1. A physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing, photographed, painted, sculptured, or otherwise made visible. 2. A mental representation; idea; conception. 3. Form; appearance; semblance. 4. A type; embodiment. 5. An idol or representation of a deity. 6. A person or thing that resembles another closely; counterpart, double or copy. 7. A concrete representation, as in art, literature, or music, that is expressive or evocative of something else. images, image-face.
1. The active opposition or mutual hostility of two opposing forces, physical or mental. 2. An opposing force, principle, or tendency.
1. The act, power or property of appealing, alluring, enticing or inviting. 2. A thing or feature which draws by appealing to desires, tastes, etc. 3. The action of a body or substance in drawing to itself, by some physical force, another to which it is not materially attached; the force thus exercised. attractions.
"A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the status of a free Superconscient containing or basing everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos; — this and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle, subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is the support of all physical experience, can be taken as the whole field of Maya.” The Life Divine
“A basis can be created for a subjective illusion-consciousness which is yet part of Being, if we accept in the sense of an illusory subjective world-awareness the account of sleep and dream creation given to us in the Upanishads. For the affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold; the Self is Brahman and all that is is the Brahman, but all that is is the Self seen by the Self in four states of its being. In the pure self-status neither consciousness nor unconsciousness as we conceive it can be affirmed about Brahman; it is a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy, or else it is the status of a free Superconscient containing or basing everything but involved in nothing. But there is also a luminous status of sleep-self, a massed consciousness which is the origin of cosmic existence; this state of deep sleep in which yet there is the presence of an omnipotent Intelligence is the seed state or causal condition from which emerges the cosmos;—this and the dream-self which is the continent of all subtle, subjective or supraphysical experience, and the self of waking which is the support of all physical experience, can be taken as the whole field of Maya.” The Life Divine
ache ::: a continuous or abiding pain, in contrast to a sudden or sharp one. Used of both physical and mental sensations.
::: "A cosmic Will and Wisdom observant of the ascending march of the soul"s consciousness and experience as it emerges out of subconscient Matter and climbs to its own luminous divinity fixes the norm and constantly enlarges the lines of the law — or, let us say, since law is a too mechanical conception, — the truth of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A cosmic Will and Wisdom observant of the ascending march of the soul’s consciousness and experience as it emerges out of subconscient Matter and climbs to its own luminous divinity fixes the norm and constantly enlarges the lines of the law—or, let us say, since law is a too mechanical conception,—the truth of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine—none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” Letters on Yoga
". . . all birth is a progressive self-finding, a means of self-realisation.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“… all birth is a progressive self-finding, a means of self-realisation.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"All change must come from within with the felt or the secret support of the Divine Power; it is only by one"s own inner opening to that that one can receive help, not by mental, vital or physical contact with others.” Letters on Yoga
“All change must come from within with the felt or the secret support of the Divine Power; it is only by one’s own inner opening to that that one can receive help, not by mental, vital or physical contact with others.” Letters on Yoga
"All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: ". . . all our spiritual and psychic experience bears affirmative witness, brings us always a constant and, in its main principles, an invariable evidence of the existence of higher worlds, freer planes of existence. Not having bound ourselves down, like so much of modern thought, to the dogma that only physical experience or experience based upon the physical sense is true, the analysis of physical experience by the reason alone verifiable, and all else only result of physical experience and physical existence and anything beyond this an error, self-delusion and hallucination, we are free to accept this evidence and to admit the reality of these planes. We see that they are, practically, different harmonies from the harmony of the physical universe; they occupy, as the word ‘plane" suggests, a different level in the scale of being and adopt a different system and ordering of its principles.” The Life Divine
“… all our spiritual and psychic experience bears affirmative witness, brings us always a constant and, in its main principles, an invariable evidence of the existence of higher worlds, freer planes of existence. Not having bound ourselves down, like so much of modern thought, to the dogma that only physical experience or experience based upon the physical sense is true, the analysis of physical experience by the reason alone verifiable, and all else only result of physical experience and physical existence and anything beyond this an error, self-delusion and hallucination, we are free to accept this evidence and to admit the reality of these planes. We see that they are, practically, different harmonies from the harmony of the physical universe; they occupy, as the word ‘plane’ suggests, a different level in the scale of being and adopt a different system and ordering of its principles.” The Life Divine
All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body, suksma deha , though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake.” Letters on Yoga
“All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement.
Amal: “I believe the reference is to the outward-gazing ‘physical’ mind and its triple activity as described in the passage.”
Amal: “In the old photography there used to be negatives made of glass. These negatives are”plates”.
Amal: “The reference seems to be to the vital being in the first place—the vital being in its destructive aspect—and then to the physical being. The physical being is suggested by the fact of the snake always moving in continuous contact with the earth.”
"A mind of light will replace the present confusion and trouble of this earthly ignorance; it is likely that even those parts of humanity which cannot reach it will yet be aware of its possibility and consciously tend towards it; not only so, but the life of humanity will be enlightened, uplifted, governed, harmonised by this luminous principle and even the body become something much less powerless, obscure and animal in its propensities and capable instead of a new and harmonised perfection. It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would mean a new humanity uplifted into Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-consciousness, capable even on the mental level and in its own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A mind of light will replace the present confusion and trouble of this earthly ignorance; it is likely that even those parts of humanity which cannot reach it will yet be aware of its possibility and consciously tend towards it; not only so, but the life of humanity will be enlightened, uplifted, governed, harmonised by this luminous principle and even the body become something much less powerless, obscure and animal in its propensities and capable instead of a new and harmonised perfection. It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would mean a new humanity uplifted into Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-consciousness, capable even on the mental level and in its own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Ananke ::: “This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy,—that was a notion of the Greeks,—a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit.” The Life Divine
“And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit.” The Life Divine
"A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle. This advance like others in the evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound, but from the very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the eventual outcome.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfected instrument, truth-conscious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle. Above all, its possession would enable the human being to rise beyond the normalities of his present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle. This advance like others in the evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound, but from the very beginning it would be inevitable: the pressure of the supermind creating from above out of itself the mind of Light would compel this certainty of the eventual outcome.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Animal ::: Nolini: “The Animal is the vital-physical consciousness personified.”
"A philosophy of change?(1) But what is change? In ordinary parlance change means passage from one condition to another and that would seem to imply passage from one status to another status. The shoot changes into a tree, passes from the status of shoot to the status of tree and there it stops; man passes from the status of young man to the status of old man and the only farther change possible to him is death or dissolution of his status. So it would seem that change is not something isolated which is the sole original and eternal reality, but it is something dependent on status, and if status were non-existent, change also could not exist. For we have to ask, when you speak of change as alone real, change of what, from what, to what? Without this ‘what" change could not be. ::: —Change is evidently the change of some form or state of existence from one condition to another condition.” Essays Divine and Human
“A philosophy of change?(1) But what is change? In ordinary parlance change means passage from one condition to another and that would seem to imply passage from one status to another status. The shoot changes into a tree, passes from the status of shoot to the status of tree and there it stops; man passes from the status of young man to the status of old man and the only farther change possible to him is death or dissolution of his status. So it would seem that change is not something isolated which is the sole original and eternal reality, but it is something dependent on status, and if status were non-existent, change also could not exist. For we have to ask, when you speak of change as alone real, change of what, from what, to what? Without this ‘what’ change could not be.
ascent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ascent or the upward movement takes place when there is a sufficient aspiration from the being, i.e., from the various mental, vital and physical planes.” *Letters on Yoga
ascent ::: “The ascent or the upward movement takes place when there is a sufficient aspiration from the being, i.e., from the various mental, vital and physical planes.” Letters on Yoga
::: "As for immortality, it cannot come if there is attachment to the body, — for it is only by living in the immortal part of oneself which is unidentified with the body and bringing down its consciousness and force into the cells that it can come. I speak of course of yogic means. The scientists now hold that it is (theoretically at least) possible to discover physical means by which death can be overcome, but that would mean only a prolongation of the present consciousness in the present body. Unless there is a change of consciousness and change of functionings it would be a very small gain.” Letters on Yoga
“As for immortality, it cannot come if there is attachment to the body,—for it is only by living in the immortal part of oneself which is unidentified with the body and bringing down its consciousness and force into the cells that it can come. I speak of course of yogic means. The scientists now hold that it is (theoretically at least) possible to discover physical means by which death can be overcome, but that would mean only a prolongation of the present consciousness in the present body. Unless there is a change of consciousness and change of functionings it would be a very small gain.” Letters on Yoga
::: "As for prophecy, I have never met or known of a prophet, however reputed, who was infallible. Some of their predictions come true to the letter, others do not, — they half-fulfil or misfire entirely. It does not follow that the power of prophecy is unreal or the accurate predictions can be all explained by probability, chance, coincidence. The nature and number of those that cannot is too great. The variability of fulfilment may be explained either by an imperfect power in the prophet sometimes active, sometimes failing or by the fact that things are predictable in part only, they are determined in part only or else by different factors or lines of power, different series of potentials and actuals. So long as one is in touch with one line, one predicts accurately, otherwise not — or if the lines of power change, one"s prophecy also goes off the rails. All the same, one may say, there must be, if things are predictable at all, some power or plane through which or on which all is foreseeable; if there is a divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, it must be so. Even then what is foreseen has to be worked out, actually is worked out by a play of forces, — spiritual, mental, vital and physical forces — and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces.” Letters on Yoga
“As for prophecy, I have never met or known of a prophet, however reputed, who was infallible. Some of their predictions come true to the letter, others do not,—they half-fulfil or misfire entirely. It does not follow that the power of prophecy is unreal or the accurate predictions can be all explained by probability, chance, coincidence. The nature and number of those that cannot is too great. The variability of fulfilment may be explained either by an imperfect power in the prophet sometimes active, sometimes failing or by the fact that things are predictable in part only, they are determined in part only or else by different factors or lines of power, different series of potentials and actuals. So long as one is in touch with one line, one predicts accurately, otherwise not—or if the lines of power change, one’s prophecy also goes off the rails. All the same, one may say, there must be, if things are predictable at all, some power or plane through which or on which all is foreseeable; if there is a divine Omniscience and Omnipotence, it must be so. Even then what is foreseen has to be worked out, actually is worked out by a play of forces,—spiritual, mental, vital and physical forces—and in that plane of forces there is no absolute rigidity discoverable. Personal will or endeavour is one of those forces.” Letters on Yoga
as it would be if; as though. (Introducing a supposition, or way of conceiving some entity or situation, that is not to be taken literally, but yields some insight or convenience in metaphysics.)
"A SPIRITUAL evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling Spirit, is then the keynote, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence. This significance is concealed at the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of insensibility of Matter hides the universal Consciousness-Force which works within it, so that the Energy, which is the first form the Force of creation assumes in the physical universe, appears to be itself inconscient and yet does the works of a vast occult Intelligence.” The Life Divine
“A SPIRITUAL evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling Spirit, is then the keynote, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence. This significance is concealed at the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of insensibility of Matter hides the universal Consciousness-Force which works within it, so that the Energy, which is the first form the Force of creation assumes in the physical universe, appears to be itself inconscient and yet does the works of a vast occult Intelligence.” The Life Divine
assuage ::: to mitigate, alleviate, soothe, relieve (physical or mental pain).
". . . as there is a constant dynamic energy in movement in the universe which takes various material forms more or less subtle or gross, so in each physical body or object, plant or animal or metal, there is stored and active the same constant dynamic force; a certain interchange of these two gives us the phenomena which we associate with the idea of life. It is this action that we recognise as the action of Life-Energy and that which so energises itself is the Life-Force. Mind-Energy, Life-Energy, material Energy are different dynamisms of one World-Force.” The Life Divine
“… as there is a constant dynamic energy in movement in the universe which takes various material forms more or less subtle or gross, so in each physical body or object, plant or animal or metal, there is stored and active the same constant dynamic force; a certain interchange of these two gives us the phenomena which we associate with the idea of life. It is this action that we recognise as the action of Life-Energy and that which so energises itself is the Life-Force. Mind-Energy, Life-Energy, material Energy are different dynamisms of one World-Force.” The Life Divine
“As there is an inner sight other than the physical, so there is an inner hearing other than that of the external ear, and it can listen to voices and sounds and words of other worlds, other times and places, or those which come from supraphysical beings.” Letters on Yoga
athlete ::: Sri Aurobindo employs the word as an adj. in the sense of athletic: Of the nature of, or befitting, one who is physically active, powerful, muscular, robust, agile.
atom ::: “In the very atom there is a subconscious will and desire which must also be present in all atomic aggregates because they are present in the Force which constitutes the atom.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: ". . . 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
attack ::: the act of setting upon with violent force.; launching a physical assault (against) attacks.
At times he calls himself the ‘Lord of Nations." It is he who sets all wars in motion and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won . . . This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation not the supramental world, for that would spell his end. The Mother"s talk of 26 March 1959.
At times he calls himself the ‘Lord of Nations.’ It is he who sets all wars in motion and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won . . . This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation not the supramental world, for that would spell his end. The Mother’s talk of 26 March 1959.
“Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development—Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” Letters on Yoga
background ::: n.** 1. The general scene or surface against which designs, patterns, or figures are represented or viewed. 2. Fig. The complex of physical, cultural, and psychological factors that serves as the environment of an event or experience; the set of conditions against which an occurrence is perceived. backgrounds. adj. 3.** Of, pertaining to, or serving as a background.
beauty ::: “Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the Mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital.” The Future Poetry
"Beauty is Ananda taking form — but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.” The Future Poetry
“Beauty is Ananda taking form—but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishably one.” The Future Poetry
"Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine – but the principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses itself through the form.” *The Future Poetry
“Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine—but the principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses itself through the form.” The Future Poetry
beyond ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that it is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather the absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there found; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our limited senses.” The Upanishads *
Beyond ::: “The language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that it is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather the absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there found; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our limited senses.” The Upanishads
biography ::: an account of a person"s life written, composed, or produced by another.
birth ::: “Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life, which would otherwise be a self-evident fact of existence, becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an occult processus of life.” The Life Divine
bodily ::: 1. Physical as opposed to mental or spiritual. 2. Of, relating to, or belonging to the body or the physical nature of man.
body ::: 1. The entire material or physical structure of an organism, especially of a human or animal as differentiated from the soul. 2. The entire physical structure of a human being. 3. A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses. 4. Substance. 5. An agent or entity. 6. The mass of a thing. 7. A mass of matter that is distinct from other masses. 8. The largest or main part of anything; the foundation; central part. body"s, bodies.
physical mind
physical ::: The Mother: “The physical is the concrete domain that crystallises and defines the thoughts, the movements of the vital, etc. It is a solid foundation for action.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
physical ::: the Mother: "The physical is the concrete domain that crystallises and defines the thoughts, the movements of the vital, etc. It is a solid foundation for action.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
"But man also has a life-mind, a vital mentality which is an instrument of desire: this is not satisfied with the actual, it is a dealer in possibilities; it has the passion for novelty and is seeking always to extend the limits of experience for the satisfaction of desire, for enjoyment, for an enlarged self-affirmation and aggrandisement of its terrain of power and profit. It desires, enjoys, possesses actualities, but it hunts also after unrealised possibilities, is ardent to materialise them, to possess and enjoy them also. It is not satisfied with the physical and objective only, but seeks too a subjective, an imaginative, a purely emotive satisfaction and pleasure.” *The Life Divine
“But man also has a life-mind, a vital mentality which is an instrument of desire: this is not satisfied with the actual, it is a dealer in possibilities; it has the passion for novelty and is seeking always to extend the limits of experience for the satisfaction of desire, for enjoyment, for an enlarged self-affirmation and aggrandisement of its terrain of power and profit. It desires, enjoys, possesses actualities, but it hunts also after unrealised possibilities, is ardent to materialise them, to possess and enjoy them also. It is not satisfied with the physical and objective only, but seeks too a subjective, an imaginative, a purely emotive satisfaction and pleasure.” The Life Divine
"But the role of subliminal forces cannot be said to be small, since from there come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings towards a better self and better humanity without which man would be only a thinking animal — as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve, if they do not yet dispel, the ignorance.” Letters on Yoga*
“But the role of subliminal forces cannot be said to be small, since from there come all the greater aspirations, ideals, strivings towards a better self and better humanity without which man would be only a thinking animal—as also most of the art, poetry, philosophy, thirst for knowledge which relieve, if they do not yet dispel, the ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"But the Titan will have nothing of all this; it is too great and subtle for his comprehension. His instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel, — if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly, — it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"By individual we mean normally something that separates itself from everything else and stands apart, though in reality there is no such thing anywhere in existence; it is a figment of our mental conceptions useful and necessary to express a partial and practical truth. But the difficulty is that the mind gets dominated by its words and forgets that the partial and practical truth becomes true truth only by its relation to others which seem to the reason to contradict it, and that taken by itself it contains a constant element of falsity. Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualisation of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualised being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy. It is therefore necessary to insist that by the true individual we mean nothing of the kind, but a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality.” The Life Divine
“By individual we mean normally something that separates itself from everything else and stands apart, though in reality there is no such thing anywhere in existence; it is a figment of our mental conceptions useful and necessary to express a partial and practical truth. But the difficulty is that the mind gets dominated by its words and forgets that the partial and practical truth becomes true truth only by its relation to others which seem to the reason to contradict it, and that taken by itself it contains a constant element of falsity. Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualisation of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualised being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy. It is therefore necessary to insist that by the true individual we mean nothing of the kind, but a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality.” The Life Divine
call ::: “All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.” The Synthesis of Yoga
calligraphy ::: 1. The art of fine handwriting. 2. An artistic and highly decorative form of handwriting, as with a great many flourishes.
call ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All Yoga is in its nature a new birth; it is a birth out of the ordinary, the mentalised material life of man into a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. No Yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence. The soul that is called to this deep and vast inward change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"Certainly, ideals are not the ultimate Reality, for that is too high and vast for any ideal to envisage; they are aspects of it thrown out in the world-consciousness as a basis for the workings of the world-power. But they are primary, the actual workings secondary. They are nearer to the Reality and therefore always more real, forcible and complete than the facts which are their partial reflection.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Certainly, ideals are not the ultimate Reality, for that is too high and vast for any ideal to envisage; they are aspects of it thrown out in the world-consciousness as a basis for the workings of the world-power. But they are primary, the actual workings secondary. They are nearer to the Reality and therefore always more real, forcible and complete than the facts which are their partial reflection.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
chastisement ::: verbal (often physical) punishment; discipline.
clash ::: n. 1. A loud, harsh noise, such as that made by two metal objects in collision. 2. An encounter between hostile forces; a battle or skirmish. 3. A conflict, as between opposing or irreconcilable ideas. v. 4. To engage in a physical conflict or contest, as in a game or a battle (often followed by with). 5. To come into conflict; be in opposition. clashes, clashed, clashing.
conquer ::: 1. To defeat or subdue by force, especially by force of arms. 2. To overcome (an enemy, army, etc.); defeat. 3. To overcome or surmount by physical, mental, or moral force. conquers, conquered, conquering.
consequence ::: “ Karma is nothing but the will of the Spirit in action, consequence nothing but the creation of will. What is in the will of being, expresses itself in karma and consequence. When the will is limited in mind, karma appears as a bondage and a limitation, consequence as a reaction or an imposition. But when the will of the being is infinite in the spirit, karma and consequence become instead the joy of the creative spirit, the construction of the eternal mechanist, the word and drama of the eternal poet, the harmony of the eternal musician, the play of the eternal child.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
convulsing ::: shaking violently; agitating physically.
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
“Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements—it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.” Letters on Yoga
cosmic vision ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements — it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmologist ::: one who studies the physical universe considered as a totality of phenomena in time and space.
Dawn ::: Tehmi: “Dawn in the Veda is the goddess symbolic of new openings of divine illumination on man’s physical consciousness.”
::: "Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: "Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
delight ::: “… the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss [is that] from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss without which nothing could remain in being. In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d’être of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness.” The Secret of the Veda
disciplined ::: 1. Trained mentally or physically by instruction or exercise. 2. Having or exhibiting discipline, i.e. activity, exercise or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training.
disciplines ::: branches of knowledge as well as training for the improvement of physical powers, self-control, etc.
::: "Discoveries will be made that thin the walls between soul and matter; attempts there will be to extend exact knowledge into the psychological and psychic realms with a realisation of the truth that these have laws of their own which are other than the physical, but not the less laws because they escape the external senses and are infinitely plastic and subtle.” The Human Cycle, etc.
“Discoveries will be made that thin the walls between soul and matter; attempts there will be to extend exact knowledge into the psychological and psychic realms with a realisation of the truth that these have laws of their own which are other than the physical, but not the less laws because they escape the external senses and are infinitely plastic and subtle.” The Human Cycle, etc.
divine life ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature.” *The Life Divine ::: "The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine
"Divine Love is of two kinds — the divine Love for the creation and the souls that are part of itself, and the love of the seeker and love for the Divine Beloved; it has both a personal and impersonal element, but the personal is free here from all lower elements or bondage to the vital and physical instincts.” Letters on Yoga
“Divine Love is of two kinds—the divine Love for the creation and the souls that are part of itself, and the love of the seeker and love for the Divine Beloved; it has both a personal and impersonal element, but the personal is free here from all lower elements or bondage to the vital and physical instincts.” Letters on Yoga
division ::: “God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
dragon of the dark foundation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.” The Secret of the Veda
drive ::: v. 1. To impel; constrain; urge; compel. 2. To manoeuvre, guide or steer the progress of. 3. To impel (matter) by physical force; to cause (something) to move along by direct application of physical force; to propel, carry along. 4. To send, expel, or otherwise cause to move away or out by force or compulsion. 5. To strive vigorously and with determination toward a goal or objective. 6. To cause and guide the movement of (a vehicle, an animal, etc.). n. 7. A strong organized effort to accomplish a purpose, with energy, push or aggressiveness. 8. Impulse; impulsive force. adj. 9. Urged onward, impelled. 10. Pertaining to an inner urge that stimulates activity or inhibition. drives, drove, drov"st, driving, driven.
"Each inner experience is perfectly real in its own way, although the values of different experiences differ greatly, but it is real with the reality of the inner self and the inner planes. It is a mistake to think that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life. We are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life.” Letters on Yoga
ease ::: 1. Freedom from labour, pain, or physical annoyance; tranquil rest; comfort. 2. Freedom from difficulty, hardship, or effort. 3. Freedom from concern or anxiety; a quiet state of mind.
effort ::: the use of physical or mental energy to do something; exertion. effort"s, efforts.
Eternal"s. Sri Aurobindo: ". . . that which is, cannot perish; it can only lose itself. All is eternal in the eternal spirit.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Eternal ::: “… that which is, cannot perish; it can only lose itself. All is eternal in the eternal spirit.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
ethics ::: 1. A system of moral principles. 2. The branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. **ethics".
::: "Even Science believes that one day death may be conquered by physical means and its reasonings are perfectly sound. There is no reason why the supramental Force should not do it. Forms on earth do not last (they do in other planes) because these forms are too rigid to grow expressing the progress of the spirit. If they become plastic enough to do that there is no reason why they should not last.” Letters on Yoga
“Even Science believes that one day death may be conquered by physical means and its reasonings are perfectly sound. There is no reason why the supramental Force should not do it. Forms on earth do not last (they do in other planes) because these forms are too rigid to grow expressing the progress of the spirit. If they become plastic enough to do that there is no reason why they should not last.” Letters on Yoga
“Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Evolution is an inverse action of the involution: what is an ultimate and last derivation in the involution is the first to appear in the evolution; what was original and primal in the involution is in the evolution the last and supreme emergence.” The Life Divine ::: "Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
field ::: 1. A wide unbroken expanse, as of ice. 2. An area or sphere of activity. 3. A broad, level, open expanse of land; a stretch of open land, esp. one used for pasture or tillage; a plain. 4. The surface on which something is portrayed or enacted. An area of human activity or interest. 5. A piece of ground devoted to sports or contests; playing field. 6. A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure. fields, field-paths, star-field, time-field, play-fields, race-fields.
fight ::: n. 1. Fig. A confrontation between opposing groups in which each attempts to harm or gain power over the other, as with bodily force or weapons. fights. v. 2. To contend with physically or in battle; attempt to defend oneself against or to subdue, defeat, or destroy an adversary. fighting, fought.
filth ::: 1. Foul or dirty matter. 2. Extreme physical or moral uncleanliness; pollution.
fleshly ::: of or pertaining to the flesh or the body; bodily, corporeal, or physical.
force ::: n. 1. Strength; energy; power; intensity. 2. Fig. An agency, influence, or source of power likened to a physical force. Force, force"s, forces, Force-compelled, Conscious-Force, earth-force, God-Force, lion-forces, Mother-Force, Nature-force, Nature-Force, serpent-force, soul-force, Soul-Forces, world-force, World-Force, world-forces. *v. 3. To compel or cause (a person, group, etc.) to do something through effort, superior strength, etc.; coerce. 4. To propel or drive despite resistance. 5. To break open (a gate, door, etc.) *forces, forced, forcing.
"For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.” Essays Divine and Human
“For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.” Essays Divine and Human
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
"For it is a gnostic way of dynamic living that must be the fulfilled divine life on earth, a way of living that develops higher instruments of world-knowledge and world-action for the dynamisation of consciousness in the physical existence and takes up and transforms the values of a world of material Nature.” The Life Divine
“For it is a gnostic way of dynamic living that must be the fulfilled divine life on earth, a way of living that develops higher instruments of world-knowledge and world-action for the dynamisation of consciousness in the physical existence and takes up and transforms the values of a world of material Nature.” The Life Divine
fortify ::: to impart physical strength or endurance to; invigorate. fortifying.
::: "For what we understand by law is a single immutably habitual movement or recurrence in Nature fruitful of a determined sequence of things and that sequence must be clear, precise, limited to its formula, invariable.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“For what we understand by law is a single immutably habitual movement or recurrence in Nature fruitful of a determined sequence of things and that sequence must be clear, precise, limited to its formula, invariable.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
freedom ::: “Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: . . . .” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
gas ::: 1. A substance in the gaseous state. 2. Physics. A substance possessing perfect molecular mobility and the property of indefinite expansion, as opposed to a solid or liquid.
gene ::: the basic physical unit of heredity which leads to the expression of hereditary character.
geography
"God is one but he is not bounded by his unity.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“God is one but he is not bounded by his unity.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
hallucination ::: 1. A sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind, caused by various physical and mental disorders. 2. A false notion, belief, or impression; illusion; delusion.
harm ::: n. 1. Physical or psychological injury or damage. harms. v. 2. To injure physically, morally, or mentally.
harsh ::: 1. Grim or unpleasantly severe; stern; cruel; austere. 2. Physically uncomfortable; desolate; stark. 3. Unpleasant to the taste or sense of smell; bitter; acrid.
"Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"If there is a self in us capable of largeness and universality, able to enter into a cosmic consciousness, that too must be within our inner being; the outer consciousness is a physical consciousness bound to its individual limits by the triple cord of mind, life and body: any external attempt at universality can only result either in an aggrandisement of the ego or an effacement of the personality by its extinction in the mass or subjugation to the mass.” The Life Divine*
“If there is a self in us capable of largeness and universality, able to enter into a cosmic consciousness, that too must be within our inner being; the outer consciousness is a physical consciousness bound to its individual limits by the triple cord of mind, life and body: any external attempt at universality can only result either in an aggrandisement of the ego or an effacement of the personality by its extinction in the mass or subjugation to the mass.” The Life Divine
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
"Ignorance, this matrix of sin, has in its substantial effect the appearance of a triple cord of limited mind, inefficient life, obscure physical animality, the three ropes with which the Rishi Shunahshepa in the parable was bound as a victim to the sacrificial post.” The Secret of the Veda
“Ignorance, this matrix of sin, has in its substantial effect the appearance of a triple cord of limited mind, inefficient life, obscure physical animality, the three ropes with which the Rishi Shunahshepa in the parable was bound as a victim to the sacrificial post.” The Secret of the Veda
::: ". . . immortality in its fundamental sense does not mean merely some kind of personal survival of the bodily death; we are immortal by the eternity of our self-existence without beginning or end, beyond the whole succession of physical births and deaths through which we pass, beyond the alternations of our existence in this and other worlds: the spirit"s timeless existence is the true immortality.” *The Life Divine
“… immortality in its fundamental sense does not mean merely some kind of personal survival of the bodily death; we are immortal by the eternity of our self-existence without beginning or end, beyond the whole succession of physical births and deaths through which we pass, beyond the alternations of our existence in this and other worlds: the spirit’s timeless existence is the true immortality.” The Life Divine
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
"Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences — for to us they are more than merely ideas, — it has carried to its extreme possibilities.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences—for to us they are more than merely ideas,—it has carried to its extreme possibilities.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
::: "Inner mind is that which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality) and can only be directly experienced (apart from its vrttis in the surface mind such as philosophy, poetry, idealism, etc.) by sadhana, by breaking down the habit of being on the surface and by going deeper within.” *Letters on Yoga
"Inner mind is that which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality) and can only be directly experienced (apart from its vrttis in the surface mind such as philosophy, poetry, idealism, etc.) by sadhana, by breaking down the habit of being on the surface and by going deeper within.” Letters on Yoga
“Inner mind is that which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality) and can only be directly experienced (apart from its vrttis in the surface mind such as philosophy, poetry, idealism, etc.) by sadhana, by breaking down the habit of being on the surface and by going deeper within.” Letters on Yoga
in political and legal philosophy and theology, doctrines based on the theory that there are certain unchanging laws which pertain to man"s nature, which can be discovered by reason, and therefore ethically binding in human society, and to which man-made laws should conform.
inscrutable ::: 1. Difficult or nearly impossible to fathom or understand; impenetrable. 2. Incapable of being seen through physically; physically impenetrable.
intermediate zone ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers. ::: It is not necessary for everyone to struggle through the intermediate zone. If one has purified oneself, if there is no abnormal vanity, egoism, ambition or other strong misleading element, or if one is vigilant and on one"s guard, or if the psychic is in front, one can either pass rapidly and directly or with a minimum of trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth.
intoxicating ::: affecting temporarily with diminished physical and mental control by means of alcoholic liquor, a drug, or another substance.
