline, you know: one very small movement like that, and (gesture of dissolution).
   The body was used to commonsense, practical sense and that, prrrt! seems to be crumbling away So there is a sort of What saves the situation is that I say to myself (I SEEI dont know how to explain I see its peoples reaction: in front of this, people quite naturally feel youre taking leave of your senses), so I say to myself, What do I care! What do I care what they think of mewhoever it may be, I couldnt care less. The body couldnt care less (its been a long time since the rest stopped caring, but the body). Then I see in my memory certain expressions of Sri Aurobindos, certain smiles in front of perfectly reasonable attitudes and the ridiculousness of those reasonable attitudes becomes patent. I live in that all the time.

0 1970-05-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So then, yesterday I wrote (I forget the words), But when You want to transform the IMAGE into Your likeness, what happens?1 Something like that. And I got the answer last night! Two activities of the Subtle.Physical.
   Oh, Ill tell the first (laughing): I killed someone point-blank!
  --
   Thats the thing, you understand, thats the thing, and the body is capable. Yesterday when I read that aphorism, I said to Sri Aurobindo, But you said that the body, too, would change; here [in the aphorism] its the image that one sheds when one goes back towards the Truth, but you said the true Truth is that things would change HERE.I challenged [him], yes! And I had that answer. Two what we might call two dreams, but I dont dream anymore. Those were two activities of the Subtle.Physical (laughing), extraordinary!
   But whom did you kill?

0 1970-05-13, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yes, I would have a few things. There are two things. First, on the mental or vital planes, there are means of correspondence: you have a mental or a vital body, and you can develop those bodies. But this Subtle.Physical, how do you develop it, how do you consciously make contact with it?
   (after a long silence)
  --
   In fact, I rather FOLLOWED Sri Aurobindo there, because before he left his body, I dont remember having had much contact with this Subtle.Physical I may have had some, but it didnt strike me. But it was since he started being there and I met him daily
   But we have a body corresponding to that world, dont we? I mean we, for instance, we human beings, do we have a body corresponding to that world?
   Some have a body in the Subtle.Physical, oh yes! Oh, yes.
   But not everyone?
   For some its fluid, that is, uncertain, but some do have a body. I think people develop their Subtle.Physical in the course of life.
   Yes, and Id like to know how it can be done, in fact.
  --
   I feel that a work is taking place there, below (Mother touches her body), and a work is taking place in this way (gesture a little higher with the right hand, and below with the left hand, both hands parallel with a space between them), and then between the two, its its not yet. So then, whats going to happen between the two? This (the right hand, above) is the Subtle.Physical, and this (the left hand, below) is the material physical, and then, between the two, there is a confusion or something thats not ready or
   (long silence)

0 1970-05-27, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Is it in the Subtle.Physical, that place where the living and the dead are together?
   Yes.
   But are things to go in the direction of a materialisation of the Subtle.Physical?
   No. That cant be materialized, it would be impossible! I think its a means of action, that is to say, it responds more clearly and strongly to the will. It seems more receptive. Its more supple, more expressive too. But materialized, it would appear like pure chaos.
  --
   Maybe, yes. Whats trying to take place is a stronger and more direct influence on purely material circumstances. Yes, this is it: action on this Subtle.Physical has an effect according to the laws of the material world in the material world.
   You see, amidst many other things (it lasted a long time and was a very complex thing), but as one example amidst other things, it had to do with the consequences, even current ones, of certain things Amrita did when he was here and handled money. But I spoke to him and arranged things with him as if he were present, not as if he had left.
  --
   I was wondering about something. The other day, I asked you how to gain access to this Subtle.Physical. But from what youve now said, do we gain access to this world through work activities, as it were? Is it a world for work, as it were?1
   THIS ONE, yes. Id have to see several different things to make a rule, and I dont know. Last night, thats how it was, thats all I can say.

0 1971-09-14, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   He meets people, talks, but hes here, he hasnt left the earths atmosphere. Amrita left to rest; Pavitra is here, in the Subtle.Physical thats where Sri Aurobindo is and its a physical that has a strong tendency to materialize.
   Well see.

0 1972-03-25, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But this form is in the Subtle.Physical, isnt it?
   It must be already like that in the Subtle.Physical.
   But how will it pass into the physical?
  --
   That must be how it is in the Subtle.Physical.
   But whats mysterious is the transition from one to the other.

03.02 - The Gradations of Consciousness The Gradation of Planes, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a Subtle.Physical as well as the gross physical and material plane.
  The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general

05.03 - Bypaths of Souls Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The soul in Nature grows along a definite line and the descent also of higher principles overarching that soul happens also in the same line connecting it with its archetype in the supreme status. This we may call the major line of development through various avataras one after another: but apart from this there may also be subsidiary formations that are its emanations or are added to it from elsewhere either temporarily or even permanently. The soul can put out derivative or ancillary emanations, parts of its being and consciousness, a mental or vital or even a Subtle.Physical movement or formation which can take a body creating a temporary, a transient personality or enter into another's body and another personality in order to go through a necessary experience and gather an element needed for the growth of its being and consciousness. One can recall here the famous story of Shankaracharya Who entered into the body of a king (just dead, made him alive and lead the life of the king) in order to experience love and enjoyment, things of which, being a Sannyasi, he was innocent. Similarly one can take into one-self such parts and elements from others which he wishes to utilise for his growth and evolution. It is said that a man with low carnal instincts and impulses becomes an animal of that type in his next life. But perhaps it is truer to say that a part only the vital part of animal appetiteenters into or takes shape in an animal: the soul itself, the true or the whole being of the person, once become human, does not revert to animalhood. The animal portion in man that refuses to be taken up and integrated, sublimated into the higher human consciousness has to be satisfied and exhausted, as much as possible, in the animal way.
   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.

05.04 - The Immortal Person, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In the process of making the body personal and divine and immortal, death or what appears as such may be a needed operation. It is no longer an ineluctable destiny forced upon you, but an instrument which you use consciously for a definite purpose. It is a mystic or occult work (kriy:) which we can try to understand by an analogy. The evolution of the ideal or divine man, the assumption of the mortal by the immortal involves a twofold operation: rejection and integration. Rejection means throwing out the elements that belong exclusively to the lower grade and cannot be taken up and incorporated into the higher; while integration means taking up and absorbing utilisable elements of the lower into the higher. This double process goes on on all the levels, on the mental, on the vital, on the Subtle.Physical and even on the physical level. At a certain stage or in a concentrated process of alchemy the process of rejection may demand a mode of reshuffling and redisposition which physically appears like death, but it is inevitably followed or accompanied by the process of integration or recreation.
   Perhaps this supreme and dangerous gesture only the Master can makeas the pioneer and pathfinder and he has made it.

05.09 - Varieties of Religious Experience, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   But if occultism is to be feared because of its wrong use and potential danger, spirituality too should then be placed on the same footing. All good things in the world have their deformation and danger, but that is no reason why one should avoid them altogether. What is required is right attitude and discrimination, training and discipline. Viewed in the true light, occultism is dynamic spirituality; in other words, it seeks to express and execute, bring down to the material life the powers and principles of the Spirit through the agency of the subtler forces of mind and life and the Subtle.Physical.
   Occultism is naturally shunned by those who worship, who seek to experience the transcendent Spirit, God in Heaven, but it is an indispensable instrument for those who endeavour to manifest the Divine in a concrete form.

05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   When a man dies, his soul or psychic being, after a time goes to the psychic world and takes rest there till the hour comes to take birth again in another body upon earth. There are then these two periods in the life after death. First, the passage and next the rest. The passage means the gradual shedding of all the other sheaths or envelopes that surround the psychic being and form its earthly frame. With the physical body has to go also the subtle body, then the vital and finally the mental too. The reason why one does not remember the past lives is this that one leaves behind the instrument of memory the brain mindwith one's death. One does not carryover with the psychic being the other parts that constitute the terrestrial life. They are dispersed and dissolved in their respective cosmic spheres. The subtle body gives up its elements to the Subtle.Physical plane, the vital elements are taken up into the vital world and the mental elements go into the mental world,unless the psychic being is highly developed and has organised around itself as its instrument of self-expression any of these elements. In that case, as much of the terrestrial partsnamely, of the subtle body and life and mindas have come into direct contact with the psychic and have allowed themselves to be moved and moulded by its consciousness, will alone persist and share in the immortality of the soul. Normally, the elements of the human vehicle form a loose and unorganised aggregate massed round the psychic centre. When the centre withdraws, they too fall off automatically and are scattered into the universal storehouse of Nature. Only when they have been organised and when they have attained a definite form and character expressing something of the psychic nature, can they maintain their identity, for this identity is part and parcel of the psychic identity.
   I have said that the memory of past lives is effaced because of the effacement of the instrument. But there is a higher memory which is the attribute of the psychic consciousness. The psychic being is made of light and knowledge: it knows, rather it sees and can survey the whole curve of its past growth and development. Of course, it may not see or remembervery often it does notall the physical details of things and happenings of an earthly life, the hundred incidents, accidents and contingencies that are not directly linked to its consciousness. But all things that have had its touch and have contri buted to its growth and development and have in their turn received its influenceobjects, persons, happenings or movementsfind themselves harboured in the psychic memory. And thus the only sure way of remembering the past, remembering, that is to say, what is worth remembering, is to go into the psychic being, possess the psychic consciousness. There one has the whole panorama of the soul's odyssey revealed. Any other way leads only to imagination, conjecture and delusion.
  --
   The psychic being is a packet of gathered power, a charged battery, as it were; when it comes down upon earth, it calls round itself elements of mind and vital and even Subtle.Physical needed for the purpose of the particular life experience, and even those that would go to constitute the physical body. The psychic being usually picks up these elements of mind and life and body out of the universal store-house of earth's atmosphere as it needs them, in the same way as it returns them there on the journey back after death. But as I have already said, there are beings who have developed well-formed personalities of mind and life and even of the physical consciousness. These formations are not mere loose accretions, temporary arrangements for a life experience, but are welded, organised, given a more or less permanent shape, as the proper instrument of the psychic being, as its own expression. In such cases, the outer personality too continues to exist as an essential mode or vibration in and with the psychic consciousness itself and when the soul descends upon earth, is in contact with the earth's atmosphere, it projects out of I itself the external personality and formation. This does not I mean certainly that the personality remains something fixed and rigid, but that it has attained an essential fullness of form and yet retains the capacity for further change and growth through further growth of the psychic being in other life experiences.
   Now the time and occasion for a particular birth of the soul depends naturally on the inner need of that being. But it must be notedas it is a fact in the occult world that the souls are not so many absolutely separate unrelated autonomous self-sufficient entities, each one coming and going as and when it chooses and likes: on the contrary, the souls form groups or families according to some secret affinity. And when they come down, they do so not unoften in company. A call goes, a bell is rung as it were intimating that the hour is come and they rush down. And it may even happen that in rushing down a psychic being is not too careful or fastidious about the instrument, the vehicle he chooses to inhabit; whatever is handy and nearest and on the whole suitable to his purpose he takes up and goes forward. He takes it all as an adventure and has the joy of battle and the warrior spirit that can taste of victory only when hard fought and won. That is how we meet not unoften a considerable discrepancy between the inner being of a man and his earthly tenement, his soul and his external character and physical nature. There is a meaning in the choice, a significance in the utilisation of unfavourable conditions: there is a method in the madness.
  --
   First then there are the supreme divinities, aspects or own personalities of the Divine in his supreme status, the Super-mind; next come the first emanations, the true or pure gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads, the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations down to the Subtle.Physical; except when they themselves incarnate on the earth in an earthly body.
   Man, the soul, we said, comes direct from the Divine and is thrown and almost stuck into the earth as a spark, as a point of luminous consciousness-force. This soul, as it develops, we find, belongs to one or other of the fundamental type of divine personality, it is a lineal descendant, as it were, of one of the quaternary and its growth means growing into the nature of that particular godhead and its fulfilment means identification with that.

05.31 - Divine Intervention, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   But we have arrived today at a stage when this old-world view has perforce to be discarded. We can no longer take Laplace seriously: for scientists themselves have established as a fact in physical Nature the indeterminacy of her movements, the impossibility of foretelling a laLaplace, not because of any deficiency in the human instrument but because of the very nature of things. Science is of course at a loss to explain the why or even the how of this indeterminacy. We say, however, that it is nothing but the intrusion of another, a different kind of force in the field of the forces actually at play. That force comes from a higher, a subtler level. Things and forces move in their ordinary round, according to the normal laws, bound ,within their present frame: but always there drops in from elsewhere an unknown element, a force or energy or impulse of another quality, which causes a shift of emphasis in the actual, brings about a change unaccountable and unforeseen. This is what is called miracle: the imposition of a higher law, a generic law governing subtler forms and forces upon an inferior and grosser sphere. And the higher or subtler the plane from which the new force descends the plane can be anything between the one nearest to the material, the Subtle.Physical or ethereal, and the one nearest to the other extreme, the spiritual the greater will be the change in nature, quality and extent in the lower order. Such miracles, interventions, providential happenings are not rare. They are always occurring, only they do not attract attention. For it is these phenomena that are the real causes of all progresscosmic as well as individual. Evolution is based upon this truth of Nature.
   Man is not bound to the present pattern or complex of his nature and character: he is not irrevocably fixed to the framea Procrustean bedgiven by the parallelogram of actual forces in or around him. Always he can call down forces or forces can descend into him from otherwhere and bring about a change, even a revolution in the mode and make-up of his character and nature and life. What we call "opening" in our. Sadhana refers to this factor in our consciousness. It means the possibility of the descent of a higher force in our normal nature. Nature is not such a solid stream-lined structure as not to admit of any interstices in it. We know of the comparatively vast spaces that separate atom from atom, the immense emptiness across which even the ultimate nuclear particles have to act upon each other. These are the loop-holes in the great net and it is precisely through them that other forces percolate.

06.12 - The Expanding Body-Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   All this means that the physical body is not man's sole means of action in the physical world. The physical extends and expands into more and more subtle modes of activity and all the more, not less, effective for that very reason. Behind the physical lies the Subtle.Physical, behind which again is the vital physical and then the various grades of the vital. Indeed the vital or life energy as a whole is the real dynamism of all our physical activities and if it usually acts through its bodily instruments, it can act independently of them too; normally, too, it often acts in this way, only we are not conscious or observant enough to notice. A conscious concentration of the vital energy directed upon a material object can handle it with the effectivity of material energy. When it needs physical conditions it creates them, as the protective vital energy of the young man created the physical disposition of objects that formed a covert for the girl.
   In the present case, the phenomenon happened automatically without any premeditation on the part of the persons concerned; because the sympathy between the two was so strong, other considerations did not weigh in the balance against it. Needless to say, if one wishes to obtain conscious mastery of this occult power, one will have to go through a long and arduous discipline. But, if difficult, the thing is not impossible. In the matter of physical feats, for example, a particular development may seem for the moment beyond your reach; but with practice and perseverance, stubborn will and wise guidance, you can not only arrive at your immediate end but do much more. The story of many who have broken Olympic records is revealing in this respect. In the same way, one can master the subtle forces, if one goes about the thing earnestly and in the right way. It is more difficultmuch more perhaps but the way is there provided the will is there.

07.20 - Why are Dreams Forgotten?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   It is because dreams do not occur always in the same domain. It is not always the same part of the being that dreams nor is it the same place where one dreams. If one were in conscious communication with all the parts of one's being then one would remember all his dreams. But it is only with a few parts of your being that you remain in conscious contact in sleep. For example, you have a dream in the Subtle.Physical, that is to say, in the domain very near the physical. This generally happens towards the end of the night, in the early hours of the morning just before you get up (say between four and five). Before rising from bed, if you remain very quiet, without making any movement and concentrate a little, you will be able to remember the dreams that you had immediately before: the communication between the physical and the Subtle.Physical being close, you would be able to re-member easily enough. Now if you begin from the beginning what happens is something like this. As you fall into sleep, the body becomes quiet and the vital too goes to rest; but the mind continues to be active, it has not gone to sleep. You have now what are called mental dreams built out of all kinds of ideas and imaginations set free. After a time the mind gets tired and falls silent; the vital has rested sufficiently and wakes up in its turn and moves about. Your dreams of the mental domain are pushed back giving place to vital dreams. When you are active in the vital you very often go out of your body, visit all kinds of places and get involved in various exploits and adventures. If you wake up suddenly then, you would remember your vital exploits in sleep. Some people train themselves to get up at fixed hour of the night. They thus bring to memory the dreams they had just before waking. Now the vital too after having been sufficiently active gets tired and goes to rest. Yet another part of the being now re-places the vital and comes forward. It may be the turn of the Subtle.Physical to enter the arena. The vital is pushed back and you lose contact with it.
   To become conscious of all the various movements of your nights, to recover them in your memory, some sort of training is necessary. The different states of the being in which you roam at night are, as you have seen, usually separate from each other. There is a gap in between two states; you jump from one to the other. There is no highway passing through all the domains of your consciousness connecting them without break or interruption. That means forgetfulness. When you leap from one into the other, you push back, that is forget, the one you leave behind. So you have to construct a bridge and very few people know how to do it; it requires more engineering skill than to build a material bridge. You may have very wonderful experiences in sleep, but you forget them all; perhaps you remember, as I have said, the last one, the one nearest to the physical mind. The best way then to remember and become conscious of the whole night is to begin at the end and go backward. Catch hold of the last image that still persists in your memory, like the loose end of a thread and then pull, pull slowly, till image after image comes back: it is something like the unrolling of a cinema film in the reverse direction. When you lose trace, stop and concentrate a little; try to call back whatever stray bit or faint impression still persists or can be more easily revived and then again pull slowly, gently, pick up whatever shows itself, try to join the bits. In this way, after some trial and training you will be able to recover a good part of the lost underworld.

08.13 - Thought and Imagination, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   If you want to know of the vital you must go to the object vitally; it means an exteriorisation that leaves the body at least three-fourths in trance. And if you want to see things physically you will have to go out in your most material Subtle.Physical; that leaves the body in an entirely cataleptic condition. These things cannot be done without there being someone by your side who has the right knowledge and who can protect you.
   But the mental exteriorisation happens constantly. It puts you in relation with the mental world. If you are very conscious and the person you see in thought is also very conscious, then you can know of the ideas and opinions which the person might form at that time, but even then only indirectly, you do not know directly.

09.18 - The Mother on Herself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   When I began to practise occultism, as I started working with my nights, making them conscious, I found that between the Subtle.Physical level and the most material vital there was a small region, very small indeed, that was not developed well enough to serve as a conscious link between the two. So what happened in the most material vital was not being accurately translated into the consciousness of the most Subtle.Physical. Something was lost in the passage which was however not quite empty but only half-conscious, not adequately developed. I knew there was only one way, namely to go on working for the development. I started working sometime in February, I suppose. One month, two months, three, four months passed with no result. I continued. Five months, six months. Then in July or August I left my home in Paris for the country-side. I came to a very small place near the seaside and stayed with friends. There was a garden there. And in the garden a fine green turf and flowers and trees all round. It was a pretty little quiet place. It was very quiet, very silent. One day I lay myself down on the grass, flat on the face resting on my elbows (among the grass). Suddenly the whole life of this nature, the whole life of the intermediate region I am speaking of, which is most living in the plant and in physical nature, all this domain became all on a sudden, unexpectedly, without any transition, absolutely living, intense, conscious, wonderful. This was the result of the continuous activity of six months that had not given any result till then. I did not know it; just a little favourable condition and the result is there. It is like the chick in the egg. It has been there for a long time but you do not see it. You ask doubtfully if there is any chick at all inside the egg. And then suddenly a crack, a small hole the egg bursts and the chick comes out, quite formed and whole and entire. It took all this time to form itself. So it is like this. When you wish to pre pare something within you it is like the preparation of the chick inside the shell. It takes a long time and there is not the least result. But you must not be disheartened. You must continue your effort, as before, regularly as if the whole of eternity were before you, thoroughly disinterested in the result. One day the result bursts upon you, the whole result of all your work.
   II

10.14 - Night and Day, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Your sleep-world is full of many worlds, rising tier upon tier like hills in a mountain range. Quite at the bottom is an almost physical, a Subtle.Physical world and at the top is the world of the spiritual or psychic being or consciousness. You range through all of them in some way or other but you remember only partially and in snippets and you do not know which is which. It is by focussing your attention upon them and trying to distinguish the different modes of each in regard to your feeling and perception that you gradually begin to unravel them, untie the knots and spread out the threads separately.
   ***

1.03 - Eternal Presence, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Sri Aurobindo, immense and very concrete (in the Subtle.Physical), was sitting over the whole compound during the meditation.
  28 August 1962
  --
  Last night, we (you and I and some others) were together for quite a long time in the permanent dwelling-place of Sri Aurobindo which exists in the Subtle.Physical (what Sri Aurobindo called the true physical).
  1 February 1963
  --
  Sri Aurobindo is in the Subtle.Physical, you can meet him when you sleep, if you know how to go there.
  13 August 1964
  --
  (During sleep a sadhak had a vision of Sri Aurobindo in his Subtle.Physical body living in the Subtle.Physical world. He sent a report of his vision to Mother, who replied:)
  Sri Aurobindo shows himself according to the need of each one and in the Subtle.Physical the things are not as fixed as they are here.
  Attach more importance to the feeling produced by the vision than to details of what you have seen.
  --
  Sri Aurobindo is constantly in the Subtle.Physical, very active there. I see him almost daily, and last night I spent many hours with him.
  If you become conscious in the Subtle.Physical you will surely meet him, it is what he called the true physicalit has nothing to do with the psychic.
  21 December 1969

1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  was neither material, Subtle.Physical, vital or mental: eve-
  rything consisted of a supramental substance ...

1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  I have mentioned that Sri Aurobindo used to keep his upper body always bare. In this, as in many other habits, he was very much an Indian, though he was brought up in English ways. For instance, he was not accustomed to use slippers in the room. He always went about barefoot. When a pair of slippers was offered to him, he said, "I don't use them. Let them be given to Nolini who likes shoes." During severe cold weather we have seen him use only a chaddar. But it intrigued me very much to see that he kept his feet always exposed, projecting out of the wrap. It seems odd, for our feet feel the cold more than other parts. Did it imply that at all moments, even at night, the feet of the Divine must be available as the haven of refuge to the needy and the devoted? It may not be too fantastic to suppose that many beings came in their subtle bodies to offer their pranams at his feet. My hypothesis is not altogether a fiction, for we have now learnt from the Mother that Sri Aurobindo has built a home in the Subtle.Physical plane and many of us visit him at night in our subtle bodies. She has also told us that we visit her or she visits us during our sleep. In the morning she has often asked, "Do you know anything about it?" Well, as all this is true, surely beings could also come in their subtle forms to do pranam to Sri Aurobindo. "But why bare feet?" one may ask. "That is the Indian custom", would be my, answer.
  "Did he sleep at night?" was the question very often asked. To all appearance he did sleep and quite sufficiently. The Mother and he always insist on observing normal rules of health. We must eat well and sleep well, So, if there was a physical need for food, there could be a need for sleep as with us, but with a difference. For our sleep is a heavy plunge into inconscience where we forget everything, whereas a Yogi sleeps awake. There is also a state in which the physical body is apparently asleep, while the subtle body goes out visiting various persons in their sleep. The Mother has said that she does most of the subtle work in this way at night. Sri Aurobindo wrote to me, "In former days when she was spending the night in a trance and out working in the Ashram, she brought back with her the knowledge of all that was happening to everybody... I often know from her what has happened before it is reported by anyone."

