5 Integral Yoga
3 Sri Aurobindo
2 The Mother
0 1959-03-10 - vital dagger, vital mass, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo calls this realm The Intermediate Zone, a zone in which, he says, you can have all the experiences you wish if you enter into it. But it isnt (laughing) very advisable!and I understand why! I had that experience because I had just read what Sri Aurobindo says on this subject in a letter in this latest book, On Yoga; I wanted to see for myself what it was. Ah, I understood!
And I express this in my own way when I say1 that thoughts come and go, flow in and out. But thoughts concerning material things are formations originating in that world, they are kinds of wills coming from the vital plane which try to express themselves, and most often they are truly deadly. If you are annoyed, for example, if someone says something unpleasant to you and you react It always happens in the same way; these little entities are there waiting, and when they feel its the right moment, they introduce their influence and their suggestions. This is what is vitally symbolized by the being with his dagger rushing forward to stab youand in the back, at that! Not even face to face! This then expresses itself in the human consciousness by a movement of anger or rage or indignation: How intolerable! How ! And the other fellow says, Yes! We shall put an end to it!
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05.04 - The Measure of Time, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is when things are arranged in this manner, the right thing in the right place, that divine perfection, the Realisation in the material, is attained. And for this consummation to come about, the process that is followed is a greater and greater infiltration of higher and higher forces into the field of disorder, of our normal life and consciousness. The time taken simply indicates that the process is being worked out; it is an expression of the rhythm of procedure. But to the Divine; the Supreme Consciousness that works, time itself has no separate meaning or intrinsic value; for it a thousand or a million years do not mean more than what is one moment for us. Indeed, the slowness of time simply marks the steps of events in the lower ranges of creation: as we rise higher and higher, forces from there come down into the lower field, and the tempo of events quickens; finally, when the highest peak is attained and its forces descend and intervene in the ordering of the lowest levels, then the change, the arrangement that is being worked out, is accomplished immediately and without delay: the time lag is abolished altogether. Time may be compared to a kind of elastic bond connecting the highest and the lowest and running through The Intermediate Zones. It contracts as one moves upward and is telescoped, as it were, at the top.
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1914 03 13p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The subconscient is The Intermediate Zone between precise perception and ignorance, total darkness; it is probable that most beings, even human beings, live constantly in this subconscient; few emerge from it. This is the conquest that is to be made; for to be conscious in the true sense of the word is to be Thyself integrally; and is not this the very definition of the work to be accomplished, the mission to be fulfilled upon earth?
Deliver us, O Lord, from darkness; grant that we may become perfectly awake.
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2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Y was another M, with a powerful vital being. At one time I had strong hopes about him. But people whose sadhana is on a vital basis pass into what I have called The Intermediate Zone and hardly go beyond. The vital is like a jungle and it is extremely difficult to rescue one with such a vital power. It is comparatively much easier to help people who are weak and have no such power. Y used to think that he had put himself in the Divine's hand and the Divine was in him. We had to be severe with him to disillusion him of his idea. That is why he could not remain here. He went back and became a guru with about thirty or forty disciples round him. Gurugiri comes very easily to these people. He did all that in my name which I heartily disliked. Unfortunately his mind was not equally powerfully developed as his vital. He had the fighter's mind, not the thinker's. We often put a strong force on him and as a result he used to become very lucid for a time and he could see his wrong movements. But immediately his vital rushed back and took control of his mind and it all used to be wiped out. If his mind had been as developed perhaps he would have been able to retain the clarity. The intellect helps one to separate oneself from the vital and look at it dispassionately. The mind also can deceive but not so much.
M is another of this type.
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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
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4.3.4 - Accidents, Possession, Madness, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As to Xs collapse, I did not intend to say anything about it just now,for mental discussion of causes and consequences is not of much help at this juncture. I must say however that it is not the push for union with the Divine nor is it the Divine Force that leads to madnessit is the way in which people themselves act with regard to their claim for these things. To be more precise, I have never known a case of collapse in Yogaas opposed to mere difficulty or negative failure,a case of dramatic disaster in which there was not one of three causes, or more than one of the three at work. First, some sexual aberration I am not speaking of mere sexuality which can be very strong in the nature without leading to collapseor an attempt to sexualise spiritual experience on an animal or gross material basis; second, an exaggerated ambition, pride or vanity trying to seize on spiritual force or experience and turn it to ones own glorificationending in megalomania; third, an unbalanced vital and a weak nervous system apt to follow its own imaginations and unruled impulses without any true mental will or strong vital will to steady or restrain it, and so at the mercy of the imaginations and suggestions of the adverse vital world when carried over the border into The Intermediate Zone of which I spoke in a recent message.1 All the cases of collapse in this Asram have been due to these three causesto the first two mostly. Only three or four of them have ended in madnessand in these the sexual aberration was invariably present; usually a violent fall from the Way is the consequence. Xs is no exception to the rule. It is not because she pushed for union with the Divine that she went mad, but because she misused what came down for a mystic sexuality and the satisfaction of megalomaniac pride, in spite of my repeated and insistent warnings. For the moment that is all the light I can give on the matternaturally I generalise and avoid details.
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Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
called The Intermediate Zone, and they don't want to go beyond. The vital is
like a jungle and it is extremely difficult to rescue one with such a vital
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