“It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy—the material aspect being only its outermost movement—that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” The Life Divine
"It [death] has no separate existence by itself, it is only a result of the principle of decay in the body and that principle is there already — it is part of the physical nature. At the same time it is not inevitable; if one could have the necessary consciousness and force, decay and death is not inevitable. But to bring that consciousness and force into the whole of the material nature is the most difficult thing of all — at any rate, in such a way as to annul the decay principle.” Letters on Yoga
“It [death] has no separate existence by itself, it is only a result of the principle of decay in the body and that principle is there already—it is part of the physical nature. At the same time it is not inevitable; if one could have the necessary consciousness and force, decay and death is not inevitable. But to bring that consciousness and force into the whole of the material nature is the most difficult thing of all—at any rate, in such a way as to annul the decay principle.” Letters on Yoga
It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, — and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners, — is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole. The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges.” *Letters on Yoga
It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know,—and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners,—is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole. The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges.” Letters on Yoga
Jhumur: “It is the little sense mind which thinks itself to be very great. It is just a small point of consciousness, it is a small world and yet it thinks itself to be the whole world. The physical mind really thinks itself to be a very huge field of experience. It is the first mental plane after the physical.”
Jhumur: “She (Savitri) has gone into this world of light not having really left her body. It is not an experience that is beyond the body. It is in the physical life that she has attained this plane, so topaz, a yellow colour, is the colour of the mind, stone is the consciousness in matter, so physical life, body, life, mind. Mother had told us I remember that a precious stone symbolises consciousness that is lodged in matter. It shows how blazing light is present even in the hardest matter. So you have the image of the physical light, like a kind of a wall, a barrier.”
Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature.” Letters on Yoga
::: "Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity. . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity….” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Karmic ::: “If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
labourer ::: 1. Someone who works with their hands; someone engaged in manual labour. 2. A worker; one who is engaged in physical work, esp. of an unskilled kind. labourers.
::: "Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: " . . . liberation is self-possession. . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“… liberation is self-possession….” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
light ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” *The Life Divine
"Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.” *The Hour of God
"Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
The Mother: "The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Light, light"s, lights, light-petalled, light-tasselled, half-light.
lotus (as chakra) ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This arrangement of the psychic body is reproduced in the physical with the spinal column as a rod and the ganglionic centres as the chakras which rise up from the bottom of the column, where the lowest is attached, to the brain and find their summit in the brahmarandhra at the top of the skull. These chakras or lotuses, however, are in physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as are sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its need. This is the real reason, looked at from the mechanical point of view, why the embodied soul seems so dependent on the bodily and nervous life, — though the dependence is neither so complete nor so real as it seems. The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake, — therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti, — in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Madhav: “Space which is normally occupied by movements in the world is now occupied by the spiritual silence of the Self. Mark, it is not physical silence but spiritual silence. Spiritual silence permits activity, even speech, unlike physical silence which shuts off speech. Spiritual silence is silence of the whole being, whereas physical silence, mauna as we call it, is only abstention from speech, vocal activity, which makes the mind, very often, more active than before.” The Book of the Divine Mother
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
Madhav: “The mind is pictured in terms of a seat with three legs: the physical mind (sense mentality); vital mind (desire mind, dynamic mentality); reason (thought mentality). The normal human mind has these three layers.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The triple cord refers to the physical, the vital and the thought strands of the mind which constrict and narrow the range of human vision. As they are loosened, the gaze widens and larger horizons come into view.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “This is another key idea in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, that Nature, what is called Prakriti in Indian philosophy, is not different, not alien to the Purusha. Nature is not foreign to the soul, to God. It is a conscious front of God. Scratch Nature, look behind the exterior of Nature and you will find God. The apparent difference, distinction between Nature and God is only a superficial appearance. Nature is really a power of God. It is devatma shakti, the self-power of God—svagunair nigudham lost in its qualitative workings. She is not separate; conscious, not something unconscious. Nature is aware that it is only a front of God behind.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “Triple-plated gloom is the darkness with three successive layers: the material-physical, the vital and the mental. This is the Shadow that infests the three lower orders of existence.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “When Aswapathy lifts the curtain of the flesh i.e. when he gets through the barrier of his physical existence, he comes to the threshold of another domain, subtle and occult. He sees a serpent watching, guarding the entrance. In all traditions, especially the ancient, at the doors of every subtle kingdom there is a sentinel and that sentinel is imaged as a serpent. In spiritual symbolism the serpent stands for Energy. Depending on the colour of the serpent, it is physical energy or vital energy, mental energy, spiritual energy. Unless this serpent allows one to pass one cannot enter. The serpent, in this context, is the guard whose consent is necessary before one can pass. The Book of the Divine Mother
"Man himself is not a life and mind born of Matter and eternally subject to physical Nature, but a spirit that uses life and body.” The Renaissance in India
“Man himself is not a life and mind born of Matter and eternally subject to physical Nature, but a spirit that uses life and body.” The Renaissance in India
"Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Man is God hiding himself from Nature so that he may possess her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own individuality in the human being.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
mantra ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” *The Future Poetry
mantra ::: : “The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” The Future Poetry
mass ::: n. 1. A body of coherent matter, usually of indefinite shape and often of considerable size. 2. A large amount or number, such as a great body of people. masses, flower-masses. 3. Bulk, size, expanse, or massiveness. 4. The main body, bulk, or greater part of anything. 5. Physics. A measure of the amount of matter contained in or constituting a physical body. adj. 6. Of, involving, composed of masses of people (or things) or the majority of people (or a society, group, etc.); done, made, etc., on a large scale. v. 7. To gather into or dispose in a mass or masses; assemble. massed.
material world ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Our material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have seen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence.” The Life Divine
::: "Matter is only so much mobile energy vibrating intensely into form.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Matter is only so much mobile energy vibrating intensely into form.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
mechanic ::: n. 1. A worker skilled in making, using, or repairing machines, vehicles, and tools. mechanic"s. adj. **2. Resembling the action of a machine. 3. Resembling (inanimate) machines or their operations; acting or performed without the exercise of thought or volition; lacking spontaneity or originality; machine-like; automatic. 4. Habitual; routine; automatic. 5. Pertaining to, or controlled or affected by, physical force. mechanical, mechanically.**
“Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine.
metaphysical ::: highly abstract or theoretical; abstruse, relating to that which is immaterial or concerned with abstract thought or subjects, as existence, causality, or truth.
mind, physical
mind, physical ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The physical mind is that part of the mind which is concerned with the physical things only — it depends on the sense-mind, sees only objects, external actions, draws its ideas from the data given by external things, infers from them only and knows no other Truth until it is enlightened from above.” *Letters on Yoga
mind of light ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind, dependent upon it even when not apparently springing direct from it, . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
misery ::: 1. Severe mental or emotional unhappiness or distress. 2. The state of suffering and want as a result of physical circumstances or extreme poverty. 3. A cause or source of suffering. misery"s, miseries.
motive ::: n. 1. An emotion, desire, physiological need, or similar impulse that acts as an incitement to action. motives. adj. **2. Of or constituting an incitement to action. 3. In art, literature and music: A motif (a recurring subject, theme, idea). motived, motiveless. v. 4. To incite; motivate. motives.**
Muladhara — physical.
Muladhara—physical.
n. **1. A rigid structure formed of relatively slender pieces, joined as to surround sizeable empty spaces. 2. Form, constitution, or structure in general; system; order. 3. Applied to the heaven, earth, etc. regarded as a structure. 4. A body, esp. the human body; physique. 5. A border or case for enclosing a picture, mirror, etc. ::: frames, world-frame. v. 6. To contrive, devise, or compose, as a plan, law, or poem. 7. To fashion or shape. 8. To shape or adapt to a particular purpose. framed, framing, self-framed.**
n. 1. Emotional or spiritual exaltation. 2. An elevating effect, result, or influence in the sphere of morality, emotion, physical condition, etc. v. 3. To lift up; raise; elevate. 4. To elevate in rank, honour, estate, or estimation. 5. To exalt emotionally or spiritually. uplifts, uplifting.
Name ::: Jhumur: “Hold onto the Name. That is the only power. I remember Mother once told me—because there was a moment when I was attacked by a certain person. She was mad and so had a certain number of people she chose to attack with her vibrations, with her words. If she could she would throw stones. I was very, very young, about 17 or 18. I said, ‘Every time I see her, Mother, I really start to tremble. It has become something so physically terrifying. Once she (the mad person) had thrown a big paperweight, a cement paperweight in the library. It went just past my head, it could have killed me. After that I became really frightened. So Mother told me ‘Nothing will happen to you. Each time you see her just say ‘Ma, Ma, Ma.’ But it was so difficult. Each time I saw her from far I would think, ‘I have to say Ma.’ But when she came close enough I could not say the Name, for a long time, for a very long time. I was so frightened the fear would take the Name away. I knew very well I had to say the Name That is what Mother told me. And one day I could, finally I could and the mad person lost interest in me!”
Necessity ::: “… Necessity is the child of the spirit’s free self-determination. What affects us as Necessity, is a Will which works in sequence and not a blind Force driven by its own mechanism.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
necessity ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . Necessity is the child of the spirit"s free self-determination. What affects us as Necessity, is a Will which works in sequence and not a blind Force driven by its own mechanism.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
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.
"Nothing can be more remarkable and suggestive than the extent to which modern Science confirms in the domain of Matter the conceptions and even the very formulae of language which were arrived at, by a very different method, in the Vedanta, — the original Vedanta, not of the schools of metaphysical philosophy, but of the Upanishads. And these, on the other hand, often reveal their full significance, their richer contents only when they are viewed in the new light shed by the discoveries of modern Science, — for instance, that Vedantic expression which describes things in the Cosmos as one seed arranged by the universal Energy in multitudinous forms.(1) Significant, especially, is the drive of Science towards a Monism which is consistent with multiplicity, towards the Vedic idea of the one essence with its many becomings.” The Life Divine
“Nothing can be more remarkable and suggestive than the extent to which modern Science confirms in the domain of Matter the conceptions and even the very formulae of language which were arrived at, by a very different method, in the Vedanta,—the original Vedanta, not of the schools of metaphysical philosophy, but of the Upanishads. And these, on the other hand, often reveal their full significance, their richer contents only when they are viewed in the new light shed by the discoveries of modern Science,—for instance, that Vedantic expression which describes things in the Cosmos as one seed arranged by the universal Energy in multitudinous forms.(1) Significant, especially, is the drive of Science towards a Monism which is consistent with multiplicity, towards the Vedic idea of the one essence with its many becomings.” The Life Divine
“ Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
noxious ::: injurious to physical or mental health.
ocean ::: 1. The vast body of salt water that covers three fourths of the surface of the globe. 2. A vast expanse or quantity. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj. in this sense.) Ocean, ocean"s, oceans, ocean-silence, ocean-ecstasy, world-ocean"s. adj. 3. Of or pertaining to the ocean in its natural and physical relations. Also fig. ::: oceans. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a v.)
"Of course, the gods exist — that is to say, there are Powers that stand above the world and transmit the divine workings. It is the physical mind which believes only what is physical that denies them. There are also beings of other worlds — gods and Asuras, etc.” Letters on Yoga
“Of course, the gods exist—that is to say, there are Powers that stand above the world and transmit the divine workings. It is the physical mind which believes only what is physical that denies them. There are also beings of other worlds—gods and Asuras, etc.” Letters on Yoga
::: "OM is the mantra, the expressive sound-symbol of the Brahman Consciousness in its four domains from the Turiya to the external or material plane. The function of a mantra is to create vibrations in the inner consciousness that will prepare it for the realisation of what the mantra symbolises and is supposed indeed to carry within itself. The mantra OM should therefore lead towards the opening of the consciousness to the sight and feeling of the One Consciousness in all material things, in the inner being and in the supraphysical worlds, in the causal plane above now superconscient to us and, finally, the supreme liberated transcendence above all cosmic existence.” *Letters on Yoga
“OM is the mantra, the expressive sound-symbol of the Brahman Consciousness in its four domains from the Turiya to the external or material plane. The function of a mantra is to create vibrations in the inner consciousness that will prepare it for the realisation of what the mantra symbolises and is supposed indeed to carry within itself. The mantra OM should therefore lead towards the opening of the consciousness to the sight and feeling of the One Consciousness in all material things, in the inner being and in the supraphysical worlds, in the causal plane above now superconscient to us and, finally, the supreme liberated transcendence above all cosmic existence.” Letters on Yoga
orchid ::: any terrestrial or epiphytic plant of the family Orchidaceae, of temperate and tropical regions, having usually showy flowers.
"Ordinarily we mean by it [consciousness] our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed.” Letters on Yoga
“Ordinarily we mean by it [consciousness] our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed.” Letters on Yoga
“Our material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have seen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence.” The Life Divine
"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.” The Life Divine
“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.” The Life Divine
outward ::: n. 1. Relating to physical reality rather than with thoughts or the mind; the material or external world. outward"s, outwardness. adj. 2. Relating to the physical self. 3. Purely external; superficial. 4. Belonging or pertaining to external actions or appearances, as opposed to inner feelings, mental states, etc. 5. Pertaining to or being what is seen or apparent, as distinguished from the underlying nature, facts, etc.; pertaining to surface qualities only; superficial.
"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.” The Life Divine
“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.” The Life Divine
Oversoul ::: We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance, luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery. We become aware, in a certain experience, of a range of being superconscient to all these three, aware too of something, a supreme highest Reality sustaining and exceeding them all, which humanity speaks of vaguely as Spirit, God, the Oversoul: from these superconscient ranges we have visitations and in our highest being we tend towards them and to that supreme Spirit. There is then in our total range of existence a superconscience as well as a subconscience and inconscience, overarching and perhaps enveloping our subliminal and our waking selves, but unknown to us, seemingly unattainable and incommunicable.
pain ::: 1. An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder. 2. The sensation of acute physical hurt or discomfort caused by injury, illness, etc. **Pain, pain"s, pains, earth-pain, life-pain, world-pain, pain-forgetting, pain-fraught.
"Pain and grief are Nature"s reminder to the soul that the pleasure it enjoys is only a feeble hint of the real delight of existence. In each pain and torture of our being is the secret of a flame of rapture compared with which our greatest pleasures are only as dim flickerings.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“Pain and grief are Nature’s reminder to the soul that the pleasure it enjoys is only a feeble hint of the real delight of existence. In each pain and torture of our being is the secret of a flame of rapture compared with which our greatest pleasures are only as dim flickerings.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Pain is caused because the physical consciousness in the Ignorance is too limited to bear the touches that come upon it. Otherwise, to cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience all touches come as Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
“Pain is caused because the physical consciousness in the Ignorance is too limited to bear the touches that come upon it. Otherwise, to cosmic consciousness in its state of complete knowledge and complete experience all touches come as Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
"Patience is our first great necessary lesson, but not the dull slowness to move of the timid, the sceptical, the weary, the slothful, the unambitious or the weakling; a patience full of a calm and gathering strength which watches and prepares itself for the hour of swift great strokes, few but enough to change destiny.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Patience is our first great necessary lesson, but not the dull slowness to move of the timid, the sceptical, the weary, the slothful, the unambitious or the weakling; a patience full of a calm and gathering strength which watches and prepares itself for the hour of swift great strokes, few but enough to change destiny.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
personality ::: “Personality is only a temporary mental, vital, physical formation which the being, the real Person, the psychic entity, puts forward on the surface,—it is not the self in its abiding reality.” The Life Divine
phantasm ::: something apparently seen but having no physical reality; a phantom or an apparition.
phantom ::: n. 1. Something apparently seen, heard, or sensed, but having no physical reality; a ghost or an apparition. 2. An image that appears only in the mind; an illusion. adj. 3. Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a phantom; illusory. phantom"s, phantoms.
philosophy ::: “All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience.” The Hour of God
::: ". . . philosophy is only a way of formulating to ourselves intellectually in their essential significance the psychological and physical facts of existence and their relation to any ultimate reality that may exist,. . . .” Essays on the Gita
“… philosophy is only a way of formulating to ourselves intellectually in their essential significance the psychological and physical facts of existence and their relation to any ultimate reality that may exist,….” Essays on the Gita
philosophy
::: "Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret. God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret. God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
potent ::: possessing inner or physical strength; powerful; having great control or authority.
presence ::: 1. The state or fact of being present; current existence or occurrence. 2. A divine, spiritual, or supernatural spirit or influence felt or conceived as present. 3. The immediate proximity of someone or something.
Sri Aurobindo: "It is intended by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a Being, felt as present in one"s existence and consciousness or in relation with it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of the ‘ineffable Presence" it can only be said that it is there and nothing more can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental significance, — the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting everything else.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” Essays Divine and Human
"But if we learn to live within, we infallibly awaken to this presence within us which is our more real self, a presence profound, calm, joyous and puissant of which the world is not the master — a presence which, if it is not the Lord Himself, is the radiation of the Lord within.” *The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” *The Life Divine
"If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, — all Nature is its external proof, — we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the invisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature.” *The Life Divine
"The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” *The Life Divine
"There is a secret divine Will, eternal and infinite, omniscient and omnipotent, that expresses itself in the universality and in each particular of all these apparently temporal and finite inconscient or half-conscient things. This is the Power or Presence meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine by the illusion of Nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"One must have faith in the Master of our life and works, even if for a long time He conceals Himself, and then in His own right time He will reveal His Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"They [the psychic being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. The psychic being is one"s own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the Divine and develops towards the Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
"For it is quietness and inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.” *Essays Divine and Human
The Mother: "For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart — not in the physical heart but the psychic centre — of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
::: "Pressure, throbbing, electrical vibrations are all signs of the working of the Force. The places indicate the field of action — the top of the head is the summit of the thinking mind where it communicates with the higher consciousness; the neck or throat is the seat of the physical, externalising or expressive mind; the ear is the place of communication with the inner mind-centre by which thoughts etc. enter into the personal being from the general Nature.” Letters on Yoga
“Pressure, throbbing, electrical vibrations are all signs of the working of the Force. The places indicate the field of action—the top of the head is the summit of the thinking mind where it communicates with the higher consciousness; the neck or throat is the seat of the physical, externalising or expressive mind; the ear is the place of communication with the inner mind-centre by which thoughts etc. enter into the personal being from the general Nature.”
::: "Progress is the very heart of the significance of human life, for it means our evolution into greater and richer being; . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Progress is the very heart of the significance of human life, for it means our evolution into greater and richer being; …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
quantum ::: 1. Quantity, amount. 2. Physics. The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently.
Radha ::: “Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
ray ::: 1. A thin line or narrow beam of light or other radiant energy. 2. Radiance; light. 3. Physics, Optics. Any of the lines or streams in which light appears to radiate from a luminous body. 4. A straight line extending from a point. 5. A slight indication, esp. of something anticipated or hoped for. **Ray, soul-ray.
ray ::: “Even if there is much darkness—and this world is full of it and the physical nature of man also—yet a ray of the true Light can prevail eventually against a tenfold darkness. Believe that and cleave to it always.” Letters on Yoga
reaction ::: 1. Action in response to some influence, event, etc. 2. Physiol. Action in response to a stimulus, as of the system or of a nerve, muscle, etc. reaction"s, reactions.
red ::: Jhumur: “In general it is the play of the vital forces. Mother always uses red as a symbol of the physical, the colour of blood, the early stage of the developing
respond ::: physiol. To exhibit some action of effect as if in answer; react. responds, responded.
rhythm ::: 1. Procedure marked by the regular recurrence of particular elements, phases, etc.; flow, pulse, cadence. 2. Regular recurrence of elements in a system of motion. 3. Music. The pattern of regular or irregular pulses caused in music by the occurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats. 4. Measured movement, as in dancing. 5. Physiol. The regular recurrence of an action of function, as of the beat of the heart. 6. The arrangement of words into a more or less regular sequence of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables. 7. Pros. Metrical or rhythmical form; metre; a particular kind of metrical form or metrical movement. rhythms, rhythm-beats, fire-rhythm, jewel-rhythm, world-rhythms. (Sri Aurobindo also employs rhythms as a v., rhythmed as a v. and an adj., and rhythming as a v. and an adj.)
"Science at its limits, even physical Science, is compelled to perceive in the end the infinite, the universal, the spirit, the divine intelligence and will in the material universe.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“Science at its limits, even physical Science, is compelled to perceive in the end the infinite, the universal, the spirit, the divine intelligence and will in the material universe.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Science is a right knowledge, in the end only of processes, but still the knowledge of processes too is part of a total wisdom and essential to a wide and a clear approach towards the deeper Truth behind.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Science is a right knowledge, in the end only of processes, but still the knowledge of processes too is part of a total wisdom and essential to a wide and a clear approach towards the deeper Truth behind.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
sensations (‘s) ::: 1. Perception or awareness of stimuli through the senses. 2. A physical ‘feeling" considered apart from the resulting ‘perception" of an object. 3. A state of intense or heightened interest or emotion; an exciting experience resulting from the stimulation of one of the sense organs. sensations.
"Sense is in fact the mental contact of the embodied consciousness with its surroundings. This contact is always essentially a mental phenomenon; but in fact it depends chiefly upon the development of certain physical organs of contact with objects and with their properties to whose images it is able by habit to give their mental values. What we call the physical senses have a double element, the physical-nervous impression of the object and the mental-nervous value we give to it, and the two together make up our seeing, hearing, smell, taste, touch with all those varieties of sensation of which they, and the touch chiefly, are the starting-point or first transmitting agency.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“Sense is in fact the mental contact of the embodied consciousness with its surroundings. This contact is always essentially a mental phenomenon; but in fact it depends chiefly upon the development of certain physical organs of contact with objects and with their properties to whose images it is able by habit to give their mental values. What we call the physical senses have a double element, the physical-nervous impression of the object and the mental-nervous value we give to it, and the two together make up our seeing, hearing, smell, taste, touch with all those varieties of sensation of which they, and the touch chiefly, are the starting-point or first transmitting agency.” The Synthesis of Yoga
sensual ::: 1. Of or relating to any of the senses or sense organs; sensory; physical rather than spiritual or intellectual. 2. Pertaining to, inclined to, or preoccupied with the gratification of the senses or appetites.
sheath ::: “… sheaths is simply a term for bodies, because each is superimposed on the other and acts as a covering and can be cast off. Thus the physical body itself is called the food sheath and its throwing off is what is called death.” Letters on Yoga
sheaths ::: Madhav: “The physical is not the only body encasing the soul. Ensouling it, as it were, and subtler than it, is the vital body; finer than the vital is the mental body; still finer is the causal body and the finest of them all is the body of bliss. All these bodies, each subtler than the other, are termed sheaths in view of their functions as so many coverings of the being at the core.” Readings in Savitri, Vol. I.
Shruti: “The symbolic representation of the metaphysical ascending layers of creation, the mystical (Sri Yantra) symbol of creation. The symbol of diamonds and triangles leading to a single point at the top and encompassed in a square. If you look at it from above, aerially, it appears to be this symbol (from a flat perspective), but if you look at it from the side it is an ascending mountain. (Called Mount Meru but actually like the Sri Yantra).”
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
sound-waves ::: physics. Longitudinal waves in an elastic medium, esp. waves producing an audible sensation.
spirit of Delight ::: Sri Aurobindo: " Now, that a conscious Infinite is there in physical Nature, we are assured by every sign, though it is a consciousness not made or limited like ours. All her constructions and motions are those of an illimitable intuitive wisdom too great and spontaneous and mysteriously self-effective to be described as an intelligence, of a Power and Will working for Time in eternity with an inevitable and forecasting movement in each of its steps, even in those steps that in their outward or superficial impetus seem to us inconscient. And as there is in her this greater consciousness and greater power, so too there is an illimitable spirit of harmony and beauty in her constructions that never fails her, though its works are not limited by our aesthetic canons. An infinite hedonism too is there, an illimitable spirit of delight, of which we become aware when we enter into impersonal unity with her; and even as that in her which is terrible is a part of her beauty, that in her which is dangerous, cruel, destructive is a part of her delight, her universal Ananda. Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
spiritual ::: 1. Of or pertaining to, affecting or concerning, the spirit or soul as distinguished from the physical nature; incorporeal. 2. Of or pertaining to sacred things or matters; sacred. 3. Characterized by or suggesting predominance of the spirit; having spiritual tendencies or instincts; holy.
Sri Aurobindo: "All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: "As there is an inner sight other than the physical, so there is an inner hearing other than that of the external ear, and it can listen to voices and sounds and words of other worlds, other times and places, or those which come from supraphysical beings.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development — Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the Mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital.” *The Future Poetry
Sri Aurobindo: "Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life, which would otherwise be a self-evident fact of existence, becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an occult processus of life.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "Even if there is much darkness — and this world is full of it and the physical nature of man also — yet a ray of the true Light can prevail eventually against a tenfold darkness. Believe that and cleave to it always.” Letters on Yoga*
Sri Aurobindo: "Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "His [the Titan"s] instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel, — if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly, — it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "In the very atom there is a subconscious will and desire which must also be present in all atomic aggregates because they are present in the Force which constitutes the atom.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "It could be affirmed as a consequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy — the material aspect being only its outermost movement — that creates all these forms of the physical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure of the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be capable of producing a new universe in its place, must indeed, unless it be held back in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back, inevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the Force that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the world; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as much as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the animals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the plant or of each other. All existence here is a universal Life that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide life-process in physical process before it emerges as submental sensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout the same creative Life-principle.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: " Karma is nothing but the will of the Spirit in action, consequence nothing but the creation of will. What is in the will of being, expresses itself in karma and consequence. When the will is limited in mind, karma appears as a bondage and a limitation, consequence as a reaction or an imposition. But when the will of the being is infinite in the spirit, karma and consequence become instead the joy of the creative spirit, the construction of the eternal mechanist, the word and drama of the eternal poet, the harmony of the eternal musician, the play of the eternal child.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Personality is only a temporary mental, vital, physical formation which the being, the real Person, the psychic entity, puts forward on the surface, — it is not the self in its abiding reality.” *The Life Divine
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Science started on the assumption that the ultimate truth must be physical and objective — and the objective Ultimate (or even less than that) would explain all subjective phenomena. Yoga proceeds on the opposite view that the ultimate Truth is spiritual and subjective and it is in that ultimate Light that we must view objective phenomena.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . sheaths is simply a term for bodies, because each is superimposed on the other and acts as a covering and can be cast off. Thus the physical body itself is called the food sheath and its throwing off is what is called death.” Letters on Yoga
::: Sri Aurobindo: "Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses. This is a statement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But there is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force — it may be spiritual, mental or vital — to secure a particular result at some point in the world. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or currents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of emotion, — for example, anger, sorrow, etc., — which go out and affect others without their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel the result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming and invading him.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The physical nerves are part of the material body but they are extended into the subtle body and there is a connection between the two.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” *Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss [is that] from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being, is drawn. A secret Delight is the base of existence, its sustaining atmosphere and almost its substance. This Ananda is spoken of in the Taittiriya Upanishad as the ethereal atmosphere of bliss without which nothing could remain in being. In the Aitareya Upanishad Soma, as the lunar deity, is born from the sense-mind in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d"être of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness.” The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force. He is lodged in the heart of every breathing thing; from him are memory and knowledge and the debates of the reason. He is that which is known by all the Vedas and by all forms of knowing; he is the knower of Veda and the maker of Vedanta. In other words, the Divine is at once the Soul of matter and the Soul of life and the Soul of mind as well as the Soul of the supramental light that is beyond mind and its limited reasoning intelligence.” *Essays on the Gita
*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
Sri Aurobindo: "There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life"s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: “There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life’s action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "The word is a sound expression of the idea. In the supra-physical plane when an idea has to be realised, one can by repeating the word-expression of it, produce vibrations which prepare the mind for the realisation of the idea. That is the principle of the Mantras and of Japa. One repeats the name of the Divine and the vibrations created in the consciousness prepare the realisation of the Divine. It is the same idea that is expressed in the Bible: ‘God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light". It is creation by the Word.” *The Future Poetry
Sri Aurobindo: "This idea of universality, of oneness not only with God or the eternal Self in me, but with all humanity and other beings, is growing to be the most prominent strain in our minds and it has to be taken more largely into account in any future idea or computation of the significance of rebirth and karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West too the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and mostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy, — that was a notion of the Greeks, — a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga *Ananke"s.