1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  The Yogi goes still further, 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 a refusal to these thought waves (as also vital waves, Subtle.Physical energy waves) or this giving a personalmental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force. 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;

1.06 - Psychic Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  "The veiled psychic 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 the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic... It is the individual soul, caitya purusa, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the Subtle.Physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience... It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature... If the secret psychic person can come forward into the front... the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence."2
  ~ The Mother On Education

1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   and almost fantastically subrational, but of an immense potency for the earth-life. Again behind our mind, our life, our conscious physical there is a larger subliminal consciousness, - there are inner mental, inner vital, inner more Subtle.Physical reaches supported by an inmost psychic existence which is the animating soul of all the rest; and in these hidden reaches too lie a mass of numerous pre-existent personalities which supply the material, the motive-forces, the impulsions of our developing surface existence. For in each one of us here there may be one central person, but also a multitude of subordinate personalities created by the past history of its manifestation or by expressions of it on these inner planes which support its present play in this external material cosmos. And while on our surface we are cut off from all around us except through an exterior mind and sense contact which delivers but little of us to our world or of our world to us, in these inner reaches the barrier between us and the rest of existence is thin and easily broken; there we can feel at once
  - not merely infer from their results, but feel directly - the action of the secret world-forces, mind-forces, life-forces, Subtle.Physical forces that constitute universal and individual existence; we shall even be able, if we will but train ourselves to it, to lay our hands on these world-forces that throw themselves on us or surround us and more and more to control or at least strongly modify their action on us and others, their formations, their very movements. Yet again, above our human mind are still greater reaches superconscient to it and from there secretly descend influences, powers, touches which are the original determinants of things here and, if they were called down in their fullness, could altogether alter the whole make and economy of life in the material universe. It is all this latent experience and knowledge that the Divine Force working upon us by our opening to it in the integral Yoga, progressively reveals to us, uses and works out the consequences as means and steps towards a transformation of our whole being and nature. Our life is thenceforth no longer a little rolling wave on the surface, but interpenetrant if not coincident with the cosmic life. Our spirit, our self rises not only into an inner identity with some wide cosmic Self but into
  The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2

1.08 - Independence from the Physical, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  There are all kinds of "elsewheres," as many as there are planes of consciousness, and we can go out at one point or another, depending upon where we have focused our consciousness (the universal Mind and universal Vital have already been mentioned), but the most immediate elsewhere, the one that borders on our physical world and resembles it except for a greater intensity, is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Subtle.Physical. This knowledge is as ancient as the world and not unique to Sri Aurobindo's yoga, but it is part of our integral development, preparing us for the day when we leave our body for a longer period in what men ignorantly call "death." To make it clearer,
  let us listen to a young disciple describe his experience in the Subtle.Physical, when he left his body for the first time: "I was stretched out on my couch, concentrated, when I suddenly found myself at my friend's house; he was playing music with several others. I could see everything quite clearly, even more clearly than in the physical world,
  and I moved very quickly, without obstacle. I stayed there for quite a while, watching; I even tried to draw their attention, but they were not conscious. Then, suddenly, something pulled me, an instinct: 'Now I

1.09 - Sleep and Death, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  These sundry I's express a fraction of reality, the reality seen by the naked eye, but immense realms stretch beyond them. We have already mentioned a universal Mind, a universal Vital, and a Subtle.Physical behind this physical shell; now we must try to recover our entire universal reality. There are three methods or stages for achieving this.
  The first, available to everyone, is sleep. The second, less common,
  --
  Thus, there is an infinite gradation of coextensive, simultaneous realities, upon which sleep opens a natural window. Indeed, if we set aside the superficial life-death-sleep classification in favor of a more essential classification of the universe, we see that, from top to bottom (if there is such a thing as top and bottom), this universe is but a continuum of consciousness-force or, as Sri Aurobindo puts it, a gradation of planes of consciousness ranging without break from pure Matter to pure Spirit Subtle.Physical, Vital, Mind, Supermind (we may use another terminology, if we like, but the fact remains) and everything occurs on these planes: everything coexists there, without any separation. Life, death, and sleep are simply different positions of consciousness within this one gradation. When we are awake, we receive mental or vital vibrations, which are translated in us by certain symbols, certain ways of seeing, understanding, or living. When we are asleep, or "dead," we receive the same mental, vital or other vibrations, which are translated in us by other symbols, other ways of seeing, understanding, or living the same reality. In each case, the key to our existence, here or elsewhere, is always our capacity of consciousness; if we lack consciousness in life, we will lack
  consciousness in every other way: death will really be death, and sleep really a stupor. To become aware of these different planes of reality is therefore our fundamental work. Once we have done this work integrally, the artificial boundaries that separate our different modes of existence will crumble; we will move without break, without any gap of consciousness, from life to sleep to death. More precisely, death and sleep will cease to exist as we understand them, to be replaced by different manners of continuously perceiving the total Reality, and perhaps ultimately by an integral consciousness that will perceive everything simultaneously. Our evolution is far from over. Death is not a denial of Life but a process of Life.96
  --
  As mentioned earlier, we are made up of several centers of consciousness, ranging from above the head to the bottom. Each of these centers is somewhat like a radio receiver tuned in to particular wavelengths, and is linked with different planes of consciousness from which we constantly receive, most often unknowingly, all sorts of vibrations Subtle.Physical, vital or mental, higher or lower that account for our way of thinking, feeling and living, with our individual consciousness acting as a filter and picking up certain 96
  The Life Divine, 18:193
  --
  But how to remember one's sleep? For most people it is a total blank a link is missing. There are in fact many links, or bridges, as the Mother puts it, as if we were made of a series of countries connected to one another by bridges. Thus, we may easily remember some parts of our being and their travels, while others are forgotten for lack of a bridge to the rest of our consciousness. When crossing this void, or untrained part of the consciousness, we forget (which generally happens to those who fall into "ecstasy," a subject we will return to). Usually, a sufficiently developed person travels through the whole range of planes of consciousness in his or her sleep and goes right to the supreme Light of the Spirit Sat-Chit-Ananda most often unconsciously, but those few minutes are the true sleep, true repose in the absolute relaxation of Joy and Light. Sri Aurobindo used to say that the real purpose of sleep is to return spontaneously to the Source and reimmerse oneself in it. From there we come down slowly through each plane the Mind, Vital, Subtle.Physical, and Subconscient (the last one is remembered the most easily) where each part of our being has its own corresponding experiences. There are also many zones within each plane, each with its own particular bridge. The major difficulty is in building the first bridge, the connection with the external waking consciousness. The one and only way to do this is to remain perfectly motionless and silent upon awakening. If we turn over or move, everything vanishes or, rather,
  the great lake of sleep is instantly covered with little ripples, which keep us from seeing anything. If we begin to think, then the ripples turn into swirls of mud that totally obscure everything; thought has no place in this process, neither can the mind help us to remember.
  --
  from the muddy shades of the subconscient (gray, brown, black); the vibrant hues of the Subtle.Physical; the bright colors of the Vital,
  which, we should note, always look somewhat artificial, flashy, and a bit hard (this region is particularly deceptive); to the lights of the Mind, which become increasingly powerful and pure as one rises toward the Origin. From the Overmind and above (we will discuss the Overmind later), a radical change occurs in the nature of the vision:
  --
  Let us conclude these brief generalities, which are at best trail markers for the seeker, with a final observation concerning premonitions. We should again emphasize that having a premonition about something is the sign that this "something" already exists on some plane before taking place here; it does not hang in midair. We are extremely scrupulous and precise regarding physical reality, yet we treat the happenings of nonphysical worlds as if they were incoherent or vague, perhaps because the vagueness is in our own mind. We find through experience, however, that everything is perfectly rational, if not always reasonable: not only does the luminosity intensify as we ascend the scale of consciousness, but time accelerates, covering a wider range of space, as it were, or more distant events (both in the future and in the past), and ultimately we emerge into that motionless Light where everything is. As a consequence, we realize that the fulfillment on earth of our premonitory vision takes place sooner or later in time, depending on the plane of consciousness where the vision has occurred. For example, when we see in the Subtle.Physical, which borders our world, the earthly transcription is almost immediate, a few hours or a day away; we see an accident, and the next day, it takes place.
  Moreover, the vision is very precise, down to the slightest detail. The higher we rise on the scale of consciousness, the later the fulfillment of the vision and the more universal its scope; the details of realization are less precise, as if the happening itself were unavoidable (provided our vision is sufficiently free of egoism), with a margin of uncertainty 102

1.1.1.01 - Three Elements of Poetic Creation, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the Subtle.Physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind widenesses. To get the Overmind inspiration is so rare that there are only a few lines or short passages in all poetic literature that give at least some appearance or reflection of it. When the source of inspiration is in the heart or the psychic there is more easily a good will in the vital channel, the flow is spontaneous; the inspiration takes at once its true form and speech and is transmitted without any interference or only a minimum of interference by the brain-mind, that great spoiler of the higher or deeper splendours. It is the character of the lyrical inspiration, to flow in a jet out of the beingwhe ther it comes from the vital or the psychic, it is usually spontaneous, for these are the two most powerfully impelling and compelling parts of the nature. When on the contrary the source of inspiration is in the creative poetic intelligence or even the higher mind or the illumined mind, the poetry which comes from this quarter is always apt to be arrested by the outer intellect, our habitual thought-production engine. This intellect is an absurdly overactive part of the nature; it always thinks that nothing can be well done unless it puts its finger into the pie and therefore it instinctively interferes with the inspiration, blocks half or more than half of it and labours to substitute its own inferior and toilsome productions for the true speech and rhythm that ought to have come. The poet labours in anguish to get the one true word, the au thentic rhythm, the real divine substance of what he has to say, while all the time it is waiting complete and ready behind; but it is denied free transmission by some part of the transmitting agency which prefers to translate and is not willing merely to receive and transcribe. When one gets something through from the illumined mind, then there is likely to come to birth work that is really fine and great. When there comes with labour or without it something reasonably like what the poetic intelligence wanted to say, then there is something fine or adequate, though it may not be great unless there is an intervention from the higher levels. But when the outer brain is at work trying to fashion out of itself or to give its own version of what the higher sources are trying to pour down, then there results a manufacture or something quite inadequate or faulty or, at the best, good on the whole, but not the thing that ought to have come.
  2 June 1931

1.1.2.02 - Poetry of the Material or Physical Consciousness, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  You cant drive a sharp line between the Subtle.Physical and the physical like that in these matters. If a poet writes from the outward physical only his work is likely to be more photographic than poetic.
  1937

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Constantly and unknowingly, we receive influences and inspirations from these higher, superconscious regions, which express themselves inside us as ideas, ideals, aspirations, or works of art; they secretly mold our life, our future. Similarly, we constantly and unknowingly receive vital and Subtle.Physical vibrations, which determine our emotional life and relationship with the world every moment of the day. We are enclosed in an individual, personal body only through a stubborn visual delusion; in fact, we are porous throughout and ba the in universal forces, like an anemone in the sea: Man twitters intellectually (=foolishly) about the surface results and attributes them all to his "noble self," ignoring the fact that his noble self is hidden far away from his own vision behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions.183 Our sole freedom is to lift ourselves to higher planes through individual evolution. Our only role is to transcribe and materially embody the truths of the plane we belong to. Two important points, which apply to every plane of consciousness, from the highest to the lowest, deserve to be underscored in order for us better to understand the mechanism of the universe. First, these planes do not depend upon us or upon what we think of them any more than the sea depends on the anemone; they exist independently of man. Modern psychology, for which all the levels of being are mixed together in a so-called collective unconscious, like some big magician's hat from which to draw archetypes and neuroses at random, betrays in this respect a serious lack of vision: first, because the forces of these planes are not at all unconscious (except to us), but very conscious, definitely more so than we are; and secondly, because these forces are not "collective," in the sense that they are no more a human product than the sea is the product of the anemone; it is rather the frontal man who is the product of that Immensity behind. The gradations of consciousness are universal states not dependent on the outlook of the subjective personality; rather the outlook of the subjective personality is determined by the grade of consciousness in which it is organized according to its typal nature or its evolutionary stage.184 Naturally, it is only human to reverse the order of things and put ourselves in the center of the world. But this is not a matter of theory, always debatable, but of experience, which everyone can have. If we go out of our body and consciously enter these planes, we realize that they exist outside us, just as the entire world exists outside Manhattan, with forces and beings and even places that have nothing in common with our earthly world; entire civilizations have attested to this, stating it, engraving it, or painting it on their walls or in their temples, civilizations that were perhaps less ingenious than ours, but certainly not less intelligent.
  The second important point concerns the conscious forces and beings that occupy these planes. Here we must clearly draw a line between the superstition, or even hoax, arising from our "collective" contri bution, and the truth. As usual, the two are closely intermingled.

1.1.5 - Thought and Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What you perceive as suggestions or voices, are accepted and felt by people to be thoughts of their own mind. When one practises Yoga and observes the thoughts, one sees that they come from outside, from universal Nature, from the mental, vital or Subtle.Physical worlds etc. The proper thing is then to stand back from these thoughts, voices or suggestions, to reject them or else control them, to make the mind free and quiet and open only to the divine light, force, knowledge and the presence of the Divine. Your mistake has been to allow free play to these thoughts, voices and suggestions instead of rejecting, silencing and controlling them. It is what you must now do. Aspire, get into contact with the Light and the true Force, reassert your will to reject these suggestions and voices. Do not take interest in these voices, keep the mind quiet.
  ***
  --
  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.
  I mention this only to emphasise that the possibilities of the mental being are not limited and that it can be the free Witness and Master in its own house. It is not to say that everybody can do it in the way I did and with the same rapidity of the decisive movement (for of course the later fullest development of this new untrammelled mental Power took time, many years); but a progressive freedom and mastery over ones mind is perfectly within the possibilities of anyone who has the faith and will to undertake it.

1.16 - Man, A Transitional Being, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  illumined mind, higher mind, then vital, and Subtle.Physical. It becomes more and more ensnared and mired in its force, scattered into microscopic instincts or survival-oriented tropisms, until its final dispersion in Matter, in which everything becomes fragmented. "In the 317
  The Hour of God, 17:149

1.2.1.04 - Mystic Poetry, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Mystic poetry can be written from any plane, provided the writer gets an inspiration from the inner consciousness whether mind, vital or Subtle.Physical.
  20 October 1936

1.23 - The Double Soul in Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  10: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. Not the unborn Self or Atman, for the Self even in presiding over the existence of the individual is aware always of its universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, caitya purus.a, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the Subtle.Physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience. These other person-powers in man, these beings of his being, are also veiled in their true entity, but they put forward temporary personalities which compose our outer individuality and whose combined superficial action and appearance of status we call ourselves: this inmost entity also, taking form in us as the psychic Person, puts forward a psychic personality which changes, grows, develops from life to life; for this is the traveller between birth and death and between death and birth, our nature parts are only its manifold and changing vesture. The psychic being can at first exercise only a concealed and partial and indirect action through the mind, the life and the body, since it is these parts of Nature that have to be developed as its instruments of self-expression, and it is long confined by their evolution. Missioned to lead man in the Ignorance towards the light of the Divine Consciousness, it takes the essence of all experience in the Ignorance to form a nucleus of soul-growth in the nature; the rest it turns into material for the future growth of the instruments which it has to use until they are ready to be a luminous instrumentation of the Divine. It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature. It is the psychic personality in us that flowers as the saint, the sage, the seer; when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty, Love and Bliss, the divine heights and largenesses, and opens us to the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality, oneness. On the contrary, where the psychic personality is weak, crude or ill-developed, the finer parts and movements in us are lacking or poor in character and power, even though the mind may be forceful and brilliant, the heart of vital emotions hard and strong and masterful, the life-force dominant and successful, the bodily existence rich and fortunate and an apparent lord and victor. It is then the outer desire-soul, the pseudo-psychic entity, that reigns and we mistake its misinterpretations of psychic suggestion and aspiration, its ideas and ideals, its desires and yearnings for true soul-stuff and wealth of spiritual experience.7 If the secret psychic Person can come forward into the front and, replacing the desire-soul, govern overtly and entirely and not only partially and from behind the veil this outer nature of mind, life and body, then these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence.
  11:But it might seem then that by bringing this psychic entity, this true soul in us, into the front and giving it there the lead and rule we shall gain all the fulfilment of our natural being that we can seek for and open also the gates of the kingdom of the Spirit. And it might well be reasoned that there is no need for any intervention of a superior Truth-Consciousness or principle of Supermind to help us to attain to the divine status or the divine perfection. Yet, although the psychic transformation is one necessary condition of the total transformation of our existence, it is not all that is needed for the largest spiritual change. In the first place, since this is the individual soul in Nature, it can open to the hidden diviner ranges of our being and receive and reflect their light and power and experience, but another, a spiritual transformation from above is needed for us to possess our self in its universality and transcendence. By itself the psychic being at a certain stage might be content to create a formation of truth, good and beauty and make that its station; at a farther stage it might become passively subject to the worldself, a mirror of the universal existence, consciousness, power, delight, but not their full participant or possessor. Although more nearly and thrillingly united to the cosmic consciousness in knowledge, emotion and even appreciation through the senses, it might become purely recipient and passive, remote from mastery and action in the world; or, one with the static self behind the cosmos, but separate inwardly from the world-movement, losing its individuality in its Source, it might return to that Source and have neither the will nor the power any further for that which was its ultimate mission here, to lead the nature also towards its divine realisation. For the psychic being came into Nature from the Self, the Divine, and it can turn back from Nature to the silent Divine through the silence of the Self and a supreme spiritual immobility. Again, an eternal portion of the Divine,8 this part is by the law of the Infinite inseparable from its Divine Whole, this part is indeed itself that Whole, except in its frontal appearance, its frontal separative self-experience; it may awaken to that reality and plunge into it to the apparent extinction or at least the merging of the individual existence. A small nucleus here in the mass of our ignorant Nature, so that it is described in the Upanishad as no bigger than a man's thumb, it can by the spiritual influx enlarge itself and embrace the whole world with the heart and mind in an intimate communion or oneness. Or it may become aware of its eternal Companion and elect to live for ever in His presence, in an imperishable union and oneness as the eternal lover with the eternal Beloved, which of all spiritual experiences is the most intense in beauty and rapture. All these are great and splendid achievements of our spiritual self-finding, but they are not necessarily the last end and entire consummation; more is possible.

1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  12:Certainly, if that body, life and consciousness were limited to the possibilities of the gross body which are all that our physical senses and physical mentality accept, there would be a very narrow term for this evolution, and the human being could not hope to accomplish anything essentially greater than his present achievement. But this body, as ancient occult science discovered, is not the whole even of our physical being; this gross density is not all of our substance. The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths of our substance were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which the soul actually and simultaneously dwells, although here and now we are superficially conscious only of the material vehicle. But it is possible to become conscious in our other bodies as well and it is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently between our physical, psychical and ideal personalities which is the cause of those "psychic" and "occult" phenomena that are now beginning to be increasingly though yet too little and too clumsily examined, even while they are far too much exploited. The old Hathayogins and Tantriks of India had long ago reduced this matter of the higher human life and body to a science. They had discovered six nervous centres of life in the dense body corresponding to six centres of life and mind faculty in the subtle, and they had found out Subtle.Physical exercises by which these centres, now closed, could be opened up, the higher psychical life proper to our subtle existence entered into by man, and even the physical and vital obstructions to the experience of the ideal and spiritual being could be destroyed. It is significant that one prominent result claimed by the Hathayogins for their practices and verified in many respects was a control of the physical life-force which liberated them from some of the ordinary habits or so-called laws thought by physical science to be inseparable from life in the body.
  13:Behind all these terms of ancient psycho-physical science lies the one great fact and law of our being that whatever be its temporary poise of form, consciousness, power in this material evolution, there must be behind it and there is a greater, a truer existence of which this is only the external result and physically sensible aspect. Our substance does not end with the physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base, the material starting-point. As there are behind our waking mentality vaster ranges of consciousness subconscient and superconscient to it of which we become sometimes abnormally aware, so there are behind our gross physical being other and subtler grades of substance with a finer law and a greater power which support the denser body and which can by our entering into the ranges of consciousness belonging to them be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of being for the grossness and limitation of our present physical life and impulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of animal birth and life and death, of difficult alimentation and facility of disorder and disease and subjection to poor and unsatisfied vital cravings ceases to have the appearance of a dream and chimera and becomes a possibility founded upon a rational and philosophic truth which is in accordance with all the rest that we have hitherto known, experienced or been able to think out about the overt and secret truth of our existence.

1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  5:There are two successive movements of consciousness, difficult but well within our capacity, by which we can have access to the superior gradations of our conscious existence. There is first a movement inward by which, instead of living in our surface mind, we break the wall between our external and our now subliminal self; this can be brought about by a gradual effort and discipline or by a vehement transition, sometimes a forceful involuntary rupture, - the latter by no means safe for the limited human mind accustomed to live securely only within its normal limits, - but in either way, safe or unsafe, the thing can be done. What we discover within this secret part of ourselves is an inner being, a soul, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner Subtle.Physical entity which is much larger in its potentialities, more plastic, more powerful, more capable of a manifold knowledge and dynamism than our surface mind, life or body; especially, it is capable of a direct communication with the universal forces, movements, objects of the cosmos, a direct feeling and opening to them, a direct action on them and even a widening of itself beyond the limits of the personal mind, the personal life, the body, so that it feels itself more and more a universal being no longer limited by the existing walls of our too narrow mental, vital, physical existence. This widening can extend itself to a complete entry into the consciousness of cosmic Mind, into unity with the universal Life, even into a oneness with universal Matter. That, however, is still an identification either with a diminished cosmic truth or with the cosmic Ignorance.
  6:But once this entry into the inner being is accomplished, the inner Self is found to be capable of an opening, an ascent upwards into things beyond our present mental level; that is the second spiritual possibility in us. The first most ordinary result is a discovery of a vast static and silent Self which we feel to be our real or our basic existence, the foundation of all else that we are. There may be even an extinction, a Nirvana both of our active being and of the sense of self into a Reality that is indefinable and inexpressible. But also we can realise that this self is not only our own spiritual being but the true self of all others; it presents itself then as the underlying truth of cosmic existence. It is possible to remain in a Nirvana of all individuality, to stop at a static realisation or, regarding the cosmic movement as a superficial play or illusion imposed on the silent Self, to pass into some supreme immobile and immutable status beyond the universe. But another less negative line of supernormal experience also offers itself; for there takes place a large dynamic descent of light, knowledge, power, bliss or other supernormal energies into our self of silence, and we can ascend too into higher regions of the Spirit where its immobile status is the foundation of those great and luminous energies. It is evident in either case that we have risen beyond the mind of Ignorance into a spiritual state; but, in the dynamic movement, the resultant greater action of Consciousness-Force may present itself either simply as a pure spiritual dynamis not otherwise determinate in its character or it may reveal a spiritual mind-range where mind is no longer ignorant of the Reality, - not yet a supermind level, but deriving from the supramental Truth-Consciousness and still luminous with something of its knowledge.

1.3.04 - Peace, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and Subtle.Physical worlds.
  These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine.