Sri Aurobindo: "Trance or samadhi is a way of escape — the body is made quiet, the physical mind is in a state of torpor, the inner consciousness is left free to go on with its experiences. The disadvantage is that trance becomes indispensable and the problem of the waking consciousness is not solved; it remains imperfect.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Weakness puts the same test and question to the strengths and energies and greatnesses in which we glory. Power is the play of life, shows its degree, finds the value of its expression; weakness is the play of death pursuing life in its movement and stressing the limit of its acquired energy.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead"" or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
::: "Sri Krishna . . . Lord of the divine love and Ananda — and his flute calls the physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn to that love and Ananda.” *Letters on Yoga
“Sri Krishna . . . Lord of the divine love and Ananda—and his flute calls the physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn to that love and Ananda.” Letters on Yoga
stoic ::: adj. 1. Of or pertaining to the school of philosophy founded by Zeno, who taught that people should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity. n. 2. A member or adherent of the Stoic school of philosophy. Stoic"s.
stress ::: 1. Physical, mental or emotional strain or tension; a situation, occurrence, condition or factor causing strain. 2. Stimulus or pressure of the influence of an adverse force. 3. Special or exceptional emphasis or significance attached to something. stress-vision.
subconscient ::: “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. No, subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.” The Synthesis of Yoga.
subconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "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. No, subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.” *The Synthesis of Yoga.
"The subconscient is a concealed and unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body-consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there.
Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature.” Letters on Yoga
"That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action. It can be held to include the dumb occult consciousness, dynamic but not sensed by us, which operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life process and automatic responses. It covers also those lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind which are more operative in the animal and in plant life.” *The Life Divine
"The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses. It must be trained by a still more persistent insistence of the higher parts of the being to give up its old responses and take on the new and true ones.” Letters on Yoga
"About the subconscient — it is the sub-mental base of the being and is made up of impressions, instincts, habitual movements that are stored there. Whatever movement is impressed in it, it keeps. If one impresses the right movement in it, it will keep and send up that. That is why it has to be cleared of old movements before there can be a permanent and total change in the nature. When the higher consciousness is once established in the waking parts, it goes down into the subconscient and changes that also, makes a bedrock of itself there also.” Letters on Yoga
"The sub-conscious is the evolutionary basis in us, it is not the whole of our hidden nature, nor is it the whole origin of what we are. But things can rise from the subconscient and take shape in the conscious parts and much of our smaller vital and physical instincts, movements, habits, character-forms has this source.” Letters on Yoga
"The subconscient is the support of habitual action — it can support good habits as well as bad.” Letters on Yoga
"For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements.” The Life Divine *subconscient"s.
"Subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.” Letters on Yoga
“Subliminal is a general term used for all parts of the being which are not on the waking surface. Subconscient is very often used in the same sense by European psychologists because they do not know the difference. But when I use the word, I mean always what is below the ordinary physical consciousness, not what is behind it. The inner mental, vital, physical, the psychic are not subconscious in this sense, but they can be spoken of as subliminal.” Letters on Yoga
sublimity ::: something in physical objects that evokes or awakens awe and reverence.
substance ::: 1. Essential nature; essence. 2. That of which a thing consists; physical matter or material. 3. That which is solid and practical in character, quality, or importance, as contrasted with an appearance or something unsubstantial.
subtle body ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle, a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle which are described as those of knowledge and bliss.” The Synthesis of Yoga
subtle images ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Subtle images can be images of all things in all worlds.” *Letters on Yoga
"These are not mental images. There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” Letters on Yoga
subtle Matter ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Much more than half our thoughts and feelings are not our own in the sense that they take form out of ourselves; of hardly anything can it be said that it is truly original to our nature. A large part comes to us from others or from the environment, whether as raw material or as manufactured imports; but still more largely they come from universal Nature here or from other worlds and planes and their beings and powers and influences; for we are overtopped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made use of for the manifestation of their forms and forces.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"All that manifested from the Eternal has already been arranged in worlds or planes of its own nature, planes of subtle Matter, planes of Life, planes of Mind, planes of Supermind, planes of the triune luminous Infinite. But these worlds or planes are not evolutionary but typal. A typal world is one in which some ruling principle manifests itself in its free and full capacity and energy and form are plastic and subservient to its purpose. Its expressions are therefore automatic and satisfying and do not need to evolve; they stand so long as need be and do not need to be born, develop, decline and disintegrate.” Essays Divine and Human*
"Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
terrain ::: n. 1. An area of land; ground. Also fig. terrains. adj. 2. Of the earth, esp. with reference to its physical character.
“That part of us which we can strictly call subconscient because it is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action. It can be held to include the dumb occult consciousness, dynamic but not sensed by us, which operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life process and automatic responses. It covers also those lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind which are more operative in the animal and in plant life.” The Life Divine
"The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man"s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine
“The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man’s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” The Life Divine
"The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, — as did Christ, — secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature, — as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, ‘If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross," or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease, — as a dog dieth, — knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.” Essays on the Gita
“The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption,—as did Christ,—secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature,—as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, ‘If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross,’ or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease,—as a dog dieth,—knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.” Essays on the Gita
"The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
the physical features of a place or region.
"The physical heart is in the left side, but the heart centre of yoga is in the middle of the chest — the cardiac centre.” *Letters on Yoga
“The physical heart is in the left side, but the heart centre of yoga is in the middle of the chest—the cardiac centre.” 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
“The physical mind is that part of the mind which is concerned with the physical things only—it depends on the sense-mind, sees only objects, external actions, draws its ideas from the data given by external things, infers from them only and knows no other Truth until it is enlightened from above.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces.” *Letters on Yoga
“The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces.” Letters on Yoga
"The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: — (1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga, — (1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error — the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga*
“The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top:—(1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga,—(1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error—the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga
“The cosmic consciousness has many levels—the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga
“The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness. But there is a wall of separative ignorance between. Once it breaks down he becomes aware of the cosmic Self, of the consciousness of the cosmic Nature, of the forces playing in it, etc. He feels all that as he now feels physical things and impacts. He finds it all to be one with his larger or universal self.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force.” Essays on the Gita
“The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force.” Essays on the Gita
“The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital force. He is lodged in the heart of every breathing thing; from him are memory and knowledge and the debates of the reason. He is that which is known by all the Vedas and by all forms of knowing; he is the knower of Veda and the maker of Vedanta. In other words, the Divine is at once the Soul of matter and the Soul of life and the Soul of mind as well as the Soul of the supramental light that is beyond mind and its limited reasoning intelligence.” Essays on the Gita
"The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine*
“The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound. But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects. Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations. Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation. Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state, and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.” The Life Divine
"The essential character of Supermind is a Truth-consciousness which knows by its own inherent right of nature, by its own light: it has not to arrive at knowledge but possesses it.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The essential character of Supermind is a Truth-consciousness which knows by its own inherent right of nature, by its own light: it has not to arrive at knowledge but possesses it.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"The form is the manifestation or appearance, the idea is the truth. The form is phenomenon, the idea is reality.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The form is the manifestation or appearance, the idea is the truth. The form is phenomenon, the idea is reality.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"The gradual self-liberation from bondage to Nature is the true progress of humanity.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The gradual self-liberation from bondage to Nature is the true progress of humanity.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: "The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of creation; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive, the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore, but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God"s purpose and thy will to accomplish.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of creation; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive, the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore, but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God’s purpose and thy will to accomplish.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: "The heart spoken of by the Upanishads corresponds with the physical cardiac centre; it is the hrdpadma of the Tantriks. As a subtle centre, cakra , it is supposed to have its apex on the spine and to broaden out in front. Exactly where in this area one or another feels it does not matter much; to feel it there and be guided by it is the main thing.” *Letters on Yoga
“The heart spoken of by the Upanishads corresponds with the physical cardiac centre; it is the hrdpadma of the Tantriks. As a subtle centre, cakra , it is supposed to have its apex on the spine and to broaden out in front. Exactly where in this area one or another feels it does not matter much; to feel it there and be guided by it is the main thing.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The human vital and physical external nature resist to the very end, but if the soul has once heard the call, it arrives, sooner or later.” Letters on Yoga
“The human vital and physical external nature resist to the very end, but if the soul has once heard the call, it arrives, sooner or later.” Letters on Yoga
"The inner vision is an open door on higher planes of consciousness beyond the physical mind which gives room for a wider truth and experience to enter and act upon the mind. It is not the only or the most important door, but it is one which comes readiest to very many if not most and can be a very powerful help.” Letters on Yoga
“The inner vision is an open door on higher planes of consciousness beyond the physical mind which gives room for a wider truth and experience to enter and act upon the mind. It is not the only or the most important door, but it is one which comes readiest to very many if not most and can be a very powerful help.” Letters on Yoga
“The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers.
"The ‘I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear — the true being is felt in its place.” Letters on Yoga
“The ‘I’ or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its place.” Letters on Yoga
“The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind, dependent upon it even when not apparently springing direct from it, …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
The Mother: “For, in human beings, here is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart—not in the physical heart but the psychic centre—of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of his Presence.” Words of the Mother, MCW, Vol. 15.
The Mother: "For me poetry is beyond all philosophy and beyond all explanation.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: “For me poetry is beyond all philosophy and beyond all explanation.” On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: "In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. the physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher. On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: “In the physical world, of all things it is beauty that expresses best the Divine. the physical world is the world of form and the perfection of form is beauty. Beauty interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its role is to put all manifested nature in contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, through harmony and a sense of the ideal which uplifts and leads towards something higher. On Education, MCW Vol. 12.
The Mother: ‘There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical body – they have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount. . . the Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I don"t know what has become of him. As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted but he found it disgusting!
The Mother: ‘There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical body—they have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount. . . the Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I don’t know what has become of him. As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted but he found it disgusting!
The Mother "The sun is the symbol of the Divine in the physical nature” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3
The Mother”The sun is the symbol of the Divine in the physical nature” Questions and Answers, MCW Vol. 3
"The mystic feels real and present, even ever present to his experience, intimate to his being, truths which to the ordinary reader are intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations.” Letters on Savitri
“The mystic feels real and present, even ever present to his experience, intimate to his being, truths which to the ordinary reader are intellectual abstractions or metaphysical speculations.” Letters on Savitri
“The presence of the Spirit is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure spiritual existence and consciousness, of the delight of a divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer being.” The Life Divine
"The real motive power of the life of the soul is Will; desire is only a deformation of will in the dominant bodily life and physical mind. The essential turn of the soul to possession and enjoyment of the world consists in a will to delight, and the enjoyment of the satisfaction of craving is only a vital and physical degradation of the will to delight. It is essential that we should distinguish between pure will and desire, between the inner will to delight and the outer lust and craving of the mind and body.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The real motive power of the life of the soul is Will; desire is only a deformation of will in the dominant bodily life and physical mind. The essential turn of the soul to possession and enjoyment of the world consists in a will to delight, and the enjoyment of the satisfaction of craving is only a vital and physical degradation of the will to delight. It is essential that we should distinguish between pure will and desire, between the inner will to delight and the outer lust and craving of the mind and body.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"There are, according to the Sankhya philosophy accepted in this respect by the Gita, three essential qualities or modes of the world-energy and therefore also of human nature, sattva, the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction, rajas, the mode of passion, action and struggling emotion, tamas, the mode of ignorance and inertia.” Essays on the Gita
“There are, according to the Sankhya philosophy accepted in this respect by the Gita, three essential qualities or modes of the world-energy and therefore also of human nature, sattva, the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction, rajas, the mode of passion, action and struggling emotion, tamas, the mode of ignorance and inertia.” Essays on the Gita
“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
"There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language of this yoga the psychic being which supports our successive births and at each birth assumes a new mind, life and body. It opens above to the Self or Spirit which is unborn and by conscious recovery of it we transcend the changing personality and achieve freedom and full mastery over our nature.” Letters on Yoga
“There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language of this yoga the psychic being which supports our successive births and at each birth assumes a new mind, life and body. It opens above to the Self or Spirit which is unborn and by conscious recovery of it we transcend the changing personality and achieve freedom and full mastery over our nature.” Letters on Yoga
“There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” Letters on Yoga
"There is a rhythm in everything unheard by the physical ear and by that rhythm things exist.” Letters on Yoga*
“There is a rhythm in everything unheard by the physical ear and by that rhythm things exist.” Letters on Yoga
“These are not mental images. There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” Letters on Yoga
These notes were written apropos of Bergson"s ‘philosophy of change", ‘you" would refer to a proponent of this philosophy.
These notes were written apropos of Bergson’s ‘philosophy of change’, ‘you’ would refer to a proponent of this philosophy.
"The serpent is the symbol of energy — especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest (physical) centre, Muladhara, and when it rises it goes up through the spine and joins the higher consciousness above.” Letters on Yoga
“The serpent is the symbol of energy—especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest (physical) centre, Muladhara, and when it rises it goes up through the spine and joins the higher consciousness above.” Letters on Yoga
"The serpent with the six hoods is the Kundalini Shakti, the divine power asleep in the lowest physical centre which, awakened in the yoga, ascends in light through the opening centres to meet the Divine in the highest centre and so connect the manifest and the unmanifested, joining spirit and Matter.” Letters on Yoga*
“The serpent with the six hoods is the Kundalini Shakti, the divine power asleep in the lowest physical centre which, awakened in the yoga, ascends in light through the opening centres to meet the Divine in the highest centre and so connect the manifest and the unmanifested, joining spirit and Matter.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The shoreless stream of idea and thought, imagination and experience, name and form, sensation and vibration sweeps onward for ever, without beginning, without end, rising into view, sinking out of sight; through it the one Intelligence with its million self-expressions pours itself abroad, an ocean with innumerable waves. One particular self-expression may disappear into its source and continent, but that does not and cannot abolish the phenomenal universe. The One is for ever, and the Many are for ever because the One is for ever. So long as there is a sea, there will be waves.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The shoreless stream of idea and thought, imagination and experience, name and form, sensation and vibration sweeps onward for ever, without beginning, without end, rising into view, sinking out of sight; through it the one Intelligence with its million self-expressions pours itself abroad, an ocean with innumerable waves. One particular self-expression may disappear into its source and continent, but that does not and cannot abolish the phenomenal universe. The One is for ever, and the Many are for ever because the One is for ever. So long as there is a sea, there will be waves.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“… the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being—‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man’ was the image used by the ancient seers—and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” The Synthesis of Yoga
::: "The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge.” *Letters on Yoga
“The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge.” Letters on Yoga
"The Spirit is the truth of our being; mind and life and body in their imperfection are its masks, but in their perfection should be its moulds.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The Spirit is the truth of our being; mind and life and body in their imperfection are its masks, but in their perfection should be its moulds.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
::: "The spiritual law of Karma is that the nature of each being can be only the result of his past energies; . . . .” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The spiritual law of Karma is that the nature of each being can be only the result of his past energies; …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The subconscient is a concealed and unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body-consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there.
“The subconscient is a thing of habits and memories and repeats persistently or whenever it can old suppressed reactions, reflexes, mental, vital or physical responses. It must be trained by a still more persistent insistence of the higher parts of the being to give up its old responses and take on the new and true ones.” Letters on Yoga
“The sub-conscious is the evolutionary basis in us, it is not the whole of our hidden nature, nor is it the whole origin of what we are. But things can rise smaller vital and physical instincts, movements, habits, character-forms has this source.” Letters on Yoga
"The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges.” Letters on Yoga
“The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges.” Letters on Yoga
“The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle, a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle which are described as those of knowledge and bliss.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The theory of the Mantra is that it is a word of power born out of the secret depths of our being where it has been brooded upon by a deeper consciousness than the mental, framed in the heart and not constructed by the intellect, held in the mind, again concentrated on by the waking mental consciousness and then thrown out silently or vocally — the silent word is perhaps held to be more potent than the spoken — precisely for the work of creation. The Mantra can not only create new subjective states in ourselves, alter our psychical being, reveal knowledge and faculties we did not before possess, can not only produce similar results in other minds than that of the user, but can produce vibrations in the mental and vital atmosphere which result in effects, in actions and even in the production of material forms on the physical plane.” The Upanishads
“The theory of the Mantra is that it is a word of power born out of the secret depths of our being where it has been brooded upon by a deeper consciousness than the mental, framed in the heart and not constructed by the intellect, held in the mind, again concentrated on by the waking mental consciousness and then thrown out silently or vocally—the silent word is perhaps held to be more potent than the spoken—precisely for the work of creation. The Mantra can not only create new subjective states in ourselves, alter our psychical being, reveal knowledge and faculties we did not before possess, can not only produce similar results in other minds than that of the user, but can produce vibrations in the mental and vital atmosphere which result in effects, in actions and even in the production of material forms on the physical plane.” The Upanishads
::: "The true physical mind is the receiving and externalising intelligence which has two functions — first, to work upon external things and give them a mental order with a way of practically dealing with them and, secondly, to be the channel of materialising and putting into effect whatever the thinking and dynamic mind sends down to it for the purpose.” Letters on Yoga
“The true physical mind is the receiving and externalising intelligence which has two functions—first, to work upon external things and give them a mental order with a way of practically dealing with them and, secondly, to be the channel of materialising and putting into effect whatever the thinking and dynamic mind sends down to it for the purpose.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The true emptiness is the beginning of what I call in the Arya ‘sama ‘ — the rest, calm, peace of the eternal Self — which has finally to replace tamas, the physical inertia. Tamas is the degradation of sama , as rajas is the degradation of Tapas, the Divine Force.” *Letters on Yoga
“The true emptiness is the beginning of what I call in the Arya ‘sama ‘—the rest, calm, peace of the eternal Self—which has finally to replace tamas, the physical inertia. Tamas is the degradation of sama , as rajas is the degradation of Tapas, the Divine Force.” Letters on Yoga
"The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither is it merely a physical operation embodying a certain equation of forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child, the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the rapture of His own power of endless creation.” The Supramental Manifestation
“The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither is it merely a physical operation embodying a certain equation of forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child, the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the rapture of His own power of endless creation.” The Supramental Manifestation
"The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake, — therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti, — in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra. When by Pranayama the division between the upper and lower prana currents in the body is dissolved, this Kundalini is struck and awakened, it uncoils itself and begins to rise upward like a fiery serpent breaking open each lotus as it ascends until the Shakti meets the Purusha in the brahmarandhra in a deep samadhi of union.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake,—therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti,—in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra. When by Pranayama the division between the upper and lower prana currents in the body is dissolved, this Kundalini is struck and awakened, it uncoils itself and begins to rise upward like a fiery serpent breaking open each lotus as it ascends until the Shakti meets the Purusha in the brahmarandhra in a deep samadhi of union.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The whole nature of man is to become more than himself. He was the man-animal, he has become more than the animal man. He is the thinker, the craftsman, the seeker after beauty. He shall be more than the thinker, he shall be the seer of knowledge; he shall be more than the craftsman, he shall be the creator and master of his creation; he shall be more than the seeker of beauty, for he shall enjoy all beauty and all delight. Physical he seeks for this immortal substance; vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision.
“The whole nature of man is to become more than himself. He was the man-animal, he has become more than the animal man. He is the thinker, the craftsman, the seeker after beauty. He shall be more than the thinker, he shall be the seer of knowledge; he shall be more than the craftsman, he shall be the creator and master of his creation; he shall be more than the seeker of beauty, for he shall enjoy all beauty and all delight. Physical he seeks for this immortal substance; vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision.
"The word ‘physical mind" is rather ambiguous, because it can mean this externalising Mind and the mental in the physical taken together.” Letters on Yoga*
“The word ‘physical mind’ is rather ambiguous, because it can mean this externalising Mind and the mental in the physical taken together.” Letters on Yoga
“The word soul is very vaguely used in English—as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” Letters on Yoga
"The world is a great game of hide and seek in which the real hides behind the apparent, spirit behind matter.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“The world is a great game of hide and seek in which the real hides behind the apparent, spirit behind matter.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"The world knows three kinds of revolution. The material has strong results, the moral and intellectual are infinitely larger in their scope and richer in their fruits, but the spiritual are the great sowings.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“The world knows three kinds of revolution. The material has strong results, the moral and intellectual are infinitely larger in their scope and richer in their fruits, but the spiritual are the great sowings.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“This arrangement of the psychic body is reproduced in the physical with the spinal column as a rod and the ganglionic centres as the chakras which rise up from the bottom of the column, where the lowest is attached, to the brain and find their summit in the brahmarandhra at the top of the skull. These chakras or lotuses, however, are in physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as are sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its need. This is the real reason, looked at from the mechanical point of view, why the embodied soul seems so dependent on the bodily and nervous life,—though the dependence is neither so complete nor so real as it seems. The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake,—therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti,—in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"This is the great truth now dawning on the world, that Will is the thing which moves the world and that Fate is merely a process by which Will fulfils itself.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“This is the great truth now dawning on the world, that Will is the thing which moves the world and that Fate is merely a process by which Will fulfils itself.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man"s unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man’s unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Titan ::: : “His [the Titan’s] instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel,—if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly,—it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"To live and act under control or according to a standard of what is right — not to allow the vital or the physical to do whatever they like and not to let the mind run about according to its fancy without truth or order. Also to obey those who ought to be obeyed.” Letters on Yoga
“To live and act under control or according to a standard of what is right—not to allow the vital or the physical to do whatever they like and not to let the mind run about according to its fancy without truth or order. Also to obey those who ought to be obeyed.” Letters on Yoga
torment ::: n. 1. An action that causes great pain, suffering, or anguish; torture. 2. A state of great physical pain or mental torture; anguish. v. 3. To annoy, pester, or harass. tormented, tormenting, torment-craft.
torpor ::: 1. A state of mental or physical inactivity or insensibility. 2. A state of lethargy; apathy. 3. The dormant, inactive state of a hibernating or estivating animal.
torture ::: n. 1. Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment, coercion or malevolent purpose. 2. Excruciating physical or mental pain; agony. self-torture. *v. *3. To bring great physical or mental pain upon another. tortures.
torturing ::: that causes excruciating physical or mental pain.
"To the mystic there is no such thing as an abstraction. Everything which to the intellectual mind is abstract has a concreteness, substantiality which is more real than the sensible form of an object or of a physical event.” Letters on Savitri*
“To the mystic there is no such thing as an abstraction. Everything which to the intellectual mind is abstract has a concreteness, substantiality which is more real than the sensible form of an object or of a physical event.” Letters on Savitri
triple heavens ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Vishnu is the wide-moving one. He is that which has gone abroad — as it is put in the language of the Isha Upanishad, sa paryagât, — triply extending himself as Seer, Thinker and Former, in the superconscient Bliss, in the heaven of mind, in the earth of the physical consciousness, tredhâ vicakramânah. In those three strides he has measured out, he has formed in all their extension the earthly worlds; for in the Vedic idea the material world which we inhabit is only one of several steps leading to and supporting the vital and mental worlds beyond. In those strides he supports upon the earth and mid-world, — the earth the material, the mid-world the vital realms of Vayu, Lord of the dynamic Life-principle, — the triple heaven and its three luminous summits, trîni rocanâ. These heavens the Rishi describes as the higher seat of the fulfilling. Earth, the mid-world and heaven are the triple place of the conscious being"s progressive self-fulfilling, trishadhastha, earth the lower seat, the vital world the middle, heaven the higher. All these are contained in the threefold movement of Vishnu.” The Secret of the Veda
truth ::: “Science started on the assumption that the ultimate truth must be physical and objective—and the objective Ultimate (or even less than that) would explain all subjective phenomena. Yoga proceeds on the opposite view that the ultimate Truth is spiritual and subjective and it is in that ultimate Light that we must view objective phenomena.” Letters on Yoga
"Unconsciousness is only an intermediate swoon of the conscious or its obscure sleep; . . . .” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“Unconsciousness is only an intermediate swoon of the conscious or its obscure sleep; …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
unconsciousness ::: “What we call unconsciousness is simply other-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental awareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our awareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious when we are asleep or stunned or drugged or ``dead’’ or in any other state, than when we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our surroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a most elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought because it is proved at every point by experience.” The Synthesis of Yoga
universality ::: “This idea of universality, of oneness not only with God or the eternal Self in me, but with all humanity and other beings, is growing to be the most prominent strain in our minds and it has to be taken more largely into account in any future idea or computation of the significance of rebirth and karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
unknown ::: “The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity.” The Life Divine
violence ::: 1. Swift and intense force. 2. Rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment.
“Vishnu is the wide-moving one. He is that which has gone abroad—as it is put in the language of the Isha Upanishad, sa paryagât,—triply extending himself as Seer, Thinker and Former, in the superconscient Bliss, in the heaven of mind, in the earth of the physical consciousness, tredhâ vicakramânah. In those three strides he has measured out, he has formed in all their extension the earthly worlds; for in the Vedic idea the material world which we inhabit is only one of several steps leading to and supporting the vital and mental worlds beyond. In those strides he supports upon the earth and mid-world,—the earth the material, the mid-world the vital realms of Vayu, Lord of the dynamic Life-principle,—the triple heaven and its three luminous summits, trîni rocanâ. These heavens the Rishi describes as the higher seat of the fulfilling. Earth, the mid-world and heaven are the triple place of the conscious being’s progressive self-fulfilling, trishadhastha, earth the lower seat, the vital world the middle, heaven the higher. All these are contained in the threefold movement of Vishnu.” The Secret of the Veda
weak ::: 1. Lacking firmness of character or strength of will. 2. Lacking physical strength, energy, or vigour; feeble. 3. Likely to fail under pressure, stress, or strain; lacking resistance; fragile. (Also used as a n.) weaker.
weakness ::: “Weakness puts the same test and question to the strengths and energies and greatnesses in which we glory. Power is the play of life, shows its degree, finds the value of its expression; weakness is the play of death pursuing life in its movement and stressing the limit of its acquired energy.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"We are ignorant also of the superconscient, that which we ordinarily call spirit or oversoul; yet this we find to be our highest and widest self, Sachchidananda creating and governing all that we are and become by His divine Maya.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“We are ignorant also of the superconscient, that which we ordinarily call spirit or oversoul; yet this we find to be our highest and widest self, Sachchidananda creating and governing all that we are and become by His divine Maya.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
weariness ::: temporary loss of strength and energy resulting from hard physical or mental work.
"We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had for its previous and preparatory terms in the succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle.” The Life Divine
“We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had for its previous and preparatory terms in the succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle.” The Life Divine
weary ::: adj. 1. Physically or mentally fatigued. 2. Impatient or dissatisfied with something (often followed by of). 3. Causing fatigue; tiresome. wearily. v. 4. To become exhausted tired through overuse or great strain or stress.
"We. . . become conscious, in our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“We. . . become conscious, in our physical movements, in our nervous and vital reactions, in our mental workings, of a Force greater than body, mind and life which takes hold of our limited instruments and drives all their motion. There is no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking or feeling but of that moving, feeling and thinking in us. This force that we feel is the universal Force of the Divine, which, veiled or unveiled, acting directly or permitting the use of its powers by beings in the cosmos, is the one Energy that alone exists and alone makes universal or individual action possible. For this force is the Divine itself in the body of its power; all is that, power of act, power of thought and knowledge, power of mastery and enjoyment, power of love.” The Synthesis of Yoga
::: "We have to face the future"s offer of death as well as its offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant death to our old names and forms that we shall live most vitally in greater and newer forms and names.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“We have to face the future’s offer of death as well as its offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant death to our old names and forms that we shall live most vitally in greater and newer forms and names.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
“We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being: there is the submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient, comprising the material basis and a good part of our life and body; there is the subliminal, which comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; there is this waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up on the surface, a wave of their secret surge. But even this is not an adequate account of what we are; for there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit. For the subliminal proper is no more than the inner being on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance luminous, powerful and extended indeed beyond the poor conception of our waking mind, but still not the supreme or the whole sense of our being, not its ultimate mystery.” The Life Divine
"What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
". . . what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature — this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised, — a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense.” The Life Divine
“… what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature—this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised,—a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense.” The Life Divine
"What we have called specifically the Mind of Light is indeed the last of a series of descending planes of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a self-chosen limitation or modification of its self-manifesting activities, but its essential character remains the same: there is in it an action of light, of truth, of knowledge in which inconscience, ignorance and error claim no place.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga*
“What we have called specifically the Mind of Light is indeed the last of a series of descending planes of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a self-chosen limitation or modification of its self-manifesting activities, but its essential character remains the same: there is in it an action of light, of truth, of knowledge in which inconscience, ignorance and error claim no place.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created. It integrates, harmonises, establishes a new rhythm in the nature. It can bring down too a higher and yet higher force and range of the higher nature until, if that be the aim of the sadhana, it becomes possible to bring down the supramental force and existence. All this is prepared, assisted, farthered by the work of the psychic being in the heart centre; the more it is open, in front, active, the quicker, safer, easier the working of the Force can be. The more love and bhakti and surrender grow in the heart, the more rapid and perfect becomes the evolution of the sadhana. For the descent and transformation imply at the same time an increasing contact and union with the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
“When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created. It integrates, harmonises, establishes a new rhythm in the nature. It can bring down too a higher and yet higher force and range of the higher nature until, if that be the aim of the sadhana, it becomes possible to bring down the supramental force and existence. All this is prepared, assisted, farthered by the work of the psychic being in the heart centre; the more it is open, in front, active, the quicker, safer, easier the working of the Force can be. The more love and bhakti and surrender grow in the heart, the more rapid and perfect becomes the evolution of the sadhana. For the descent and transformation imply at the same time an increasing contact and union with the Divine.” Letters on Yoga
"When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created.” Letters on Yoga
“When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates the inner mind centres, then into the heart centre and liberates fully the psychic and emotional being, then into the navel and other vital centres and liberates the inner vital, then into the Muladhara and below and liberates the inner physical being. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation; it takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created.” Letters on Yoga
"When we see with the inner vision and sense and not with the physical eye a tree or other object, what we become aware of is an infinite one Reality constituting the tree or object, pervading its every atom and molecule, forming them out of itself, building the whole nature, process of becoming, operation of indwelling energy; all of these are itself, are this infinite, this Reality: we see it extending indivisibly and uniting all objects so that none is really separate from it or quite separate from other objects. ‘It stands," says the Gita, ‘undivided in beings and yet as if divided." Thus each object is that Infinite and one in essential being with all other objects that are also forms and names, — powers, numens, — of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
“When we see with the inner vision and sense and not with the physical eye a tree or other object, what we become aware of is an infinite one Reality constituting the tree or object, pervading its every atom and molecule, forming them out of itself, building the whole nature, process of becoming, operation of indwelling energy; all of these are itself, are this infinite, this Reality: we see it extending indivisibly and uniting all objects so that none is really separate from it or quite separate from other objects. ‘It stands,’ says the Gita, ‘undivided in beings and yet as if divided.’ Thus each object is that Infinite and one in essential being with all other objects that are also forms and names,—powers, numens,—of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
::: "Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Whether we take the modern scientific or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanity is a fact. The wheel of Brahma rotates for ever but it does not turn in the same place; its rotations carry it forward.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Whether we take the modern scientific or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanity is a fact. The wheel of Brahma rotates for ever but it does not turn in the same place; its rotations carry it forward.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Wideness and calmness are the foundation of the yogic consciousness and the best condition for inner growth and experience. If a wide calm can be established in the physical consciousness, occupying and filling the very body and all its cells, that can become the basis for its transformation; in fact, without this wideness and calmness the transformation is hardly possible.” Letters on Yoga*
“Wideness and calmness are the foundation of the yogic consciousness and the best condition for inner growth and experience. If a wide calm can be established in the physical consciousness, occupying and filling the very body and all its cells, that can become the basis for its transformation; in fact, without this wideness and calmness the transformation is hardly possible.” Letters on Yoga
Word ::: “The word is a sound expression of the idea. In the supra-physical plane when an idea has to be realised, one can by repeating the word-expression of it, produce vibrations which prepare the mind for the realisation of the idea. That is the principle of the Mantras and of Japa. One repeats the name of the Divine and the vibrations created in the consciousness prepare the realisation of the Divine. It is the same idea that is expressed in the Bible: ‘God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light’. It is creation by the Word.” The Future Poetry
world-lines ::: physics and Philos.: The succession of points in space-time that are occupied by a particle.
KEYS (10k)
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:trust you are prepared for it, both financially and phy—” “We’re all set,” I said, cutting Janine off. ~ Ann M Martin, #NFDB
2:Quite often, when I describe to people what I want, I'll say "overwhelming" - I want it to feel like it's phy ~ Anna Meredith, #NFDB
3:phi·los·o·phy n. (pl.-phies) the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, esp. when considered as an academic discipline. See ~ Oxford University Press, #NFDB
4:David Hume, the greatest skeptic of them all, once remarked that after a gathering of skeptics met to proclaim the veracity of skepticism as a philosophy, all of the members of the gathering nonetheless left by the door rather than the window. I see Hume’s point. It was all just talk. The solemn philosophers weren’t taking what they said seriously. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
5:The reality of the Islamic metaphysical world was not taken seriously despite the fact that Iqbal, who was the ideological founder of Pakistan, had shown much interest in Islamic philosophy, although I do not think that he is really a traditional Islamic philosopher. He himself was influenced by Western philosophy, but at least was intelligent enough to realize the significance of Islamic philosophy. The problem with him was that he did not know Arabic well enough. His Persian was very good, but he could not read all the major texts of Islamic philoso- phy, which are written mostly in Arabic. Nevertheless, he wrote on the development of metaphysics in Persia, and he had some philosophical substance, much more than the other famous reformers who are men- tioned all the time, such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan or Muh:ammad ‘Abduh. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
6:the Gods were not the caufes of this tonfufed and diforderly conduct to the Trojans, but that they through their own depravity rendered themfelves worthy of an energy of this kind, and among thefe Pandarus in an eminent degree, as being a man ambitious, avaricious, and leading an atheiflical life. Hence Minerva, proceeding according to the intellect of her father, does not excite any one cafually to this adion, but is faid to feek Pandarus*, as particularly adapted to an avenging energy. She ev'ry where the godlike Pandarus explorM*. For a man who is capable of doing and fuffering any thing, and who alfo oppofes himfelf to divinity, through a certain gigantic and audacious habit of foul, is rare, and truly difficult to be found. As therefore phy-ficians are not the caufes of cuttings and burnings, but the difeafes of thofe that are cured, fo neither are the Gods the caufes of the impiety refpeding oaths and leagues, but the habits of thofe by whom it is committed. In the fecond place, this alfo mufl be confidered, that Minerva is not * Pandarus feems to be derived utto rou Travra, 3[jav, that is, as we commonly fay of a very Hepraved character, he was a man capable of any thing, » Iliad, lib. 4. ver. 81$. faid faid to prepare Pandarns for the deed, but only to try if he gave hlmfelf np to this energy. For divinity does not deftroy the freedoni of the will, not even in fuch as are confummately wicked : ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1839 Integral Yoga
146 Occultism
104 Christianity
92 Yoga
79 Philosophy
64 Psychology
57 Fiction
56 Poetry
31 Science
17 Theosophy
15 Integral Theory
14 Education
11 Hinduism
8 Mythology
7 Cybernetics
5 Sufism
3 Buddhism
3 Baha i Faith
2 Mysticism
1 Thelema
1 Kabbalah
1 Alchemy
1028 Sri Aurobindo
903 The Mother
570 Satprem
292 Nolini Kanta Gupta
62 Carl Jung
55 H P Lovecraft
53 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
49 Aleister Crowley
44 Sri Ramakrishna
27 Swami Krishnananda
27 Plotinus
26 A B Purani
22 Rudolf Steiner
21 James George Frazer
19 Swami Vivekananda
19 Aldous Huxley
17 Saint Augustine of Hippo
15 Walt Whitman
14 Franz Bardon
13 Nirodbaran
12 Plato
12 Friedrich Nietzsche
11 Jorge Luis Borges
11 George Van Vrekhem
10 Saint John of Climacus
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 Norbert Wiener
7 Alice Bailey
6 John Keats
5 Thubten Chodron
5 Robert Browning
5 Paul Richard
5 Patanjali
5 Joseph Campbell
4 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
4 Peter J Carroll
4 Jordan Peterson
4 Al-Ghazali
3 William Wordsworth
3 Saint Teresa of Avila
3 R Buckminster Fuller
3 Ovid
3 Ken Wilber
3 Edgar Allan Poe
3 Bokar Rinpoche
3 Baha u llah
2 Percy Bysshe Shelley
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Lucretius
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 Jean Gebser
2 Jalaluddin Rumi
2 Henry David Thoreau
2 Anonymous
444 Record of Yoga
133 The Synthesis Of Yoga
69 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
68 Agenda Vol 01
66 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
58 Letters On Yoga III
57 Agenda Vol 03
55 Lovecraft - Poems
53 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
51 Agenda Vol 04
49 The Life Divine
49 Letters On Yoga IV
47 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
47 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
43 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
43 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
43 Agenda Vol 10
42 Agenda Vol 09
42 Agenda Vol 02
41 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
40 Letters On Yoga II
39 Questions And Answers 1956
38 Agenda Vol 13
37 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
37 Agenda Vol 08
37 Agenda Vol 05
36 Agenda Vol 06
34 Agenda Vol 07
33 Agenda Vol 11
32 Questions And Answers 1955
32 Questions And Answers 1953
31 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
30 Questions And Answers 1954
30 Agenda Vol 12
29 Mysterium Coniunctionis
28 Magick Without Tears
27 The Study and Practice of Yoga
27 Prayers And Meditations
26 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
26 Essays On The Gita
25 Letters On Yoga I
22 The Human Cycle
22 Liber ABA
21 The Golden Bough
20 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
20 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
19 The Perennial Philosophy
17 The Future of Man
16 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
15 Whitman - Poems
14 Words Of The Mother II
14 The Secret Of The Veda
14 The Practice of Psycho therapy
14 The Phenomenon of Man
14 On Education
14 Let Me Explain
14 Essays Divine And Human
14 City of God
13 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
13 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
13 Some Answers From The Mother
12 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
12 Talks
12 Isha Upanishad
11 Preparing for the Miraculous
11 Letters On Poetry And Art
10 Theosophy
10 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
10 Raja-Yoga
10 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
9 Words Of Long Ago
9 The Practice of Magical Evocation
9 Labyrinths
8 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
8 Hymn of the Universe
8 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
7 Twilight of the Idols
7 Savitri
7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
7 Cybernetics
7 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
7 Aion
6 Vedic and Philological Studies
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Problems of Philosophy
6 The Integral Yoga
6 The Bible
6 On the Way to Supermanhood
6 Keats - Poems
5 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
5 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
5 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
5 Initiation Into Hermetics
5 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
5 Browning - Poems
4 Words Of The Mother III
4 The Alchemy of Happiness
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Liber Null
4 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
4 Bhakti-Yoga
3 Wordsworth - Poems
3 Words Of The Mother I
3 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
3 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
3 Tara - The Feminine Divine
3 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Metamorphoses
2 Walden
2 The Red Book Liber Novus
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Book of Certitude
2 The Blue Cliff Records
2 Symposium
2 Shelley - Poems
2 Selected Fictions
2 Rumi - Poems
2 Poe - Poems
2 Of The Nature Of Things
2 Kena and Other Upanishads
2 God Exists
2 Faust
2 Borges - Poems
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 Amrita Gita
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Would Matter and Spirit meet, then, in a third phySIOLOGICAL position that would perhaps be at last the position of Man rediscovered, the something that had for so long fought and suffered in quest of becoming its own species? She was the great Possible at the beginning of man. Mother is our fable come true. 'All is possible' was her first open sesame.
Yes, She was in the midst of a spiritual 'horde,' for the pioneer of a new species must always fight against the best of the old: the best is the obstacle, the snare that traps us in its old golden mire.
00.01 - The Approach to Mysticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Mystic realities cannot be reached by the scientific consciousness, because they are far more subtle than the subtlest object that science can contemplate. The neutrons and positrons are for science today the finest and profoundest object-forces; they belong, it is said, almost to a borderl and where physics ends. Nor for that reason is a mystic reality something like a mathematical abstraction, -n for example. The mystic reality is subtler than the subtlest of physical things and yet, paradoxical to say, more concrete than the most concrete thing that the senses apprehend.
Furthermore, being so, the mystic domain is of infinitely greater potency than the domain of intra-atomic forces. If one comes, all on a sudden, into contact with a force here without the necessary preparation to hold and handle it, he may get seriously bruised, morally and physically. The adventure into the mystic domain has its own toll of casualtiesone can lose the mind, one can lose one's body even and it is a very common experience among those who have tried the path. It is not in vain and merely as a poetic metaphor that the ancient seers have said
Kurasya dhr niit duratyay1
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The mystic forces are not only of immense potency but of a definite moral disposition and character, that is to say, they are of immense potency either for good or for evil. They are not mechanical and amoral forces like those that physical sciences deal with; they are forces of consciousness and they are conscious forces, they act with an aim and a purpose. The mystic forces are forces either of light or of darkness, either Divine or Titanic. And it is most often the powers of darkness that the naturally ignorant consciousness of man contacts when it seeks to cross the borderline without training or guidance, by the sheer arrogant self-sufficiency of mental scientific reason.
Ignorance, certainly, is not man's ideal conditionit leads to death and dissolution. But knowledge also can be equally disastrous if it is not of the right kind. The knowledge that is born of spiritual disobedience, inspired by the Dark ones, leads to the soul's fall and its calvary through pain and suffering on earth. The seeker of true enlightenment has got to make a distinction, learn to separate the true and the right from the false and the wrong, unmask the luring Mra say clearly and unfalteringly to the dark light of Luciferapage Satana, if he is to come out into the true light and comm and the right forces. The search for knowledge alone, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, the path of pure scientific inquiry and inquisitiveness, in relation to the mystic world, is a dangerous thing. For such a spirit serves only to encourage and enhance man's arrogance and in the end not only limits but warps and falsifies the knowledge itself. A knowledge based on and secured exclusively through the reason and mental light can go only so far as that faculty can be reasonably stretched and not infinitelyto stretch it to infinity means to snap it. This is the warning that Yajnavalkya gave to Gargi when the latter started renewing her question ad infinitum Yajnavalkya said, "If you do not stop, your head will fall off."
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Integral Yoga
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to brea the the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
00.02 - Mystic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mystics all over the world and in all ages have clothed their sayings in proverbs and parables, in figures and symbols. To speak in symbols seems to be in their very nature; it is their characteristic manner, their inevitable style. Let us see what is the reason behind it. But first who are the Mystics? They are those who are in touch with supra-sensual things, whose experiences are of a world different from the common physical world, the world of the mind and the senses.
These other worlds are constituted in other ways than ours. Their contents are different and the laws that obtain there are also different. It would be a gross blunder to attempt a chart of any of these other systems, to use an Einsteinian term, with the measures and conventions of the system to which our external waking consciousness belongs. For, there "the sun shines not, nor the moon, nor the stars, neither these lightnings nor this fire." The difficulty is further enhanced by the fact that there are very many unseen worlds and they all differ from the seen and from one another in manner and degree. Thus, for example, the Upanishads speak of the swapna, the suupta, and the turya, domains beyond the jgrat which is that where the rational being with its mind and senses lives and moves. And there are other systems and other ways in which systems exist, and they are practically innumerable.
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When a Mystic refers to the Solar Light or to the Fire the light, for example, that struck down Saul and transformed him into Saint Paul or the burning bush that visited Moses, it is not the physical or material object that he means and yet it is that in a way. It is the materialization of something that is fundamentally not material: some movement in an inner consciousness precipitates itself into the region of the senses and takes from out of the material the form commensurable with its nature that it finds there.
And there is such a commensurability or parallelism between the various levels of consciousness, in and through all the differences that separate them from one another. Thus an object or a movement apprehended on the physical plane has a sort of line of re-echoing images extended in a series along the whole gradation of the inner planes; otherwise viewed, an object or movement in the innermost consciousness translates itself in varying modes from plane to plane down to the most material, where it appears in its grossest form as a concrete three-dimensional object or a mechanical movement. This parallelism or commensurability by virtue of which the different and divergent states of consciousness can portray or represent each other is the source of all symbolism.
A symbol symbolizes something for this reason that both possess in common a certain identical, at least similar, quality or rhythm or vibration, the symbol possessing it in a grosser or more apparent or sensuous form than the thing symbolized does. Sometimes it may happen that it is more than a certain quality or rhythm or vibration that is common between the two: the symbol in its entirety is the thing symbolized but thrown down on another plane, it is the embodiment of the latter in a more concrete world. The light and the fire that Saint Paul and Moses saw appear to be of this kind.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, before any explanation is attempted it is important to bear in mind that the Upanishads speak of things experiencednot merely thought, reasoned or argued and that these experiences belong to a world and consciousness other than that of the mind and the senses. One should naturally expect here a different language and mode of expression than that which is appropriate to mental and physical things. For example, the world of dreams was once supposed to be a sheer chaos, a mass of meaningless confusion; but now it is held to be quite otherwise. Psychological scientists have discovered a methodeven a very well-defined and strict methodin the madness of that domain. It is an ordered, organised, significant world; but its terminology has to be understood, its code deciphered. It is not a jargon, but a foreign language that must be learnt and mastered.
In the same way, the world of spiritual experiences is also something methodical, well-organized, significant. It may not be and is not the rational world of the mind and the sense; but it need not, for that reason, be devoid of meaning, mere fancifulness or a child's imagination running riot. Here also the right key has to be found, the grammar and vocabulary of that language mastered. And as the best way to have complete mastery of a language is to live among the people who speak it, so, in the matter of spiritual language, the best and the only way to learn it is to go and live in its native country.
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Garhapatya is the Fire in the body-consciousness, the fire of Earth, as it is sometimes called; Dakshina is the Fire of the moon or mind, and Ahavaniya that of life.10 The earthly fire is also the fire of the sun; the sun is the source of all earth's heat and symbolises at the same time the spiritual light manifested in the physical consciousness. The lunar fire is also the fire of the stars, the stars, mythologically, being the consorts or powers of the moon and they symbolise, in Yogic experience, the intuitive thoughts. The fire of the life-force has its symbol in lightning, electric energy being its vehicle.
Agni in the physical consciousness is calledghapati, for the body is the house in which the soul is lodged and he is its keeper, guardian and lord. The fire in the mental consciousness is called daki; for it is that which gives discernment, the power to discriminate between the truth and the falsehood, it is that which by the pressure of its heat and light cleaves the wrong away from the right. And the fire in the life-force is called havanya; for pra is not only the plane of hunger and desire, but also of power and dynamism, it is that which calls forth forces, brings them into' play and it is that which is to be invoked for the progression of the Sacrifice, for an onward march on the spiritual path.
Of the three fires one is the upholderhe who gives the firm foundation, the stable house where the Sacrifice is performed and Truth realised; the second is the Knower, often called in the Veda jtaved, who guides and directs; and the third the Doer, the effective Power, the driving Energyvaivnara.
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The five elements of the ancientsearth, water, fire, air and ether or spaceare symbols taken from the physical world to represent other worlds that are in it and behind it. Each one is a principle that constitutes the fundamental nature of a particular plane of existence.
Earth represents the material world itself, Matter or existence in its most concrete, its grossest form. It is the basis of existence, the world that supports other worlds (dhar, dharitri),the first or the lowest of the several ranges of creation. In man it is his body. The principle here is that of stability, substantiality, firmness, consistency.
Water represents the next rung the vital world, the world life-force (pra). physiologically also we know that water is the element forming three-fourths of the constituents of a living body and that dead and dry are synonymous terms; it is the medium in which the living cells dwell and through which they draw their sustenance. Water is the veritable sap of lifeit is the emblem of life itself. The principle it represents is that of movement, continuity, perpetuity.
Fire represents the Heart. It is that which gives the inner motive to the forces of life, it is the secret inspiration and aspiration that drive the movements of life. It is the heat of consciousness, the ardour of our central being that lives in the Truth and accepts nothing, nothing but the Truth. It is the pure and primal energy of our divine essence, driving ever upward and onward life's course of evolution.
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The Science of the Five Agnis (Fires), as propounded by Pravahan, explains and illustrates the process of the birth of the body, the passage of the soul into earth existence. It describes the advent of the child, the building of the physical form of the human being. The process is conceived of as a sacrifice, the usual symbol with the Vedic Rishis for the expression of their vision and perception of universal processes of Nature, physical and psychological. Here, the child IS said to be the final fruit of the sacrifice, the different stages in the process being: (i) Soma, (ii) Rain, (iii) Food, (iv) Semen, (v) Child. Soma means Rasa physically the principle of water, psychologically the 'principle of delightand symbolises and constitutes the very soul and substance of life. Now it is said that these five principles the fundamental and constituent elementsare born out of the sacrifice, through the oblation or offering to the five Agnis. The first Agni is Heaven or the Sky-God, and by offering to it one's faith and one's ardent desire, one calls into manifestation Soma or Rasa or Water, the basic principle of life. This water is next offered to the second Agni, the Rain-God, who sends down Rain. Rain, again, is offered to the third Agni, the Earth, who brings forth Food. Food is, in its turn, offered to the fourth Agni, the Father or Male, who elaborates in himself the generating fluid.
Finally, this fluid is offered to the fifth Agni, the Mother or the Female, who delivers the Child.
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Some Western and Westernised scholars have tried to show that the phenomenon described here is an exclusively natural phenomenon, actually visible in the polar region where the sun never sets for six months and moves in a circle whose plane is parallel to the plane of the horizon on the summer solstice and is gradually inclined as the sun regresses towards the equinox (on which day just half the solar disc is visible above the horizon). The sun may be said there to move in the direction East-South-West-North and again East. Indeed the Upanishad mentions the positions of the sun in that order and gives a character to each successive station. The Ray from the East is red, symbolising the Rik, the Southern Ray is white, symbolising the Yajur, the Western Ray is black symbolising the Atharva. The natural phenomenon, however, might have been or might not have been before the mind's eye of the Rishi, but the symbolism, the esotericism of it is clear enough in the way the Rishi speaks of it. Also, apart from the first four movements (which it is already sufficiently difficult to identify completely with what is visible), the fifth movement, as a separate descending movement from above appears to be a foreign element in the context. And although, with regard to the sixth movement or status, the sun is visible as such exactly from the point of the North Pole for a while, the ring of the Rishi's utterance is unmistakably spiritual, it cannot but refer to a fact of inner consciousness that is at least what the physical fact conveys to the Rishi and what he seeks to convey and express primarily.
Now this is what is sought to be conveyed and expressed. The five movements of the sun here also are nothing but the five smas and they refer to the cycle of the Cosmic or Universal Brahman. The sixth status where all movements cease, where there is no rising and setting, no ebb and flow, no waxing and waning, where there is the immutable, the ever-same unity, is very evidently the Transcendental Brahman. It is That to which the Vedic Rishi refers when he prays for a constant and fixed vision of the eternal Sunjyok ca sryam drie.
It would be interesting to know what the five ranges or levels or movements of consciousness exactly are that make up the Universal Brahman described in this passage. It is the mystic knowledge, the Upanishad says, of the secret delight in thingsmadhuvidy. The five ranges are the five fundamental principles of delightimmortalities, the Veda would say that form the inner core of the pyramid of creation. They form a rising tier and are ruled respectively by the godsAgni, Indra, Varuna, Soma and Brahmawith their emanations and instrumental personalities the Vasus, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Maruts and the Sadhyas. We suggest that these refer to the five well-known levels of being, the modes or nodi of consciousness or something very much like them. The Upanishad speaks elsewhere of the five sheaths. The six Chakras of Tantric system lie in the same line. The first and the basic mode is the physical and the ascent from the physical: Agni and the Vasus are always intimately connected with the earth and -the earth-principles (it can be compared with the Muladhara of the Tantras). Next, second in the line of ascent is the Vital, the centre of power and dynamism of which the Rudras are the deities and Indra the presiding God (cf. Swadhishthana of the Tantras the navel centre). Indra, in the Vedas, has two aspects, one of knowledge and vision and the other of dynamic force and drive. In the first aspect he is more often considered as the Lord of the Mind, of the Luminous Mind. In the present passage, Indra is taken in his second aspect and instead of the Maruts with whom he is usually invoked has the Rudras as his agents and associates.
The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
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Now, each one of them in its turn has its own emanations the eleven Rudriyas are familiar. These are secondary and there are tertiary and other graded emanations the last ones touch the earth and embody physico-vital forces. The lowest formations or beings can trace their origin to one or other of the primaries and their nature and function partake of or are an echo of their first ancestor.
Man, however, is an epitome of creation. He embraces and incarnates the entire gamut of consciousness and comprises in him all beings from the highest Divinity to the lowest jinn or elf. And yet each human being in his true personality is a lineal descendant of one or other typal aspect or original Personality of the one supreme Reality; and his individual character is all the more pronounced and well-defined the more organised and developed is the being. The psychic being in man is thus a direct descent, an immediate emanation along a definite line of devolution of the supreme consciousness. We may now understand and explain easily why one chooses a particular Ishta, an ideal god, what is the drive that pushes one to become a worshipper of Siva or Vishnu or any other deity. It is not any rational understanding, a weighing of pros and cons and then a resultant conclusion that leads one to choose a path of religion or spirituality. It is the soul's natural call to the God, the type of being and consciousness of which it is a spark, from which it has descended, it is the secret affinity the spiritual blood-relation as it were that determines the choice and adherence. And it is this that we name Faith. And the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a deformation in the ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source or the original is one and indivisible and in the highest integration consciousness is global and not exclusive. And the human being that attains such a status is not bound or wholly limited to one particular formation: its personality is based on the truth of impersonality. And yet the two can go together: an individual can be impersonal in consciousness and yet personal in becoming and true to type.
The number of gods depends on the level of consciousness on which we stand. On this material plane there are as many gods as there are bodies or individual forms (adhar). And on the supreme height there is only one God without a second. In between there are gradations of types and sub-types whose number and function vary according to the aspect of consciousness that reveals itself.
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The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
But Yama did answer and unveil the mystery and impart the supreme secret knowledge the knowledge of the Transcendent Brahman: it is out of the transcendent reality that the immanent deity takes his birth. Hence the Divine Fire, the Lord of creation and the Inner Mastersarvabhtntartm, antarymis called brahmajam, born of the Brahman. Yama teaches the process of transcendence. Apart from the knowledge and experience first of the individual and then of the cosmic Brahman, there is a definite line along which the human consciousness (or unconsciousness, as it is at present) is to ascend and evolve. The first step is to learn to distinguish between the Good and the Pleasurable (reya and preya). The line of pleasure leads to the external, the superficial, the false: while the other path leads towards the inner and the higher truth. So the second step is the gradual withdrawal of the consciousness from the physical and the sensual and even the mental preoccupation and focussing it upon what is certain and permanent. In the midst of the death-ridden consciousness in the heart of all that is unstable and fleetingone has to look for Agni, the eternal godhead, the Immortal in mortality, the Timeless in time through whom lies the passage to Immortality beyond Time.
Man has two souls corresponding to his double status. In the inferior, the soul looks downward and is involved in the current of Impermanence and Ignorance, it tastes of grief and sorrow and suffers death and dissolution: in the higher it looks upward and communes and joins with the Eternal (the cosmic) and then with the Absolute (the transcendent). The lower is a reflection of the higher, the higher comes down in a diminished and hence tarnished light. The message is that of deliverance, the deliverance and reintegration of the lower soul out of its bondage of worldly ignorant life into the freedom and immortality first of its higher and then of its highest status. It is true, however, that the Upanishad does not make a trenchant distinction between the cosmic and the transcendent and often it speaks of both in the same breath, as it were. For in fact they are realities involved in each other and interwoven. Indeed the triple status, including the Individual, forms one single totality and the three do not exclude or cancel each other; on the contrary, they combine and may be said to enhance each other's reality. The Transcendence expresses or deploys itself in the cosmoshe goes abroad,sa paryagt: and the cosmic individualises, concretises itself in the particular and the personal. The one single spiritual reality holds itself, aspects itself in a threefold manner.
The teaching of Yama in brief may be said to be the gospel of immortality and it consists of the knowledge of triple immortality. And who else can be the best teacher of immortality than Death himself, as Nachiketas pointedly said? The first immortality is that of the physical existence and consciousness, the preservation of the personal identity, the individual name and formthis being in itself as expression and embodiment and instrument of the Inner Reality. This inner reality enshrines the second immortality the eternity and continuity of the soul's life through its incarnations in time, the divine Agni lit for ever and ever growing in flaming consciousness. And the third and final immortality is in the being and consciousness beyond time, beyond all relativities, the absolute and self-existent delight.
Rig Veda, X. 14-11, 12.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The Book of the Law states simply, "Every man and every woman is a star." This is a startling thought for those who considered a star a heavenly body, but a declaration subject to proof by anyone who will venture into the realm of his own Unconscious. This realm, he will learn if he persists, is not hemmed in by the boundaries of his physical body but is one with the boundless reaches of outer space.
Those who, armed with the tools provided by the Qabalah, have made the journey within and crossed beyond the barriers of illusion, have returned with an impressive quantity of knowledge which conforms strictly to the definition of "science" in Winston's College Dictionary: "Science: a body of knowledge, general truths of particular facts, obtained and shown to be correct by accurate observation and thinking; knowledge condensed, arranged and systematized with reference to general truths and laws."
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The Qabalah reveals the nature of certain physical and psychological phenomena. Once these are apprehended, understood and correlated, the student can use the principles of Magic to exercise control over life's conditions and circumstances not otherwise possible. In short. Magic provides the practical application of the theories supplied by the Qabalah.