14.02 - Occult Experiences, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   These outer personalities there is not one, there are many you consider this body of yours as your only form, but you have many. Each level has its own individual form and a recognisable one. Each one has special eyes, nose, ears, so this inner personality also has recognisable features. If you know, you can even name them it is this person, that person. The Subtle.Physical is more concrete. Only the physical form, the material form does not change much. It changes, yes, according to your age, slowly but for sometime you are the same. These inner forms are changeful; they are not restricted to one rigid figure. Still they are recognisable. There is a plasticity which is very natural; according to the situation, according to your mood, according to your feeling, they change. But the most important, the most original form is your psychic being your true being that which we must strive to realise and attain. As the Mother says: It is the Divine personality in each one of us. Your outer personality is sometimes only a caricature, but still it tries to reflect, though with difficulty, something of the needs and urges of this inmost reality of yours. Someone has asked me: "How to find, how to know this inner being, the true being in me?" For, as the poet here says, he can't touch you and you can't touch him, but what you want is to touch that person. The fact is that it is not so altogether out of contact, not altogether unless a man is a total villain, which is very rare. You can't obliterate that true existence of you, it is there. It expresses itself in all the movements that are good and noble and selfless. Whenever you see something beautiful or do something nice, be sure that it is your psychic being that sees or does it. The psychic being in you is the Mother for it is an emanation of Herself that She has put in you, in order to protect you. When you see the sunset and feel happy, it is the psychic being in you that sees it. It is a small beginning but it is a beginning. Let your psychic being guide your acts. The only thing necessary is to be sincere. You have to be sincere. First day you will find it very difficult, second day you will find it easier, third day it will become still easier and then on the fourth day it will become your nature. It is not easy, but if you try you will be able to do it.
   ***

15.03 - A Canadian Question, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   But what we have been given is not less of a miracle. Mother has prepared for us her new body in the inner world, in the Subtle.Physical which is as living and tangible as her physical body even though not as concrete. In one of her last Notes2 she refers to this new transformed body and she describes it as presented to her vision. That body she has built up in her long arduous labours, built up in a complete form and left with us and with humanity.
   This new body of hers, prepared behind the material curtain, she sought to infuse into the material form, even press into it or force into it this new element; but Matter and man's physical nature were not yet ready: Earth still considered it as an intrusion, as something foreign. The material casing broke down in consequenceperhaps not broke down, rather broke through: but that must be another story.

1951-02-15 - Dreams, symbolic - true repose - False visions - Earth-memory and history, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are many possibilities. But most often, it is that a communication has been established either on the mental or the vital plane or even on the Subtle.Physical plane and it is this communication which brings about the meeting lateryour dream is not only a premonition but also a condition; there is an inner relation close enough to enable you to come into contact in sleep, and circumstances so arrange themselves that you meet physically afterwards. Sometimes it is only a premonition, but then the dream has a special qualityyou see someone coming and he does come physically a little later.
   Generally it is an already established relation; it is someone whom you meet, whom you frequent, whom you speak to, with whom you live some hours of the night. Then afterwards when you both meet you have the impression that you know each other very well. Thats a fact, you already know each other, before having met physically.
  --
   The capacity for visions, when it is sincere and spontaneous, can put you in touch with events which you are not capable of knowing in your outer consciousness. There is a very interesting fact, it is that somewhere in the terrestrial mind, somewhere in the terrestrial vital, somewhere in the Subtle.Physical, one can find an exact, perfect, automatic recording of everything that happens. It is the most formidable memory one could imagine, which misses nothing, forgets nothing, records all. And if you are able to enter into it, you can go backward, you can go forward, and in all directions, and you will have the memory of all thingsnot only of things of the past, but of things to come. For everything is recorded there.
   In the mental world, for instance, there is a domain of the physical mind which is related to physical things and keeps the memory of physical happenings upon earth. It is as though you were entering into innumerable vaults, one following another indefinitely, and these vaults are filled with small pigeon-holes, one above another, one above another, with tiny doors. Then if you want to know something and if you are conscious, you look, and you see something like a small pointa shining point; you find that this is what you wish to know and you have only to concentrate there and it opens; and when it opens, there is a sort of an unrolling of something like extremely subtle manuscripts, but if your concentration is sufficiently strong you begin to read as though from a book. And you have the whole story in all its details. There are thousands of these little holes, you know; when you go for a walk there, it is as though you were walking in infinity. And in this way you can find the exact facts about whatever you want to know. But I must tell you that what you find is never what has been reported in historyhistories are always planned out; I have never come across a single historical fact which is like history. This is not to discourage you from learning history, but things are like that. Events have been quite different from the way in which they have been reported, and for a very simple reason: the human brain is not capable of recording things with exactitude; history is built upon memories and memories are always vague. If you take, for example, written memories, he who writes chooses the events which have interested him, what he has seen, noticed or known, and that is always only a very small portion of the whole. When the historian narrates, the same thing happens as with dreams where you take one point, then another, then another, and at last you can have an almost exact vision of what has taken place and with a little imagination you fill up the gaps; but historians relate a continuous story; between the events or moments there are gaps which they fill up as best they can or rather as they wish, according to their mental, vital and other preferences. And that comprises the history you are made to learn. The same story, narrated in one language and in another, in one country or in another, you cannot imagine how comic it is! This is particularly true if one of the countries is interested because of its vanity, its prestige. And finally the two pictures presented to you are so different that you could believe that two different things were being spoken about. It is unbelievable. But I have noticed that even for altogether external, concrete facts where there is no question of evaluation, it is still the same thing. No human brain is capable of understanding a thing in its totality; even the most scholarly, the most learned, even the most sincere person does not see a subjectand especially many subjectstotally. He will say what he knows, what he understands, and all that he does not know, all that he does not understand is not there, and this absolutely changes everything.

1951-02-19 - Exteriorisation- clairvoyance, fainting, etc - Somnambulism - Tartini - childrens dreams - Nightmares - gurus protection - Mind and vital roam during sleep, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Many people faint like this and see themselves. There is one condition for this: the organ of sight in the Subtle.Physical body or in the most material vital must be developed.
   I must tell you that this kind of capacity may come spontaneously, without effortone may be a born clairvoyant. They are not necessarily very intelligent people, their vital consciousness may be mediocre, but they are born clairvoyant. It is not a sign of a great developmentcomes from something else, from a capacity of the parents, of past lives, etc. But if you are not born clairvoyant, and if you do not carry in you the other extreme, I mean a psychic being wholly conscious and fully developed which leads its own independent life in the body, and you want to learn to see and have visions, then it is a very long, very slow discipline and there are very few people who have the necessary patience and endurance to go to the end of the training.
  --
   You are speaking of a somnambulist? But that is quite another thing. This means that the part which goes out (whether a part of the mind or a part of the vital) is so strongly attached to the body, or rather that the body is so attached to this part, that when this part decides to do something the body follows it automatically. In your inner being you decide to do a certain thing and your body is so closely tied to your inner being that without thinking of it, without wanting to do so, without making any effort, it follows and does the same thing. Note that in this matter, the physical body has capacities it would not have in the ordinary waking condition. For instance, it is well known that one can walk in dangerous places where one would find it rather difficult to walk in the waking state. The body follows the consciousness of the inner being and its own consciousness is asleep for the body has a consciousness. All the parts of the being, including the most material, have an independent consciousness. Hence when you go to sleep dead tired, when your physical body needs rest absolutely, your physical consciousness sleeps, while the consciousness of your Subtle.Physical body or your vital or of your mind does not sleep, it continues its activity; but your physical consciousness is separated from the body, it is asleep in a state of unconsciousness, and then the part which does not sleep, which is active, uses the body without the physical consciousness as intermediary and makes it do things directly. That is how one becomes a somnambulist. According to my experience, the waking consciousness goes to sleep for some reason or other (usually due to fatigue), but the inner being is awake, and the body is so tied to it that it follows it automatically. That is why you do fantastic things, because you do not see them physically, you see them in a different way.
   It is said that somnambulism is due to serious preoccupations and cares. Is this true? Tartini composed a sonata in this state, and when he got up in the morning, he wrote down the whole thing.
  --
   If it is the psychic being which goes out, one would not be aware of it, the more so as most of the time it is not within you! Very few people carry their psychic being within them because the dwelling-place is not ready. What goes out is sometimes the Subtle.Physical, this is when one sees ones body stretched out for the physical vision to remain conscious, it must be a very material part of the being which goes out; one must go out very materially in the Subtle.Physical body or in the most material vital. But usually it is the vital which goes out and still more often the mental being; but when it is the mind which goes out one is not aware of it at all, for the mind is like the psychic, it is very rarely within you. If you think of something or somebody, one part of your mind is immediately there the mind is a vagabond, it roves, it comes and goes, it enters and goes out. There are very few people who have organised their mind sufficiently to keep it within them, close-packed, and prevent it from gadding about.
   At times I seem to go out of my body and see it dead.

1951-02-24 - Psychic being and entity - dimensions - in the atom - Death - exteriorisation - unconsciousness - Past lives - progress upon earth - choice of birth - Consecration to divine Work - psychic memories - Individualisation - progress, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was a partial exteriorisation; it was not a total exteriorisation which indeed causes death. If one goes out entirely, that is, if there is a complete separation from the body and one is really dead, and then one comes back, that causes such an intense suffering that one cannot forget it. It is said that babies cry when they come into the world because the first contact with air makes them cry, but I think it is something else. The re-entry into the body causes a kind of friction, for what goes out has to be something very material if it is to bring about death, something even more material than the Subtle.Physical, and this friction is extremely painful. Otherwise one may be externally unconscious, but one is not dead for all that. It is only when something extremely material goes out of the body and all ties are broken that there is truly death. And that is why (I believe we are beginning to discover it) people do not die till six or seven days after their death. That is, they are not dead as long as the body remains intact, but only when a part of the body begins to decompose. Hence during this period, someone who has the necessary knowledge, power and capacity may raise a person in such a state. I believe this explains most of the cases of miraculous resurrection.
   A person was dead. The doctors massaged the heart and after some time the person revived.

1951-03-19 - Mental worlds and their beings - Understanding in silence - Psychic world- its characteristics - True experiences and mental formations - twelve senses, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are people who live constantly in a higher consciousness, while others have to make an effort to enter there. But here it is an altogether different thing; in the experience I was speaking about, what gave it all its value was that I was not expecting it at all, not at all. I knew very well, I had been for a very long time and continuously in spiritual contact, if I may say so, with the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, but I had never thought of the possibility of a modification in the physical air and I was not expecting it in the least, and it was this that gave the whole value to the experience, which came like that, quite suddenly, just as when one enters a place with another temperature or another altitude. I do not know if you have noticed that the air you brea the is not always the same, that there are different vibrations in the air of one country and in the air of another, in the air of one place and in the air of another. If indeed you are accustomed to have this perception of the Subtle.Physical, you can say immediately, Ah! This air is as in France or This is the air of Japan. It is something indefinable like taste or smell. But in this instance it is not that, it is a perception of another sense. It is a physical sense, it is not a vital or mental sense; it is a sense of the physical world, but there are other senses than the five that we usually have at our disposal there are many others.
   Actually, for the physical beingnote that I say the physical beingto be fully developed, it must have twelve senses. It is one of these senses which gives you the kind of perception I was speaking of. You cannot say that it is taste, smell, hearing, etc., but it is something which gives you a very precise impression of the difference of quality. And it is very precise, as distinct as seeing black and white, it is truly a sense perception.

1951-03-31 - Physical ailment and mental disorder - Curing an illness spiritually - Receptivity of the body - The subtle-physical- illness accidents - Curing sunstroke and other disorders, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1951-03-31 - Physical ailment and mental disorder - Curing an illness spiritually - Receptivity of the body - The Subtle.Physical- illness accidents - Curing sunstroke and other disorders
  author class:The Mother

1951-04-14 - Surrender and sacrifice - Idea of sacrifice - Bahaism - martyrdom - Sleep- forgetfulness, exteriorisation, etc - Dreams and visions- explanations - Exteriorisation- incidents about cats, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are always many explanations possible and it is very difficult to explain for someone else. For oneself, if one has studied very carefully ones dreams and activities of the night, one can distinguish fine nuances. I was saying I thought I had a vision of another world I knew it was something which existed, but I could not imagine there was a country where it existed; this seemed to me impossible, so very beautiful it was. It was the active mind which interfered. But I knew that what I was seeing truly existed, and it was only when I saw these landscapes physically that I realised in fact that I had seen something which existed, but I had seen it with inner eyes (it was the Subtle.Physical) before seeing it physically. Everyone has certain very small indications, but for that one must be very, very methodical, very scrupulous, very careful in ones observation and not neglect the least signs, and above all not give favourable mental explanations to the experiences one has. For if one wants to explain to oneself (I dont even speak of explaining to others), if one wants to explain the experience to oneself advantageously, to draw satisfaction, one does not understand anything any more. That is, one may mix up the signs without even noticing that they are mixed up. For instance, when one sees somebody in a dream (I am not speaking of dreams in which you see somebody unknown, but of those where you see somebody you know, who comes to see you) there are all sorts of explanations possible. If it is someone living far away from you, in another country, perhaps that person has written a letter to you and the letter is on the way, so you see this person because he has put a formation of himself in his letter, a concentration; you see the person and the next morning you get the letter. This is a very frequent occurrence. If it is a person with a very strong thought-power, he may think of you from very far, from his own country and concentrate his thought, and this concentration takes the form of that person in your consciousness. Perhaps it is that this person is calling you intentionally; deliberately he comes to tell you something or give you a sign, if he is in danger, if he is sick. Suppose he has something important to tell you, he begins to concentrate (he knows how to do it, as everyone does not) and he enters your atmosphere, comes to tell you something special. Now if you are passive and attentive, you receive the message. And then, two more instances still: someone has exteriorized himself more or less materially in his sleep and has come to see you. And you become conscious of this person because (almost by miracle) you are in a corresponding state of consciousness. And finally, a last instance, this person may be dead and may come to see you after his death (one part of him or almost the whole of his being according to the relation you have with him). Consequently, for someone who is not very, very careful it is very difficult to distinguish these nuances, very difficult. On the other hand, quite often imaginative people will tell you, Oh! I saw this personhe is dead. I have heard that I dont know how many times. These are people whose imagination runs freely. It is possible that the person is dead, but not because he has appeared to you! One must pay great attention to the outer forms things take. There are shades very difficult to distinguish, one must be very, very careful. For oneself, if one is in the habit of studying all this, one can become aware of the differences, but to interpret anothers experiences is very difficult, unless he gives you in great detail all that surrounds the dream, the vision: the ideas he had before, the ideas he had later, the state of his health, the feelings he experienced when going to sleep, the activities of the preceding day, indeed, all sorts of things. People who tell you, Oh! I had this vision, explain it to me!, that is childishnessunless it is someone whom you have followed very carefully, whom you yourself have taught how to recognise the planes, and whose habits, whose reactions you know; otherwise it is impossible to explain, for there are innumerable explanations for one single thing.
   There are some very remarkable instances of exteriorisation. I am going to tell you two incidents about cats which occurred quite a long time ago in France. One happened very long ago, long before the war even. We used to have small meetings every weekquite a small number of friends, three or four, who discussed philosophy, spiritual experiences, etc. There was a young boy, a poet, but one who was rather light-hearted; he was very intelligent, he was a student in Paris. He used to come regularly to these meetings (they took place on Wednesday evenings) and one evening he did not come. We were surprised; we had met him a few days before and he had said he would comehe did not come. We waited quite a long time, the meeting was over and at the time of leaving I opened the door to let people out (it was at my house that these meetings were held), I opened the door and there before it sat a big dark grey cat which rushed into the room like mad and jumped upon me, like this, mewing desperately. I looked into its eyes and told myself, Well, these are so-and-sos eyes (the one who was to come). I said, Surely something has happened to him. And the next day we learnt that he had been assassinated that night; the next morning he had been found lying strangled on his bed. This is the first story. The other happened long afterwards, at the time of the war the First [World] War, not the Second the war of the trenches. There was a young man I knew very well; he was a poet and artist (I have already spoken about him), who had gone to the war. He had enlisted, he was very young; he was an officer. He had given me his photograph. (This boy was a student of Sanskrit and knew Sanskrit very well, he liked Buddhism very much; indeed he was much interested in things of the spirit, he was not an ordinary boy, far from it.) He had given me his photograph on which there was a sentence in Sanskrit written in his own hand, very well written. I had framed this photograph and put it above a sort of secretaire (a rather high desk with drawers); well, above it I had hung this photograph. And at that time it was very difficult to receive news, one did not know very well what was happening. From time to time we used to receive letters from him, but for a long time there had been nothing, when, one day, I came into my room, and the moment I entered, without any apparent reason the photograph fell from the wall where it had been well fixed, and the glass broke with a great clatter. I felt a little anxious, I said, There is something wrong. But we had no news. Two or three days later (it was on the first floor; I lived in a house with one room upstairs, all the rest on the ground-floor, and there was a flight of steps leading to the garden) I opened the entrance door and a big grey cat rushed inlight grey, this timea magnificent cat, and, just as the other one had done, it flung itself upon me, like this, mewing. I looked into its eyeshad the eyes of that boy. And this cat, it turned and turned around me and all the time tugged at my dress and miaowed. I wanted to put it out, but it would not go, it settled down there and did not want to move. The next day it was announced in the papers that this boy had been found dead between two trenches, dead for three days. That is, at the time he must have died his photograph had fallen. The consciousness had left the body completely: he was there abandoned, because they did not always go to see what was happening between the trenches; they could not, you understand; he was found two or three days later; at that time probably he had gone out altogether from his body and wanted definitely to inform me about what had happened and he had found that cat. For cats live in the vital being, they have a very developed vital consciousness and can easily be taken possession of by vital forces.

1951-04-17 - Unity, diversity - Protective envelope - desires - consciousness, true defence - Perfection of physical - cinema - Choice, constant and conscious - law of ones being - the One, the Multiplicity - Civilization- preparing an instrument, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You mean whether the protective envelope of which I spoke from a physical point of view can serve also from a moral, a psychological point of view? It is not the same envelope, it is another domain. A man may have this Subtle.Physical envelope quite intact and it may work marvellously to protect him from all illnesses and accidents, and yet at the same time he may be full of desires, because desires belong to another sphere. Desire is not a physical thing, desire is something vital, and this envelope is more material than the vital: it cannot prevent the vital from entering into contact with the vital world and receiving from there all its impulsions. Naturally he who has mastered himself, who has found his psychic being, who lives constantly in the consciousness of this psychic being, who has established a perfect relation or at least a constant relation with the inner divine Presence is enveloped in an atmosphere of knowledge, light, beauty, purity, which is the best of all protections against desires, but all the same it is possible for desire to intrude if one is not always on ones guard, because we say that it comes from outside. One may have overcome a desire within oneself, and yet it may come from outside as a contagion; but through this envelope of light, knowledge and purity, the desire loses its force and instead of coming like a movement which evokes a blind and immediate response, one perceives what is happening, becomes aware of the force which wants to enter and one can quietlywhen it is not wantedmake an inner movement and reject the incoming desire. This is the only true defence: a wakeful consciousness, pure and alert, so to say, which does not sleep, does not let things enter without being aware of them. The worst thing is that people are quite unconscious and that it is only after the contagion has entered that they notice it, and it is a little late to reactis not impossible, but it is more difficultwhile if one sees it coming, if in the surrounding atmosphere it comes making a kind of little black mark, one can chase it off as one would something disagreeable. But the protective envelope on the material plane has no effect in this instance.
   This is indeed something very interesting. I have seen that material things are arranged in such a way at present that one could reach a high degree of perfection of the physical instrument in any field whatever, no matter what may be the degree of inner or psychic development. This was what I thought yesterday evening about the talkies. It is evidently a great progress in the cinematographic art and it cant be called in itself bad or good. It was that I had always seen only talkies of idiotic, vulgar, crude stories, indeed all the stupidities generally shown in cinemas, and this perfection of the instrument had made the crudity yet more crude, the stupidity yet more stupid, and this kind of impression of degradation yet more strong. But yesterday, when we saw that documentary with the beautiful birds singing. Those who made this film have taken great pains, one cant imagine how much of effort and work it entails to film birds in their nests without disturbing them, then to record the sound accurately enough to be able to amplify it and make it perceptible to all. It is a very big work they have done there. And it is the same perfecting of the same instrument which permitted the production of the lovely thing we saw yesterday evening and that ignoble thing we saw sometime ago. This makes us reflect deeply on material things.

1953-05-06, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   For example, you have a dream in the Subtle.Physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five oclock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentivequietly attentive and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the Subtle.Physical and the physical is establishedvery rarely is there no communication.
   Now, dreams are mostly forgotten because you have a dream while in a certain state and then pass into another. For instance, when you sleep, your body is asleep, your vital is asleep, but your mind is still active. So your mind begins to have dreams, that is, its activity is more or less coordinated, the imagination is very active and you see all kinds of things, take part in extraordinary happenings. After some time, all that calms down and the mind also begins to doze. The vital that was resting wakes up; it comes out of the body, walks about, goes here and there, does all kinds of things, reacts, sometimes fights, and finally eats. It does all kinds of things. The vital is very adventurous. It watches. When it is heroic it rushes to save people who are in prison or to destroy enemies or it makes wonderful discoveries. But this pushes back the whole mental dream very far behind. It is rubbed off, forgotten: naturally you cannot remember it because the vital dream takes its place. But if you wake up suddenly at that moment, you remember it. There are people who have made the experiment, who have got up at certain fixed hours of the night and when they wake up suddenly, they do remember. You must not move brusquely, but awake in the natural course, then you remember.
   After a time, the vital having taken a good stroll, needs to rest also, and so it goes into repose and quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of adventures. Then something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the Subtle.Physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering, seeing the rooms and why, this thing that was there, but it has come here and that other thing which was in that room is now in this one, and so on. If you wake up without stirring, you remember. But this has pushed away far to the back of the consciousness all the stories of the vital. They are forgotten and so you cannot recollect your dreams. But if at the time of waking up you are not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long as you wish, you need not even open your eyes; you keep your head exactly where it was and you make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of the tail of your dream. You catch it and start pulling gently, without stirring in the least. You begin pulling quite gently, and then first one part comes, a little later another. You go backward; the last comes up first. Everything goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole dream reappears: Ah, there! it was like that. Above all, do not jump up, do not stir; you repeat the dream to yourself several timesonce, twiceuntil it becomes clear in all its details. Once that dream is settled, you continue not to stir, you try to go further in, and suddenly you catch the tail of something else. It is more distant, more vague, but you can still seize it. And here also you hang on, get hold of it and pull, and you see that everything changes and you enter another world; all of a sudden you have an extraordinary adventureit is another dream. You follow the same process. You repeat the dream to yourself once, twice, until you are sure of it. You remain very quiet all the time. Then you begin to penetrate still more deeply into yourself, as though you were going in very far, very far; and again suddenly you see a vague form, you have a feeling, a sensation like a current of air, a slight breeze, a little breath; and you say, Well, well. It takes a form, it becomesclear and the third category comes. You must have a lot of time, a lot of patience, you must be very quiet in your mind and body, very quiet, and you can tell the story of your whole night from the end right up to the beginning.
   Even without doing this exercise which is very long and difficult, in order to recollect a dream, whether it be the last one or the one in the middle that has made a violent impression on your being, you must do what I have said when you wake up: take particular care not even to move your head on the pillow, remain absolutely still and let the dream return.