It serves yet another vital function. In addition to the advantages to be gained from its philosophical application, the ancients discovered a very practical use for the literal Qabalah.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
economists insisted that superior physical fitness obviously governed economic
survival as well. Karl Marx accepted the scientific viewpoints of both Malthus and
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fittest to survive." Thus survival of the physically fittest became the basis for
national departments of defense with their priority of access to the most advanced
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chemical structuring produces ever more powerful and incisive performances perpound of physical matter employed.
000.112 Structures are complexes of visible or invisible physical events
interacting to produce stable patterns. A structural system divides Universe into all
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sustainable physical success on this planet. The prime barrier to humanity's
discovery and comprehension of nature is the obscurity of the mathematical
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values. In physically realized time-size each has therefore 4 + 3 = 7 dimensions, but
since each system is inherently independent in Universe and therefore has
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dimensions in all for experientially evidencing physical reality.
000.1271 To define the everywhere-and-everywhen-transforming cosmic
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favorably comprehend and to exercise its option to attain universal physical
success, thereby eliminating forevermore all world politics and competition for the
--
governing all physical and meta physical, omniinteraccommodative, ceaseless
intertransformings of Universe.
--
revolution and will enter a new and-lasting epoch of physical success for all. If not,
it will be curtains for all humanity within this century.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Naturally the temple officials took him for an insane person. His worldly well-wishers brought him to skilled physicians; but no-medicine could cure his malady. Many a time he doubted his sanity himself. For he had been sailing across an uncharted sea, with no earthly guide to direct him. His only haven of security was the Divine Mother Herself. To Her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ignorant of mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mother, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mother never failed him in his distress or doubt. Even those who criticized his conduct were greatly impressed with his purity, guilelessness, truthfulness, integrity, and holiness. They felt an uplifting influence in his presence.
It is said that samadhi, or trance, no more than opens the portal of the spiritual realm. Sri Ramakrishna felt an unquenchable desire to enjoy God in various ways. For his meditation he built a place in the northern wooded section of the temple garden. With Hriday's help he planted there five sacred trees. The spot, known as the Panchavati, became the scene of many of his visions.
--
Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861. After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comfort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five "suppliers of stores" appointed by the Divine Mother. Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.
--- THE BRAHMANI
--
Sri Ramakrishna welcomed the visitor with great respect, described to her his experiences and visions, and told her of people's belief that these were symptoms of madness. She listened to him attentively and said: "My son, everyone in this world is mad. Some are mad for money, some for creature comforts, some for name and fame; and you are mad for God." She assured him that he was passing through the almost unknown spiritual experience described in the scriptures as mahabhava, the most exalted rapture of divine love. She told him that this extreme exaltation had been described as manifesting itself through nineteen physical symptoms, including the shedding of tears, a tremor of the body, horripilation, perspiration, and a burning sensation. The Bhakti scriptures, she declared, had recorded only two instances of the experience, namely, those of Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya.
Very soon a tender relationship sprang up between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmani, she looking upon him as the Baby Krishna, and he upon her as mother. Day after day she watched his ecstasy during the kirtan and meditation, his samadhi, his mad yearning; and she recognized in him a power to transmit spirituality to others. She came to the conclusion that such things were not possible for an ordinary devotee, not even for a highly developed soul. Only an Incarnation of God was capable of such spiritual manifestations. She proclaimed openly that Sri Ramakrishna, like Sri Chaitanya, was an Incarnation of God.
--
Thus the insane priest was by verdict of the great scholars of the day proclaimed a Divine Incarnation. His visions were not the result of an over-heated brain; they had precedent in spiritual history. And how did the proclamation affect Sri Ramakrishna himself? He remained the simple child of the Mother that he had been since the first day of his life. Years later, when two of his householder disciples openly spoke of him as a Divine Incarnation and the matter was reported to him, he said with a touch of sarcasm: "Do they think they will enhance my glory that way? One of them is an actor on the stage and the other a physician. What do they know about Incarnations? Why, years ago pundits like Gauri and Vaishnavcharan declared me to be an Avatar. They were great scholars and knew what they said. But that did not make any change in my mind."
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
--
Sri Ramakrishna now devoted himself to scaling the most inaccessible and dizzy heights of dualistic worship, namely, the complete union with Sri Krishna as the Beloved of the heart. He regarded himself as one of the gopis of Vrindavan, mad with longing for her divine Sweetheart. At his request Mathur provided him with woman's dress and jewelry. In this love-pursuit, food and drink were forgotten. Day and night he wept bitterly. The yearning turned into a mad frenzy; for the divine Krishna began to play with him the old tricks He had played with the gopis. He would tease and taunt, now and then revealing Himself, but always keeping at a distance. Sri Ramakrishna's anguish brought on a return of the old physical symptoms: the burning sensation, an oozing of blood through the pores, a loosening of the joints, and the stopping of physiological functions.
The Vaishnava scriptures advise one to propitiate Radha and obtain her grace in order to realize Sri Krishna. So the tortured devotee now turned his prayer to her. Within a short time he enjoyed her blessed vision. He saw and felt the figure of Radha disappearing into his own body.
--
The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing cloth.
Totapuri was the bearer of a philoso phy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philoso phy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
--
On the appointed day, in the small hours of the morning, a fire was lighted in the Panchavati. Totapuri and Sri Ramakrishna sat before it. The flame played on their faces. "Ramakrishna was a small brown man with a short beard and beautiful eyes, long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was open over his white teeth in a bewitching smile, at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. His temperament was high-strung, for he was supersensitive to all the winds of joy and sorrow, both moral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened before the mirror of his eyes, a two-sided mirror, turned both out and in." (Romain Rolland, Prophets of the New India, pp. 38-9.) Facing him, the other rose like a rock. He was very tall and robust, a sturdy and tough oak. His constitution and mind were of iron. He was the strong leader of men.
In the burning flame before him Sri Ramakrishna performed the rituals of destroying his attachment to relatives, friends, body, mind, sense-organs, ego, and the world. The leaping flame swallowed it all, making the initiate free and pure. The sacred thread and the tuft of hair were consigned to the fire, completing his severance from caste, sex, and society. Last of all he burnt in that fire, with all that is holy as his witness, his desire for enjoyment here and hereafter. He uttered the sacred mantras giving assurance of safety and fearlessness to all beings, who were only manifestations of his own Self. The rites completed, the disciple received from the guru the loin-cloth and ochre robe, the emblems of his new life.
--
His body would not have survived but for the kindly attention of a monk who happened to be at Dakshineswar at that time and who somehow realized that for the good of humanity Sri Ramakrishna's body must be preserved. He tried various means, even physical violence, to recall the fleeing soul to the prison-house of the body, and during the resultant fleeting moments of consciousness he would push a few morsels of food down Sri Ramakrishna's throat. Presently Sri Ramakrishna received the command of the Divine Mother to remain on the threshold of relative consciousness. Soon there-after after he was afflicted with a serious attack of dysentery. Day and night the pain tortured him, and his mind gradually came down to the physical plane.
--- COMPANY OF HOLY MEN AND DEVOTEES
From now on Sri Ramakrishna began to seek the company of devotees and holy men. He had gone through the storm and stress of spiritual disciplines and visions. Now he realized an inner calmness and appeared to others as a normal person. But he could not bear the company of worldly people or listen to their talk. Fortunately the holy atmosphere of Dakshineswar and the liberality of Mathur attracted monks and holy men from all parts of the country. Sadhus of all denominations — monists and dualists, Vaishnavas and Vedantists, Saktas and worshippers of Rama — flocked there in ever increasing numbers. Ascetics and visionaries came to seek Sri Ramakrishna's advice. Vaishnavas had come during the period of his Vaishnava sadhana, and Tantriks when he practised the disciplines of Tantra. Vedantists began to arrive after the departure of Totapuri. In the room of Sri Ramakrishna, who was then in bed with dysentery, the Vedantists engaged in scriptural discussions, and, forgetting his own physical suffering, he solved their doubts by referring directly to his own experiences. Many of the visitors were genuine spiritual souls, the unseen pillars of Hinduism, and their spiritual lives were quickened in no small measure by the sage of Dakshineswar. Sri Ramakrishna in turn learnt from them anecdotes concerning the ways and the conduct of holy men, which he subsequently narrated to his devotees and disciples. At his request Mathur provided him with large stores of food-stuffs, clothes, and so forth, for distribution among the wandering monks.
"Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."
--
The real organizer of the Samaj was Devendranath Tagore (1817-1905), the father of the poet Rabindranath. His physical and spiritual beauty, aristocratic aloofness, penetrating intellect, and poetic sensibility made him the foremost leader of the educated Bengalis. These addressed him by the respectful epithet of Maharshi, the "Great Seer". The Maharshi was a Sanskrit scholar and, unlike Raja Rammohan Roy, drew his inspiration entirely from the Upanishads. He was an implacable enemy of image worship ship and also fought to stop the infiltration of Christian ideas into the Samaj. He gave the movement its faith and ritual. Under his influence the Brahmo Samaj professed One Self-existent Supreme Being who had created the universe out of nothing, the God of Truth, Infinite Wisdom, Goodness, and Power, the Eternal and Omnipotent, the One without a Second. Man should love Him and do His will, believe in Him and worship Him, and thus merit salvation in the world to come.
By far the ablest leader of the Brahmo movement was Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884). Unlike Raja Rammohan Roy and Devendranath Tagore, Keshab was born of a middle-class Bengali family and had been brought up in an English school. He did not know Sanskrit and very soon broke away from the popular Hindu religion. Even at an early age he came under the spell of Christ and professed to have experienced the special favour of John the Baptist, Christ, and St. Paul. When he strove to introduce Christ to the Brahmo Samaj, a rupture became inevitable with Devendranath. In 1868 Keshab broke with the older leader and founded the Brahmo Samaj of India, Devendra retaining leadership of the first Brahmo Samaj, now called the Adi Samaj.
--
Durgacharan Nag, also known as Nag Mahashay, was the ideal householder among the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was the embodiment of the Master's ideal of life in the world, unstained by worldliness. In spite of his intense desire to become a sannyasi, Sri Ramakrishna asked him to live in the world in the spirit of a monk, and the disciple truly carried out this injunction. He was born of a poor family and even during his boyhood often sacrificed everything to lessen the sufferings of the needy. He had married at an early age and after his wife's death had married a second time to obey his father's command. But he once said to his wife: "Love on the physical level never lasts. He is indeed blessed who can give his love to God with his whole heart. Even a little attachment to the body endures for several births. So do not be attached to this cage of bone and flesh. Take shelter at the feet of the Mother and think of Her alone. Thus your life here and hereafter will be ennobled." The Master spoke of him as a "blazing light". He received every word of Sri Ramakrishna in dead earnest. One day he heard the Master saying that it was difficult for doctors, lawyers, and brokers to make much progress in spirituality. Of doctors he said, "If the mind clings to the tiny drops of medicine, how can it conceive of the Infinite?" That was the end of Durgacharan's medical practice and he threw his chest of medicines into the Ganges. Sri Ramakrishna assured him that he would not lack simple food and clothing. He bade him serve holy men. On being asked where he would find real holy men, the Master said that the sadhus themselves would seek his company. No sannyasi could have lived a more austere life than Durgacharan.
--- GIRISH GHOSH
--
Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philoso phy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
--
Baburam Ghosh came to Dakshineswar accompanied by Rakhal, his classmate. The Master, as was often his custom, examined the boy's physiognomy and was satisfied about his latent spirituality. At the age of eight Baburam had thought of leading a life of renunciation, in the company of a monk, in a hut shut out from the public view by a thick wall of trees. The very sight of the Panchavati awakened in his heart that dream of boyhood. Baburam was tender in body and soul. The Master used to say that he was pure to his very bones. One day Hazra in his usual mischievous fashion advised Baburam and some of the other young boys to ask Sri Ramakrishna for some spiritual powers and not waste their life in mere gaiety and merriment. The Master, scenting mischief, called Baburam to his side and said: "What can you ask of me? Isn't everything that I have already yours? Yes, everything I have earned in the shape of realizations is for the sake of you all. So get rid of the idea of begging, which alienates by creating a distance. Rather realize your kinship with me and gain the key to all the treasures.
--- NIRANJAN
--
One day, in January 1884, the Master was going toward the pine-grove when he went into a trance. He was alone. There was no one to support him or guide his footsteps. He fell to the ground and dislocated a bone in his left arm. This accident had a significant influence on his mind, the natural inclination of which was to soar above the consciousness of the body. The acute pain in the arm forced his mind to dwell on the body and on the world outside. But he saw even in this a divine purpose; for, with his mind compelled to dwell on the physical plane, he realized more than ever that he was an instrument in the hand of the Divine Mother, who had a mission to fulfil through his human body and mind. He also distinctly found that in the phenomenal world God manifests Himself, in an inscrutable way, through diverse human beings, both good and evil. Thus he would speak of God in the guise of the wicked, God in the guise of the pious. God in the guise of the hypocrite, God in the guise of the lewd. He began to take a special delight in watching the divine play in the relative world. Sometimes the sweet human relationship with God would appear to him more appealing than the all-effacing Knowledge of Brahman. Many a time he would pray: "Mother, don't make me unconscious through the Knowledge of Brahman. Don't give me Brahmajnana, Mother. Am I not Your child, and naturally timid? I must have my Mother. A million salutations to the Knowledge of Brahman! Give it to those who want it." Again he prayed: "O Mother let me remain in contact with men! Don't make me a dried-up ascetic. I want to enjoy Your sport in the world." He was able to taste this very rich divine experience and enjoy the love of God and the company of His devotees because his mind, on account of the injury to his arm, was forced to come down to the consciousness of the body. Again, he would make fun of people who proclaimed him as a Divine Incarnation, by pointing to his broken arm. He would say, "Have you ever heard of God breaking His arm?" It took the arm about five months to heal.
--- BEGINNING OF HIS ILLNESS
In April 1885 the Master's throat became inflamed. Prolonged conversation or absorption in samadhi, making the blood flow into the throat, would aggravate the pain. Yet when the annual Vaishnava festival was celebrated at Panihati, Sri Ramakrishna attended it against the doctor's advice. With a group of disciples he spent himself in music, dance, and ecstasy. The illness took a turn for the worse and was diagnosed as "clergyman's sore throat". The patient was cautioned against conversation and ecstasies. Though he followed the physician's directions regarding medicine and diet, he could neither control his trances nor withhold from seekers the solace of his advice. Sometimes, like a sulky child, he would complain to the Mother about the crowds, who gave him no rest day or night. He was overheard to say to Her; "Why do You bring here all these worthless people, who are like milk diluted with five times its own quantity of water? My eyes are almost destroyed with blowing the fire to dry up the water. My health is gone. It is beyond my strength. Do it Yourself, if You want it done. This (pointing to his own body) is but a perforated drum, and if you go on beating it day in and day out, how long will it last?"
But his large heart never turned anyone away. He said, "Let me be condemned to be born over and over again, even in the form of a dog, if I can be of help to a single soul." And he bore the pain, singing cheerfully, "Let the body be preoccupied with illness, but, O mind, dwell for ever in God's Bliss!"
--
supernatural cause to a natural phenomenon. They believed that the Master's body, a material thing, was subject, like all other material things, to physical laws. Growth, development, decay, and death were laws of nature to which the Master's body could not but respond. But though holding differing views, they all believed that it was to him alone that they must look for the attainment of their spiritual goal.
In spite of the physician's efforts and the prayers and nursing of the devotees, the illness rapidly progressed. The pain sometimes appeared to be unbearable. The Master lived only on liquid food, and his frail body was becoming a mere skeleton. Yet his face always radiated joy, and he continued to welcome the visitors pouring in to receive his blessing. When certain zealous devotees tried to keep the visitors away, they were told by Girish, "You cannot succeed in it; he has been born for this very purpose — to sacrifice himself for the redemption of others."
The more the body was devastated by illness, the more it became the habitation of the Divine Spirit. Through its transparency the gods and goddesses began to shine with ever increasing luminosity. On the day of the Kali Puja the devotees clearly saw in him the manifestation of the Divine Mother.
--
It was at Cossipore that the curtain fell on the varied activities of the Master's life on the physical plane. His soul lingered in the body eight months more. It was the period of his great Passion, a constant crucifixion of the body and the triumphant revelation of the Soul. Here one sees the humanity and divinity of the Master passing and repassing across a thin border line. Every minute of those eight months was suffused with touching tenderness of heart and breath-taking elevation of spirit. Every word he uttered was full of pathos and sublimity.
It took the group only a few days to become adjusted to the new environment. The Holy Mother, assisted by Sri Ramakrishna's niece, Lakshmi Devi, and a few woman devotees, took charge of the cooking for the Master and his attendants. Surendra willingly bore the major portion of the expenses, other householders contributing according to their means. Twelve disciples were constant attendants of the Master: Narendra, Rakhal, Baburam, Niranjan, Jogin, Latu, Tarak, the-elder Gopal, Kali, Sashi, Sarat, and the younger Gopal. Sarada, Harish, Hari, Gangadhar, and Tulasi visited the Master from time to time and practised sadhana at home. Narendra, preparing for his law examination, brought his books to the garden house in order to continue his studies during the infrequent spare moments. He encouraged his brother disciples to intensify their meditation, scriptural studies, and other spiritual disciplines. They all forgot their relatives and their
--
Yet one is not sure whether the Master's soul actually was tortured by this agonizing disease. At least during his moments of spiritual exaltation — which became almost constant during the closing days of his life on earth — he lost all consciousness of the body, of illness and suffering. One of his attendants (Latu, later known as Swami Adbhutananda.) said later on: "While Sri Ramakrishna lay sick he never actually suffered pain. He would often say: 'O mind! Forget the body, forget the sickness, and remain merged in Bliss.' No, he did not really suffer. At times he would be in a state when the thrill of joy was clearly manifested in his body. Even when he could not speak he would let us know in some way that there was no suffering, and this fact was clearly evident to all who watched him. People who did not understand him thought that his suffering was very great. What spiritual joy he transmitted to us at that time! Could such a thing have been possible if he had 'been suffering physically? It was during this period that he taught us again these truths: 'Brahman is always unattached. The three gunas are in It, but It is unaffected by them, just as the wind carries odour yet remains odourless.' 'Brahman is Infinite Being, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Bliss. In It there exist no delusion, no misery, no disease, no death, no growth, no decay.' 'The Transcendental Being and the being within are one and the same. There is one indivisible Absolute Existence.'"
The Holy Mother secretly went to a Siva temple across the Ganges to intercede with the Deity for the Master's recovery. In a revelation she was told to prepare herself for the inevitable end.
--
Doubt, however, dies hard. After one or two days Narendra said to himself, "If in the midst of this racking physical pain he declares his Godhead, then only shall I accept him as an Incarnation of God." He was alone by the bedside of the Master. It was a passing thought, but the Master smiled. Gathering his remaining strength, he distinctly said, "He who was Rama and Krishna is now, in this body, Ramakrishna — but not in your Vedantic sense." Narendra was stricken with shame.
--- MAHASAMADHI
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
spiritual importance of this physical procession in
line 5.
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As man loses his personality in physical love, so
does the magician annihilate his divine personality in
--
beyond physical love. It is called the Pole-Star, because
Laylah is the one object of devotion to which the author
--
on the physical plane, Laylah is an Australian.
[69]
--
Pranayama gets rid of physiology- | "Breaks"
consciousness. /
--
precedes spiritual and physical perceptions. One would be foolish to claim
initiation unless it were complete on every plane.
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The reader will find mentioned in this work many visions and experiences that fall outside the ken of physical science and even psychology. With the development of modern knowledge the border line between the natural and the supernatural is ever shifting its position. Genuine mystical experiences are not as suspect now as they were half a century ago. The words of Sri Ramakrishna have already exerted a tremendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his words the ring of universal truth.
But these words were not the product of intellectual cogitation; they were rooted in direct experience. Hence, to students of religion, psychology, and physical science, these experiences of the Master are of immense value for the understanding of religious phenomena in general. No doubt Sri Ramakrishna was a Hindu of the Hindus; yet his experiences transcended the limits of the dogmas and creeds of Hinduism. Mystics of religions other than Hinduism will find in Sri Ramakrishna's experiences a corroboration of the experiences of their own prophets and seers. And this is very important today for the resuscitation of religious values. The sceptical reader may pass by the supernatural experiences; he will yet find in the book enough material to provoke his serious thought and solve many of his spiritual problems.
There are repetitions of teachings and parables in the book. I have kept them purposely. They have their charm and usefulness, repeated as they were in different settings. Repetition is unavoidable in a work of this kind. In the first place, different seekers come to a religious teacher with questions of more or less identical nature; hence the answers will be of more or less identical pattern. Besides, religious teachers of all times and climes have tried, by means of repetition, to hammer truths into the stony soil of the recalcitrant human mind. Finally, repetition does not seem tedious if the ideas repeated are dear to a man's heart.
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
The human brain is a physical mechanism for storing, retrieving, and re-storing again, each special-case experience. The experience is often a packaged concept.
Such packages consist of complexedly interrelated and not as-yet differentially analyzed phenomena which, as initially unit cognitions, are potentially re-experienceable. A rose, for instance, grows. has thorns, blossoms, and fragrance, but often is stored in the brain only under the single word-rose.
--
The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization. It makes no difference of what material either the fulcrum or the lever consists-wood, steel, or reinforced concrete. Nor do the special-case sizes of the lever and fulcrum, or of the load pried at one end, or the work applied at the lever's other end in any way alter either the principle or the mathematical regularity of the ratios of physical work advantage that are provided at progressive fulcrum-to-load increments of distance outward from the fulcrum in the opposite direction along the lever's arm at which theoperating effort is applied.
Mind is the weightless and uniquely human faculty that surveys the ever larger inventory of special-case experiences stored in the brain bank and, seeking to identify their intercomplementary significance, from time to time discovers one of the rare scientifically generalizable principles running consistently through all the relevant experience set. The thoughts that discover these principles are weightless and tentative and may also be eternal. They suggest eternity but do not prove it, even though there have been no experiences thus far that imply exceptions to their persistence. It seems also to follow that the more experiences we have, the more chances there are that the mind may discover, on the one hand, additional generalized principles or, on the other hand, exceptions that disqualify one or another of the already catalogued principles that, having heretofore held "true" without contradiction for a long time, had been tentatively conceded to be demonstrating eternal persistence of behavior. Mind's relentless reviewing of the comprehensive brain bank's storage of all our special-case experiences tends both to progressive enlargement and definitive refinement of the catalogue of generalized principles that interaccommodatively govern all transactions of Universe.
--
Furthermore, today's hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning has come to preclude important popular philosophic considerations of the synergetic significance of, for instance, such historically important events as the discovery within the general region of experimental inquiry known as virology that the as-yet popularly assumed validity of the concepts of animate and inanimate phenomena have been experimentally invalidated. Atoms and crystal complexes of atoms were held to be obviously inanimate; the protoplasmic cells of biological phenomena were held to be obviously animate. It was deemed to be common sense that warm- blooded, moist, and soft-skinned humans were clearly not to be confused with hard, cold granite or steel objects. A clear-cut threshold between animate and inanimate was therefore assumed to exist as a fundamental dichotomy of all physical phenomena. This seemingly placed life exclusively within the bounds of the physical.
The supposed location of the threshold between animate and inanimate was methodically narrowed down by experimental science until it was confined specifically within the domain of virology. Virologists have been too busy, for instance, with their DNA-RNA genetic code isolatings, to find time to see the synergetic significance to society of the fact that they have found that no physical threshold does in fact exist between animate and inanimate. The possibility of its existence vanished because the supposedly unique physical qualities of both animate and inanimate have persisted right across yesterday's supposed threshold in both directions to permeate one another's-previously perceived to be exclusive- domains. Subsequently, what was animate has become foggier and foggier, and what is inanimate clearer and clearer. All organisms consist physically and in entirety of inherently inanimate atoms. The inanimate alone is not only omnipresent but is alone experimentally demonstrable. Belated news of the elimination of this threshold must be interpreted to mean that whatever life may be, it has not been isolated and thereby identified as residual in the biological cell, as had been supposed by the false assumption that there was a separate physical phenomenoncalled animate within which life existed. No life per se has been isolated. The threshold between animate and inanimate has vanished. Those chemists who are preoccupied in synthesizing the particular atomically structured molecules identified as the prime constituents of humanly employed organisms will, even if they are chemically successful, be as remote from creating life as are automobile manufacturers from creating the human drivers of their automobiles. Only the physical connections and development complexes of distinctly "nonlife" atoms into molecules, into cells, into animals, has been and will be discovered. The genetic coding of the design controls of organic systems offers no more explanation of life than did the specifications of the designs of the telephone system's apparatus and operation explain the nature of the life that communicates weightlessly to life over the only physically ponderable telephone system. Whatever else life may be, we know it is weightless. At the moment of death, no weight is lost. All the chemicals, including the chemist's life ingredients, are present, but life has vanished. The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The meta physical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic.
It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand.
The overconcentration on details of hyperspecialization has also been responsible for the lack of recognition by science of its inherently mandatory responsibility to reorient all our educational curricula because of the synergetically disclosed, but popularly uncomprehended, significance of the 1956 Nobel Prize-winning discovery in physics of the experimental invalidation of the concept of "parity" by which science previously had misassumed that positive-negative complementations consisted exclusively of mirror-imaged behaviors of physical phenomena.
Science's self-assumed responsibility has been self-limited to disclosure to society only of the separate, supposedly physical (because separately weighable) atomic component isolations data. Synergetic integrity would require the scientists to announce that in reality what had been identified heretofore as physical is entirely meta physical-because synergetically weightless. Meta physical has been science's designation for all weightless phenomena such as thought. But science has made no experimental finding of any phenomena that can be described as a solid, or as continuous, or as a straight surface plane, or as a straight line, or as infinite anything. We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all phenomena are meta physical; wherefore, as many have long suspected-like it or not-life is but a dream.Science has found no up or down directions of Universe, yet scientists are personally so ill-coordinated that they all still personally and sensorially see "solids" going up or down-as, for instance, they see the Sun "going down." Sensorially disconnected from their theoretically evolved information, scientists discern no need on their part to suggest any educational reforms to correct the misconceiving that science has tolerated for half a millennium.
Society depends upon its scientists for just such educational reform guidance.
--
Children freed of the ignorantly founded educational traditions and exposed only to their spontaneously summoned, computer-stored and -distributed outflow of reliable-opinion-purged, experimentally verified data, shall indeed lead society to its happy egress from all misinformedly conceived, fearfully and legally imposed, and physically enforced customs of yesterday. They can lead all humanity into omnisuccessful survival as well as entrance into an utterly new era of human experience in an as-yet and ever-will-be fundamentally mysterious Universe.
And whence will come the wealth with which we may undertake to lead world man into his new and validly hopeful life? From the wealth of the minds of world man-whence comes all wealth. Only mind can discover how to do so much with so little as forever to be able to sustain and physically satisfy all humanity.
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
absence. Instinctively physicists and naturalists went to work as
though they could look down from a great height upon a world
--
view of his own significance in the physical world. There is no
need to be surprised at this slow awakening. It often happens
--
of physical scale which separates, both in rhythm and dimension,
33
--
upsetting the physical unity of the world ;
A sense of movement, capable of perceiving the irresistible
--
A sense, lastly, of the organic, discovering physical links and
structural unity under the superficial juxtaposition of successions
--
as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve
the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The question which Arjuna asks Sri Krishna in the Gita (second chapter) occurs pertinently to many about all spiritual personalities: "What is the language of one whose understanding is poised? How does he speak, how sit, how walk?" Men want to know the outer signs of the inner attainment, the way in which a spiritual person differs outwardly from other men. But all the tests which the Gita enumerates are inner and therefore invisible to the outer view. It is true also that the inner or the spiritual is the essential and the outer derives its value and form from the inner. But the transformation about which Sri Aurobindo writes in his books has to take place in nature, because according to him the divine Reality has to manifest itself in nature. So, all the parts of nature including the physical and the external are to be transformed. In his own case the very physical became the transparent mould of the Spirit as a result of his intense Sadhana. This is borne out by the impression created on the minds of sensitive outsiders like Sj. K. M. Munshi who was deeply impressed by his radiating presence when he met him after nearly forty years.
The Evening Talks collected here may afford to the outside world a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also form some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extraordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his works. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the human side of his personality, is unknown to the outside world because from 1910 to 1950 a span of forty years he led a life of outer retirement. No doubt, many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by many as lack of love for humanity.
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
whole being, mental, psychic, vital and physical, enters into a
complete state of rest made of perfect peace, absolute silence
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But as in physical knowledge the multiplication of scientific processes has its disadvantages, as that tends, for instance, to develop a victorious artificiality which overwhelms our natural human life under a load of machinery and to purchase certain forms of freedom and mastery at the price of an increased servitude, so the preoccupation with Yogic processes and their exceptional results may have its disadvantages and losses. The
The Conditions of the Synthesis
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The physical being is always fatigued when it is asked to keep a
lasting concentration.
--
It may be that physical appearance has something to do with it,
but truly speaking it does not count for much. I believe rather
--
say in French, and that one can rely only on one's physical eyes
Series Two - To a Sadhak in the Building Department
for seeing and observing, on one's physical-mental knowledge
for judging and deciding, and that the laws of Nature are laws -
--
If I could move about and see everything physically for myself, I
would not need to get information from anyone. But this is not
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for mankind. It can be, therefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
--
If the bodily life is what Nature has firmly evolved for us as her base and first instrument, it is our mental life that she is evolving as her immediate next aim and superior instrument. This in her ordinary exaltations is the lofty preoccupying thought in her; this, except in her periods of exhaustion and recoil into a reposeful and recuperating obscurity, is her constant pursuit wherever she can get free from the trammels of her first vital and physical realisations. For here in man we have a distinction which is of the utmost importance. He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason. Mind in man is first emmeshed in the life of the body, where in the plant it is entirely involved and in animals always imprisoned. It accepts this life as not only the first but the whole condition of its activities and serves its needs as if they were the entire aim of existence. But the bodily life in man is a base, not the aim, his first condition and not his last determinant. In the just idea of the ancients man is essentially the thinker, the Manu, the mental being who leads the life and the body,3 not the animal who is led by them. The true human existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material and we begin more and more to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession and in the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and rightly to use the life of the body. For freedom and not a skilful subjection is the true means of mastery. A free, not a compulsory acceptance of the conditions, the enlarged and sublimated conditions of our physical being, is the high human ideal. But beyond this intellectual mentality is the divine.
The mental life thus evolving in man is not, indeed, a
--
Moreover the whole trend of modern thought and modern endeavour reveals itself to the observant eye as a large conscious effort of Nature in man to effect a general level of intellectual equipment, capacity and farther possibility by universalising the opportunities which modern civilisation affords for the mental life. Even the preoccupation of the European intellect, the protagonist of this tendency, with material Nature and the externalities of existence is a necessary part of the effort. It seeks to prepare a sufficient basis in man's physical being and vital energies and in his material environment for his full mental possibilities. By the spread of education, by the advance of the backward races, by the elevation of depressed classes, by the multiplication of labour-saving appliances, by the movement
The Three Steps of Nature
--
towards ideal social and economic conditions, by the labour of Science towards an improved health, longevity and sound physique in civilised humanity, the sense and drift of this vast movement translates itself in easily intelligible signs. The right or at least the ultimate means may not always be employed, but their aim is the right preliminary aim, - a sound individual and social body and the satisfaction of the legitimate needs and demands of the material mind, sufficient ease, leisure, equal opportunity, so that the whole of mankind and no longer only the favoured race, class or individual may be free to develop the emotional and intellectual being to its full capacity. At present the material and economic aim may predominate, but always, behind, there works or there waits in reserve the higher and major impulse.
And when the preliminary conditions are satisfied, when the great endeavour has found its base, what will be the nature of that farther possibility which the activities of the intellectual life must serve? If Mind is indeed Nature's highest term, then the entire development of the rational and imaginative intellect and the harmonious satisfaction of the emotions and sensibilities must be to themselves sufficient. But if, on the contrary, man is more than a reasoning and emotional animal, if beyond that which is being evolved, there is something that has to be evolved, then it may well be that the fullness of the mental life, the suppleness, flexibility and wide capacity of the intellect, the ordered richness of emotion and sensibility may be only a passage towards the development of a higher life and of more powerful faculties which are yet to manifest and to take possession of the lower instrument, just as mind itself has so taken possession of the body that the physical being no longer lives only for its own satisfaction but provides the foundation and the materials for a superior activity.
The assertion of a higher than the mental life is the whole foundation of Indian philoso phy and its acquisition and organisation is the veritable object served by the methods of Yoga.
--
The only approximate terms in the English language have other associations and their use may lead to many and even serious inaccuracies. The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle,5 a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle6 which are described as those of knowledge and bliss. But this knowledge is not a systematised result of mental questionings and reasonings, not a temporary arrangement of conclusions and opinions in the terms of the highest probability, but rather a pure self-existent and self-luminous Truth. And this bliss is not a supreme pleasure of the heart and sensations with the experience of pain and sorrow as its background, but a delight also selfexistent and independent of objects and particular experiences, a self-delight which is the very nature, the very stuff, as it were, of a transcendent and infinite existence.
antah.karan.a.
--
For, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instruments (karan.a), this crowning manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a deformation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital forces and actions to the aspect of Will or Force assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and
Consciousness. The evolution which we observe and of which
--
The immanence itself would have no credible reason for being if it did not end in such a transfiguration. But if human mind can become capable of the glories of the divine Light, human emotion and sensibility can be transformed into the mould and assume the measure and movement of the supreme Bliss, human action not only represent but feel itself to be the motion of a divine and non-egoistic Force and the physical substance of our being sufficiently partake of the purity of the supernal essence, sufficiently unify plasticity and durable constancy to support and prolong these highest experiences and agencies, then all the long labour of Nature will end in a crowning justification and her evolutions reveal their profound significance.
So dazzling is even a glimpse of this supreme existence and so absorbing its attraction that, once seen, we feel readily justified in neglecting all else for its pursuit. Even, by an opposite exaggeration to that which sees all things in Mind and the mental life as an exclusive ideal, Mind comes to be regarded as an unworthy deformation and a supreme obstacle, the source of an illusory universe, a negation of the Truth and itself to be denied and all its works and results annulled if we desire the final liberation. But this is a half-truth which errs by regarding only the actual limitations of Mind and ignores its divine intention.
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Then, on 23 November 1938, I got up at 2 o'clock to prepare hot water for the Mother's early bath because the 24th was Darshan day. Between 2.20 and 2.30 the Mother rang the bell. I ran up the staircase to be told about an accident that had happened to Sri Aurobindo's thigh and to be asked to fetch the doctor. This accident brought about a change in his complete retirement, and rendered him available to those who had to attend on him. This opened out a long period of 12 years during which his retirement was modified owing to circumstances, inner and outer, that made it possible for him to have direct physical contacts with the world outside.
The long period of the Second World War with all its vicissitudes passed through these years. It was a priceless experience to see how he devoted his energies to the task of saving humanity from the threatened reign of Nazism. It was a practical lesson of solid work done for humanity without any thought of return or reward, without even letting humanity know what he was doing for it! Thus he lived the Divine and showed us how the Divine cares for the world, how He comes down and works for man. I shall never forget how he who was at one time in his own words "not merely a non-co-operator but an enemy of British Imperialism" bestowed such anxious care on the health of Churchill, listening carefully to the health-bulletins! It was the work of the Divine, it was the Divine's work for the world.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
to recover, do not recover. Perhaps it is the same for physical
diseases?
--
What is all this about psychological and physical
diseases? I understand nothing of it.
--
such as depression, revolt, sadness, etc. physical diseases are
those of the body.
--
"Supramental beauty in the physical"3 - what does
it mean? All these things - all the arts, the beautiful
--
supramental beauty in the physical?
No, all that is only the manifestation of a universal harmony
--
of the promises; and also you must be patient. In this physical
world, things take time to get realised.
--
I am speaking of your inner eyes, not the physical ones.
"Turn your faculty of feeling inward instead of letting it
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
NATURE, then, is an evolution or progressive self-manifestation of an eternal and secret existence, with three successive forms as her three steps of ascent. And we have consequently as the condition of all our activities these three mutually interdependent possibilities, the bodily life, the mental existence and the veiled spiritual being which is in the involution the cause of the others and in the evolution their result. Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the mental, it is Nature's aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily existence, so too the spiritual should not abrogate but transfigure our intellectual, emotional, aesthetic and vital activities.
For man, the head of terrestrial Nature, the sole earthly frame in which her full evolution is possible, is a triple birth. He has been given a living frame in which the body is the vessel and life the dynamic means of a divine manifestation. His activity is centred in a progressive mind which aims at perfecting itself as well as the house in which it dwells and the means of life that it uses, and is capable of awaking by a progressive self-realisation to its own true nature as a form of the Spirit. He culminates in what he always really was, the illumined and beatific spirit which is intended at last to irradiate life and mind with its now concealed splendours.
--
The characteristic energy of bodily Life is not so much in progress as in persistence, not so much in individual selfenlargement as in self-repetition. There is, indeed, in physical Nature a progression from type to type, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to man; for even in inanimate Matter Mind is at work. But once a type is marked off physically, the chief immediate preoccupation of the terrestrial Mother seems to be to keep it in being by a constant reproduction. For Life always seeks immortality; but since individual form is impermanent and only the idea of a form is permanent in the consciousness that creates the universe, - for there it does not perish, - such constant reproduction is the only possible material immortality.
Self-preservation, self-repetition, self-multiplication are necessarily, then, the predominant instincts of all material existence.
--
In each of these forms Nature acts both individually and collectively; for the Eternal affirms Himself equally in the single form and in the group-existence, whether family, clan and nation or groupings dependent on less physical principles or the supreme group of all, our collective humanity. Man also may seek his own individual good from any or all of these spheres of activity, or identify himself in them with the collectivity and live for it, or, rising to a truer perception of this complex universe, harmonise the individual realisation with the collective aim. For as it is the right relation of the soul with the Supreme, while it is in the universe, neither to assert egoistically its separate being nor to blot itself out in the Indefinable, but to realise its unity with the Divine and the world and unite them in the individual, so the right relation of the individual with the collectivity is neither to pursue egoistically his own material or mental progress or spiritual salvation without regard to his fellows, nor for the sake of the community to suppress or maim his proper development, but to sum up in himself all its best and completest possibilities and pour them out by thought, action and all other means on his surroundings so that the whole race may approach nearer to the attainment of its supreme personalities.
It follows that the object of the material life must be to fulfil, above all things, the vital aim of Nature. The whole aim of the material man is to live, to pass from birth to death with as much comfort or enjoyment as may be on the way, but anyhow to live.
He can subordinate this aim, but only to physical Nature's other instincts, the reproduction of the individual and the conservation of the type in the family, class or community. Self, domesticity, the accustomed order of the society and of the nation are the constituents of the material existence. Its immense importance in the economy of Nature is self-evident, and commensurate is the importance of the human type which represents it. He assures her of the safety of the framework she has made and of the orderly continuance and conservation of her past gains.
But by that very utility such men and the life they lead are condemned to be limited, irrationally conservative and earthbound. The customary routine, the customary institutions, the inherited or habitual forms of thought, - these things are the life-breath of their nostrils. They admit and jealously defend the changes compelled by the progressive mind in the past, but combat with equal zeal the changes that are being made by it in the present. For to the material man the living progressive thinker is an ideologue, dreamer or madman. The old Semites who stoned the living prophets and adored their memories when dead, were the very incarnation of this instinctive and unintelligent principle in Nature. In the ancient Indian distinction between the once born and the twice born, it is to this material man that the former description can be applied. He does Nature's inferior works; he assures the basis for her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the glories of her second birth.
--
Nevertheless it is possible to make the material man and his life moderately progressive by imprinting on the material mind the custom of progress, the habit of conscious change, the fixed idea of progression as a law of life. The creation by this means of progressive societies in Europe is one of the greatest triumphs of Mind over Matter. But the physical nature has its revenge; for the progress made tends to be of the grosser and more outward kind and its attempts at a higher or a more rapid movement bring about great wearinesses, swift exhaustions, startling recoils.
It is possible also to give the material man and his life a moderate spirituality by accustoming him to regard in a religious spirit all the institutions of life and its customary activities. The creation of such spiritualised communities in the East has been one of the greatest triumphs of Spirit over Matter. Yet here, too, there is a defect; for this often tends only to the creation of a religious temperament, the most outward form of spirituality.
--
But if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more difficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness and sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance and the eternal and divine either in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no world and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from the world's impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, sordid cares and egoistic self-content.
But the work in the world of so supreme a power as spiritual force cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can return upon the material and use it as a means of its own greater fullness. Refusing to be blinded by the dualities, the appearances, it can seek in all appearances whatsoever the vision of the same Lord, the same eternal Truth, Beauty, Love, Delight. The
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the contact of the human and individual consciousness with the divine is the very essence of Yoga. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. The contact may take place at any point of the complex and intricately organised consciousness which we call our personality. It may be effected in the physical through the body; in the vital through the action of
Bhakta, the devotee or lover of God; Bhagavan, God, the Lord of Love and Delight.
--
For it is calculated on the amount of vital or dynamic force necessary to drive the physical engine during the normal span of human life and to perform more or less adequately the various workings demanded of it by the individual life inhabiting this frame and the world-environment by which it is conditioned.
34
--
Hathayoga therefore seeks to rectify Nature and establish another equilibrium by which the physical frame will be able to sustain the inrush of an increasing vital or dynamic force of
Prana indefinite, almost infinite in its quantity or intensity. In
--
By its numerous asanas or fixed postures it first cures the body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without working them off in action and movement the vital forces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to it an extraordinary health, force and suppleness and seeks to liberate it from the habits by which it is subjected to ordinary physical
Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal operations. In the ancient tradition of Hathayoga it has always been supposed that this conquest could be pushed so far even as to conquer to a great extent the force of gravitation. By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments. These are called pran.ayama, the control of the breath or vital power; for breathing is the chief physical functioning of the vital forces. Pranayama, for the Hathayogin, serves a double purpose. First, it completes the perfection of the body. The vitality is liberated from many of the ordinary necessities of physical Nature; robust health, prolonged youth, often an extraordinary longevity are attained.
On the other hand, Pranayama awakens the coiled-up serpent of the Pranic dynamism in the vital sheath and opens to the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abnormal faculties denied to the ordinary human life while it puissantly intensifies such normal powers and faculties as he already possesses.
--
The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour. The object of physical Nature, the preservation of the mere physical life, its highest perfection, even in a certain sense the capacity of a greater enjoyment of physical living have been carried out on an abnormal scale. But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and difficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and impose so complete a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. If in return for this loss we gain another life in another world within, the mental, the dynamic, these results could have been acquired through other systems, through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less laborious methods and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the common life, for their own sake, not utilised, not thrown into the common sum of the world's activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose.
Rajayoga takes a higher flight. It aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It fixes its eyes on the citta, that stuff of mental consciousness in which all these activities arise, and it seeks, even as Hathayoga with its physical material, first to purify and to tranquillise. The normal state of man is a condition of trouble and disorder, a kingdom either at war with itself or badly governed; for the lord, the Purusha, is subjected to his ministers, the faculties, subjected even to his subjects, the instruments of sensation, emotion, action, enjoyment. Swarajya, self-rule, must be substituted for this subjection.
First, therefore, the powers of order must be helped to overcome
--
We perceive that as Hathayoga, dealing with the life and body, aims at the supernormal perfection of the physical life and its capacities and goes beyond it into the domain of the mental life, so Rajayoga, operating with the mind, aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the mental life and goes beyond it into the domain of the spiritual existence.
But the weakness of the system lies in its excessive reliance on abnormal states of trance. This limitation leads first to a certain aloofness from the physical life which is our foundation and the sphere into which we have to bring our mental and spiritual gains. Especially is the spiritual life, in this system, too much associated with the state of Samadhi. Our object is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions.
But in Rajayoga it tends to withdraw into a subliminal plane at the back of our normal experiences instead of descending and possessing our whole existence.
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.
--
healthy. For that, you must follow a physical discipline: sleep
regularly, eat regularly, exercise regularly, etc., etc. And unfortunately you refuse all discipline. This makes my task very
--
The best thing for your headache is to take plenty of physical
exercise (such as gardening for example).
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Perfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the highest results of Rajayoga and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by mankind. At any rate a full development of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by humanity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral method. Nor would these have any raison d'etre unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has evolved or is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base, and the mental life, our intermediate instrument.
Nor would the integrality to which we aspire be real or even possible, if it were confined to the individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of such an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind.
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My physical mind is not yet convinced that human life
is capable of overcoming all suffering and even death.
--
some other plane than the physical? I don't mean by
leaving the body; even when in the body, is it not possible
--
even when your physical eyes do not see me? I don't think so, for
if it were so, you would not complain of separation, you would
--
progress which life in a physical body represents, that one may
hope to be reborn in a higher organism. All defection, on the
--
not be done after death. It is the physical life which is the true
field for progress and realisation.
--
this desire to come to You physically?
I have never said anything of the kind. But you must prepare
--
If you are physically far from me and think of me all the time,
you will surely be nearer to me than if you were seated near me
--
think that I was not with you. Wherever you work, physically
near or far, I am always with you in your work and in your
--
Certainly not; quite on the contrary, to be able to conquer the desires of the vital one must have an excellent physical equilibrium
and sound health.
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
human beings: the pride and blindness of the physical mind.
8 July 1935
--
vital and the physical. But I am deeply sensible of your
kindness, my Mother, and grateful too.
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of physical Education.
Sweet Mother,
--
is physical energy, we absorb it principally through respiration,
and all that facilitates and improves respiration increases at the
same time the absorption of physical energy.
But there are many other kinds of energies, or rather many
--
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
--
form and symbol of an eternal Reality, and through the physical
appearance, it is to this higher Reality that you must turn. The
--
What is meant by the "silence of the physical consciousness"2 and how can one remain in this silence?
The physical consciousness is not only the consciousness of our
body, but of all that surrounds us as well - all that we perceive
--
of the physical world; and everyone knows how much time and
effort are needed merely to learn the things indispensable for
--
Supernature is the Nature superior to material or physical Nature - what we usually call "Nature". But this Nature that we
see, feel and study, this Nature that has been our familiar environment since our birth upon earth, is not the only one. There
--
be expressed by a quaternary: the physical, the vital, the mental
and the psychic or soul.
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of any physical embracing, as practical jokers with the tastes
and habits of street-urchins might like to suggest and who seek
01.01 - A Yoga of the Art of Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo saw that the very core of his teaching was being missed by this common interpretation of his saying. So he changed his words and said, Our Yoga is not for humanity but for the Divine. But I am afraid this change of front, this volte-face, as it seemed, was not welcomed in many quarters; for thereby all hope of having him back for the work of the country or the world appeared to be totally lost and he came to be looked upon again as an irrevocable meta physical dreamer, aloof from physical things and barren, even like the Immutable Brahman.
II
--
It is not my purpose here to enter into details as to the exact meaning of the descent, how it happens and what are its lines of activity and the results brought about. For it is indeed an actual descent that happens: the Divine Light leans down first into the mind and begins its purificatory work therealthough it is always the inner heart which first recognises the Divine Presence and gives its assent to the Divine action for the mind, the higher mind that is to say, is the summit of the ordinary human consciousness and receives more easily and readily the Radiances that descend. From the Mind the Light filters into the denser regions of the emotions and desires, of life activity and vital dynamism; finally, it gets into brute Matter itself, the hard and obscure rock of the physical body, for that too has to be illumined and made the very form and figure of the Light supernal. The Divine in his descending Grace is the Master-Architect who is building slowly and surely the many-chambered and many-storeyed edifice that is human nature and human life into the mould of the Divine Truth in its perfect play and supreme expression. But this is a matter which can be closely considered when one is already well within the mystery of the path and has acquired the elementary essentials of an initiate.
Another question that troubles and perplexes the ordinary human mind is as to the time when the thing will be done. Is it now or a millennium hence or at some astronomical distance in future, like the cooling of the sun, as someone has suggested for an analogy. In view of the magnitude of the work one might with reason say that the whole eternity is there before us, and a century or even a millennium should not be grudged to such a labour for it is nothing less than an undoing of untold millenniums in the past and the building of a far-flung futurity. However, as we have said, since it is the Divine's own work and since Yoga means a concentrated and involved process of action, effectuating in a minute what would perhaps take years to accomplish in the natural course, one can expect the work to be done sooner rather than later. Indeed, the ideal is one of here and nowhere upon this earth of material existence and now in this life, in this very bodynot hereafter or elsewhere. How long exactly that will mean, depends on many factors, but a few decades on this side or the other do not matter very much.
01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in distress does the normal man think of God and non-worldly things, the real matter, however, is that the inner life is a thing apart and follows its own line of movement, does not depend upon, is not subservient to, the kind of outer life that one may happen to live under. The Bible says indeed, "Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that mourn"... But the Upanishad declares, on the other hand, that even as one lies happily on a royal couch, bathes and anoints himself with all the perfumes of the world, has attendants all around and always to serve him, even so, one can be full of the divine consciousness from the crown of the head to the tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a poor or a prosperous life is in no direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or delay one from following the path of the ideal; nor can all your riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm it, if it chooses to walk onit can not only walk, but soar and fly with all that knapsack on its back.
If one were to be busy about reforming the world and when that was done then alone to turn to other-worldly things, in that case, one would never take the turn, for the world will never be reformed totally or even considerably in that way. It is not that reformers have for the first time appeared on the earth in the present age. Men have attempted social, political, economic and moral reforms from times immemorial. But that has not barred the spiritual attempt or minimised its importance. To say that because an ideal is apparently too high or too great for the present age, it must be kept in cold storage is to set a premium on the present nature of humanity arid eternise it: that would bind the world to its old moorings and never give it the opportunity to be free and go out into the high seas of larger and greater realisations.
The ideal or perhaps one should say the policy of Real-politick is the thing needed in this world. To achieve something actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something, is worth much more than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to be achieved in the material world? It is always an ideal. Even procuring food for each and every person, clothing and housing all is not less an ideal for all its concern about actuality. Only there are ideals and ideals; some are nearer to the earth, some seem to be in the background. But the mystery is that it is not always the ideal nearest to the earth which is the easiest to achieve or the first thing to be done first. Do we not see before our very eye show some very simple innocent social and economic changes are difficult to carry outthey bring in their train quite disproportionately gestures and movements of violence and revolution? That is because we seek to cure the symptoms and not touch the root of the disease. For even the most innocent-looking social, economic or political abuse has at its base far-reaching attitudes and life-urgeseven a spiritual outlook that have to be sought out and tackled first, if the attempt at reform is to be permanently and wholly successful. Even in mundane matters we do not dig deep enough, or rise high enough.
Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the working of the forces that act and achieve and not the external facts and events and arrangements aloneone finds that things that are achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of Brahman.
The highest ideal, the very highest which God and Nature and Man have in view, is not and cannot be kept in cold storage: it is being worked out even here and now, and it has to be worked out here and now. The ideal of the Life Divine embodies a central truth of existence, and however difficult or chimerical it may appear to be to the normal mind, it is the preoccupation of the inner being of manall other ways or attempts of curing human ills are faint echoes, masks, diversions of this secret urge at the source and heart of things. That ideal is a norm and a force that is ever dynamic and has become doubly so since it has entered the earth atmosphere and the waking human consciousness and is labouring there. It is always safer and wiser to recognise that fact, to help in the realisation of that truth and be profited by it.
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This process of a developing consciousness in Nature is precisely what is known as Evolution. It is the bringing out and fixing of a higher and higher principle of consciousness, hitherto involved and concealed behind the veil, in the earth consciousness as a dynamic factor in Nature's manifest working. Thus, the first stage of evolution is the status of inconscient Matter, of the lifeless physical elements; the second stage is that of the semi-conscious life in the plant, the third that of the conscious life in the animal, and finally the fourth stage, where we stand at present, is that of the embodied self-conscious life in man.
The course of evolution has not come to a stop with man and the next stage, Sri Aurobindo says, which Nature envisages and is labouring to bring out and establish is the life now superconscious to us, embodied in a still higher type of created being, that of the superman or god-man. The principle of consciousness which will determine the nature and build of this new, being is a spiritual principle beyond the mental principle which man now incarnates: it may be called the Supermind or Gnosis.
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The heart and its urges, the vital and its surges, the physical impulsesit is these of which the poets sang in their infinite variations. But the mind proper, that is to say, the higher reflective ideative mind, was not given the right of citizenship in the domain of poetry. I am not forgetting the so-called Meta physicals. The element of meta physics among the Meta physicals has already been called into question. There is here, no doubt, some theology, a good dose of mental cleverness or conceit, but a modern intellectual or rather rational intelligence is something other, something more than that. Even the meta physics that was commandeered here had more or less a decorative value, it could not be taken into the pith and substance of poetic truth and beauty. It was a decoration, but not unoften a drag. I referred to the Upanishads, but these strike quite a different, almost an opposite line in this connection. They are in a sense truly meta physical: they bypass the mind and the mental powers, get hold of a higher mode of consciousness, make a direct contact with truth and beauty and reality. It was Buddha's credit to have forged this missing link in man's spiritual consciousness, to have brought into play the power of the rational intellect and used it in support of the spiritual experience. That is not to say that he was the very first person, the originator who initiated the movement; but at least this seems to be true that in him and his au thentic followers the movement came to the forefront of human consciousness and attained the proportions of a major member of man's psychological constitution. We may remember here that Socrates, who started a similar movement of rationalisation in his own way in Europe, was almost a contemporary of the Buddha.
Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a priori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be more scientific, let us use the word, more matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its ivory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things human and terrestrial; made immanent in the mundane and the ephemeral, as they are commonly called. This is not an impossibility. Sri Aurobindo seems to have done the thing. In him we find the three terms of human consciousness arriving at an absolute fusion and his poetry is a wonderful example of that fusion. The three terms are the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical and the physical or sensational. The intellectual, or more generally, the mental, is the intermediary, the Paraclete, as he himself will call it later on in a poem9 magnificently exemplifying the point we are trying to make out the agent who negotiates, bridges and harmonises the two other firmaments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
Indeed it would be wrong to associate any cold ascetic nudity to the spiritual body of Sri Aurobindo. His poetry is philosophic, abstract, no doubt, but every philoso phy has its practice, every abstract thing its concrete application,even as the soul has its body; and the fusion, not mere union, of the two is very characteristic in him. The deepest and unseizable flights of thought he knows how to clo the with a Kalidasian richness of imagery, or a Keatsean gusto of sensuousness:
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We left out the Meta physicals, for they can be grouped as a set apart. They are not so much meta physical as theological, religious. They have a brain-content stirring with theological problems and speculations, replete with scintillating conceits and intricate fancies. Perhaps it is because of this philosophical burden, this intellectual bias that the Meta physicals went into obscurity for about two centuries and it is precisely because of that that they are slowly coming out to the forefront and assuming a special value with the moderns. For the modern mind is characteristically thoughtful, introspective"introvert"and philosophical; even the exact physical sciences of today are rounded off in the end with meta physics.
The growth of a philosophical thought-content in poetry has been inevitable. For man's consciousness in its evolutionary march is driving towards a consummation which includes and presupposes a development along that line. The mot d'ordre in old-world poetry was "fancy", imaginationremember the famous lines of Shakespeare characterising a poet; in modern times it is Thought, even or perhaps particularly abstract meta physical thought. Perceptions, experiences, realisationsof whatever order or world they may beexpressed in sensitive and aesthetic terms and figures, that is poetry known and appreciated familiarly. But a new turn has been coming on with an increasing insistencea definite time has been given to that, since the Renaissance, it is said: it is the growing importance of Thought or brain-power as a medium or atmosphere in which poetic experiences find a sober and clear articulation, a definite and strong formulation. Rationalisation of all experiences and realisations is the keynote of the modern mentality. Even when it is said that reason and rationality are not ultimate or final or significant realities, that the irrational or the submental plays a greater role in our consciousness and that art and poetry likewise should be the expression of such a mentality, even then, all this is said and done in and through a strong rational and intellectual stress and frame the like of which cannot be found in the old-world frankly non-intellectual creations.
--
The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting history with a significant role: it has acted as a force of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major role in man's creative activity.
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philoso phy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
--
Here we have a pattern of thought-movement that does not seem to follow the lineaments of the normal brain-mind consciousness, although it too has a basis there: our customary line of reasoning receives a sudden shock, as it were, and then is shaken, moved, lifted up, transportedgradually or suddenly, according to the temperament of the listener. Besides, we have here the peculiar modern tone, which, for want of a better term, may be described as scientific. The impressimprimaturof Science is its rational coherence, justifying or justified by sense data, by physical experience, which gives us the pattern or model of an inexorable natural law. Here too we feel we are in the domain of such natural law but lifted on to a higher level.
This is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. Normally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still the human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attri bute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the coruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential lineaments of revelatory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of the Reality. In the former there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind).
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts from the perception of a Power that is beyond the ordinary nature yet is its inevitable master, a fulcrum, as we have said, outside the earth. For what is required first is the discovery and manifestation of a new soul-consciousness in man which will bring about by the very pressure and working out of its self-rule an absolute reversal of man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway over humanity, for man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their sovereign might have to be forged in the human being and brought into play. It is a stupendous task, some would say impossible; but it is very far removed from quietism or passivism. Sri Aurobindo is in retirement, but it is a retirement only from the outward field of present physical activities and their apparent actualities, not from the true forces and action of life. It is the retreat necessary to one who has to go back into himself to conquer a new plane of creative power,an entrance right into the world of basic forces, of fundamental realities, into the flaming heart of things where all actualities are born and take their first shape. It is the discovery of a power-house of tremendous energism and of the means of putting it at the service of earthly life.