1953-07-22, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And then if there is a group of such small entities, they may clash with one another, because among themselves they do not have a very peaceful life: clashing with one another, fighting, destroying, demolishing each other. And that is the origin of microbes. They are forces of disintegration. But they continue to be alive even in their divided forms and this is the origin of germs and microbes. Therefore most microbes have behind them a bad will and that is what makes them so dangerous. And unless one knows the quality and kind of bad will and is capable of acting upon it, there is a ninety-nine per cent chance of not finding the true and complete remedy. The microbe is a very material expression of something living in a Subtle.Physical world and that is why these very microbes (as I have said there2) that are always around you, within you, for years together do not make you ill and then suddenly they make you fall ill.
   There is another reason. The origin of the microbes and their support lie in a disharmony, in the beings receptivity to the adverse force. I will tell you a story. I do not know whether I have already told it to you, but I am going to tell you now for it will give you an illustration.

1954-05-26 - Symbolic dreams - Psychic sorrow - Dreams, one is rarely conscious, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  No, not necessarily. It can be a fact. This means that instead of seeing physically, one sees in the Subtle.Physical or the vital or the mind. But one sees something of me: for instance, if I send out a force or a thought or a movement, an action to someone, in his atmosphere this takes my form, in his mental consciousness it takes my form. So he sees it. It is a fact. I send something and he sees it. It is not my whole being (there the interpretation goes wrong most of the time), but it is something of myself.
  But this always has some significance, Mother, hasnt it?

1954-06-23 - Meat-eating - Story of Mothers vegetable garden - Faithfulness - Conscious sleep, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  When I began studying occultism, I became aware thatjust when I began to work upon my nights in order to make them conscious I became aware that there was between the Subtle.Physical and the most material vital a small region, very small, which was not sufficiently developed to serve as a conscious link between the two activities. So what took place in the consciousness of the most material vital did not get translated exactly in the consciousness of the most Subtle.Physical. Some of it got lost on the way because it was like anot positively a void but something only half-conscious, not sufficiently developed. I knew there was only one way, that was to work to develop it. I began working. This happened sometime about the month of February, I believe. One month, two months, three, four, no result. We go on. Five months, six months it was at the end of July or the beginning of August. I left Paris, the house I was staying in, and went to the countryside, quite a small place on the seashore, to stay with some friends who had a garden. Now, in that garden there was a lawnyou know what a lawn is, dont you? grasswhere there were flowers and around it some trees. It was a fine place, very quiet, very silent. I lay on the grass, like this, flat on my stomach, my elbows in the grass, and then suddenly all the life of that Nature, all the life of that region between the Subtle.Physical and the most material vital, which is very living in plants and in Nature, all that region became all at once, suddenly, without any transition, absolutely living, intense, conscious, marvellous; and this was the result, wasnt it?, of six months of work which had given nothing. I had not noticed anything; but just a little condition like that and the result was there! It is like the chick in the egg, yes! It is there for a very long time and yet one sees nothing at all. And one wonders whether there is indeed a chick in the egg; and then, suddenly Tick!, there is a tiny hole, you know, and then everything bursts and out comes the chick! It is quite ready, but it took all that time to be formed; thats how it is. When you want to prepare something within you, that is how it is, it is like the chick in the egg. You need a very long time, and this without having the least result, never getting discouraged, and continuing your effort, absolutely regularly, as though you had eternity before you and, moreover, as though you were quite disinterested about the result. You do the work because you do it. And then, suddenly, one day, it bursts and you see before you the full result of your work.
  But you understand, dont you? One speaks like this, very easily, of becoming conscious of ones nights, having control over ones sleep-activities and all sorts of things of this kind, but you need to do many such little works like the one I have just described to you. Many of these are needed to obtain this result. When one is accomplished, you realise that there is another missing, and when this is done, you realise there is still another, and so on, until one fine day you can do what I said, and you go from one plane to another, like that, putting all to rest, until you come out of all activity and enter the supreme rest, consciously. It is worth the trouble.

1954-09-08 - Hostile forces - Substance - Concentration - Changing the centre of thought - Peace, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and Subtle.Physical worlds. These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine.
  So?
  Sweet Mother, what are the adverse powers of the Subtle.Physical?
  What are the adverse forces? There are as many of them as there are elements in the world. Only, unless they express themselves physically, we do not see them. So we are not aware of them. But I told you the other day that the atmosphere is full of countless formations which are usually made up of thoughts, desires, impulses, wills, and which are as mixed as mens thoughts. There are good ones, there are bad ones; and behind that there are all the formations of the vital world, a world essentially hostile to the Divine. Only the vital in man, under the psychic influence, can change and become a collaborator in the divine work. Otherwise, the vital world is essentially formed of beings hostile to the divine work, and those who open themselves to these forces without any control are naturally under the influence of the adverse forces. So, one cant say what these adverse forces are. It would be easier to say what they are not.

1954-10-20 - Stand back - Asking questions to Mother - Seeing images in meditation - Berlioz -Music - Mothers organ music - Destiny, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  And so? You are asking what it is? It can be many, many things. It can be simply that, your physical eyes being closed, your inner eyes open and begin to see in their domain or in the Subtle.Physical or the most material vital, it may be that.
  It can be a projection of your own thoughts, that is, when you begin reflecting on something, certain images pass before you, like that; they pass rather before your mind than your eyes, and it is like an imaged objectivisation of your thought, your state of thought or state of consciousness. But then, it becomes quite clear, coherent and it is interesting. It can serve as an indication.

1955-03-02 - Right spirit, aspiration and desire - Sleep and yogic repose, how to sleep - Remembering dreams - Concentration and outer activity - Mother opens the door inside everyone - Sleep, a school for inner knowledge - Source of energy, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Ah, yogic repose. It means that instead of an unconscious sleep it is a sleepif you want to call it sleepa conscious sleep. The body is in a state of complete repose, with the nerves relaxed, the muscles relaxed; one is completely relaxed and at rest; but the spirit remains conscious, conscious enough to be able to put the vital also at rest, the mind also at rest, and let everything be in a state of peace, quietude, immobility, so that the consciousness may be completely free. Then the consciousness can either rest also, if it thinks it necessary, or work if it thinks that is needed; and in any case it is free to do as it wants, what it wants, and to go to the regions to which it wants to go. But the parts belonging to the present physical being, that is, the mind, vital and physical, are in a complete repose and a kind of immobility, due to which the hours of sleep do not need to be so long. One can cut short the number of hours of sleep very much if one leaves the body in this state of rest. But this asks for much work, and a very conscious work, you see, very conscious and very persistent. It cannot be had immediately, it may require years of discipline. Only, once it is acquired, well, one has mastered sleep and can prevent, well For example, there are many people who, when they go to sleep, are in a very good state of consciousness, and when they wake up in the morning they are completely dazed and have lost all that they had gained the previous day; and thats because their sleep is unconscious and they go out in the vital or the mind or the Subtle.Physical; they go to undesirable places or else fall into the inconscience and lose in this inconscience all they had gained before It is something very necessary, but it cant be acquired very easily. It is one of the most difficult things to do, but it is very useful; only, one can hardly do it without a very close guidance, because unless one knows how to do it even to the last detail, one risks doing stupid things.
  In any case one thing you can do in all security is, before going to sleep, to concentrate, relax all tension in the physical being, try that is, in the body try so that the body lies like a soft rag on the bed, that it is no longer something with twitchings and cramps; to relax it completely as though it were a kind of thing like a rag. And then, the vital: to calm it, calm it as much as you can, make it as quiet, as peaceful as possible. And then the mind also the mind, try to keep it like that, without any activity. You must put upon the brain the force of great peace, great quietude, of silence if possible, and not follow ideas actively, not make any effort, nothing, nothing; you must relax all movement there too, but relax it in a kind of silence and quietude as great as possible.

1955-04-06 - Freuds psychoanalysis, the subliminal being - The psychic and the subliminal - True psychology - Changing the lower nature - Faith in different parts of the being - Psychic contact established in all in the Ashram, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Well, it is what he says, you know. Its what is behind. I think it is what could be called the Subtle.Physical, the subtle vital, the subtle mind. It is something thats behind what is manifested. One can imagine that what is manifested is like a layer or like a crust or a bark; it is that which we see and with which we are in touch. And it clothes something, it clothes or expresses something which is more subtle and serves as its support.
  When one dreams, one goes very often into his subliminal being, and there things are almost the same and yet not absolutely the same; there is a great resemblance and yet there is a difference; and usually this is greater. One has the impression of entering into something thats vaster; and, for example, one feels that one can do more, that one knows more, one has a power and clear-sightedness which one doesnt have in the ordinary consciousness; one has the impression while dreaming that one knows many more things than when one is awake. No? Doesnt this happen? You dont have dreams like that? when one dreams and knows a lot, for example, about the secret causes of things, about what a movement expresses all that, one feels that one knows it. For instance, when one dreams of someone, one knows better what he thinks, what he wants, all these things, better than when one is in waking contact with him. This happens when one has entered the subliminal. Very often one dreams in the subliminal.

1955-04-27 - Symbolic dreams and visions - Curing pain by various methods - Different states of consciousness - Seeing oneself dead in a dream - Exteriorisation, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  But you have never noticed that it is different? For example, your physical consciousness or your Subtle.Physical consciousness, your vital consciousness or the consciousness of your higher or lower vital, your psychic consciousness, your mental consciousness, each one is completely different! So when you sleep you have one consciousness, and when you are awake you have another. In your waking state you look at things projected outside you, in your sleep state you see them interiorised. So it is as though in one case you were pushed altogether outside yourself, in front, and in the other it is as though you were looking at yourself in an inner mirror.
  Dont understand? Not very well!

1955-05-18 - The Problem of Woman - Men and women - The Supreme Mother, the new creation - Gods and goddesses - A story of Creation, earth - Psychic being only on earth, beings everywhere - Going to other worlds by occult means, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Usually it is the mental part of the vital which goes out; not the mind, the vital. For short distances one can go out from his body with the Subtle.Physical, and in these cases one sees things materially as they are. But one cant go long distances. There are practical reasons, but above all there is the reason of safety; because if one goes too far with the Subtle.Physical, the body is not only in a trance, it is in a cataleptic state, and then, unless it is guarded by someone who has a very profound knowledge and a great power, this can turn out badly. Therefore, for these long journeys it is usually the most subtle part of the vital (which corresponds to a kind of mental consciousness of the vital), which goes out.
  So one sees everything which has a similar quality. But supposing there is something very material, one doesnt see it as it is. So one cant say with certainty, It is like this or like that. One can say, I saw this, thats all. But one cant recount stories like those in the papers about what is happening on the moon or Jupiter or Venus. One can have an experience and know certain things but usually they are things of a more psychological nature.

1955-07-06 - The psychic and the central being or jivatman - Unity and multiplicity in the Divine - Having experiences and the ego - Mental, vital and physical exteriorisation - Imagination has a formative power - The function of the imagination, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  To be conscious of the vital you must go there in the vital, and this is already an exteriorisation which leaves the body at least more than three-fourths in trance. And if you want to see things physically, you must go out in your most material Subtle.Physical and then here you leave your body in a cataleptic state; and these things are not to be done without someone being with you who understands them and can guard you.
  But the mental exteriorisation occurs constantly. It puts you in contact only with the mental world. Perhaps if you are very conscious and the person you go to see is very conscious, and if at that moment he has formed opinions or ideas about something happening in Calcutta, then you can become conscious of the ideas of this person on what is happeningindirectly but you are not directly conscious of the thing.

1956-08-08 - How to light the psychic fire, will for progress - Helping from a distance, mental formations - Prayer and the divine - Grace Grace at work everywhere, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  And each defect one wants to cure or each progress one wants to makeif all that is thrown into the fire, it burns with a new intensity. And this is not an image, it is a fact in the Subtle.Physical. One can feel the warmth of the flame, one can see in the Subtle.Physical the light of the flame. And when there is something in the nature which prevents one from advancing and one throws it into this fire, it begins to burn and the flame becomes more intense.
    For devotion by its embodiment in acts not only makes its own way broad and full and dynamic, but brings at once into the harder way of works in the world the divinely passionate element of joy and love which is often absent in its beginning when it is only the austere spiritual will that follows in a struggling uplifting tension the steep ascent, and the heart is still asleep or bound to silence. If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle.

1956-09-05 - Material life, seeing in the right way - Effect of the Supermind on the earth - Emergence of the Supermind - Falling back into the same mistaken ways, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Sri Aurobindo has spoken I believe I have read it to you, I think its in The Synthesis of Yogaof the true mind, the true vital and the true physical or Subtle.Physical, and he has said that they co-exist with the ordinary mind, vital and physical, and that in certain conditions one may enter into contact with them, and then one becomes aware of the difference between what really is and the appearances of things.
  Well, for a developed consciousness, the Supermind is already realised somewhere in a domain of the Subtle.Physical, it already exists there visible, concrete, and expresses itself in forms and activities. And when one is in tune with this domain, when one lives there, one has a very strong feeling that this world would only have to be condensed, so to say, for it to become visible to all. What would then be interesting would be to develop this inner perception which would put you into contact with the supramental truth which is already manifested, and is veiled for you only for want of appropriate organs to enter into relation with it.
  It is possible that those who are conscious of their dreams may have dreams of a new kind which put them into contact with that world, for it is accessible to the Subtle.Physical of all those who have the corresponding organs in themselves. And there is necessarily a subtle influence of this physical on outer matter, if one is ready to receive impressions from it and admit them into ones consciousness. Thats all.
  Now, if nobody has any questions to ask, well, we shall remain silent.

1956-09-26 - Soul of desire - Openness, harmony with Nature - Communion with divine Presence - Individuality, difficulties, soul of desire - personal contact with the Mother - Inner receptivity - Bad thoughts before the Mother, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Dont you see, if one is inwardly open, if one is receptive, one receives right down into the Subtle.Physical all that is necessary for ones integral progress. And in the order of things, the outer contact should come only as a crowning and an aid so that the body the material physical consciousness and the bodymay be able to follow the movement of the inner being.
  But if you believe that this contact is going to replace the inner receptivity, you are mistaken, it is not much use. For example, people who are quite closed up, who receive nothing within, who have no opening to the forces and who imagine that because they are going to spend half an hour or an hour sitting in front of me and chatting, this is going to help them to transform themselves, they make a gross mistake. But if they are inwardly open, if they are in contact with the Force and make an effort to transform themselves, then, at a particular moment, perhaps a conversation or a material contact, a presence, may help them to make a more integral progress.

1956-10-03 - The Mothers different ways of speaking - new manifestation - new element, possibilities - child prodigies - Laws of Nature, supramental - Logic of the unforeseen - Creative writers, hands of musicians - Prodigious children, men, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  There are similar examples, for instance, among musicians. There are pianists who have individualised their hands and made them so wonderfully conscious that these hands are not decomposednot the physical hands: the hands of the Subtle.Physical and vitalthey are not deposed, do not dissolve at the time of death. They remain as instruments to play the piano and always try to incarnate in the hands of someone playing the piano. I have known some cases of people who, as they were about to play, felt as though other hands entered into theirs and started playing really marvellously, in a way they could not have done themselves.
  These things are not as exceptional as one might believe, they happen quite often.

1956-10-24 - Taking a new body - Different cases of incarnation - Departure of soul from body, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  When an especially developed soul leaves the body, does it take with it the Subtle.Physical sheath? When it reincarnates, how does it introduce this into the new body?
  Even to answer this, as I have told you, it would be necessary to write volumes or to speak for hours. For, to tell the truth, no two cases are alikethere are similarities, classifications can be made, but they are purely arbitrary. What I wanted to do was to read to you the following, for it is quite amusingoh, I dont want to be not serious! Let us say it is quite interesting:
  --
  It is said that after death, the soul of one who has done good deeds takes the path of the ancestors, pitriyana, it becomes smoke, night, etc., attains to the world of the fathers and finally to the lunar paradise. The Brahmasutra deduces from this that the soul takes with it all the elements, even those of the Subtle.Physical, which will be needed in the next incarnation.
  So a question:
  Is this correct? Is the Subtle.Physical sufficiently conscious in that case?
  We shall keep aside the questions; I am continuing:
  --
  Is it necessary to follow this uncertain and hazardous process? Does not the soul directly animate the body with all the mental, vital and Subtle.Physical elements organised around it and necessary for the next life? Does it take up the elements of the Subtle.Physical world? If so, how do they harmonise with the hereditary characteristics? Above all, must it s through the body of the father?
  There we are!
  --
  So, the soul which wants to incarnate stays at times in a domain of the higher mind, quite close to the earth, having chosen its future home; or else it can descend further, into the vital, and from there have a more direct action; or again it can enter the Subtle.Physical and very closely govern the development of its future body.
  Now the other question the one about departure.
  --
  If we take the best instance, of someone who has unified his being completely around the divine Presence within him, who is now only one will, one consciousness, this person will have grouped around his central psychic being a fully developed and organised mind, an absolutely surrendered and collaborating vital and an obedient, docile and supple physical being. This physical being, as it is fully developed, will have a subtle bodywhat Sri Aurobindo calls the true physicalwhich will infinitely surpass the limits of its body and have enough suppleness, plasticity, balance to be able to adhere to the inner parts of the being and follow the movement of the soul in its I dont want to say in its ascent, but in its peregrinations outside the body. What the soul will do, where it will goit all depends on what it has decided before leaving the body. And this capacity to keep around itself the being that has been fully organised and unified in its physical life, will allow it to really choose what it wants to do. And this also represents a very different field of possibilities, from sing consciously from one body into another, directly there are instances in which one of these fully conscious and fully developed beings has slowly prepared another being capable of receiving and assimilating it, and in order not to stop its material work when it leaves one body, it goes and joins another psychic being, merges with it, combines with it in another physical body; that is an extreme case, extremely rare also, but one which forms part of an altogether traditional occult knowledgeto the instance at the other extreme, where the soul having finished its bodily experience, wants to assimilate it in repose and prepare for another physical existence later, sometimes much later. And so this is what happens, among many other possibilities: it leaves in each domainin the Subtle.Physical, in the vital, in the mental domain the corresponding beings; it leaves them with a sort of link between them, but each one keeps its independent existence, and it itself goes into the zone, the reality, the world of the psychic proper, and enters into a blissful repose for assimilation, until it has assimilated (laughing), as described in this paper, all its good deeds, digested all its good deeds, and is ready to begin a new experience. And then, if its work has been well done and the parts or sheaths of its being which it has left in their different domains have acted as they should there, when it descends again, it will put on one after another all these parts which lived with it in a former life, and with this wealth of knowledge and experience it will prepare to enter a new body. This may be after hundreds or thousands of years, for in those domains all that is organised is no longer necessarily subject to the deposition which here we call death. As soon as a vital being is fully harmonised, it becomes immortal. What dissolves it and breaks it up are all the disorders within it and all the tendencies towards destruction and deposition; but if it is fully harmonised and organised and, so to say, divinised, it becomes immortal. It is the same thing for the mind. And even in the Subtle.Physical, beings who are fully developed and have been impregnated with spiritual forces do not necessarily dissolve after death. They may continue to act or may take a beneficial rest in certain elements of Nature like watergenerally it is in some liquid, in water or the sap of treesor it may be, as described here (laughing), in the clouds. But they may also remain active and continue to act on the more material elements of physical Nature.
  I have given you here a certain number of examples; I tell you, I could talk to you for hours and there would always be new examples to give! But this covers the subject broadly and opens the door to imagination.

1956-12-12 - paradoxes - Nothing impossible - unfolding universe, the Eternal - Attention, concentration, effort - growth capacity almost unlimited - Why things are not the same - will and willings - Suggestions, formations - vital world, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  (After a silence Mother continues:) The individual consciousness extends far beyond the body; we have seen that even the Subtle.Physical which is yet material pared with the vital being and in certain conditions almost visible, extends at times considerably beyond the visible limits of the physical body. This Subtle.Physical is constituted of active vibrations which enter into contact or mingle with the vibrations of the Subtle.Physical of others, and this reciprocal contact gives rise to influencesnaturally the most powerful vibrations get the better of the others. For example, as I have already told you several times, if you have a thought, this thought clothes itself in subtle vibrations and becomes an entity which travels and moves about in the earth-atmosphere in order to realise itself as best it can, and because it is one among millions, naturally there is a multiple and involved interaction as a result of which things dont take place in such a simple and schematic fashion.
  What you call yourself, the individual being enclosed within the limits of your present consciousness, is constantly penetrated by vibrations of this kind, coming from outside and very often presenting themselves in the form of suggestions, in the sense that, apart from a few exceptions, the action takes place first in the mental field, then becomes vital, then physical. I want to make it clear that it is not a question of the pure mind here, but of the physical mind; for in the physical consciousness itself there is a mental activity, a vital activity and a purely material activity, and all that takes place in your physical consciousness, in your body consciousness and bodily activity, penetrates first in the form of vibrations of a mental nature, and so in the form of suggestions. Most of the time these suggestions enter you without your being in the least conscious of them; they go in, awaken some sort of response in you, then spring up in your consciousness as though they were your own thought, your own will, your own impulse; but it is only because you are unconscious of the process of their penetration.

1957-05-15 - Differentiation of the sexes - Transformation from above downwards, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  But on the other planes, even in the terrestrial world, the more subtle planes of the terrestrial world, even in the Subtle.Physical and the vital and mental, there are beings divided in two like this, but also beings which are neither male nor female. They exist. For instance, in the vital world, it is extremely rare to come across differentiations of sex the beings are usually sexless. And I strongly suspect that the world of the gods as described to us by men, has been largely influenced by human thought. In any case, there are many deities who are without sex. In all the stories told of the pantheons of all countries, there is a good deal that has been strongly influenced by human thought. So, this difference is simply a means used by Nature to achieve its aim, thats all, nothing more than that. We must take it like that. It is not an eternal symbolnot at all.
  Now, there are many people who are very keen on this distinction they may keep it if they like!but it is not at all something final or eternal or perfect in itself. It was perhaps the ideal of the overmind creation, that is possible and yet, even then not totally, only partially. But still those who are so fond of this differentiationlet them keep it if they like! If it gives them pleasure. It has its advantages and disadvantages, many disadvantages.

1957-06-26 - Birth through direct transmutation - Man and woman - Judging others - divine Presence in all - New birth, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    But there is here still the necessity of a resort to the normal means of propagation and the gross method of physical Nature. A purely occult method, a resort to supraphysical processes acting by supraphysical means for a physical result would have to be possible if we are to avoid this necessity: the resort to the sex impulse and its animal process could not be transcended otherwise. If there is some reality in the phenomenon of materialisation and dematerialisation claimed to be possible by occultists and evidenced by occurrences many of us have witnessed,1 a method of this kind would not be out of the range of possibility. For in the theory of the occultists and in the gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a Subtle.Physical force but a Subtle.Physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter and to create in this Subtle.Physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible for an object formed in this Subtle.Physical substance to make a transit from its subtlety into the state of gross Matter directly by the intervention of an occult force and process whether with or even without the assistance or intervention of some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable to our present way of existence. It might then assume at once the structure and greater powers and functionings of the truly divine material body which must one day emerge in a progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence both of the life and form in a divinised earth-nature.
    The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, pp. 32-33
  --
  Not as far as the most material plane; as far as the perceptible Subtle.Physicalperceptible by the intermediary senses, between the physical senses and those of the Subtle.Physical; for instance, like a breath felt as a gentle breeze, like certain perceptions of smell, like subtle perfumes. Naturally, those who have an inner vision can see, but for the most material senses there is nothow shall I put it?not the permanence given by the physical body as we know it materially. There are phenomena, yes, that can even be seen, but they are fleeting. There is no stability, the stability in matter, the fixity has not been acquired. I mean there is a contact, there is even the contact of touch, there is a perception, but there isnt the permanence given by the material body. They are transient phenomena which, naturally, dont give you the same feeling of an altogether tangible reality. Still, the influence is constant, the intervention is constant, the perception is constant, but there is not the stability of a body which well, which, when it goes out of the room and returns, it comes back the same as it went out, you understand? Or when you sit down in a certain place, it occupies that place in a very concrete way.
  I cannot say because I dont know everything that has happened and is happening on earth, but as far as I know, this has not yet been achieved, this concrete permanence.
  Yet, it was of matter, for there was sight, touch, hearing. But hearing doesnt need to be very material: the sounds of the Subtle.Physical life, its vibrations can be heard very well; and quite strangely, it is hearing and smell which seem to be the most permanent in the Subtle.Physical world, more so than the perception of form and also a certain sense of contact which is very, very concrete. Only, this heavy material presence of a physical body which occupies an absolutely definite and concrete place and prevents any other thing from occupying the same place, this does not yet seem to be possible; therefore, what has so far been achieved has after all to be a little more fluid than the heaviest kind of matter.
  Does this progress depend on the human consciousness?

1958-01-01 - The collaboration of material Nature - Miracles visible to a deep vision of things - Explanation of New Year Message, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  And suddenly I heard, as if they came from all the corners of the earth, those great notes one sometimes hears in the Subtle.Physical, a little like those of Beethovens Concerto in D-major, which come in moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras had burst forth all in unison, without a single false note, to express the joy of this new communion between Nature and Spirit, the meeting of old friends who come together again after having been separated for so long.
  Then these words came, O Nature, Material Mother, thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate and there is no limit to the splendour of this collaboration.

1958-01-08 - Sri Aurobindos method of exposition - The mind as a public place - Mental control - Sri Aurobindos subtle hand, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  And things are very closely interdependent: I also saw the case when someone came to him with an acute pain somewhere: Oh, it hurts here! Oh, it hurts! Oh! He said nothing, he remained calm, he looked at the person, and I saw, I saw something like a Subtle.Physical hand which came and took hold of the little point dancing about in disorder and confusion, and he took it like this (same gesture) and there, everything had gone.
  Oh, oh! Look my pain has gone.

1958-02-19 - Experience of the supramental boat - The Censors - Absurdity of artificial means, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  I was on a huge boat which was a symbolic representation of the place where this work is going on. This boat, as large as a city, is fully organised, and it had certainly already been functioning for some time, for its organisation was complete. It is the place where people who are destined for the supramental life are trained. These peopleor at least a part of their beinghad already undergone a supramental transformation, for the boat itself and everything on board was neither material nor Subtle.Physical nor vital nor mentalit was a supramental substance. This substance was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance which is closest to the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a mixture of gold and red, forming a uniform substance of a luminous orange. Everything was like that the light was like that, the people were like thateverything had that colour, although with various shades which made it possible to distinguish things from each other. The general impression was of a world without shadows; there were shades but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything went on regularly and in silence. And at the same time one could see all the details of an education, a training in all fields, by which the people on board were being prepared.
  This immense ship had just reached the shore of the supramental world and a first group of people who were destined to become the future inhabitants of this supramental world were to disembark. Everything had been arranged for this first landing. At the wharf several very tall beings were posted. They were not human beings, they had never been men before. Nor were they the permanent inhabitants of the supramental world. They had been delegated from above and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge of the whole thing from the beginning and all the time. I had prepared all the groups myself. I stood on the boat at the head of the gangway, calling the groups one by one and sending them down to the shore. The tall beings who were posted there were inspecting, so to say, those who were landing, authorising those who were ready and sending back those who were not and who had to continue their training on board the ship. While I was there looking at everybody, the part of my consciousness which came from here became extremely interested; it wanted to see and recognise all the people, see how they had changed and check which ones were taken immediately and which ones had to remain to continue their training. After a while, as I stood there observing, I began to feel that I was being pulled back so that my body might wake upa consciousness or a person here and in my consciousness I protested, No, no, not yet, not yet! I want to see the people! I was seeing and noting everything with intense interest. Things continued in this way until suddenly the clock here began to strike three, and this brought me back violently. There was a sensation of suddenly falling into my body. I came back with a shock because I had been called back very suddenly, but with all my memory. I remained quiet, without moving, until I could recollect the whole experience and keep it.

1960 07 13, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Human thought is creative; it gives more or less lasting forms to mental, vital and even Subtle.Physical substance. These forms are appearances rather than realities; but for those whose thoughts they are, and still more for those who believe in them, they have a concrete enough existence to give them an illusion of reality. Thus, for the believers of religions which assert the existence of a hell, a paradise, or various heavens, these places do exist objectively, and when they die they can go there for a longer or shorter period. But still these things are only impermanent mental formations; they carry no eternal truth in themselves.
   I have seen the heavens and hells where some people have gone after death, and it is very difficult to make them understand that there is no truth in them. Once it took me more than a year to convince someone that his so-called hell was not hell and to get him out of it.

1962 01 12, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The experience of the boat took place in the Subtle.Physical. And the people who had dark patches and who had to be taken back were always the ones who lacked the suppleness needed for these two movements, but especially the movement of widening, more than the movement of progression to follow the Becoming; this seemed to be a preoccupation later, for those who had landed, after the landing. But the preparation on the boat was for this capacity for widening.
   There was also something else which I did not mention when I described my experience: the boat had no machines. Everything, everything was set in motion by the willindividuals and thingseven peoples dress was a result of their will. And this gave a great suppleness to all these things and to the forms of individuals; because one was conscious of this will, which is not a mental will but a will of the Self, or a spiritual will, one might say, a will of the soul, if one gives that meaning to the word soul. But this is something which can be experienced here when one acts with an absolute spontaneity, that is to say, when an action, such as speech or movement, is not determined by the mind I am not speaking of thought and intellectnot even by the mind which usually makes us act. Usually, when we do something, we perceive within us the will to do this thing when we are conscious and observe ourselves doing it, we can see that; there is alwaysit may be very fleeting the will to do it. It is the intervention of the mind, the habitual intervention, the order in which things happen. Whereas the supramental action is decided by overleaping the mind. It is not necessary to pass through the mind, it is direct. Something enters into direct contact with the vital centres and makes them actwithout passing through the thought, but with full consciousness. The consciousness does not work in the usual order, it goes directly from the centre of spiritual will to Matter.

1962 02 27, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   To come back to what I was saying, according to the plane on which one has seen, one can more or less judge the time that the vision will take to be fulfilled. And the immediate things are already realised, they already exist in the Subtle.Physical and they can be seen therethey simply are, they exist there. They are only the reflectionnot even a transcription the reflection or projection of the image in the material world which will appear on the next day or in a few hours. There you see the exact thing in all its details, because it already exists; so everything depends on the accuracy of the vision and the power of vision. If you have a power of vision that is objective and sincere, you see the thing accurately; if you add your own feelings and impressions to it, it is coloured by them. So accuracy in the Subtle.Physical depends exclusively on the instrument, that is to say, on the one who sees.
   But as soon as you enter a more subtle region, such as the vital and even more so in the mental, but already in the vital there is a small margin of possibility then there you can see roughly what is going to happen, but in detail it may be like this or like that; there are wills and influences that may possibly intervene and create a difference.
  --
   Thus when you know someone well and you often see him physically, if you see him in the Subtle.Physical, already there are things which become more marked, more visible, more outstanding, which you had not seen physically, because in the greyness of the material world they had merged with many other things on the same plane. There are characteristics or expressions of character which become outstanding enough to be quite visible, although they had not been physically apparent. When you look at a person physically, there is the complexion, the features, the expression; at the same moment, if you see this face in the Subtle.Physical, you suddenly notice that one part of the face is one colour, another part another colour; that in the eyes there is an expression and a kind of light which were not at all visible; and that the whole has quite a different appearance and, above all, gives a very different feeling, which to our physical eyes would seem rather extravagant, but which to the subtle vision is very expressive and revealing of the character, or even of the influences acting on this person. What I say here is the record of an experience that I had again a few days ago.
   So according to the degree to which you are conscious and the extent to which you see, you perceive images, see events that are more or less near, and you see them more or less accurately. The only vision that is true and sure is the vision of the divine Consciousness. So the problem is to become aware of the divine Consciousness and to keep this consciousness in all details all the time.
  --
   When events are already prepared in the Subtle.Physical and you have a vision of them, is it too late to change things? Can one still act?
   I know of a very interesting example. There was a time when in the newspaper Le Matinit was a long time ago, you must have been very youngevery day there was a little cartoon of a boy pointing to somethinga kind of page-boy dressed like thatand always showing the date or somethinga little cartoon. Now the gentleman in this story was travelling and he was staying in a big hotel, I do not remember in which town, and one night or early in the morning, very early, he had a dream. He saw this page-boy pointing to his funeral carriageyou know, when they take people to the cemetery, in Europe and inviting him to step into it! He saw that and then in the morning when he was ready, he left his room which was on the top floor, and there, on the landing, the same boy, dressed in the same way, was pointing out the lift for him to go down. That gave him a shock. He refused and said, No thank you. The lift fell and crashed, killing the people inside.
  --
   My explanation is that an entity had forewarned him. The image of the page-boy seems to indicate that an intelligence, a consciousness had intervened; it does not seem to have been his own subconscient. Or it might be that his subconscient was aware and had seen in the Subtle.Physical that this was going to happen. But why did his subconscient give him an image like that? I do not know. Perhaps something in the subconscient knew, because it was already there, it was already in the Subtle.Physical. The accident already existed before it happened the law of the accident.
   Obviously, there is always, in every case, some difference, sometimes a few hours but that is the maximum sometimes a few seconds. And very often, things tell you that they are there, and it takes them sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds to come into contact with your consciousness. Constantly, constantly I know what is going to happen, and for things that are of absolutely no interest there is no advantage in knowing it beforehand, it changes nothing; but it exists, it is all around you. If your consciousness is wide enough, you know all that, for example, that a certain person is going to bring you a parcel, things like that. And it is like that every day. Or that a certain person is about to arrive. It is because the consciousness is extended, so it contacts things.

1962 10 12, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So many things So many things Man has made a terrible tragedy out of death. These last few days, I have seen this, because last night or the night before I spent at least two hours in a world which is Subtle.Physical, where the living and the dead intermingle without feeling any differenceit doesnt make any difference. There, there is no difference. The living were therethose whom we call the living and those whom we call the dead. They were there together, they ate together, they moved together, they played together; and all this was in a pretty light, quiet and very pleasant, it was very pleasant. I said to myself, There, men have made a break, like this, and then they say, Now, dead. And dead the best part of it is that they treat them as they would treat something unconsciousyet the body is still conscious.
   (Silence)
  --
   Now I can feel Him everywhere, all the time, all the time even a physical contactit is Subtle.Physical, but physicalin things, in the air, in people, in like this. (Mother presses her hands to her face.) And then, it is not far to go, all I have to do is this (Mother turns her hands slightly inwards), one second of concentrationHe is there! He is there, He is everywhere. He is far away only when we think He is far away.
   Naturally, when we begin to think of all the zones, all the planes of universal consciousness and that it is at the very end, at the very end, right at the very end, then it becomes very far away, very, very far! (Mother laughs.) But when we think that He is everywhere, that He is everything and that it is only our perception that prevents us from seeing Him and feeling Him and that we only have to do this (Mother turns her hands inwards); it is a movement like this and like that (Mother turns her hands alternately inwards and outwards), it becomes very concrete: you do this (outward movement), everything becomes artificial, hard, dry, false, untrue, artificial; you do this (inward movement), everything becomes wide, tranquil, luminous, peaceful, vast, joyful. And it is simply this, that (Mother turns her hands alternately inwards and outwards). How? Where? It cannot be described, it is only, only a movement of consciousness, nothing else. A movement of consciousness. And the difference between the true consciousness and the false consciousness becomes more and more precise, and at the same time, thinyou dont have to do great things to come out of it. Before that, one has the impression that one is living inside something and that a great interiorisation, concentration, absorption, is needed to get out of it; but now the impression is of something one accepts (Mother screens her face with her hand), something like a thin little peel that is very hardvery hard but malleable, very, very dry, very thin, very thin, something like putting on a mask; and then one does this (gesture), and it disappears.

1966 07 06, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Each time I have been conscious of the Power, the experience has been similar. The Will from above is translated into a vibration which certainly takes on some vital force but which acts in a Subtle.Physical domain. One perceives a certain quality of vibration which is difficult to describe, but which gives the impression of something coagulated, not fragmented, something which seems to be denser than air, but which is extremely homogeneous, with a golden luminosity, with a tremendous driving power, and which expresses a certain willwhich is not of the same nature as human will, which has the nature of vision rather than of thought; it is like a vision that imposes itself in order to be realisedin a domain that is very close to material Matter, but invisible, except to the inner sight. And that vibration exerts a pressure on people, things, circumstances, to mould them according to its vision. And it is irresistible. Even people who think the opposite, who want the opposite, do what is wanted without wanting to; even the things that by their very nature are opposed to it are turned around.
   For national events, relations among nations, world circumstances, it acts like that, constantly, constantly, as a tremendous Power. And so if one is oneself in a state of union with the divine Will, without any intervention of thought, or any conception or idea, one can follow it, one sees and knows.1

1970 02 12, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   As Sri Aurobindo has predicted, things are moving fast, and the situation of humanity has changed much since Sri Aurobindo began to work in the Subtle.Physical: the idea of human unity has made great headway and is more widely understood.
   12 February 1970

1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   disease, as you must realise from the Subtle.Physical as well as
   mental changes in him, and you must not hope to see him again. Have

2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But, in fact, in what we call dreamless sleep, we have gone into a profounder and denser layer of the subconscient, a state too involved, too immersed or too obscure, dull and heavy to bring to the surface its structures, and we are dreaming there but unable to grasp or retain in the recording layer of subconscience these more obscure dream figures. Or else, it may be, the part of our mind which still remains active in the sleep of the body has entered into the inner domains of our being, the subliminal mental, the subliminal vital, the Subtle.Physical, and is there lost to all active connection with the surface parts of us. If we are still in the nearer depths of these regions, the surface subconscient which is our sleep-wakefulness records something of what we experience in these depths; but it records it in its own transcription, often marred by characteristic incoherences and always, even when most coherent, deformed or cast into figures drawn from the world of waking experience. But if we have gone deeper inward, the record fails or cannot be recovered and we have the illusion of dreamlessness; but the activity of the inner dream consciousness continues behind the veil of the now mute and inactive subconscient surface. This continued dream activity is revealed to us when we become more inwardly conscious, for then we get into connection with the heavier and deeper subconscient stratum and can be aware - at the time or by a retracing or recovering through memory - of what happened when we sank into these torpid depths. It is possible too to become conscious deeper within our subliminal selves and we are then aware of experiences on other planes of our being or even in supraphysical worlds to which sleep gives us a right of secret entry. A transcript of such experiences reaches us; but the transcriber here is not the subconscious, it is the subliminal, a greater dream-builder.
  If the subliminal thus comes to the front in our dream consciousness, there is sometimes an activity of our subliminal intelligence, - dream becomes a series of thoughts, often strangely or vividly figured, problems are solved which our
  --
  There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or Subtle.Physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature, - and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being's direct consciousness of things than its informants: the subliminal is not dependent on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to its direct experience of objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and Subtle.Physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience.
  It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw from the surface activities

2.07 - The Mother Relations with Others, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    I am with you, that signifies a world of things, because I am with you on all levels, on all planes, from the supreme consciousness down to my most physical consciousness. Here, in Pondicherry, you cannot brea the without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the Subtle.Physical, and extends to the Lake, ten kilometres from here. Farther, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, then on the mental plane and the other higher planes, everywhere. When I came here for the first time, I felt the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, felt it materially at a distance of ten miles, ten nautical miles, not kilometres. It was very sudden, very concrete, an atmosphere pure, luminous, light, light that lifts you up.
    It is now long since Sri Aurobindo has put up everywhere in the Ashram this reminder that you all know: Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you, because she is, indeed, always present.
  --
    With those whom I have accepted as disciples, to whom I have said Yes, there is more than a tie, there is an emanation of me. This emanation warns me whenever it is necessary and tells me what is happening. Indeed I receive intimations constantly, but not all are recorded in my active memory, I would be flooded; the physical consciousness acts like a filter. Things are recorded on a subtle plane, they are there in a latent state, something like a piece of music that is recorded without being played, and when I need to know with my physical consciousness, I make contact with this Subtle.Physical plane and the disc begins to turn. Then I see how things are, their development in time, the actual result.
    And if for some reason you write to me asking for my help and I answer I am with you, it means that the communication with you becomes active, you come into my active consciousness for a time, for the time necessary.

2.09 - Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A mind with immeasurably wider and more subtle perceptions, a life-energy with a greater dynamism, a Subtle.Physical substance with a larger and finer receptivity are building out of themselves our surface evolution. A psychic entity is there behind these occult activities which is the true support of our individualisation; the ego is only an outward false substitute: for it is this secret soul that supports and holds together our self-experience and world-experience; the mental, vital, physical, external ego is a superficial construction of Nature. It is only when we have seen both our self and our nature as a whole, in the depths as well as on the surface, that we can acquire a true basis of knowledge.

2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For a larger mental being is there within us, a larger inner vital being, even a larger inner Subtle.Physical being other than our surface body-consciousness, and by entering into this or becoming it, identifying ourselves with it, we can observe the springs of our thoughts and feelings, the sources and motives of our action, the operative energies that build up our surface personality. For we discover and can know the inner being that secretly thinks and perceives in us, the vital being that secretly
  Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
  --
   feels and acts upon life through us, the Subtle.Physical being that secretly receives and responds to the contacts of things through our body and its organs. Our surface thought, feeling, emotion is a complexity and confusion of impulsions from within and impacts from outside us; our reason, our organising intelligence can impose on it only an imperfect order: but here within we find the separate sources of our mental, our vital and our physical energisms and can see clearly the pure operations, the distinct powers, the composing elements of each and their interplay in a clear light of self-vision. We find that the contradictions and the struggles of our surface consciousness are largely due to the contrary or mutually discordant tendencies of our mental, vital and physical parts opposing and unreconciled with each other and these again to the discord of many different inner possibilities of our being and even of different personalities on each level in us which are behind the intermixed disposition and differing tendencies of our surface nature. But while on the surface their action is mixed together, confused and conflicting, here in our depths they can be seen and worked upon in their independent and separate nature and action and a harmonisation of them by the mental being in us, leader of the life and body,5 - or, better, by the central psychic entity, - is not so difficult, provided we have the right psychic and mental will in the endeavour: for if it is with the vital-ego motive that we make the entry into the subliminal being, it may result in serious dangers and disaster or at the least an exaggeration of ego, self-affirmation and desire, an enlarged and more powerful ignorance instead of an enlarged and more powerful knowledge. Moreover, we find in this inner or subliminal being the means of directly distinguishing between what rises from within and what comes to us from outside, from others or from universal Nature, and it becomes possible to exercise a control, a choice, a power of willed reception, rejection and selection, a clear power of self-building and harmonisation which we do not possess or can operate very imperfectly in our composed surface personality but which is the prerogative of
  5 manomayah pranasarraneta - Mundaka Upanishad, 2. 2. 7.
  --
  But more important is the power of the subliminal to enter into a direct contact of consciousness with other consciousness or with objects, to act without other instrumentation, by an essential sense inherent in its own substance, by a direct mental vision, by a direct feeling of things, even by a close envelopment and intimate penetration and a return with the contents of what is enveloped or penetrated, by a direct intimation or impact on the substance of mind itself, not through outward signs or figures, - a revealing intimation or a self-communicating impact of thoughts, feelings, forces. It is by these means that the inner being achieves an immediate, intimate and accurate spontaneous knowledge of persons, of objects, of the occult and to us intangible energies of world-Nature that surround us and impinge upon our own personality, physicality, mindforce and life-force. In our surface mentality we are sometimes aware of a consciousness that can feel or know the thoughts and inner reactions of others or become aware of objects or happenings without any observable sense-intervention or otherwise exercise powers supernormal to our ordinary capacity; but these capacities are occasional, rudimentary, vague. Their possession is proper to our concealed subliminal self and, when they emerge, it is by a coming to the surface of its powers or operations. These emergent operations of the subliminal being or some of them are now fragmentarily studied under the name of psychic phenomena, - although they have ordinarily nothing to do with the psyche, the soul, the inmost entity in us, but only with the inner mind, the inner vital, the Subtle.Physical parts
  Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
  --
   see their movements; to read a mind and a heart becomes less difficult, a less uncertain venture. There is a constant mental, vital, Subtle.Physical interchange going on between all who meet or live together, of which they are themselves unaware except in so far as its impacts and interpenetrations touch them as sensible results of speech and action and outer contact: for the most part it is subtly and invisibly that this interchange takes place; for it acts indirectly, touching the subliminal parts and through them the outer nature. But when we grow conscious in these subliminal parts, that brings consciousness also of all this interaction and subjective interchange and intermingling, with the result that we need no longer be involuntary subjects of their impact and consequence, but can accept or reject, defend ourselves or isolate. At the same time, our action on others need no longer be ignorant or involuntary and often unintentionally harmful; it can be a conscious help, a luminous interchange and a fruitful accommodation, an approach towards an inner understanding or union, not as now a separative association with only a limited intimacy or unity, restricted by much nonunderstanding and often burdened or endangered by a mass of misunderstanding, of mutual misinterpretation and error.
  Equally important would be the change in our dealings with the impersonal forces of the world that surround us. These we know only by their results, by the little that we can seize of their visible action and consequence. Among them it is mostly the physical world-forces of which we have some knowledge, but we live constantly in the midst of a whirl of unseen mindforces and life-forces of which we know nothing, we are not even aware of their existence. To all this unseen movement and action the subliminal inner consciousness can open our awareness, for it has a knowledge of it by direct contact, by inner vision, by a psychic sensitiveness; but at present it can only enlighten our obtuse superficiality and outwardness by unexplained warnings, premonitions, attractions and repulsions, ideas, suggestions, obscure intuitions, the little it can get through imperfectly to the surface. The inner being not only contacts directly and concretely the immediate motive and movement of these universal
  --
  This affiliation, this concealed method of our knowledge, obscure and non-evident to our present mentality, becomes clear and evident when the subliminal inner being breaks its boundaries of individuality and, carrying our surface mind with it, enters into the cosmic consciousness. The subliminal is separated from the cosmic through a limitation by the subtler sheaths of our being, its mental, vital, Subtle.Physical sheaths, just as the surface nature is separated from universal Nature by the gross physical sheath, the body; but the circumscribing wall around it is more transparent, is indeed less a wall than a fence. The subliminal has besides a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond all these sheaths and forms a circumconscient, an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of the world and can become aware of them and deal with them before they enter. The subliminal is able to widen indefinitely this circumconscient envelope and more and more enlarge its selfprojection into the cosmic existence around it. A point comes where it can break through the separation altogether, unite, identify itself with cosmic being, feel itself universal, one with all existence. In this freedom of entry into cosmic self and cosmic nature there is a great liberation of the individual being; it puts on a cosmic consciousness, becomes the universal individual. Its first result, when it is complete, is the realisation of the cosmic spirit, the one self inhabiting the universe, and this union may even bring about a disappearance of the sense of individuality, a merger of the ego into the world-being. Another common result is an entire openness to the universal Energy so that it is felt acting through the mind and life and body and the sense of individual action ceases. But more usually there are results of less amplitude; there is a direct awareness of universal being and nature, there is a greater openness of the mind to the cosmic
  Mind and its energies, to the cosmic Life and its energies, to

2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But the subliminal self has not at all this subconscious character: it is in full possession of a mind, a life-force, a clear Subtle.Physical sense of things. It has the same capacities as our waking being, a subtle sense and perception, a comprehensive extended memory and an intensive selecting intelligence, will, self-consciousness; but even though the same in kind, they are wider, more developed, more sovereign. And it has other capacities which exceed those of our mortal mind because of a power of direct awareness of the being, whether acting in itself or turned upon its object, which arrives more swiftly at knowledge, more swiftly at effectivity of will, more deeply at understanding and satisfaction of impulse. Our surface mind is hardly a true mentality, so involved, bound, hampered, conditioned is it by the body and bodily life and the limitations of the nerve-system and the physical organs. But the subliminal self has a true mentality superior to these limitations; it exceeds the physical mind and physical organs although it is aware of them and their works and is, indeed, in a large degree their cause or creator. It is only subconscious in the sense of not bringing all or most of itself to the surface, it works always behind the veil: it is rather a secret intraconscient and circumconscient than a subconscient; for it envelops quite as much as it supports the outer nature.
  This description is no doubt truest of the deeper parts of the subliminal; in other layers of it nearer to our surface there is a more ignorant action and those who, penetrating within, pause in the zones of lesser coherence or in the No-man's-land between the subliminal and the surface, may fall into much delusion and confusion: but that too, though ignorant, is not of the nature of the subconscious; the confusion of these intermediate zones has no kinship to the Inconscience.