And, properly speaking, it is not at all a school, least of all a mere school of thought, that is growing round Sri Aurobindo. It is rather the nucleus of a new life that is to come. Quite naturally it has almost insignificant proportions at present to the outward eye, for the work is still of the nature of experiment and trial in very restricted limits, something in the nature of what is done in a laboratory when a new power has been discovered, but has still to be perfectly formulated in its process. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that there is a vigorous propaganda carried on in its behalf or that there is a large demand for recruits. Only the few, who possess the call within and are impelled by the spirit of the future, have a chance of serving this high attempt and great realisation and standing among its first instruments and pioneer workers.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I must say in view of something you seem to have said to your father that it is not the object of the one to be a great man or the object of the other to be a great Yogin. The ideal of human life is to establish over the whole being the control of a clear, strong and rational mind and a right and rational will, to master the emotional, vital and physical being, create a harmony of the whole and develop the capacities whatever they are and fulfil them in life. In the terms of Hindu thought, it is to enthrone the rule of the purified and sattwic buddhi, follow the dharma, fulfilling one's own svadharma and doing the work proper to one's capacities, and satisfy kama and artha under the control of the buddhi and the dharma. The object of the divine life, on the other hand, is to realise one's highest self or to realise
God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities great or small and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the highest or as a true instrument of the divine
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age. Not matter but that which forms the substance of matter, not intellect but a vaster consciousness that informs the intellect, not man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he may and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that orderthis is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged, nevertheless secretly inspires all the human activities of today. Only, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms of vital life. The intellectual and physical man gave us one aspect of the reality, but neither is the vital and psychical man the complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the viewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural and deeper movement of humanity and not as before merely with its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of humanity, in Nietzsche's phrase, was a sort of divagation from nature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of natural evolution. And the new Renaissance of today has precisely corrected this aberration of humanity and brought it again in a line with the natural cosmic order.
Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.
***
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The modern critical self-consciousness in the artist originated with the Romantics. The very essence of Romanticism is curiosity the scientist's pleasure in analysing, observing, experimenting, changing the conditions of our reactions, mental or sentimental or even nervous and physical by way of discovery of new and unforeseen or unexpected modes of "psychoses" or psychological states. Goethe, Wordsworth, Stendhal represented a mentality and initiated a movement which led logically to the age of Hardy, Housman and Bridges and in the end to that of Lawrence and Joyce, Ezra Pound and Eliot and Auden. On the Continent we can consider Flaubert as the last of the classicists married to the very quintessence of Romanticism. A hard, self-regarding, self-critical mentality, a cold scalpel-like gaze that penetrates and upturns the reverse side of things is intimately associated with the poetic genius of Mallarm and constitutes almost the whole of Valry's. The impassioned lines of a very modern poet like Aragon are also characterised by a consummate virtuosity in chiselled artistry, conscious and deliberate and willed at every step and turn.
The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Socrates is said to have brought down Philoso phy from Heaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can be ascribed to Tagore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental Reality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been brought nearer to our planet, close to human consciousness in Tagore's vision, being clothed in earth and flesh and blood, made vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily asceticism and monasticism. So Tagore boldly declared in those famous lines of his:
Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere renunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself in a thousand associations.1
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Both the poets were worshippers, idolaters, of beauty, especially of natural physical beauty, of beauty heaped on beauty, of beauty gathered, like honey from all places and stored and ranged and stalled with the utmost decorative skill. Yet the difference between the two is not less pronounced. A philosopher is reminded of Bergson, the great exponent of movement as reality, in connection with certain aspects of Tagore. Indeed, Beauty in Tagore is something moving, flowing, dancing, rippling; it is especially the beauty which music embodies and expresses. A Kalidasian beauty, on the contrary, is statuesque and plastic, it is to be appreciated in situ. This is, however, by the way.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ahana", Collected Poems & Plays, Vol. 2
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The gospel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery, although that too is indispensable, and it is something more than moral courage. In the speeches referred to, the subject-matter (as well as the manner to a large extent) is philosophical, meta physical, even abstract in outlook and treatment: they are not a call to arms, like the French National Anthem, for example; they are not merely an ethical exhortation, a moral lesson either. They speak of the inner spirit, the divine in man, the supreme realities that lie beyond. And yet the words are permeated through and through with a vibration life-giving and heroic-not so much in the explicit and apparent meaning as in the style and manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, for example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth,nec plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme:
Yasyaite himavanto mahitv
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In his inquiry into truth and certitude Pascal takes his stand upon what he calls the geometrical method, the only valid method, according to him, in the sphere of reason. The characteristic of this method is that it takes for granted certain fundamental principles and realitiescalled axioms and postulates or definitionsand proceeds to other truths that are infallibly and inevitably deduced from them, that are inherent and implied in them. There is no use or necessity in trying to demonstrate these fundamentals also; that will only land us into confusion and muddle. They have to be simply accepted, they do not require demonstration, it is they that demonstrate others. Such, for instance, are space, time, number, the reality of which it is foolishness and pedantry to I seek to prove. There is then an order of truths that do not i require to be proved. We are referring only to the order of I physical truths. But there is another order, Pascal says, equally I valid and veritable, the order of the Spirit. Here we have another set of fundamentals that have to be accepted and taken for granted, matrix of other truths and realities. It can also be called the order of the Heart. Reason posits physical fundamentals; it does not know of the fundamentals of the Heart which are beyond its reach; such are God, Soul, Immortality which are evident only to Faith.
But Faith and Reason, according to Pascal, are not contraries nor irreconcilables. Because the things of faith are beyond reason, it is not that they are irrational. Here is what Pascal says about the function and limitation of reason:
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One is not sure if such reasoning is convincing to the intellect; but perhaps it is a necessary stage in conversion. At least we can conclude that Pascal had to pass through such a stage; and it indicates the difficulty his brain had to undergo, the tension or even the torture he made it pass through. It is true, from Reason Pascal went over to Faith, even while giving Reason its due. Still it seems the two were not perfectly synthetised or fused in him. There was a gap between that was not thoroughly bridged. Pascal did not possess the higher, intuitive, luminous mind that mediates successfully between the physical discursive ratiocinative brain-mind and the vision of faith: it is because deep in his consciousness there lay this chasm. Indeed,Pascal's abyss (l' abme de Pascal) is a well-known legend. Pascal, it appears, used to have very often the vision of an abyss about to open before him and he shuddered at the prospect of falling into it. It seems to us to be an experience of the Infinity the Infinity to which he was so much attracted and of which he wrote so beautifully (L'infiniment grand et l'infiniment petit)but into which he could not evidently jump overboard unreservedly. This produced a dichotomy, a lack of integration of personality, Jung would say. Pascal's brain was cold, firm, almost rigid; his heart was volcanic, the faith he had was a fire: it lacked something of the pure light and burned with a lurid glare.
And the reason is his meta physics. It is the Jansenist conception of God and human nature that inspired and coloured all his experience and consciousness. According to it, as according to the Calvinist conception, man is a corrupt being, corroded to the core, original sin has branded his very soul. Only Grace saves him and releases him. The order of sin and the order of Grace are distinct and disparate worlds and yet they complement each other and need each other. Greatness and misery are intertwined, united, unified with each other in him. Here is an echo of the Manichean position which also involves an abyss. But even then God's grace is not a free agent, as Jesuits declare; there is a predestination that guides and controls it. This was one of the main subjects he treated in his famous open letters (Les Provinciales) that brought him renown almost overnight. Eternal hell is a possible prospect that faces the Jansenist. That was why a Night always over-shadowed the Day in Pascal's soul.
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Pascal's faith had not the calm, tranquil, serene, luminous and happy self-possession of an Indian Rishi. It was ardent and impatient, fiery and vehement. It had to be so perhaps, since it was to stand against his steely brain (and a gloomy vital or life force) as a counterpoise, even as an antidote. This tension and schism brought about, at least contri buted to his neuras thenia and physical infirmity. But whatever the effect upon his inner consciousness and spiritual achievement, his power of expression, his literary style acquired by that a special quality which is his great gift to the French language. If one speaks of Pascal, one has to speak of his language also; for he was one of the great masters who created the French prose. His prose was a wonderful blend of clarity, precision, serried logic and warmth, colour, life, movement, plasticity.
A translation cannot give any idea of the Pascalian style; but an inner echo of the same can perhaps be caught from the thought movement of these characteristic sayings of his with which we conclude:
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Our ideals have been mental constructions, rather than spiritual realitiesrealities of the deepest and highest being. And the power by which we sought to realise those ideals was mainly the insistence of our emotional urges, rather than Nature's Truth-Power. For this must be understood that the mental, the vital and the physical form a nexus of reality which works in its own inexorable law and so long as we are within them we cannot but obey the laws that guide them. Of these three strata which form the human adhara, it is the vital which holds the key to man's nature. It is the executive power, the force that fashions the realities on the physical plane; it is what creates the character. The power of thought and sentiment is often much too exaggerated, even so the power of the body, that of physical and external rules and regulations. The mental or the physical or both together can mould the vital only to a limited extent, to the extent which is allowed by the inherent law of the vital. If the demands of the mental and the physical are stretched too far and are not suffered by the vital, a crash and catastrophe is bound to come in the end.
This is the meaning of the Reformist's pessimism. So long as we remain within the domain of the triple nexus, we must always take account of an original sin, an aboriginal irredeemability in human nature. And it, is this fact which a too hasty optimistic idealism is apt to ignore. The point, however, is that man need not be necessarily bound to this triple chord of life. He can go beyond, transcend himself and find a reality which is the basis of even this lower poise of the mental and vital and physical. Only in order to get into that higher poise we must really transcend the lower, that is to say, we must not be satisfied with experiencing or envisaging it through the mind and heart but must directly commune with it, be it. There is a higher law that rules there, a power that is the truth-substance of even the vital and hence can remould it with a sovereign inevitability, according to a pattern which may not and is not the pattern of mental and emotional idealism, but the pattern of a supreme spiritual realism.
What then is required is a complete spiritual regeneration in man, a new structure of his soul and substancenot merely the realisation of the highest and supreme Truth in mental and emotional consciousness, but the translation and application of the law of that truth in the power of the vital. It is here that failed all the great spiritual or rather religious movements of the past. They were content with evoking the divine in the mental being, but left the vital becoming to be governed by the habitual un-divine or at the most to be just illumined by a distant and faint glow which served, however, more to distort than express the Divine.
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are some primary desires that seek satisfaction in man. They are the vital urges of life, the most prominent among them being the instinct of self-preservation and that of self-reproduction or the desire to preserve one's body by defensive as well as by offensive means and the desire to multiply oneself by mating. These are the two biological necessities that are inevitable to man's existence as a physical being. They give the minimum conditions required to be fulfilled by man in order that he may live and hence they are the strongest and the most fundamental elements that enter into his structure and composition.
It would have been an easy matter if these vital urges could flow on unhindered in their way. There would have been no problem at all, if they met satisfaction easily and smoothly, without having to look to other factors and forces. As a matter of fact, man does not and cannot gratify his instincts whenever and wherever he chooses and in an open and direct manner. Even in his most primitive and barbarous condition, he has often to check himself and throw a veil, in so many ways, over his sheer animality. In the civilised society the check is manifold and is frankly recognised. We do not go straight as our sexual impulsion leads, but seek to hide and camouflage it under the institution of marriage; we do not pounce upon the food directly we happen to meet it and snatch and appropriate whatever portion we get but we secure it through an elaborate process, which is known as the economic system. The machinery of the state, the cult of the kshatriya are roundabout ways to meet our fighting instincts.
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There are three lines, as the Psycho-analysts point out along which this control or censuring of the primary instincts acts. First, there is the line of Defence Reaction. That is to say, the mind automatically takes up an attitude directly contrary to the impulse, tries to shut it out and deny altogether its existence and the measure of the insistence of the impulse is also the measure of the vehemence of the denial. It is the case of the lady protesting too much. So it happens that where subconsciously there is a strong current of a particular impulse, consciously the mind is obliged to take up a counteracting opposite impulse. Thus in presence of a strong sexual craving the mind as if to guard and save itself engenders by a reflex movement an ascetic and puritanic mood. Similarly a strong unthinking physical attraction translates itself on the conscious plane as an equally strong repulsion.
Secondly, there is the line of Substitution. Here the mind does not stand in an antagonistic and protestant mood to combat and repress the impulse, but seeks to divert it into other channels, use it to other purposes which do not demand equal sacrifice, may even, on the other hand, be considered by the conscious mind as worthy of human pursuit. Thus the energy that normally would seek sexual gratification might find its outlet in the cultivation of art and literature. It is a common thing in novels to find the heroine disappointed in love taking finally to works of charity and beneficence and thus forgetting her disappointment. Another variety of this is what is known as "drowning one's sorrow in drinking."
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Thus then we may distinguish three types of control on three levels. First, the natural control, secondly the conscious, i.e. to say the mental the ethical and religious control, and thirdly the spiritual or divine control. Now the spirit is the ultimate truth and reality, behind the forces that act in the mind and in the body, so that the natural control and the ethical control are mere attempts to establish and realise the spiritual control. The animal impulses feel the hidden stress of the divine urges that are their real essence and thus there rises first an unconscious conflict in the natural life and then a conscious conflict in the higher ethical life. But when both of these are transcended and the conflict is carried on to a still higher level, then do we find their real significance and arrive at the consummation to which they move. Yoga is the ultimate transvaluation of physical (and of moral) values, it is the trans-substantiation of life-power into its spiritual substance.
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01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Close the senses. Turn within. And then go forward, that is to say, more and more inward. In that direction lies your itinerary, the journey of your consciousness. The sense-ridden secular man, who goes by his physical eye, has marked in his own way the steps of his forward march and progress. His knowledge and his power grew as he proceeded in his survey from larger masses of physical objects to their component molecules and from molecules to their component atoms and from atoms once more into electrons and protons or energy-points pure and simple, or otherwise as, in another direction, he extended his gaze from earth to the solar system, from the solar system to other starry systems, to far-off galaxies and I from galaxies to spaces beyond. The record of this double-track march to infinityas perceived or conceived by the physical sensesis marvellous, no doubt. The mystic offers the spectacle of a still more marvellous march to another kind of infinity.
Here is the Augustinian mantra taken as the motto of The Scale of Perfection: We ascend the ascending grades in our heart and we sing the song of ascension1. The journey's end is heavenly Jerusalem, the House of the Lord. The steps of this inner ascension are easily visible, not surely to the outer eye of the sense-burdened man, but to the "ghostly seeing" of the aspirant which is hazy in the beginning but slowly clears as he advances. The first step is the withdrawal from the outer senses and looking and seeing within. "Turn home again in thyself, and hold thee within and beg no more without." The immediate result is a darkness and a restless darknessit is a painful night. The outer objects of attraction and interest have been discarded, but the inner attachments and passions surge there still. If, however, one continues and persists, refuses to be drawn out, the turmoil settles down and the darkness begins to thin and wear away. One must not lose heart, one must have patience and perseverance. So when the outward world is no more-there and its call also no longer awakes any echo in us, then comes the stage of "restful darkness" or "light-some darkness". But it is still the dark Night of the soul. The outer light is gone and the inner light is not yet visible: the night, the desert, the great Nought, stretches between these two lights. But the true seeker goes through and comes out of the tunnel. And there is happiness at the end. "The seeking is travaillous, but the finding is blissful." When one steps out of the Night, enters into the deepest layer of the being, one stands face to face to one's soul, the very image of God, the perfect God-man, the Christ within. That is the third degree of our inner ascension, the entry into the deepest, purest and happiest statein which one becomes what he truly is; one finds the Christ there and dwells in love and union with him. But there is still a further step to take, and that is real ascension. For till now it has been a going within, from the outward to the inner and the inmost; now one has to go upward, transcend. Within the body, in life, however deep you may go, even if you find your soul and your union with Jesus whose tabernacle is your soul, still there is bound to remain a shadow of the sinful prison-house; the perfect bliss and purity without any earthly taint, the completeness and the crowning of the purgation and transfiguration can come only when you go beyond, leaving altogether the earthly form and worldly vesture and soar into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... above myself by overpassing only into Him." At the same time it is pointed out, this mediaeval mystic has the common sense to see that the going in and going above of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The movement of the mystic is psychological"ghostly", it is saidnot physical or carnal.
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
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Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really rejection, but a resolution, not the rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed it is a divine creature that should be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation, the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of the gods. The vision of angels and Siddhas, which man is having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the future actuality.
This then, it seems to us, is the immediate problem that Nature has set before herself. She is now at the parting of the ways. She has done with man as an essentially human being, she has brought out the fundamental possibilities of humanity and perfected it, so far as perfection may be attained within the cadre by which she chose to limit herself; she is now looking forward to another kind of experiment the evolving of another life, another being out of her entrails, that will be greater than the humanity we know today, that will be superior even to the supreme that has yet been actualised.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of physical Education. He began writing to the Mother at the
age of nineteen.
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The annual demonstration of physical culture, held at the Ashram Sportsground.
"The Titans are stronger than the gods because they have agreed with God to front
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problem and various possible methods of physical education. The fundamental problem is this: how can we
The Queen of Jhansi who died on the battlefield in 1858 while fighting British
--
In a discussion with a friend about our physical
education programme and the countless other activities we have here, he asked me: "Can you give me a
--
it is utterly indispensable, as in physical education, for example.
21 July 1963
--
Just as there are tangible and concrete bodily exercises and disciplines for physical culture, is there not
something tangible and concrete for the progress of the
--
with it. physically, continue with what you are doing, develop
and control your body methodically, make yourself useful by
--
is why we have so much physical and bodily suffering.14
Is it really the cause? Does food have such an important
--
the physical life and you understand and appreciate only that.
The two extremes always alternate in experience until one has
--
for mental and physical education, isn't there a similar
method to progress towards Sri Aurobindo's yoga? It
--
for physical, mental and vital development; but this mechanical
"Experience in thy soul the truth of the Scripture; afterwards, if thou wilt, reason
--
in the physical world.
The "supreme and radical" change of the whole nature
--
What he means is that when one will have the power to withdraw the physical body from the influence of death, the power of
transformation will be such that one will also be able to change
--
politically, morally and physically, mustn't she?
Without any doubt - and just now, there is much to be done!
--
a need for physical closeness? What is the value of this
physical contact?
(1) When one is more conscious in the physical than in the vital
and mental, the physical relation seems more real and tangible.
(2) For those who have seriously begun the yoga in the body,
the physical relation is of course a powerful aid.
I ask the first to make an effort to establish not only a psychic
--
I try to teach the others to widen their physical consciousness
so as to be able to benefit from my physical presence even at a
distance.
--
emptiness inside. Even if one has all the physical comforts, there is still something missing. One doesn't feel
very joyful. One wants to come back as soon as possible.
--
When You are physically stricken, I always feel very
sad. I tell myself that it is not an ordinary illness, that
it is an experience leading towards physical transformation. But when I think of Your suffering body, I am
sad. And then, is this not part of the Sacrifice of the
01.10 - Nicholas Berdyaev: God Made Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Eastern spirituality does not view sorrow and sufferingevilas an integral part of the Divine Consciousness. It is born out of the Divine, no doubt, as nothing can be outside the Divine, but it is a local and temporal formation; it is a disposition consequent upon certain conditions and with the absence or elimination of those conditions, this disposition too disappears. God and the Divine Consciousness can only be purity, light, immortality and delight. The compassion that a Buddha feels for the suffering humanity is not at all a feeling of suffering; pain or any such normal human reaction does not enter into its composition; it is the movement of a transcendent consciousness which is beyond and purified of the normal reactions, yet overarching them and entering into them as a soothing and illumining and vivifying presence. The healer knows and understands the pain and suffering of his patient but is not touched by them; he need not contract the illness of his patient in order to be in sympathy with him. The Divine the Soulcan be in flesh and yet not smirched with its mire; the flesh is not essentially or irrevocably the ooze it is under certain given conditions. The divine physical body is composed of radiant matter and one can speak of it even as of the soul that weapons cannot pierce it nor can fire burn it.
***
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"The touch of Earth is always reinvigorating to the son of Earth, even when he seeks a supra physical Knowledge. It may even be said that the supra physical can only be really mastered in its fullnessto its heights we can always reachwhen we keep our feet firmly on the physical. 'Earth is His footing' says the Upanishad, whenever it images the Self that manifests in the universe." Huxley's commentary is as follows:
"To its heights we can always come. For those of us who are still splashing about in the lower ooze, the phrase has a rather ironical ring. Nevertheless, in the light of even the most distant acquaintance with the heights and the fullness, it is possible to understand what its author means. To discover the Kingdom of God exclusively within oneself is easier than to discover it, not only there, but also in the outer worlds of minds and things and living creatures. It is easier because the heights within reveal themselves to those who are ready to exclude from their purview all that lies without. And though this exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fullness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusivelyto realise the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental."
01.11 - The Basis of Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In India the spirit of renascence came very late, late almost by three centuries; and even then it could not flood the whole of the continent in all its nooks and corners, psychological and physical. There were any number of pockets (to use a current military phrase) left behind which guarded the spirit of the past and offered persistent and obdurate resistance. Perhaps, such a dispensation was needed in India and inevitable also; inevitable, because the religious spirit is closest to India's soul and is its most direct expression and cannot be uprooted so easily; needed, because India's and the world's future demands it and depends upon it.
Only, the religious spirit has to be bathed and purified and enlightened by the spirit of the renascence: that is to say, one must learn and understand and realize that Spirit is the thing the one thing needfulTamevaikam jnatha; 'religions' are its names and forms, appliances and decorations. Let us have by all means the religious spirit, the fundamental experience that is the inmost truth of all religions, that is the matter of our soul; but in our mind and life and body let there be a luminous catholicity, let these organs and instruments be trained to see and compare and appreciate the variety, the numberless facets which the one Spirit naturally presents to the human consciousness. Ekam sat viprh bahudh vadanti. It is an ancient truth that man discovered even in his earliest seekings; but it still awaits an adequate expression and application in life.
--
Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and vital formation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering the physical world for the Lord, a temperament which Indian spirituality had not, or had lost long before, if she had anything of it. This was, perhaps, what Vivekananda meant when he spoke graphically of a Hindu soul with a Muslim body. The Islamic dispensation, however, brings with it not only something complementary, but also something contradictory, if not for anything else, at least for the strong individuality which does not easily yield to assimilation. Still, in spite of great odds, the process of assimilation was going on slowly and surely. But of late it appears to have come to a dead halt; difficulties have been presented which seem insuperable.
If religious toleration were enough, if that made up man's highest and largest achievement, then Nature need not have attempted to go beyond cultural fusion; a liberal culture is the surest basis for a catholic religious spirit. But such a spirit of toleration and catholicity, although it bespeaks a widened consciousness, does not always enshrine a profundity of being. Nobody is more tolerant and catholic than a dilettante, but an ardent spiritual soul is different.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Eliot's is a very Christian soul, but we must remember at the same time that he is nothing if not modern. And this modernism gives all the warp and woof woven upon that inner core. How is it characterised? First of all, an intellectualism that requires a reasoned and rational synthesis of all experiences. Another poet, a great poet of the soul's Dark Night was, as we all know, Francis Thompson: it was in his case not merely the soul's night, darkness extended even to life, he lived the Dark Night actually and physically. His haunting, weird lines, seize within their grip our brain and mind and very flesh
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,5
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not a mere notion or superstition, it is an occult reality that gives sanctity to a particular place or region. The saintly soul has always been also a pilgrim, physically, to holy places, even to one single holy place, if he so chooses. The puritan poet may say tauntingly:
Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek In Golgotha him dead who lives in heaven
--
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instruments of a higher illumination.
All elemental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are elemental and fundamental, although apparently simple and commonplace.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Unless one practises yoga in the physical being (outer being), it
remains ignorant - even its aspiration is ignorant and so is its
--
time to do all that You do? Perhaps physical time does
not exist for You!
--
But in any case, mutual misunderstanding and lack of collaboration can only come from the outer physical and vital being
which is formed in this life and is not yet under the rule and
--
the physical body.
20 September 1967
--
These words do not apply to the physical world as it is at present.
The explanation is only an approximation. Still, one can
--
Besides, although he has not taken up another physical
body, the Buddha himself has returned to work in the earthatmosphere.
--
three of them because there is a physical mind, a vital mind and
a mental mind.
--
yoga is not an escape from the physical consciousness but a
divinisation of that consciousness.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have seen that I am not able to force my physical
body to do a little better than my actual capacity. I would
--
What is the difference between sports and physical
education?
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.
--
and manifests the physical being.
Ordinarily, one becomes aware of the presence of this consciousness only when one has to face some danger or an unexpected event or a great sorrow.
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The more the psychic has taken part in these physical lives
on earth, the more numerous and precise its memories are.
--
The first condition is to have a physical nature that gives
energy rather than draws energy from others.
--
vital and the physical have to be free of all desire - otherwise
one is courting disaster.
--
The first thing the physical consciousness must understand is
that all the difficulties we meet with in life come from the fact
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
She has come, bringing with Her a splendor of power and love, an intensity of divine joy heretofore unknown to the Earth. The physical atmosphere has been completely changed by her descent, permeated with new and marvelous possibilities.
But if She is ever to reside and act here, She has to find at least a minimal receptivity, at least one human being with the required vital and physical qualities, a kind of super-Parsifal gifted with an innate and integral purity, yet possessing at the same time a body strong enough and poised enough to bear unwaveringly the intensity of the Ananda She brings.
Thus far, She has not found what is needed. Men remain obstinately men and do not want to or are unable to become supermen. All they can receive and express is a love at their own dimension: a human lovewhereas the supreme bliss of divine Ananda eludes their perception.
--
But the vibrations of divine Bliss and those of pleasure cannot cohabit in the same vital and physical house. We must therefore TOTALLY renounce all feelings of pleasure to be ready to receive the divine Ananda. But rare are those who can renounce pleasure without thereby renouncing all active participation in life or sinking into a stern asceticism. And among those who realize that the transformation is to be wrought in active life, some pretend that pleasure is a form of Ananda gone more or less astray and legitimize their search for self-satisfaction, thereby creating a virtually insuperable obstacle to their own transformation.
Now, if there is anything else you wish to ask me Anyone may ask, anyoneanyone who has something to saynot just the students.
--
Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went awaybecause on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change.
But if a force like Hers could manifest and be received here, it would have INESTIMABLE results!
0 1955-06-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Your case is not unique; there are others (and among the best and the most faithful) who are likewise a veritable battlefield for the forces opposing the advent of the truth. They feel powerless in this battle, sorrowful witnesses, victims without the strength to fight, for this is taking place in that part of the physical consciousness where the supramental forces are not yet fully active, although I am confident they soon will be. Meanwhile, the only remedy is to endure, to go through this suffering and to await patiently the hour of liberation.
While reading your prayer, I too prayed that it be heard.
0 1956-03-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Note written by Mother in French. At this period, Mother's back was already bent. This straightening of her back seems to be the first physiological effect of the 'Supramental Manifestation' of February 29, which is perhaps the reason why Mother noted down the experience under the name 'Agenda of the Supramental Action on Earth.' It was the first time Mother gave a title to what would become this fabulous document of 13 volumes. The experience took place during a 'translation class' when, twice a week, Mother would translate the works of Sri Aurobindo into French before a group of disciples.
AGENDA OF THE SUPRAMENTAL ACTION ON EARTH
0 1956-05-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But for this only like can know like. Only the Supramental Consciousness in an individual can perceive the Supramental acting in the earth atmosphere. Those who, for whatever reason, have developed this perception can see it. But those who are not even remotely conscious of their inner beings, who would be quite at a loss to say what their souls look like, are certainly not ready to perceive the difference in the earth atmosphere. They still have quite a way to go for that. Because, for those whose consciousness is more or less exclusively centered in the outer beingmental, vital and physicalthings need to have an absurd or unexpected appearance to be noticeable. And then they call it a miracle.
But we do not call a miracle the constant miracle of the forces that intervene to change circumstances and human natures and which have very far-reaching consequences, for we see only the appearance, and this appearance seems quite natural. But in truth, if you were to reflect upon the least thing that happens, you would be forced to acknowledge that it is miraculous.
0 1956-08-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
In fact, following the 'Supramental Manifestation' of February 29, 1956, all of Mother's physical difficulties increased, as though all the obscurities in the physical consciousness were surging forth beneath the pressure of the new light. The same observation applies to the disciples who were around Mother and undoubtedly to the world as a whole. A strange 'mysterious acceleration' was beginning to take hold of the world.
***
0 1956-09-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
A light, not like the golden light of the Supermind: rather a kind of phosphorescence. I felt that had it been night, it would have been physically visible.
And it was denser than my physical body: the physical body seemed to me almost unrealas though crumblylike sand running through your fingers.
I would have been incapable of speaking, words seemed so petty, narrow, ignorant.
--
I had had a somewhat similar experience at the time of the union of the supreme creative principle with the physical consciousness. But that was a subtle experience, while this was materialin the body.
I did not have the experience, I did not look at it: I WAS it.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
This vision took place early in the night and woke me up with a rather unpleasant feeling. Then I fell back to sleep and forgot about it; but a little while ago, when I was thinking of the question put to me, it returned. It returned with a great intensity and so imperatively that now, just as I wanted to tell you what kind of collectivity we wish to realize according to the ideal described by Sri Aurobindo in the last chapter of The Life Divinea gnostic, supramental collectivity, the only kind that can do Sri Aurobindos integral yoga and be realized physically in a progressive collective body becoming more and more divine the recollection of this vision became so imperative that I couldnt speak.