2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: There is a vital image which is a possibility and it can be prevented; secondly, there is the image of the event on the Subtle.Physical plane which, if it is fixed, cant be avoided.
   Disciple: Are there events absolutely fixed which cannot be changed?

2.15 - On the Gods and Asuras, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: They are what may be called the elemental beings, or rather, obscure elemental forces they are 'forces' more than 'beings'. It is these that the Theosophists call the Elementals. They are not individualised beings like the Asura and the Rakshasa, they are ignorant forces working on the Subtle.Physical plane.
   Disciple: What is the word for them in Sanskrit?

2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An inner range of spiritual experience is one very great domain of human consciousness; it has to be entered into up to its deepest depths and its vastest reaches. The supraphysical is as real as the physical; to know it is part of a complete knowledge. The knowledge of the supraphysical has been associated with mysticism and occultism, and occultism has been banned as a superstition and a fantastic error. But the occult is a part of existence; a true occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature, of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of life and life-energy, the secret laws of the Subtle.Physical and its energies, - all that Nature has not put into visible operation on the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence.
  In the spiritual domain, which is occult to the surface mind in so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of man her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic, - for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not tangible to any outer means of knowledge.

2.16 - The 15th of August, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: But if the Subtle.Physical accepts the Higher Truth?
   Sri Aurobindo: It may have accepted in my case but that proves nothing. It does not mean that it is established in the universal or that it is fundamentally and radically changed.

2.1.7.07 - On the Verse and Structure of the Poem, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I was trying doublets again because in the third Section, first subsection (Yoga of the Lord of the Horse Ascent to Godhead) there is a long passage describing Aswapatis progress through the Subtle.Physical, vital and mental worlds towards the Overmind which is far yet from being either complete or au point. It was only a brief interlude of a few lines formerly, but I had been leng thening it out afterwards with much difficulty in getting it right. I have now got the Subtle.Physical and lower vital worlds into some kind of order, but the big dark Asuric vital and the vital heavens are still roaming about in a state of half solid incompleteness. Still I suppose as I am taking my vacation (from correspondence), I may have time to put all that right.
  1 November 1936

2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: But there are many kinds of voices due to the forces on different planes and it is extremely difficult to distinguish between the right or the true inner voice and a false one. There may be voices either from the mental, the vital or the Subtle.Physical planes. Moreover, in the same person the voices may differ.
   Sri Aurobindo: Quite true. Hitler's friend said about him that what Hitler said today he contradicted tomorrow.

2.19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The part of us that we have characterised as intraconscient and circumconscient is a still more potent and much more valuable element in the constitution of our being. It includes the large action of an inner intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, even of an inner Subtle.Physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness, which is not brought to the front, which is subliminal, in the modern phrase. But when we can enter and explore this hidden self, we find that our waking sense and intelligence are for the most part a selection from what we secretly are or can be, an exteriorised and much mutilated and vulgarised edition of our real, our hidden being or an upthrow from its depths. Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help by an evolution out of the Inconscient for the utility of our present mental and physical life on earth; this that is behind is a formation mediating between the Inconscient and the larger planes of Life and Mind which have been created by the involutionary descent and whose pressure has helped to bring about the evolution of mind and life in Matter.
  Our surface responses to physical existence have at their back the support of an activity in these veiled parts, are often responses from them modified by a surface mental rendering. But also that large part of our mentality and vitality which is not a response to the outside world but lives for itself or throws itself out on material existence to use and possess it, our personality, is the outcome, the amalgamated formulation of powers, influences, motives proceeding from this potent intraconscient secrecy.

2.2.01 - The Outer Being and the Inner Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  mental and vital and their forces; the inner Subtle.Physical can
  also be in direct touch with the cosmic forces of the physical

2.2.02 - The True Being and the True Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The true being mental, vital or Subtle.Physical has always the
  greater qualities of its plane - it is the Purusha and like the

2.2.03 - The Psychic Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The soul is not limited by any form, but the psychic being puts out a form for its expression, just as the mental, vital and Subtle.Physical Purushas do - that is to say, one can see or another person can see one's psychic being in such and such a form. But
  120

2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, they have. Vision is not only on the spiritual level. It can be also on the vital and the Subtle.Physical planes, and can be very accurate.
   Disciple: Can Asuras know about their own end?

2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For the soul personality, as it develops, must get sufficient power over its own nature-formation and a sufficient selfexpressive mental and vital individuality to persist without the support of the material body, as well as to overcome any excessive detaining attachment to the physical plane and the physical life: it would be sufficiently evolved to subsist in the subtle body which we know to be the characteristic case or sheath and the proper Subtle.Physical support of the inner being. It is the soul-person, the psychic being, that survives and carries mind and life with it on its journey, and it is in the subtle body that it passes out of its material lodging; both then must be sufficiently developed for the transit. But a transference to planes of mind existence or life existence implies also a mind and life sufficiently formed and developed to pass without disintegration and exist for a time on these higher levels. If these conditions were satisfied, a sufficiently developed psychic personality and subtle body and a sufficiently developed mental and vital personality, survival of the soul-person without an immediate new-birth would be secured and the pull of the other worlds would become operative. But this by itself would mean a return to earth with the same mental and vital personality and there would be no free evolution in the new birth. There must be an individuation of the psychic person itself sufficient for it not to depend on its past mind and life formations any more than on its past body, but to shed them too in time and proceed to a new formation for new experience. For this discarding of the old and preparation of new forms the soul must dwell for some time between two births somewhere else than on the entirely material plane in which we now move; for here there would be no abiding place for a disembodied spirit. A brief stay might indeed be possible if there are subtle envelopes of the earth-existence which belong to earth but are of a vital or mental character: but even then there would be no reason for the soul to linger there for a long period, unless it is still burdened with an overpowering attachment to the earth-life.
  A survival of the material body by the personality implies a supraphysical existence, and this can only be in some plane of being proper to the evolutionary stage of the consciousness or, if there is no evolution, in a temporary second home of the spirit which would be its natural place of sojourn between life and life, - unless indeed it is its original world from which it does not return into material Nature.
  --
  But there are also the true vital worlds, - original constructions, organised developments, native habitats of the universal life-principle, the cosmic vital Anima, acting in its own field and in its own nature. On his internatal journey he may be held there for a period by force of the predominantly vital character of the influences which have shaped his earthly existence, - for these influences are native to the vital world and their hold on him would detain him for a while in their proper province: he may be kept in the grasp of that which held him in its grasp even in the physical being. Any residence of the soul in annexes or in its own constructions could be only a transitional stage of the consciousness in its passage from the physical to the supraphysical state; it must pass from these structures into the true worlds of supraphysical Nature. It may enter at once into the worlds of other-life, or it may remain first, as a transitional stage, in some region of Subtle.Physical experience whose surroundings may seem to it a prolongation of the circumstances of physical life, but in freer conditions proper to a subtler medium and in some kind of happy perfection of mind or life or a finer bodily existence. Beyond these Subtle.Physical planes of experience and the life-worlds there are also mental or spiritual-mental planes to which the soul seems to have an internatal access and into which it may pursue its internatal journey; but it is not likely to live consciously there if there has not been a sufficient mental or soul development in this life. For these levels must normally be the highest the evolving being can internatally inhabit, since one who has not gone beyond the mental rung in the ladder of being would not be able to ascend to any supramental or overmental state; or if he had so developed as to overleap the mental level and could attain so far, it might not be possible for him to return so long as the physical evolution has not developed here an organisation of an overmental or supramental life in Matter.
  But, even so, the mental worlds are not likely to be the last normal stage of the after-death passage; for man is not entirely mental: it is the soul, the psychic being, and not the mind, that is the traveller between death and birth, and the mental being is only a predominant element in the figure of its self-expression.
  There must then be a final resort to a plane of pure psychic existence in which the soul would await rebirth; there it could assimilate the energies of its past experience and life and prepare its future. Ordinarily, the normally developed human being, who has risen to a sufficient power of mentality, might be expected to pass successively through all these planes, Subtle.Physical, vital and mental, on his way to his psychic habitation. At each stage he would exhaust and get rid of the fractions of formed personality structure, temporary and superficial, that belonged to the past life; he would cast off his mind sheath and life sheath as he had already cast off his body sheath: but the essence of the personality and its mental, vital and physical experiences would remain in latent memory or as a dynamic potency for the future.
  But if the development of mind were insufficient, it is possible that it would not be able to go consciously beyond the vital level and the being would either fall back from there, returning from its vital heavens or purgatories to earth, or, more consistently, would pass at once into a kind of psychic assimilative sleep coextensive with the internatal period; to be awake in the highest planes a certain development would be indispensable.
  --
  This would mean a passage of the soul progressively through Subtle.Physical, vital and mental worlds to the psychic dwellingplace from which it would return to its terrestrial pilgrimage.
  The terrestrial gathering up and development of the materials thus prepared, their working out in the earth life would be the consequence of this internatal resort, and the new birth would be a field of the resultant activity, a new stadium or spiral curve in the individual evolution of the embodied spirit.
  --
  In each return to earth the Person, the Purusha, makes a new formation, builds a new personal quantum suitable for a new experience, for a new growth of its being. When it passes from its body, it keeps still the same vital and mental form for a time, but the forms or sheaths dissolve and what is kept is only the essential elements of the past quantum, of which some will but some may not be used in the next incarnation. The essential form of the past personality may remain as one element among many, one personality among many personalities of the same Person, but in the background, in the subliminal behind the veil of the surface mind and life and body, contri buting from there whatever is needed of itself to the new formation; but it will not itself be the whole formation or build anew the old unchanged type of nature. It may even be that the new quantum or structure of being will exhibit a quite contrary character and temperament, quite other capacities, other very different tendencies; for latent potentials may be ready to emerge, or something already in action but inchoate may have been held back in the last life which needed to be worked out but was kept over for a later and more suitable combination of the possibilities of the nature. All the past is indeed there, with its accelerated impetus and potentialities for the formation of the future, but all of it is not ostensibly present and active. The greater the variety of formations that have existed in the past and can be utilised, the more rich and multitudinous the accumulated buildings of experience, the more their essential result of capacity for knowledge, power, action, character, manifold response to the universe can be brought forward and harmonised in the new birth, the more numerous the veiled personalities mental, vital, Subtle.Physical that combine to enrich the new personality on the surface, the greater and more opulent will be that personality and the nearer to the possible transition out of the completed mental stage of evolution to something beyond it. Such a complexity and gathering up of many personalities in one person can be a sign of a very advanced stage of the individual's evolution when there is a strong central being that holds all together and works towards harmonisation and integration of the whole many-sided movement of the nature. But this opulent taking up of the past would not be a repetition of personality; it would be a new formation and large consummation. It is not as a machinery for the persistent renewal or prolongation of an unchanging personality that rebirth exists, but as a means for the evolution of the spiritual being in Nature.
  It becomes at once evident that in this plan of rebirth the false importance which our mind attaches to the memory of past lives disappears altogether. If indeed rebirth were governed by a system of rewards and punishments, if life's whole intention were to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral, - supposing that that is the intention in the dispensation of Karma and it is not what it looks like in this presentation of it, a mechanical law of recompense and retri bution without any reformatory meaning or purpose, - then there is evidently a great stupidity and injustice in denying to the mind in its new incarnation all memory of its past births and actions. For it deprives the reborn being of all chance to realise why he is rewarded or punished or to get any advantage from the lesson of the profitableness of virtue and the unprofitableness of sin vouchsafed to him or inflicted on him. Even, since life seems often to teach the opposite lesson, - for he sees the good suffer for their goodness and the wicked prosper by their wickedness, - he is rather likely to conclude in this perverse sense, because he has not the memory of an assured and constant result of experience which would show him that the suffering of the good man was due to his past wickedness and the prosperity of the sinner due to the splendour of his past virtues, so that virtue is the best policy in the long run for any reasonable and prudent soul entering into this dispensation of Nature. It might be said that the psychic being within remembers; but such a secret memory would seem to have little effect or value on the surface. Or it may be said that it realises what has happened and learns its lesson when it reviews and assimilates its experiences after issuing from the body: but this intermittent memory does not very apparently help in the next birth; for most of us persist in sin and error and show no tangible signs of having profited by the teaching of our past experience.

2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The soul in us, the psychic principle, has already begun to take secret form; it puts forward and develops a soul personality, a distinct psychic being to represent it. This psychic being remains still behind the veil in our subliminal part, like the true mental, the true vital or the true or Subtle.Physical being within us: but, like them, it acts on the surface life by the influences and intimations it throws up upon that surface; these form part of the surface aggregate which is the conglomerate effect of the inner influences and upsurgings, the visible formation and superstructure which we ordinarily experience and think of as ourselves. On this ignorant surface we become dimly aware of something that can be called a soul as distinct from mind, life or body; we feel it not only as our mental idea or vague instinct of ourselves, but as a sensible influence in our life and character and action. A certain sensitive feeling for all that is true and good and beautiful, fine and pure and noble, a response to it, a demand for it, a pressure on mind and life to accept and formulate it in our thought, feelings, conduct, character is the most usually recognised, the most general and characteristic, though not the sole sign of this influence of the psyche. Of the man who has not this element in him or does not respond at all to this urge, we say that he has no soul. For it is this influence that we can most easily recognise as a finer or even a diviner part in us and the most powerful for the slow turning towards some aim at perfection in our nature.
  But this psychic influence or action does not come up to the surface quite pure or does not remain distinct in its purity; if it did, we would be able to distinguish clearly the soul element in us and follow consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and Subtle.Physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and turn it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, smallness and error of mind and life and body. After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished, it is taken hold of by the surface nature in an obscure reception and ignorant formation, and there is or can be by this cause a still further deviation and mixture. A twist is given, a wrong direction is imparted, a wrong application, a wrong formation, an erroneous result of what is in itself pure stuff and action of our spiritual being; a formation of consciousness is accordingly made which is a mixture of the psychic influence and its intimations jumbled with mental ideas and opinions, vital desires and urges, habitual physical tendencies. There coalesce too with the obscured soul-influence the ignorant though well-intentioned efforts of these external parts towards a higher direction; a mental ideation of a very mixed character, often obscure even in its idealism, sometimes even disastrously mistaken, a fervour and passion of the emotional being throwing up its spray and foam of feelings, sentiments, sentimentalisms, a dynamic enthusiasm of the life-parts, eager responses of the physical, the thrills and excitements of nerve and body, - all these influences coalesce in a composite formation which is frequently taken as the soul and its mixed and confused action for the soul-stir, for a psychic development and action or a realised inner influence. The psychic entity is itself free from stain or mixture, but what comes up from it is not protected by that immunity; therefore this confusion becomes possible.
  Moreover, the psychic being, the soul personality in us, does not emerge full-grown and luminous; it evolves, passes through a slow development and formation; its figure of being may be at first indistinct and may afterwards remain for a long time weak and undeveloped, not impure but imperfect: for it rests its formation, its dynamic self-building on the power of soul that has been actually and more or less successfully, against the resistance of the Ignorance and Inconscience, put forth in the evolution upon the surface. Its appearance is the sign of a soulemergence in Nature, and if that emergence is as yet small and defective, the psychic personality also will be stunted or feeble.
  --
  This slow development can be aided by the mind's clear perception and insistence on something within that survives the death of the body and an effort to know its nature. But at first this knowledge is impeded by the fact that there are many elements in us, many formations which present themselves as soul elements and can be mistaken for the psyche. In the early Greek and some other traditions about the after-life, the descriptions given show very clearly that what was then mistaken for the soul was a subconscious formation, a subphysical impressionmould or shadow-form of the being or else a wraith or ghost of the personality. This ghost, which is mistakenly called the spirit, is sometimes a vital formation reproducing the man's characteristics, his surface life-mannerisms, sometimes a Subtle.Physical prolongation of the surface form of the mind-shell: at best it is a sheath of the life personality which still remains in the front for some time after the departure from the body. Apart from these confusions born of an after-death contact with discarded phantasms or remnants of the sheaths of the personality, the difficulty is due to our ignorance of the subliminal parts of our nature and the form and powers of the conscious being or Purusha which preside over their action; owing to this inexperience we can easily mistake something of the inner mind or vital self for the psyche. For as Being is one yet multiple, so also the same law prevails in ourselves and our members; the spirit, the Purusha is one but it adapts itself to the formations of Nature.
  Over each grade of our being a power of the Spirit presides; we have within us and discover when we go deep enough inwards a mind-self, a life-self, a physical self; there is a being of mind, a mental Purusha, expressing something of itself on our surface in the thoughts, perceptions, activities of our mind nature, a being of life which expresses something of itself in the impulses, feelings, sensations, desires, external life activities of our vital nature, a physical being, a being of the body which expresses something of itself in the instincts, habits, formulated activities of our physical nature. These beings or part selves of the self in us are powers of the Spirit and therefore not limited by their temporary expression, for what is thus formulated is only a fragment of its possibilities; but the expression creates a temporary mental, vital or physical personality which grows and develops even as the psychic being or soul personality grows and develops within us. Each has its own distinct nature, its influence, its action on the whole of us; but on our surface all these influences and all this action, as they come up, mingle and create an aggregate surface being which is a composite, an amalgam of them all, an outer persistent and yet shifting and mobile formation for the purposes of this life and its limited experience.
  --
  This rule of different selves in us is at the root of the stages of the development of human personality which we have already had occasion to differentiate, and we can reconsider them now from the point of view of the government of the nature by the inner principle. In some human beings it is the physical Purusha, the being of body, who dominates the mind, will and action; there is then created the physical man mainly occupied with his corporeal life and habitual needs, impulses, life habits, mind habits, body habits, looking very little or not at all beyond that, subordinating and restricting all his other tendencies and possibilities to that narrow formation. But even in the physical man there are other elements and he cannot live altogether as the human animal concerned with birth and death and procreation and the satisfaction of common impulses and desires and the maintenance of the life and the body: this is his normal type of personality, but it is crossed, however feebly, with influences by which he can proceed, if they are developed, to a higher human evolution. If the inner Subtle.Physical Purusha insists, he can arrive at the idea of a finer, more beautiful and perfect physical life and hope or attempt to realise it in his own or in the collective or group existence. In others it is the vital self, the being of life, who dominates and rules the mind, the will, the action; then is created the vital man, concerned with self-affirmation, selfaggrandisement, life-enlargement, satisfaction of ambition and passion and impulse and desire, the claims of his ego, domination, power, excitement, battle and struggle, inner and outer adventure: all else is incidental or subordinated to this movement and building and expression of the vital ego. But still in the vital man too there are or can be other elements of a growing mental or spiritual character, even if these happen to be less developed than his life-personality and life-power. The nature of the vital man is more active, stronger and more mobile, more turbulent and chaotic, often to the point of being quite unregulated, than that of the physical man who holds on to the soil and has a certain material poise and balance, but it is more kinetic and creative: for the element of the vital being is not earth but air; it has more movement, less status. A vigorous vital mind and will can grasp and govern the kinetic vital energies, but it is more by a forceful compulsion and constraint than by a harmonisation of the being. If, however, a strong vital personality, mind and will can get the reasoning intelligence to give it a firm support and be its minister, then a certain kind of forceful formation can be made, more or less balanced but always powerful, successful and effective, which can impose itself on the nature and environment and arrive at a strong self-affirmation in life and action. This is the second step of harmonised formulation possible in the ascent of the nature.
  At a higher stage of the evolution of personality the being of mind may rule; there is then created the mental man who lives predominantly in the mind as the others live in the vital or the physical nature. The mental man tends to subordinate to his mental self-expression, mental aims, mental interests or to a mental idea or ideal the rest of his being: because of the difficulty of this subordination and its potent effect when achieved, it is at once more difficult for him and easier to arrive at a harmony of his nature. It is easier because the mental will once in control can convince by the power of the reasoning intelligence and at the same time dominate, compress or suppress the life and the body and their demands, arrange and harmonise them, force them to be its instruments, even reduce them to a minimum so that they shall not disturb the mental life or pull it down from its ideative or idealising movement. It is more difficult because life and body are the first powers and, if they are in the least strong, can impose themselves with an almost irresistible insistence on the mental ruler. Man is a mental being and the mind is the leader of his life and body; but this is a leader who is much led by his followers and has sometimes no other will than what they impose on him. Mind in spite of its power is often impotent before the inconscient and subconscient which obscure its clarity and carry it away on the tide of instinct or impulse; in spite of its clarity it is fooled by vital and emotional suggestions into giving sanction to ignorance and error, to wrong thought and to wrong action, or it is obliged to look on while the nature follows what it knows to be wrong, dangerous or evil. Even when it is strong and clear and dominant, Mind, though it imposes a certain, a considerable mentalised harmony, cannot integrate the whole being and nature. These harmonisations by an inferior control are, besides, inconclusive, because it is one part of the nature which dominates and fulfils itself while the others are coerced and denied their fullness. They can be steps on the way, but not final; therefore in most men there is no such sole dominance and effected partial harmony, but only a predominance and for the rest an unstable equilibrium of a personality half formed, half in formation, sometimes a disequilibrium or unbalance due to the lack of a central government or the disturbance of a formerly achieved partial poise. All must be transitional until a first, though not a final, true harmonisation is achieved by finding our real centre. For the true central being is the soul, but this being stands back and in most human natures is only the secret witness or, one might say, a constitutional ruler who allows his ministers to rule for him, delegates to them his empire, silently assents to their decisions and only now and then puts in a word which they can at any moment override and act otherwise. But this is so long as the soul personality put forward by the psychic entity is not yet sufficiently developed; when this is strong enough for the inner entity to impose itself through it, then the soul can come forward and control the nature. It is by the coming forward of this true monarch and his taking up of the reins of government that there can take place a real harmonisation of our being and our life.
  --
  Even before the tranquillising purification of the outer nature has been effected or before it is sufficient, one can still break down the wall screening our inner being from our outer awareness by a strong force of call and aspiration, a vehement will or violent effort or an effective discipline or process; but this may be a premature movement and is not without its serious dangers. In entering within one may find oneself amidst a chaos of unfamiliar and supernormal experiences to which one has not the key or a press of subliminal or cosmic forces, subconscient, mental, vital, Subtle.Physical, which may unduly sway or chaotically drive the being, encircle it in a cave of darkness, or keep it wandering in a wilderness of glamour, allurement, deception, or push it into an obscure battlefield full of secret and treacherous and misleading or open and violent oppositions; beings and voices and influences may appear to the inner sense and vision and hearing claiming to be the Divine Being or His messengers or Powers and Godheads of the Light or guides of the path to realisation, while in truth they are of a very different character. If there is too much egoism in the nature of the seeker or a strong passion or an excessive ambition, vanity or other dominating weakness, or an obscurity of the mind or a vacillating will or a weakness of the life-force or an unsteadiness in it or want of balance, he is likely to be seized on through these deficiencies and to be frustrated or to deviate, misled from the true way of the inner life and seeking into false paths, or to be left wandering about in an intermediate chaos of experiences and fail to find his way out into the true realisation. These perils were well-known to a past spiritual experience and have been met by imposing the necessity of initiation, of discipline, of methods of purification and testing by ordeal, of an entire submission to the directions of the path-finder or path-leader, one who has realised the Truth and himself possesses and is able to communicate the light, the experience, a guide who is strong to take by the hand and carry over difficult passages as well as to instruct and point out the way. But even so the dangers will be there and can only be surmounted if there is or there grows up a complete sincerity, a will for purity, a readiness for obedience to the Truth, for surrender to the Highest, a readiness to lose or to subject to a divine yoke the limiting and self-affirming ego. These things are the sign that the true will for realisation, for conversion of the consciousness, for transformation is there, the necessary stage of the evolution has been reached: in that condition the defects of nature which belong to the human being cannot be a permanent obstacle to the change from the mental to the spiritual status; the process may never be entirely easy, but the way will have been made open and practicable.
  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.

2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An indispensable step towards overcoming this difficulty is the opening up of the inner being and its centres of action; for there the task that the surface mind could not achieve begins to be more possible. The inner mind, the inner life-consciousness and life-mind, the Subtle.Physical consciousness and its subtlephysical mentality, once liberated into action, create a larger, finer, greater mediating awareness able to communicate with the universal and with what is above them, able also to bring to bear their power on the whole range of the being, on the submental, on the subconscient mind, on the subconscient life, even on the subconscience of the body: they can, though not wholly enlighten, yet to some extent open, penetrate, work upon the fundamental Inconscience. The spiritual Light, Power,
  Knowledge, Delight from above can then descend beyond the mind and heart, which are always the easiest to reach and illumine; occupying the whole nature from top to bottom, they can pervade more fully the life and the body and by a still profounder impact shake the foundations of the Inconscience.

2.3.01 - The Planes or Worlds of Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a Subtle.Physical as well as the gross physical and material plane.
  The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general
  --
  First, each plane, in spite of its connection with others above and below it, is yet a world in itself, with its own movements, forces, beings, types, forms existing as if for its and their own sake, under its own laws, for its own manifestation without apparent regard for other members of the great series. Thus, if we regard the vital or the Subtle.Physical plane, we see great ranges of it (most of it) existing in themselves, without any relation with the material world and with no movement to affect or influence it, still less to precipitate a corresponding manifestation in the physical formula. At most we can say that the existence of anything in the vital, Subtle.Physical or any other plane creates a possibility for a corresponding movement of manifestation in the physical world. But something more is needed to turn that static or latent possibility into a dynamic potentiality or an actual urge towards a material creation. That something may be a call from the material plane, e.g. some force or someone in the physical existence entering into touch with a supraphysical power or world or part of it and moved to bring it down into the earth life. Or it may be an impulse in the vital or other plane itself, e.g. a vital being moved to extend his action
  The Planes or Worlds of Consciousness
  --
  No doubt, the Subtle.Physical is closest to the physical, and most like it. But yet the conditions are different and the thing too different. For instance, the Subtle.Physical has a freedom,
  132
  --
  The heavenly worlds are above the body. What the parts of the body correspond to are planes - Subtle.Physical, higher, middle and lower vital, mental. Each plane is in communication with various worlds that belong to it.
  The appearance of the being in other planes is not the same necessarily as that of the physical body. Very often the form taken by the vital or psychic or mental being is very different from the physical form. Even when they resemble on the whole, there is always some difference.

2.3.02 - The Supermind or Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  (5) If we regard Vaikuntha or Goloka each as the world of a Divinity, Vishnu or Krishna, we would be naturally led to seek its place or its origin in the Overmind plane. The Overmind is the plane of the highest worlds of the Gods. But Vaikuntha and Goloka are human conceptions of states of being that are beyond humanity. Goloka is evidently a world of Love, Beauty and Ananda full of spiritual radiances (the cow is the symbol of spiritual light) of which the souls there are the keepers or possessors, Gopas and Gopis. It is not necessary to assign any single plane to this manifestation - in fact there can be a reflection or possession of it or of its conditions on any plane of consciousness - the mental, vital or even the Subtle.Physical plane. The explanation of it which you mention is not therefore excluded, it is quite feasible.
  (6) It is not possible to situate Nirvana as a world or plane, for the Nirvana push is to a withdrawal from world and worldvalues; it is therefore a state of consciousness or rather of superconsciousness without habitation or level. There is more than one kind of Nirvana (extinction or dissolution) possible. Man being a mental being in a body, manomaya purus.a, makes this attempt at retreat from the cosmos through the spiritualised mind, he cannot do otherwise and it is this that gives it the appearance of an extinction or dissolution, laya, nirvan.a; for extinction of the mind and all that depends on it including the separative ego in something Beyond is the natural way, almost the indispensable way for such a withdrawal. In a more affirmative Yoga seeking transcendence but not withdrawal there would not be this indispensability, for there would be the way already alluded to of self-exceeding or transformation of the mental being. But it is possible also to pass to that through a certain experience of Nirvana, an absolute silence of mind and cessation of its activities, constructions, representations which can be so complete that not only to the silent mind but also to the passive senses the whole world is emptied of its solidity and reality and things appear only as unsubstantial forms without

2.3.03 - Integral Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yoga itself that is merely occult, phenomena of the unseen vital or mental or Subtle.Physical planes, visions, symbols, all that mixed, often perturbed, often shadowy, often illusory range of experiences which belong to this intervening country between the soul and its superficial instruments or rather to its outermost fringes, all the chaos of the intermediate zone, is summed up as psychic and considered as an inferior and dubious province of spiritual discovery. Again there is a constant confusion between the mentalised desire-soul which is a creation of the vital urge in man, of his life-force seeking for its fulfilment and the true soul which is a spark of the Divine Fire, a portion of the Divine.
  Because the soul, the psychic being uses the mind and the vital as well as the body as instruments for growth and experience it is itself looked at as if it were some amalgam or some subtle substratum of mind and life. But in Yoga if we accept all this chaotic mass as soul-stuff or soul-movement we shall enter into a confusion without an issue. All that belongs only to the coverings of the soul; the soul itself is an inner divinity greater than mind

2.3.03 - The Mother's Presence, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Your experience about the photograph was a very fine and true experience. The Mother's presence can be felt through the photograph by one who regards it with devotion towards her. It was her true presence that was there, her Subtle.Physical presence and all you felt was true. It shows that your physical mind is opening to the true consciousness. It is quite sure that this will grow and the remnants of the old movements are bound to disappear.
  2 May 1936

2.3.04 - The Higher Planes of Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - the plane of Intuition. There are mental, vital, Subtle.Physical intuitions as well as intuitions from the higher and the illumined
  Mind.

2.3.06 - The Mother's Lights, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   of lights and powers.) People do not see it usually because it is a Subtle.Physical and not a gross material phenomenon. They can see only on two conditions, first if they develop sufficient subtle sight, secondly if the aura itself begins to become so strong that it affects the sheath of gross matter which conceals it. The
  Mother has certainly no idea of making people see it - it is of themselves that one after another, some 20 or 30 in the Asram, I believe, have come to see. None of them are big Yogis, some of them are mere beginners. It is certainly one of the signs that the higher Force (call it supramental or not) is beginning to influence

2.3.07 - The Mother in Visions, Dreams and Experiences, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It was certainly a true dream of the lower vital or perhaps Subtle.Physical plane, where the laziness, indifference, frivolity of the sadhaks is a fact and the chief obstacle to the supramental descent into Matter. Because in your inner physical you were sincere and aspiring, the Mother's blessing came upon you and removed something there that was in the way. There is no indication in the dream as to what it was, but something in the lower vital or physical connected with this general defect.
  The Mother in Visions, Dreams and Experiences
  --
  The experience of a concrete presence of the Mother in the photograph and the immediate effect on the health are things of the Subtle.Physical acting on the physical mind and body - such things can happen only when the physical consciousness has begun to open - that is why I said it was a sign. Of course the full effects of the spiritual experiences can only come when the whole consciousness is entirely open and receives and responds to them. The presence of the Mother in all can be felt when one begins to have the widening of the consciousness in which it is not shut up in the personal self and the body but is extended everywhere. That comes usually with the descent of the higher consciousness from above. But one can also feel a beginning of it through the opening of the psychic. Then of course anger and jealousy do not remain - they fall away from the sense of spiritual oneness.
  3 May 1936

2.3.07 - The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I don't know about subtle vital. One says Subtle.Physical to distinguish from gross material physical - because to our normal experience all physical is gross, sthula. But the vital is in its nature non-material, so the adjective is superfluous. By material vital, we mean the vital so involved in matter as to be bound by its movements and gross physical character. The action is to support and energise the body and keep in it the capacity of life, growth, movement etc., also of sensitiveness to outer impacts.
  A Strong Vital
  --
  Divine Principle is there within. Each plane therefore has its heavens; there are the Subtle.Physical heavens, the vital heavens, the mental heavens. If Powers of disharmony got in, they would cease to be heavens.

2.3.08 - The Physical Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As for instances of the difference, I may give you two from the opposite poles of experience, one from the most external phenomena showing how the inward opens to the awareness of universal forces, one of spiritual experience indicating how the inward opens to the Divine. Take illness. If we live only in the outward physical consciousness, we do not usually know that we are going to be ill until the symptoms of the malady declare themselves in the body. But if we develop the inward physical consciousness, we become aware of a subtle environmental physical atmosphere and can feel the forces of illness coming towards us through it, feel them even at a distance and, if we have learned how to do it, we can stop them by the will or otherwise. We sense too around us a vital physical or nervous envelope which radiates from the body and protects it, and we can feel the adverse forces trying to break through it and can interfere, stop them or reinforce the nervous envelope. Or we can feel the symptoms of illness, fever or cold for instance, in the Subtle.Physical sheath before they are manifest in the gross body and destroy them there, preventing them from manifesting in the body. Take now the call for the Divine Power, Light, Ananda.
  If we live only in the outward physical consciousness, it may descend and work behind the veil but we shall feel nothing and only see certain results after a long time. Or at most we feel a certain clarity and peace in the mind, a joy in the vital, a happy state in the physical and infer the touch of the Divine. But if we are awake in the inward physical, we shall feel the light, power or Ananda flowing through the body, the limbs, nerves, blood, breath and, through the subtle body, affecting the most material cells and making them conscious and blissful and we shall sense directly the Divine Power and Presence. These are
  --
  The Gross Physical and the Subtle.Physical
  By the gross physical is meant the earthly and bodily physical
  --
  - as experienced by the outward sense mind and senses. But that is not the whole of Matter. There is a Subtle.Physical also with a subtler consciousness in it which can (for instance) go to a distance from the body and yet feel and be aware of things in a not merely mental or vital way. As for mind and vital they are everywhere - there is an obscure mind and life even in the cells of the body, the stones or in molecules and atoms.
  It [the Subtle.Physical] is difficult to realise without definite experience, e.g. as when light or ananda or force come into the body and one feels it working as if in the cells, yet with a little attention it becomes clear that it is not the material cells, but something more subtle that feels it.
  There is what is called the nervous envelope surrounding the body - you are probably seeing the suks.ma and the nervous envelope in one view. The suks.ma deha contains the sthula deha.

2.3.10 - The Subconscient and the Inconscient, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In our Yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. For if these impressions rise up most in dream in an incoherent and disorganised manner, they can also and do rise up into our waking consciousness as a mechanical repetition of old thoughts, old mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure stimulus to sensations, actions, emotions which do not originate in or from our conscious thought or will and are even often opposed to its perceptions, choice or dictates. In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate sanskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or Subtle.Physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications
  The Subconscient and the Inconscient

2.3.2 - Desire, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The desires you refer to are those of the vital-physical in the Subtle.Physical consciousness impulse to talk, essential hunger, thirst, etc. Peace and quietude full in the vital-physical and Subtle.Physical and down even in the lowest levels are necessary for the whole change to be made. The heat of which you speak is that of this subtle principle of vital-physical desire which exists for its own sake, not for the real needs of the body that is why physical satisfaction does not diminish it.
  ***

2.4.02.09 - Contact and Union with the Divine, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  more or less objective and Subtle.Physical or physical way.
  As for milana, the abiding union is within and that can

2.4.02 - Bhakti, Devotion, Worship, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Seeing is of many kinds. There is a superficial seeing which only erects or receives momentarily or for some time an image of the Being seen; that brings no change, unless the inner bhakti makes it a means for change. There is also the reception of the living image of the Divine in one of his forms into oneself,say, in the heart,that can have an immediate effect or initiate a period of spiritual growth. There is also the seeing outside oneself in a more or less objective and Subtle.Physical or physical way.
  As for milana, the abiding union is within and that can be there at all times; the outer milana or contact is not usually abiding. There are some who often or almost invariably have the contact whenever they worship; the Deity may become living to them in the picture or other image they worship, may move and act through it; others may feel him always present, outwardly, Subtle.Physically, abiding with them where they live or in the very room; but sometimes this is only for a period. Or they may feel the Presence with them, see it frequently in a body (but not materially except sometimes), feel its touch or embrace, converse with it constantly,that is also one kind of milana. The greatest milana is one in which one is constantly aware of the Deity constantly abiding in oneself, in everything in the world, holding all the world in him, identical with existence and yet supremely beyond the world but in the world too one sees, hears, feels nothing but him, so that the very senses bear witness to him alone and this does not exclude such specific personal manifestations as those vouchsafed to Krishnaprem and his guru. The more ways there are of the union, the better.
  ***

24.04 - Notes on Savitri III, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The whole thing refers to the New Creation coming down from above - now down into the psycho-vital or physico-vital or even the Subtle.Physical plane. This New Creation is the creation of the Divine Love - the Mother's Love.
   Morning Star - Venus, Goddess of Love - embodying New Creation.
   Amber colour representing a particular plane of consciousness. Yellow + red + a touch of brown - physico-vital or even Subtle.Physical plane - the New Creation come down on that plane.
   ***

24.05 - Vision of Dante, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Virgil now asked leave of Dante. Dante was very sad to part from his friend but then Virgil waved his hand and slowly retired. While Virgil was retiring, Dante noticed that Virgil did not cast a shadow and was surprised to see that he himself had a shadow. He now remembered that he had come all the way up to this region with his physical earthly body itself. In fact he did not die, he simply disappeared or was transported into an unearthly region from the earth. Commentators say that only one person in the Christian tradition went to Heaven in the physical body, it was Mary, mother of Christ: nobody else was given this special privilege except Dante. In Indian tradition too there were some fortunate people who could go to Heaven in their physical body - Yudhishthira with his dog (who was not really a dog but Dharma metamorphosed) was one; Narada, Bibhishana, Ashwatthama and Hanuman - these went up only in their Subtle.Physical body, they had to give up the gross material form (immortal, cirajivi).
   Then thinking of Virgil he moved along the bank of the river that separates now Purgatory from Heaven. The river is known significantly as "Ennce" - it is a word of Greek origin - the root means mind, thinking, intelligence; here I take it to mean mindedness, that is true mind, right consciousness. When you ba the in. its waters you wash away your old mind; a fresh luminous divine mind gives you a clear and complete vision of the Truth.

3.1.04 - Transformation in the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Whatever may have happened to Chaitanya or Ramalingam, whatever physical transformation they may have gone through is quite irrelevant to the aim of the supramentalisation of the body. Their new body was either a non-physical or Subtle.Physical body not adapted for life on the earth. If it were not so, they would not have disappeared. The object of supramentalisation is a body fitted to embody and express the physical consciousness on earth so long as one remains in the physical life. It is a step in the spiritual evolution on the earth, not a step in the passage towards a supraphysical world. The supramentalisation is the most difficult part of the change arrived at by the supramental Yoga, and all depends on whether a sufficient change can be achieved in the consciousness at present to make such a step possible, but the nature of the step is different from that aimed at by other Yogas. There is not therefore much utility in these discussionsone has first of all to supramentalise sufficiently the mind and vital and physical consciousness generallyafterwards one can think of supramentalisation of the body. The psychic and spiritual transformation must come first, only afterwards would it be practical or useful to discuss the supramentalisation of the whole being down to the body.
  ***

3.2.3 - Dreams, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  These dreams are not all mere dreams, all have not a casual, incoherent or subconscious building. Many are records or transcripts of experiences on the vital plane into which one enters in sleep, some are scenes or events of the Subtle.Physical plane. There one often undergoes happenings or carries on actions that resemble those of the physical life with the same surroundings and the same people, though usually there is in arrangement and feature some or a considerable difference. But it may also be a contact with other surroundings and with other people, not known in the physical life or not belonging at all to the physical world.
  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.
  --
  It is the subconscient that is active in ordinary dreams. But in the dreams in which one goes out into other planes of consciousness, mental, vital, Subtle.Physical, it is part of the inner being, inner mental or vital or physical that is usually active.
  ***
  --
  Those [dreams] which are formed from subconscient impressions arranged at haphazard (subconscient mind, vital or physical) either have no significance or some meaning which is difficult to find and not very much worth knowing even if it is found. Other dreams are either simply happenings of the mental, vital or Subtle.Physical worlds or else belong to the wider mental, vital or Subtle.Physical plane and have a meaning which the figures of the dream are trying to communicate.
  ***
  --
  Your dreams are of a very familiar kind, both coming often to sadhaks. The first is a sort of formation on the vital plane or a possibility for the futurewhe ther or how it will come about in the physical is a different matter. The other is an excursion into the vital world where there are all the types and forms of things that happen here, each having its own region or province there. One is constantly going into these planes (and others also, mental and psychic and Subtle.Physical as well as vital) and seeing and doing things there. Very often what one does and experiences there is a symbol of things in the nature, tendencies, achievements, difficulties, things hidden within or only half-seen on the surface. This one came clearly to show how far you have travelled from certain elements, tendencies or possibilities that were there in the past. The feeling in the dream was the sign of that progress.
  ***
  --
  Flying during sleep over houses, streets, etc. simply means that the consciousness in the vital sheath has gone out and is moving over places in the vital or Subtle.Physical world (even sometimes the material); it is always in the vital sheath that one flies like that.
  The ascending movement is differentin that, it is the consciousness that goes high up to other planes or lands and comes down again to the body.
  --
  Most people move most in the vital in sleep because it is the nearest to the physical and easiest to remain. One does enter the higher planes but either the transit there is brief or one does not remember. For in returning to the waking consciousness it is again through the lower vital and Subtle.Physical that one passes and as these are the last dreams they are more easily remembered. The other dreams are remembered only if (1) they are strongly impressed on the recording consciousness, (2) one wakes immediately after one of them, (3) one has learned to be conscious in sleep, i.e. follows consciously the passage from plane to plane. Some train themselves to remember by remaining without moving when they wake and following back the thread of the dreams.
  ***
  --
  The other, the active part of our consciousness does not remain in the inert and sleeping physical consciousness, but goes out into other planes of existence. For the most part with most people it is some part of the vital, lower or higher, that goes out into the corresponding vital planes, and the experiences it has there are transcribed in the physical consciousness or brought back to it and these transcriptions or these reports are what we call dreams or experiences on the vital plane. The reports, if one may so call them, are the memories of the outgoing part which it brings back to the physical but it is not easy to retain them in the memory after waking. For there is a crossing of a border, a bridge or a gulf and the turning over of the consciousness, what was put behind by sleep coming in front, what was in front in sleep going behind and in this transition, in this reversing process, the report or memory which can by very vivid and complete is usually lost or only some last experience or a fragment of it lingers and even that is apt to fade away in a very short time. Especially if one wakes abruptly or under pressure or rises immediately without waiting to retain the dream-experience, it is apt to disappear at once and altogether. One can train oneself however to remember ones dreams so that the material is ready to hand for interpretation and use, if they are of a nature to demand interpretation or lend themselves to use. But also, apart from these reports, there is the transcription or translation into the terms of the physical consciousness. For there is a thread that connects the outgoing and the instaying consciousnesses and along this thread messages can be sent either from here to the wandering part, most often for calling it back, but also for other purposes or from the wanderer signalling or transmitting his experiences, as it were, to the body in the measure in which it can receive them. Unfortunately the terms of this transcription are usually supplied by the quiescent and very ill-ordered consciousness that remains in the body, terms belonging to its own normal life and range, and therefore the transcription is often trivial, confused, perplexing, tiresomely null in its terms even when the experience itself is vivid, significant, coherent and full of interest. But as the dream consciousness in sleep develops, the outgoing part can increase its hold, and either manipulate the terms supplied to it from the physical being so as to express directly and vividly or else in significant symbols its own characteristic consciousness and experience or else it can impose its own terms, figures, scenes with more or less modification on the recipient consciousness in the body. In the end the consciousness can become so trained that even for dreams on the vital plane the difference between dreams and visions and experiences disappears or at most one can distinguish between dream-visions and dream-experiences and visions and experiences in a state of willed and perfectly self-conscious concentration. Even the dreams of the lower vital and the Subtle.Physical become entirely vivid, real, coherent, significant and expressive of a truth that one can at once recognise. The dream-experiences of the highest vital, the psychic and the mental or still higher planes have always this character, because when they can get through they impose themselves more than those of the lower vital realms and are less subject to distortion or mixture by the physical subconscience.
  In the lower vital dreams, before this development comes, there is usually a mixture or a double texture. This has two disadvantages, first that the scheme used, the terms, the figures are so trivial and uninteresting that one easily misses any significance there can be behind them and, secondly, that the interpretation also becomes often very doubtful or hard to seize. And when as often happens, there is a symbology of the lower vital using the terms of the normal external consciousness, its system which is quite clear and convincing to the lower vital itself, can seem very absurd, incoherent and unintelligible to the physical mind. For the lower vital uses the happenings, scenes, figures, persons of the physical life, but in defiance of the order and logic of the physical world and even without any reference to it, it fits them into a quite different significance-scheme of its own for its own purpose. One has then to seek for a clue in some especially significant figure or detail, and if one cannot find it or cannot catch the clue when it is there, then one remains perplexed or doubtful or simply blank about the meaning of the dream; if it is found, it can often light up all the night and put them into a sufficient coherence.

3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There is no how to these things the sex-impulse exists for its own sake and it uses the person as an instrument and hooks him on to anotherwhenever it can throw the hook, it throws it and once the connection is there holds on for some time at least. This is the physical vital and Subtle.Physical action for if it is the gross physical that dominates, there is no choiceany woman will serve the fun. The sensation you feel is physical vital + Subtle.Physical, that is why it is so concrete. Naturally these sensations do not stop by enjoyment they are recurrent and so long as the pressure lasts they continue. It is only by rejection or by the domination of a contrary force that they cease.
  ***

33.09 - Shyampukur, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Who are these beings? Or, what are they? Do supraphysical beings exist in fact? And do they come and disclose their identity before men in this manner? It is a very obscure and complicated affair indeed. Supraphysical beings do exist. But the supraphysical world is not of a single piece. There are worlds upon worlds in a regular series, from the most gross to the most subtle; above the physical is the Subtle.Physical, above that is life, and above life mind, the series continues above mind also; and in each of these there are several layers or planes. Any of the beings from any of these worlds or planes can manifest himself. But he has to manifest through the instrumentality of the human medium, through the substance of the medium's mind, life and body. Therefore he cannot easily manifest his real nature or true being, he has to gather his materials from the medium's own substance. Very often it is the make-up of the medium that predominates and the being that manifests preserves very little of his own. But it may on the other hand be quite otherwise. All will depend on the capacity of the medium. With an impure or unfit medium there will be a greater possibility of charlatanism and falsehood.
   In many cases it is not the true soul of a dead person that comes; what comes is some portion of him, some fragments of his mind, life or subtle body that may have survived in the corresponding worlds or in some other worlds. By animating these parts and using them as vehicles some other being or entity or force may come, as if a representative of the whole man. Or else it might even happen that an entirely different being presents himself under a false name. There is really no end to the complexities that may arise in these supraphysical worlds. There may also be a medium who knows how to keep under his control the action and modality of such appearances, that is to say, determine in advance the particular beings or types of being that will come or will not come, the kind of things they will say or will not be allowed to say. Or he may, if he chooses, open the gates for anyone to appear, simply in order that he may watch and examine what takes place. Needless to add that when Sri Aurobindo made himself a medium, something like this used to happen.

3.4.1 - The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In our Yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. For if these impressions rise up most in dream in an incoherent and disorganised manner, they can also and do rise up into our waking consciousness as a mechanical repetition of old thoughts, old mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure stimulus to sensations, actions, emotions which do not originate in or from our conscious thought or will and are even often opposed to its perceptions, choice or dictates. In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate sanskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or Subtle.Physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or illorganised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come.
  ***

4.4.1.03 - Both Ascent and Descent Necessary, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Something of the Subtle.Physical can always go up - but the
  external physical consciousness can only do it when the force

4.4.2.07 - Ascent and Going out of the Body, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Part of the consciousness, mental, vital or Subtle.Physical or all together rises out of the body, leaving it in a strongly internalised condition, sleep or trance and can move about above on other planes or in the room and outside on the earth plane. In such cases the body can be seen as lying below or in the room, seen clearly as one sees a separate object with the physical eyes. A fear such as you had can come in these exteriorisations and bring the consciousness back with a rush to the body.
  (2) An ascension of the consciousness to a position which is no longer in the body but above it. The consciousness can thus ascend and rise higher and higher with the awareness of entering regions above the ordinary mind; usually it does not go very far at first but acquires the capacity to go always higher in repetitions of this experience. At the close of the experience it returns to the body. But also there comes a definitive rise by which the consciousness permanently takes its station above.

5.02 - Perfection of the Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the use of such activities as sports and physical exercises for the education of the individual in childhood and first youth, which should mean the bringing out of his actual and latent possibilities to their fullest development, the means and methods we must use are limited by the nature of the body and its aim must be such relative human perfection of the body's powers and capacities and the powers of mind, will, character, action of which it is at once the residence and the instrument so far as these methods can help to develop them. I have written sufficiently about the mental and moral parts of perfection to which these pursuits can contri bute and this I need not repeat here. For the body itself the perfections that can be developed by these means are those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the training of its general fitness as an instrument for all the activities which may be demanded from it by the mind and the will, by the life-energy or by the dynamic perceptions, impulses and instincts of our Subtle.Physical being which is an unrecognised but very important element and agent in our nature. Health and strength are the first conditions for the natural perfection of the body, not only muscular strength and the solid strength of the limbs and physical stamina, but the finer, alert and plastic and adaptable force which our nervous and Subtle.Physical parts can put into the activities of the frame. There is also the still more dynamic force which a call upon the life-energies can bring into the body and stir it to greater activities, even feats of the most extraordinary character of which in its normal state it would not be capable. There is also the strength which the mind and will by their demands and stimulus and by their secret powers
  528
  --
  Among the natural qualities and powers of the body which can be thus awakened, stimulated and trained to a normal activity we must reckon dexterity and stability in all kinds of physical action, such as swiftness in the race, dexterity in combat, skill and endurance of the mountaineer, the constant and often extraordinary response to all that can be demanded from the body of the soldier, sailor, traveller or explorer to which I have already made reference, or in adventure of all kinds and all the wide range of physical attainment to which man has accustomed himself or to which he is exceptionally pushed by his own will or by the compulsion of circumstance. It is a general fitness of the body for all that can be asked from it which is the common formula of all this action, a fitness attained by a few or by many, that could be generalised by an extended and many-sided physical education and discipline. Some of these activities can be included under the name of sports; there are others for which sports and physical exercises can be an effective preparation. In some of them a training for common action, combined movement, discipline are needed and for that our physical exercises can make one ready; in others a developed individual will, skill of mind and quick perception, forcefulness of life-energy and Subtle.Physical impulsion are more prominently needed and may even be the one sufficient trainer. All must be included in our conception of the natural powers of the body and its capacity and instrumental fitness in the service of the human mind and will, and therefore in our concept of the total perfection of the body.
  There are two conditions for this perfection, an awakening in as great an entirety as possible of the body consciousness and an education, an evocation of its potentialities, also as entire and fully developed and, it may be, as many-sided as possible.
  --
   any moment by fluctuations from within or by a strong attack or shock from outside: only by the breaking of our limitations can a higher and more enduring perfection come. One direction in which our consciousness must grow is an increasing hold from within or from above on the body and its powers and its more conscious response to the higher parts of our being. The mind pre-eminently is man; he is a mental being and his human perfection grows the more he fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts and automatisms of the lifeenergy and the Subtle.Physical consciousness and the body, if it can enter into them, consciously use and, as we may say, fully mentalise their instinctive or spontaneous action, the perfection of these energies, their action too become more conscious and more aware of themselves and more perfect. But it is necessary for the mind too to grow in perfection and this it can do best when it depends less on the fallible intellect of physical mind, when it is not limited even by the more orderly and accurate working of the reason and can grow in intuition and acquire a wider, deeper and closer seeing and the more luminous drive of energy of a higher intuitive will. Even within the limits of its present evolution it is difficult to measure the degree to which the mind is able to extend its control or its use of the body's powers and capacities and when the mind rises to higher powers still and pushes back its human boundaries, it becomes impossible to fix any limits: even, in certain realisations, an intervention by the will in the automatic working of the bodily organs seems to become possible.
  Wherever limitations recede and in proportion as they recede, the body becomes a more plastic and responsive and in that measure a more fit and perfect instrument of the action of the spirit. In all effective and expressive activities here in the material world the cooperation of the two ends of our being is indispensable. If the body is unable whether by fatigue or by natural incapacity or any other cause to second the thought or will or is in any way irresponsive or insufficiently responsive, to that extent the action fails or falls short or becomes in some

5.03 - The Divine Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There is one problem raised by sex for those who would reject in toto the obligations imposed by the animality of the body and put forward by it as an insistent opposition in the way of the aspirant to a higher life: it is the necessity of the prolongation of the race for which the sex activity is the only means already provided by Nature for living beings and inevitably imposed upon the race. It is not indeed necessary for the individual seeker after a divine life to take up this problem or even for a group who do not seek after it for themselves alone but desire a wide acceptance of it by mankind as at least an ideal. There will always be the multitude who do not concern themselves with it or are not ready for its complete practice and to these can be left the care for the prolongation of the race. The number of those who lead the divine life can be maintained and increased, as the ideal extends itself, by the voluntary adhesion of those who are touched by the aspiration and there need be no resort to physical means for this purpose, no deviation from the rule of a strict sexual abstinence. But yet there may be circumstances in which, from another standpoint, a voluntary creation of bodies for souls that seek to enter the earth-life to help in the creation and extension of the divine life upon earth might be found to be desirable. Then the necessity of a physical procreation for this purpose could only be avoided if new means of a supraphysical kind were evolved and made available. A development of this kind must necessarily belong to what is now considered as the sphere of the occult and the use of concealed powers of action or creation not known or possessed by the common mind of the race. Occultism means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul, mind, life-force and the faculties of the Subtle.Physical consciousness to bring about results on their own or on the material plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and result in human or earthly mind and life and body or in objects and events in the world of Matter. A discovery or an extension of these little known or yet undeveloped powers is now envisaged by some well-known thinkers as a next step to be taken by mankind in its immediate evolution; the kind of creation spoken of has not been included among these developments, but it could well be considered as one of the new possibilities. Even physical science is trying to find physical means for passing beyond the ordinary instrumentation or procedure of Nature in this matter of propagation or the renewal of the physical life-force in human or animal beings; but the resort to occult means and the intervention of Subtle.Physical processes, if it could be made possible, would be a greater way which could avoid the limitations, degradations, incompleteness and heavy imperfection of the means and results solely available to the law of material force.
  In India there has been always from the earliest times a widely spread belief in the possibility and reality of the use of these powers by men with an advanced knowledge of these secret things or with a developed spiritual knowledge and experience and dynamic force and even, in the Tantras, an organised system of their method and practice. The intervention of the Yogi in bringing about a desired birth of offspring is also generally believed in and often appealed to and the bestowal on the child so obtained of a spiritual attainment or destiny by his will or his blessing is sometimes asked for and such a result is recorded not only in the tradition of the past but maintained by the witness of the present. But there is here still the necessity of a resort to the normal means of propagation and the gross method of physical Nature. A purely occult method, a resort to supraphysical processes acting by supraphysical means for a physical result would have to be possible if we are to avoid this necessity: the resort to the sex impulse and its animal process could not be transcended otherwise. If there is some reality in the phenomenon of materialisation and dematerialisation claimed to be possible by occultists and evidenced by occurrences many of us have witnessed, a method of this kind would not be out of the range of possibility. For in the theory of the occultists and in the gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a Subtle.Physical force but a Subtle.Physical Matter intervening between life and gross Matter, and to create in this Subtle.Physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible for an object formed in this Subtle.Physical substance to make a transit from its subtlety into the state of gross Matter directly by the intervention of an occult force and process, whether with or even without the assistance or intervention of some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation, without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable to our present way of existence. It might then assume at once the structure and greater powers and functionings of the truly divine material body which must one day emerge in a progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature.
  But what would be the internal or external form and structure and what the instrumentation of this divine body? The material history of the development of the animal and human body has left it bound to a minutely constructed and elaborated system of organs and a precarious order of their functioning which can easily become a disorder, open to a general or local disorganisation, dependent on an easily disturbed nervous system and commanded by a brain whose vibrations are supposed to be mechanical and automatic and not under our conscious control. According to the materialist all this is a functioning of Matter alone whose fundamental reality is chemical. We have to suppose that the body is constructed by the agency of chemical elements building up atoms and molecules and cells and these again are the agents and only conductors at the basis of a complicated physical structure and instrumentation which is the sole mechanical cause of all our actions, thoughts, feelings, the soul a fiction and mind and life only a material and mechanical manifestation and appearance of this machine which is worked out and automatically driven with a figment of consciousness in it by the forces inherent in inconscient Matter. If that were the truth it is obvious that any divinisation or divine transformation of the body or of anything else would be nothing but an illusion, an imagination, a senseless and impossible chimera. But even if we suppose a soul, a conscious will at work in this body it could not arrive at a divine transformation if there were no radical change in the bodily instrument itself and in the organisation of its material workings. The transforming agent will be bound and stopped in its work by the physical organisms unalterable limitations and held up by the unmodified or imperfectly modified original animal in us. The possibility of the disorders, derangements, maladies native to these physical arrangements would still be there and could only be shut out by a constant vigilance or perpetual control obligatory on the corporeal instruments spiritual inhabitant and master. This could not be called a truly divine body; for in a divine body an inherent freedom from all these things would be natural and perpetual; this freedom would be a normal and native truth of its being and therefore inevitable and unalterable. A radical transformation of the functioning and, it may well be, of the structure and certainly of the too mechanical and material impulses and driving forces of the bodily system would be imperative.
  --
  But what would be the result of the emergence of these forces and their liberated and diviner action on the body itself, what their dynamic connection with it and their transforming operation on the still existing animal nature and its animal impulses and gross material procedure? It might be held that the first necessary change would be the liberation of the mind, the life-force, the Subtle.Physical agencies and the physical consciousness into a freer and a diviner activity, a many-dimensioned and unlimited operation of their consciousness, a large outbreak of higher powers and the sublimation of the bodily consciousness itself, of its instrumentation, capacity, capability for the manifestation of the soul in the world of Matter. The subtle senses now concealed in us might come forward into a free action and the material senses themselves become means or channels for the vision of what is now invisible to us or the discovery of things surrounding us but at present unseizable and held back from our knowledge. A firm check might be put on the impulses of the animal nature or they might be purified and subtilised so as to become assets and not liabilities and so transformed as to be parts and processes of a diviner life. But even these changes would still leave a residue of material processes keeping the old way and not amenable to the higher control and, if this could not be changed, the rest of the transformation might itself be checked and incomplete. A total transformation of the body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, its constitution, its processes and its set-up of nature.
  Again, it might be thought that a full control would be sufficient, a knowledge and a vision of this organism and its unseen action and an effective control determining its operations according to the conscious will; this possibility has been affirmed as something already achieved and a part of the development of the inner powers in some. The cessation of the breathing while still the life of the body remained stable, the hermetic sealing up at will not only of the breath but of all the vital manifestations for long periods, the stoppage of the heart similarly at will while thought and speech and other mental workings continued unabated, these and other phenomena of the power of the will over the body are known and well-attested examples of this kind of mastery. But these are occasional or sporadic successes and do not amount to transformation; a total control is necessary and an established and customary and, indeed, a natural mastery. Even with that achieved something more fundamental might have to be demanded for the complete liberation and change into a divine body.

5.1.01 - Terminology, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Divine. You speak as if the evolution were the sole creation; the creation or manifestation is very vast and contains many planes and worlds that existed before the evolution, all different in character and with different kinds of beings. The fact of being prior to the evolution does not make them undifferentiated. The world of the Asuras is prior to the evolution, so are the worlds of the mental, vital or Subtle.Physical Devas - but these beings are all different from each other. The great Gods belong to the Overmind plane; in the Supermind they are unified as aspects of the
  Divine, in the Overmind they appear as separate personalities.

5.1.03 - The Hostile Forces and Hostile Beings, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   working in the Subtle.Physical plane. What we in Sanskrit call the Bhutas mostly come under this class. But there are two kinds of elementals, the one mischievous and the other not.
  There are no Asuras on the higher planes where the Truth prevails, except in the Vedic sense - "the Divine in its strength".

5.4.01 - Occult Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  [Occult forces:] The forces that can only be known by going behind the veil of apparent phenomena - especially the forces of the Subtle.Physical and supraphysical planes.
  Nature-forces are conscious forces - they can very well combine all that is necessary for an action or a purpose and when one means fails, take another.
  --
  They [mediums and clairvoyants] are most of them in contact with the vital-physical or Subtle.Physical worlds and do not receive anything higher at all.
  Not much confidence can be placed in all that [communications from spirit guides on other planes]. If examined closely it will be seen that these spirit guides only suggest to their subjects what is in the mind of the sitter or sitters or in the air and it comes to very little. Influences from the other worlds there are of course and any number of them, but the central guidance is not of this kind except in very rare cases.

5.4.02 - Occult Powers or Siddhis, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   mental, vital and Subtle.Physical planes are not our object. One can have contact with various Divine Forms and Personalities on the way, but there is no need to establish them in the centres, though sometimes that happens automatically (as with the four
  Personalities of the Mother for a time in the course of the sadhana. But it is not a rule to do so. Our Yoga is meant to be plastic and to allow all necessary workings of the Divine Power according to the nature, but these in the details may vary with each individual.

7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  a dream in the Subtle.Physical, that is to say, in the domain
  very near the physical. This generally happens towards
  --
  comes forward. It may be the turn of the Subtle.Physical
  to enter the arena. The vital is pushed back and you lose

Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   I would rather say it permeates the Subtle.Physical part of the body. But I am not perfectly sure of it. Let us wait and see.
  Behind the chest centre, which is always very active, I feel the presence of something and from there my aspiration goes above and unites with the force coming down. I see a kind of connecting line between this centre and the top of the head. It is a straight line. Is there anything like that?

r1912 12 11, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The rupadrishti has advanced today; perfect crude forms now sit easily in the akasha, perfect crude dense & crude developed forms appear frequently & with some stability; absolutely perfect forms are more frequent, but not yet stable. The akasha is of itself bringing forward the lipi with more ease & force. The trikaldrishti is normally perfect, except in arrangement & exact time, unless it is confused with the shaktiprayoga,all that is perceived is seen to be correct, only all is not seen in its exact place. The range also is widening. Shaktiprayoga has now more force & normal effectiveness. The force of bhautasiddhi is also increasing, in the ordinary mahima & laghima. Intellectual infallibility is now seen to be a possibility & not far from realisation, at least where it can be immediately tested. Kama Ananda today was continuous for some minutes, though not of the greater intensity already achieved. Sukshma sparsha is increasing in force & keenness, but is still usually only a Subtle.Physical sensation, except in touches of water, fire or electric atoms which have now a great sthula reality & linger on the body both in the solid sensation & in its physical-nervous effects. Other touches do not yet materialise. Sukshma gandha & gandha-rasa with sparsha is keen & powerful, but irregular in occurrence. Sravana & drishti of actual forms & voices as opposed to images & symbolic sounds are still behindhand. All these are now recognised as parts of samadhi or visvagati, the fifth member of the third chatusthaya. Health is still attacked, but dully, not with yesterdays force.
   Written Dec 12th

r1917 03 17, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Sense (physical) and delight of touch in the contact of objects outside oneself, even at a distance, has long been developing,mostly behind the veil with manifestations in frontand is now thinking of universalising itself. The sense is sometimes Subtle.Physical, sometimes sthula.
   ***

r1918 05 14, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Rupa is attempting to develop variety and partially succeeding, but it is a variety of imperfect forms. Spontaneous manifestation out of the chidakash is beginning entirely to replace development by mental-physical pressure in the Subtle.Physical ether. In this development lies the surety of a perfect siddhi
   ***

r1919 07 08, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The action of the trikaldrishti continues to expand in the ideality, on the same lines. K.A grows in insistence of continuity, though with the same essential fluctuations. There is some constant insistence now on the arogya siddhi, but chiefly in the Subtle.Physicality; the old fragmentarised rogas touch, but can almost immediately be quelled by the tapas.
   In the afternoon a complete invasion of the deeper and deepest nidra by the samadhi; all was to a greater or lesser extent idealised. In the lighter depths complete ideality and an almost complete initial coherence of lipi etc. In the deeper nidra a more forcibly imposed and sometimes broken ideality. Coherence has set in; the incoherence is chiefly in incompleteness and fragmentation; the thing begun goes on well enough, but is suddenly broken off and another lipi etc starts in its place; but the chaotic entire incoherence was only occasional and immediately tended to change to coherence. Dream is being regularised and interpreted so far as it goes, though subject to fragmentation, or is replaced by vision.

r1919 07 16, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   Kamananda, which was allowed a little to lapse yesterday, is after some difficulty of mechanical lowering and attempted discontinuityattended by an emptiness of the gross body and retirement into the Subtle.Physicality,renewing its selfconfirmation. The old habit of relapse is not yet excluded even in this first siddhi of the physical system. It is restored to a slightly obstructed continuity, but has not full possession of the physical system.
   There is a strong attempt to restore asamata attended by a great violence of suggestion of raga and dwesha; it is not supported by the Purusha or the personal Prakriti, but has been able to produce asamata in the outward physical mentality. These things are still possible because of the persistence of intuitive mentality in the stuff of the physical consciousness; that can only be secure against mental suggestions by a partial personal siddhi cut off from the external Nature or by complete idealisation.

r1919 07 18, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   The siege of Roga continues, but chiefly in the Subtle.Physicality: the effects on the dense body are occasional, sometimes strong, but thrown out by the tapas after a short struggle. Only in the two still chronic ailments is there as yet a permanently successful obstruction; but in the centrality the effective pressure of Arogya-tapas increases with a sort of slow, but always perceptible steadiness.
   Chitra is showing some tendency to greater stability, but as yet only in the indirect vision. The fugitive forms have more firmness in their incidence. There is no improvement in the character of the forms or the range of the rupa.

r1919 08 02, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   An attack of roga on the eye. Twice materialised and momentarily healed first by intuitive, then by inspirational Tapas of the revelatory kind, it managed to hold by a disposition to and some actual watering, but no effusion. The arogya tapas prevailed over the roga which for the most part lived only in suggestions in the Subtle.Physicality which could not materialise in but only affected the sthula. There was some physical sense or initiation of all the symptoms, but not their physical actuality.
   Samadhi overpowered by nidra in the afternoon, free, but still attacked by defects in the early morning

Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  planes and it is extremely difficult to distinguish which is right, the true inner voice. There may be voices from mental, vital and Subtle.Physical
  planes. Moreover, in the same man the voices may differ.

The Riddle of this World, #unknown, #Unknown, #unset
  say that the existence of anything in the vital, Subtle.Physical or any
  other plane creates a possibility for a corresponding movement of
  --
  No doubt, the Subtle.Physical is closest to the physical, and most like
  it. But yet the conditions are different and the thing too different. For
  instance, the Subtle.Physical has a freedom, plasticity, intensity, power,
  colour, wide and manifold play (there are thousands of things there that
  --
  some larger Mind, Life-Power or Subtle.Physical ranges with which they
  have entered into dynamic connection. Or they feel themselves to be in
  --
  ranges into a larger mind-plane, life-plane, Subtle.Physical plane and
  come very much changed and diminished in the transmission, without
  --
  continuance of the mind, the vital, even the Subtle.Physical; for though
  it all remains in a kind of seed memory, it does not ordinarily emerge.

WORDNET














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