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an immense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to another plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet there was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life.
--
She clearly remembered where her room was, but each time she set out to go there, either the staircase disappeared or things were so changed that she could no longer find her way! So she went here and there, up and down, searched, went in and out but it was impossible to find the way to her room! Since all of this assumed a physical appearanceas I said, a very familiar and very common appearance, as is always the case in these symbolic visions there was somewhere (how shall I put it?) the hotels administrative office and a woman who seemed to be the manager, who had all the keys and who knew where everyone was staying. So the daughter went to this person and asked her, Could you show me the way to my room?But of course! Easily! Everyone around the manager looked at her as if to say, How can you say that? However, she got up, and with authority asked for a key the key to the daughters roomsaying, I shall take you there. And off she went along all kinds of paths, but all so complicated, so bizarre! The daughter was following along behind her very attentively, you see, so as not to lose sight of her. But just as they should have come to the place where the daughters room was supposed to be, suddenly the manageress (let us call her the manageress), both the manageress and her key vanished! And the sense of this vanishing was so acute that at the same time, everything vanished!
So to help you understand this enigma, let me tell you that the mother is physical Nature as she is, and the daughter is the new creation. The manageress is the worlds organizing mental consciousness as Nature has developed it thus far, that is, the most advanced organizing sense to have manifested in the present state of material Nature. This is the key to the vision.
Naturally, when I awoke, I immediately knew what could resolve this problem which appeared so absolutely insoluble. The vanishing of the manageress and her key was an obvious sign that she was altogether incapable of leading what could be called the creative consciousness of the new world to its true place.
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But with the supramental manifestation, something new has taken place in the body: it feels it is its own master, autonomous, with its two feet solidly on the ground, as it were. This gives a physical impression of the whole being suddenly drawing itself up, with its head lifted high I am my own master.
We live perennially with a burden on our shoulders, something that bows our heads down, and we feel pulled, led by all kinds of external forces, we dont know by whom or what, nor where tothis is what men call Fate, Destiny. When you do yoga, one of the first experiences the experience of the kundalini, as it is called here in Indiais precisely one in which the consciousness rises, breaks through this hard lid, here, at the crown of the head, and at last you emerge into the Light. Then you see, you know, you decide and you realizedifficulties may still remain, but truly speaking one is above them. Well, as a result of the supramental manifestation, it is THIS experience that came into the body. The body straightened its head up and felt its freedom, its independence.
0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The qualities more particularly required for the tests of physical Nature are endurance and plasticity, cheerfulness and fearlessness.
For the spiritual tests: aspiration, confidence, idealism, enthusiasm and generosity in self-giving.
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
There is a whole gradation of planes of consciousness, from the physical consciousness to my radiant consciousness at the very highest level, that which knows the Will of the Supreme. I keep all these planes of consciousness in front of me, working simultaneously, coordinatedly, and I am acting on each plane, gathering the information proper to each plane, so as to have the integral truth of things. Thus, when I have a decision to make in regard to one of you, I plug into you directly from that level of the supreme consciousness which sees the deep truth of your being. But at the same time, my decision is shaped, as it were, by the information given to me by the other planes of consciousness and particularly by the physical consciousness, which acts as a recorder.
This physical consciousness records all it sees, all your reactions, your thoughts, all the factswithout preference, without prejudice, without personal will. Nothing escapes it. Its work is almost mechanical. Therefore I know what to tell or to ask you according to the integral truth of your being and its present possibilities. Ordinarily, in the normal man, the physical consciousness does not see things as they are, for three reasons: because of ignorance, because of preference, and because of an egoistic will. You color what you see, eliminate what displeases you. In short, you see only what you desire to see.
Now, I recently had a very striking experience: a discrepancy occurred between my physical consciousness and the consciousness of the world. In some instances decisions made in the Light and the Truth produced unexpected results, upheavals in the consciousness of others that were neither foreseen nor desired, and I did not understand. No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand and I emphasize this word understand. At last, I had to leave my highest consciousness and pull myself down into the physical consciousness to find out what was happening. And there, in my head, I saw what appeared to be a little cell bursting, and suddenly I understood: the recording had been defective. The physical consciousness had neglected to register certain of your lower reactions. It could not have been through preference or through personal will (these things were eliminated from my consciousness long, long ago). But I saw that this most material consciousness was already completely permeated with the transforming supramental truth, and it could no longer follow the rhythm of normal life. It was much more attuned to the true consciousness than to the world! I couldnt possibly blame it for lagging behind; on the contrary, it was in front, too far ahead! There was a discrepancy between the rhythm of the transformation of my being and the worlds own rhythm. The supramental action on the world is slow, it does not act directlyit acts by infiltration, by traversing the successive layers, and the results are slow to come about. So I had to pull myself violently down in order to wait for the others.
One must at times know how not to know.
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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, #Integral Yoga
The supramental world exists in a permanent way, and I am there permanently in a supramental body. I had proof of this today when my earthly consciousness went there and consciously remained there between two and three oclock in the afternoon: I now know that for the two worlds to join in a constant and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone has yet to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built. When formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. And similarly, when I am on this side that is, in the realm of the physical consciousness and I see the supramental power, the supramental light and substance constantly permeating matter, I am seeing and participating in the construction of this zone.
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.
--
But one thing and I wish to stress this point to youwhich now seems to me to be the most essential difference between our world and the supramental world (and it is only after having gone there consciously, with the consciousness that ordinarily works here, that this difference appeared to me in what might be called its enormity): everything here, except for what happens within and at a very deep level, seemed absolutely artificial to me. Not one of the values of ordinary physical life is based upon truth. Just as we have to buy cloth, sew it together, then put it on our backs in order to dress ourselves, likewise we have to take things from outside and then put them inside our bodies in order to feed ourselves. For everything, our life is artificial.
A true, sincere, spontaneous life, as in the supramental world, is a springing forth of things through the fact of conscious will, a power over substance that shapes this substance according to what we decide it should be. And he who has this power and this knowledge can obtain whatever he wants, whereas he who does not has no artificial means of getting what he desires.
0 1958-02-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The only thing in the world that still appears intolerable to me now is all physical deterioration, physical suffering, the ugliness the powerlessness to express this capacity of beauty inherent in every being. But this, too, will be conquered one day. Here, too the power will come one day to shift the needle a little. Only, one has to climb higher in consciousness: the deeper into matter you want to descend, the higher must you ascend in consciousness.
It will take time. Sri Aurobindo was surely right when he spoke of a few centuries.
0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
As for me, I am totally out of my element in this new life, as though I were uprooted from myself. I am living in the temple, in the midst of pujas,1 with white ashes on my forehead, barefoot dressed like a Hindu, sleeping on cement at night, eating impossible curries, with some good sunburns to complete the cooking. And there I am, clinging to you, for if you were not there I would collapse, so absurd would it all be. You are the only realityhow many times have I repeated this to myself, like a litany! Apart from this, I am holding up quite well physically. But inside and outside, nothing is left but you. I need you, thats all. Mother, this world is so horrifyingly empty. I really feel that I would evaporate if you werent there. Well, no doubt I had to go through this experience Perhaps I will be able to extract some book from it that will be of use to you. We are like children who need a lot of pictures in order to understand, and a few good kicks to realize our complete stupidity.
Swami must soon take to the road again, through Ceylon, towards March 20 or 25. So I shall go wandering with him until May; towards the beginning of May, he will return to India. I hope to have learned my lesson by then, and to have learned it well. Inwardly, I have understood that there is only you but its these problem children on the surface who must be made to toe the line once and for all.
0 1958-05-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I saw and understood very well that by concentrating, I could have given it the attitude of the absolute authority of the eternal Mother. When Sri Aurobindo told me, You are She, at the same time he bestowed upon my body this attitude of absolute authority. But as I had the inner vision of this truth, I concerned myself very little with the imperfections of the physical body I didnt bother about that, I only used it as an instrument. Sri Aurobindo did the sadhana for this body, which had only to remain constantly open to his action.1
Afterwards, when he left and I had to do the Yoga myself, to be able to take his physical place, I could have adopted the attitude of the sage, which is what I did since I was in an unparalleled state of calm when he left. As he left his body and entered into mine, he told me, You will continue, you will go right to the end of the work. It was then that I imposed a calm upon this body the calm of total detachment. And I could have remained like that.
But in a way, absolute calm implies withdrawal from action, so a choice had to be made between one or the other. I said to myself, I am neither exclusively this nor exclusively that. And actually, to do Sri Aurobindos work is to realize the Supramental on earth. So I began that work and, as a matter of fact, this was the only thing I asked of my body. I told it, Now you shall set right everything which is out of order and gradually realize this intermediate supermanhood between man and the supramental being or, in other words, what I call the superman.
--
In a considerable number of people, it is their body, the physical body, that obstinately resists.
The difficulty is greater for Westerners than for Indians. Its as though their substance were steeped in falsehood. It also happens with Indians, of course, but generally the falsehood is much more in the vital than in the physicalbecause after all, the physical has been utilized by bodies belonging to enlightened beings. The European substance seems steeped in rebellion; in the Indian substance this rebelliousness is subdued by an influence of surrender. The other day, someone was telling me about some Europeans with whom he corresponds, and I said, But tell them to read, to learn, to follow The Synthesis of Yoga!it leads you straight to the path. Whereupon he replied, Oh, but they say its full of talk on surrender, surrender, always surrender and they want none of it.
They want none of it! Even if the mind accepts, the body and the vital refuse. And when the body refuses, it refuses with the stubbornness of a stone.
--
No. From the minute it is conscious, it is conscious of its own falsehood! It is conscious of this law, of that law, of this third law that fourth law, this tenth laweverything is a law. We are subject to physical laws: this will produce such and such a result if you do that, this will happen, etc. Oh! It reeks! I know it well. I know it very well. These laws reek of falsehood. In the body, we have no faith in the divine Grace, none, none, none, none! Those who have not undergone a tapasya2 as I have, say, Yes, all these inner moral things, feelings, psychology, all that is very good; we want the Divine and we are ready to But all the same, material facts are material facts, they have their concrete reality, after all an illness is an illness, food is food, and everything you do has a consequence, and when you are bah, bah, bah, bah, bah!
We must understand that this isnt trueit isnt true, its a falsehood, all this is sheer falsehood. It is NOT TRUE, it is not true!
--
From the negative point of view I mean the difficulties to be overcomeone of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially. All this is an unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that remains independent and absolute even in the face of the eternal divine Reality.
And it is so automatic that it is unconscious.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
From that moment on, I was conscious that all one does is the expression of the indwelling Divine Will. But it is the Divine Will AT THE VERY CENTER of oneself, although for a while there remained an activity in the physical mind. But this was stilled two or three days after I saw Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1914, and it never started up again. Silence settled. And the consciousness was established above the head.
In the first experience [of 1910], the consciousness was established in the psychic depths of the being, and from that poise issued the feeling of no longer doing anything but what the Divine wantedit was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that there was no longer any personal will, although there was still some mental activity and everything had to be made silent. In 1914, it was silenced, and the consciousness was established above the head. Here (the heart) and here (above the head), the connection is constant.
--
It is the result of the descent of the supramental substance into Matter. Only this substancewhat it has put into physical Mattercould have made it possible. It is a new ferment. From the material standpoint, it removes from physical Matter its tamas, the heaviness of its unconsciousness, and from the psychological standpoint, its ignorance and its falsehood. Matter is subtilized. But it has surely come only as a first experience to show how it will be.
It is truly a state of absolute omniscience and omnipotence in the body which changes all the vibrations around it.
0 1958-08-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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 1958-08-29, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
At the Thursday evening meditation, he appeared as the Guru of Tantric Initiation, magnified and seated upon a symbolic representation of the forces and riches of material Nature (in the middle of the playground, to my left), and he put into my hand something sufficiently material for me to feel the vibrations physically, and it had a great realizing power. It was a kind of luminous and very vibrant globe which I held in my hands during the whole meditation.
S, who was sitting in front of me, spontaneously asked me afterwards what I had been holding in my hands during the meditation, and she described it thus: It was round, very soft and luminous like the moon.
0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Just recently one day, the contact became entirely physical, the whole body was in great exaltation, and I noticed that other lines were spontaneously being added to this Dieu de bont et de misricorde, and I noted them down. It was a springing forth of states of consciousness not words.
Seigneur, Dieu de bont et de misricorde
--
So each one must find something that acts on himself, individually. I am only speaking of the action on the physical plane, because mentally, vitally, in all the inner parts of the being, the aspiration is always, always spontaneous. I am referring only to the physical plane.
The physical seems to be more open to something that is repetitious for example, the music we play on Sundays, which has three series of combined mantras. The first is that of Chandi, addressed to the universal Mother:
Ya devi sarvabhuteshu matrirupena sansthita
--
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 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The other day when I was in this state of concentration, I had the vision that I mentioned to you. I felt I was being pulled, that something was pulling me and trying to draw my attention. I felt it very strongly. So I opened my eyes, my mental eyes (the physical eyes may remain opened or closed, it makes no difference either way; when I am concentrated, things on the physical plane no longer exist), I deliberately opened the minds eyes, for that is where I felt myself being pulled, and then I had this vision I told you of. Someone was trying to draw my attention, to tell me something. It takes someone really quite powerful, with a very great power of concentration, to do thatthere are certainly a great many people here and elsewhere who try to do this, yet I dont feel a thing.3
In the outer, practical domain, I might suddenly think of someone, so I know that this person is calling or thinking of me. When you left on your trip, I created a special link-up so that if ever, at any moment, you called me for anything, I would know it instantly, and I remained attentive and alert. But I do that only in exceptional cases. Generally speaking, when I havent made this special link-up, things keep coming in and coming in and coming in and coming in, and the answer goes out automatically, here or there or there or therehundreds and hundreds of things that I dont keep in my memory because then it would really be frightful. I dont keep these things in my consciousness; it is rather a work that is done automatically.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
In all religious and especially occult initiations, the ritual of the different ceremonies is prescribed in every detail; all the words pronounced, all the gestures made have their importance, and the least infraction of the rule, the least fault committed can have fatal consequences. It is the same in material lifeif one had the initiation into the true way of living, one could transform physical existence.
If we consider the body as the tabernacle of the Lord, then medical science, for example, becomes the initiatory ritual of the service of the temple, and doctors of all kinds are the officiating priests in the different rituals of worship. Thus, medicine is really a priesthood and should be treated as such.
The same can be said of physical culture and of all the sciences that are concerned with the body and its workings. If the material universe is considered as the outer sheath and the manifestation of the Supreme, then it can generally be said that all the physical sciences are the rituals of worship.
We always come back to the same thing: the absolute necessity for perfect sincerity, perfect honesty and a sense of the dignity of all we do so that we may do it as it should be done.
If we could truly, perfectly know all the details of the ceremony of life, the worship of the Lord in physical life, it would be wonderfulto know, and no longer to err, never again to err. To perform the ceremony as perfectly as an initiation.
To know life utterly Oh, there is a very interesting thing in this regard! And its strange, but this particular knowledge reminds me of one of my Sutras1 (which I read out, but no one understood or understood only vaguely, like that):
0 1958-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
10) When an abyss separates the true being from the physical being, Nature immediately fills it with all the hostile suggestions, of which the most deadly is fear and the most pernicious, doubt.
I wrote that before reading Sri Aurobindos aphorism on the sentinels of Nature.1 I found it very interesting and I said to myself, Well! Thats exactly what came to me!
0 1958-10-25 - to go out of your body, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
All these regions, all these realms are filled with beings who exist separately in their own realms, and if you are awake and conscious on a given plane for example, if while going out of a more material body you awaken on some higher planeyou can have the same relationship with the things and people of that plane as with the things and people of the material world. In other words, there exists an entirely objective relationship that has nothing to do with your own idea of things. Naturally, the resemblance becomes greater and greater as you draw nearer the physical world, the material world, and there is even a moment when one region can act directly upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the kingdoms of the overmind, you find a concrete reality entirely independent of your personal experience; whenever you come back to it, you again find the same things, with some differences that may have occurred DURING YOUR ABSENCE. And your relationships with the beings there are identical to those you have with physical beings, except that they are more flexible, more supple and more direct (for example, there is a capacity to change the outer form, the visible form, according to your inner state), but you can make an appointment with someone, come to the meeting and again find the same being, with only certain differences that may have occurred during your absence but it is absolutely concrete, with absolutely concrete results.
However, you must have at least a little experience of these things to understand them. Otherwise, if you are convinced that all this is just human fancy or mental formations, if you believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have imagined them to be like that, or that they have such and such defects or qualities because men have envisioned it that wayas with all those who say God is created in the image of man and exists only in human thoughtall such people wont understand, it will seem absolutely ridiculous to them, a kind of madness. You must live a little, touch the subject a little to know how concrete it is.
--
There are subtle bodies and subtle worlds that correspond to these bodies; it is what the psychological method calls states of consciousness, but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult process consists in becoming aware of these various inner states of being, or subtle bodies, and of mastering them sufficiently to be able to make one come out of the other, successively. For there is a whole hierarchy of increasing subtletiesor decreasing, depending upon the direction and the occult process consists in making a more subtle body come out from a denser body, and so forth, right to the most ethereal regions. You go out through successive exteriorizations into more and more subtle bodies or worlds. Each time it is rather like passing into another dimension. In fact, the fourth dimension of the physicists is only the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge.
To give another comparison, it could be said that the physical body is at the centerit is the most material and the most condensed, as well as the smallestand the more subtle inner bodies increasingly overlap the limits of this central physical body; they pass through it and extend further and further out, like water evaporating from a porous vase which creates a kind of steam all around it. And the more subtle it is, the more its extension tends to fuse with that of the universe: you finally become universal. It is an entirely concrete process that makes the invisible worlds an objective experience and even allows you to act in those worlds.
In Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's terminology, 'psychic' or 'psychic being' means the soul or the portion of the Supreme in man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. The soul is a special capacity or grace of human beings on earth.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
And so, physically, the body followed. My body has been taught to express the inner experience to a certain extent. In the body there is the body-force or the body-form or the body-spirit (according to the different schools, it bears a different name), and this is what leaves the body last when one dies, usually taking a period of seven days to leave.2 With special training, it can acquire a conscious lifeindependent and consciousto such a degree that not only in a state of trance (in trance, it frequently happens that one can speak and move if one is slightly trained or educated), but even in a cataleptic state it can produce sounds and even make the body move. Thus, through training, the body begins to have somnambulistic capacitiesnot an ordinary somnambulism, but it can live an autonomous life.3 This is what took place, yesterday evening it was like that I had gone out of my body, but my body was participating. And then I was pulled downwards: my hand, which had been on the arm of the chair, slipped down, then the other hand, then my head was almost touching my knees! (The consciousness was elsewhere, I saw it from outsideit was not that I didnt know what I was doing, I saw it from outside.) So I said, In any case, this has to stop somewhere because if it continues, my head (laughing) is going to be on the ground! And I thought, But what is there at the bottom of this hole?
Scarcely had these words been formulated when there I was, at the bottom of the hole! And it was absolutely as if a tremendous, almighty spring were there, and then (Mother hits the table) vrrrm! I was cast out of the abyss into a vastness. My body immediately sat straight up, head on high, following the movement. If someone had been watching, this is what he would have seen: in a single bound, vrrrm! Straight up, to the maximum, my head on high.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The other indication is what I told you the other day. When you thought of leaving to join Swami, I immediately saw a stream of light: Ah, the road is opening up! So I said, It is good. And while you were away in Ceylon, I followed you from day to day. You called much more than the second time, when you were in the Himalayas; and with the physical hardships you were undergoing, I was very, very close to you I constantly felt what was happening.
And then I saw a GREAT light, like a glory, when you were at Rameswaram. A great light. And when you returned here, this light was upon you, very strong and imposing. But at the same time, I felt that it needed protectingto be shielded, protected that it was not yet established. Established, ready to resist all that decomposes an experience. I would have liked to have kept you apart, under a glass case, but then I saw that this would have drawbacks as well as advantages. Also, I liked the way you wanted to fight against an uncomprehending reception due to your orange robes and your shaved head. Of course, it was a much shorter path than the other, but it was more difficult.
And then, more and more, I felt that if what I saw, as I saw it, could be realized I saw two things: a journeynot at all a pilgrimage as it is commonly understooda journey towards solitude in arduous conditions, and a sojourn in a very severe solitude, facing the mountains, in arduous physical conditions. The contact with this majesty of Nature has a great influence upon the ego at certain moments: it has the power to dissolve it. But all this complication, all these organized pilgrimages, all that it brings in the whole petty side of human life which spoils everything
Yes, that whole journey was odious
--
But do you feel it as something to do physically?
Yes, I dont know, this project of the Belgian Congo,4 for example, it seemed to me
--
I dont know. Thats not how I see it, in any case To live in the forest physically, an intense physical life where one is free, where one is pure, where one is far away Above all, to stop this thing from grinding on, finished with the head, and finished with thinking whatever it might be. If there is a yoga, it would be done spontaneously, naturally, physically, and without the least questioning from up thereabove all, a complete cessation of that (the head).
The first tantric guru whom the disciple joined in Ceylon and with whom he travelled in the Himalayas.
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
For example, one thing had always appeared unimportant to me in actionintermediaries between the spiritualized individual being, the conscious soul, and the Supreme. According to my personal experience, it had always seemed to me that if one is exclusively turned towards the Supreme in all ones actions and expresses Him directly, whatever is to be done is done automatically. For example, if you are always open and if at each second you consciously want to express only what the Supreme Lord wants to be expressed, it is done automatically. But with all that I have learned about pujas, about certain scriptures and certain rituals as well, the necessity for a process has become very clear to me. Its the same as in physical life; in physical life, everything needs a process, as we know, and it is the knowledge of processes that constitutes physical science. Similarly, in a more occult working, the knowledge and especially the RESPECT for the process seem to be much more important than I had first thought.
And when I studied this, when I looked at this science of processes, of intermediaries, suddenly I clearly understood the working of karma, which I had not understood before. I had worked and intervened quite often to change someones karma, but sometimes I had to wait, without exactly knowing why the result was not immediate. I simply used to wait without worrying about the reasons for this slowness or delay. Thats how it was. And generally it ended, as I said, with the exact vision of the karmas source, its initial cause; and scarcely would I have this vision when the Power would come, and the thing would be dissolved. But I didnt bother about finding out why it was like that.
--
It remains to be seen if all this has first to be mastered before there is even the possibility of holding the Supramental, of FIXING it in the manifestation. That is the great difference. For example, those with the power to materialize forces or beings lack the capacity to fix them, for these are fluid things which act and are then dissolved. That is the difference with the physical world where it is this condensation of energy that makes things (Mother strikes the arms of her chair) stable. All the things in the extra physical realms are not stable, they are fluidfluid and consequently uncertain.3
The disciple's tantric guru.
0 1958-11-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
As it is, the physical body is really only a very disfigured shadow of the eternal life of the Self, but this physical body is capable of a progressive development; the physical substance progresses through each individual formation, and one day it will be able to build a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life that is to manifest.
***
0 1959-01-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The Bulletin of physical Education, which appeared quarterly.
***
0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Your last letter gave us great pleasure, knowing that you have finally recovered physically. But we deeply hope that you will not again take up the countless activities that formerly consumed all your timeso many people come to you egoistically, for prestige, to be able to say that they are on familiar terms with you. You know this, of course
As for myself, a step has definitely been taken, and I am no longer swept away by this painful torrent. Depressions and attacks still come, but no longer with the same violence as before. X told me that 2/3 of the work has been done and that everything would be purged in twelve days or so, then the thing will be enclosed in a jar and buried somewhere or thrown into the sea, and he will explain it all to me. I will write and tell you about it.
0 1959-01-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Sweet Mother, I have a kind of fear that all these mantras are not bringing me nearer to you I mean you in your physical body, for it is not upon you physically that I was told to concentrate. Also, I almost never see you in my dreams any longer, or else only very vaguely. Last night, I dreamed that I was offering you flowers (not very pretty ones), one of which was called mantra, but I did not see you in my dream. Mother, I would like to be true, to do the right thing, to be as you want me to be.
I am your child. I belong to you alone.
0 1959-03-10 - vital dagger, vital mass, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I, who know the consequences of these things, stopped him just in time I gave him a blow. Then I had enough of all this and it was over, I cleaned the place out. It was almost a physical cleaning, for I had my hands clasped together (I was in a semitrance) and I threw them apart in an abrupt movement, left and right, powerfully, as if to sweep something away, and frrt! immediately everything was gone.
But had that not happened I was watching, not exactly with curiosity, but in order to learnto learn what kind of atmosphere people live in! And it is ALWAYS like that! They are always pestered by HORDES of little formations that are absolutely swarming and disgusting, each one making its nasty little suggestion.
0 1959-03-26 - Lord of Death, Lord of Falsehood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The power of this Titan comes from an Asura. There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical bodythey have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount The Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I dont know what has become of him.1 As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted, but he found it disgusting!
At times he calls himself the Lord of Nations. It is he who sets all wars in motion, and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation nor the supramental world, for that would spell his end. Besides, he knows We talk to each other; beyond all this, we have our relationship. For after all, you see (laughing), I am his mother! One day he told me, I know you will destroy me, but meanwhile, I will create all the havoc possible.
This Asura of Falsehood is the one who delegated the Titan that is always near me. He chose the most powerful Titan there is on earth and sent him specially to attack this body. So even if one manages to enchain or kill this Titan, it is likely that the Lord of Falsehood will delegate another form, and still another, and still another, in order to achieve his aim.
0 1959-04-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
According to the ancient traditions, this universalization of the physical body was considered the supreme realization, but it is only a foundation, the base upon which the Supramental can come down without breaking everything.
***
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender1). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forwardoh, not even a real step, just a little step!everything starts grating; its like stepping on an anthill And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for themthey have only to let it be done.
The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. Its like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You! It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. Give me the time!
0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Only someone who loves you and has the knowledge can find the true solution to the problem. X1 fulfills these conditions excellently. Go to him and simply be what you are, without blackening nor embellishing, with the sincerity and simplicity of a child. He knows your soul and its aspiration; speak to him of your physical life and of your need for space, solitude, untamed nature, the simple and free life. He will understand and, in his wisdom, will see the best thing to do.
And what he decides will be done.
0 1959-06-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
As for the predictions, I am extremely interested. Tell this to X, and also that details of this kind are a great help in my work, for they give physical clues enabling a greater precision in the action. Needless to say, I will be very grateful for any indications he may wish to give me.
For you, my dear child, it is true that something must happen and will happen. Will you please tell X on my behalf that I will participate with all my power in what he wants to undertake. He will understand.
0 1959-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
1) X spoke to me of the Vedic times when a single emperor or sage ruled the entire world with the help of governors; then these governors gradually became independent kings, and conflicts were born. So I asked him what was going to happen after this next war and whether the world would be better. He replied as follows: Yes, great sages like Sri Aurobindo who are wandering now in their subtle bodies will appear. Some sages may take the physical body of political leaders in the West. It will be the end of ignorant atomic machines and the beginning of a new age with great sages leading the world. So it seems that Xs vision links up with Sri Aurobindos prediction for 1967.
He did not give me any further details about this war, except to say that the countries which will suffer the most will be the countries of the North and the East, and he cited Burma, Japan, China and Russia. He said rather categorically that Russia would be swept away and that America would triumph.
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
For the West, with all its outward development, a few centuries may be needed before the junction between the two worlds can be made. And yet these two worlds the physical world and the world of Truthare not distant from one another. They are as if superimposed. The world of Truth is there, close by, like a lining of the other.
Shortly before the 15th of August I had a unique experience that exemplifies all this.1 For the first time the supramental light entered directly into my body, without passing through the inner beings. It entered through the feet (a red and gold colormarvelous, warm, intense), and it climbed up and up. And as it climbed, the fever also climbed because the body was not accustomed to this intensity. As all this light neared the head, I thought I would burst and that the experience would have to be stopped. But then, I very clearly received the indication to make the Calm and Peace descend, to widen all this body-consciousness and all these cells, so that they could contain the supramental light. So I widened, and as the light was ascending, I brought down the vastness and an unshakable peace. And suddenly, there was a second of fainting.
I found myself in another world, but not far away (I was not in a total trance). This world was almost as substantial as the physical world. There were roomsSri Aurobindos room with the bed he rests on and he was living there, he was there all the time: it was his abode. Even my room was there, with a large mirror like the one I have here, combs, all kinds of things. And the substance of these objects was almost as dense as in the physical world, but they shone with their own light. It was not translucent, not transparent, not radiant, but self-luminous. The various objects and the material of the rooms did not have this same opacity as the physical objects here, they were not dry and hard as in the physical world we know.
And Sri Aurobindo was there, with a majesty, a magnificent beauty. He had all his beautiful hair as before. It was all so concrete, so substantialhe was even being served some kind of food. I remained there for one hour (I had looked at my watch before and I looked at it afterwards). I spoke to Sri Aurobindo, for I had some important questions to ask him about the way certain things are to be realized. He said nothing. He listened to me quietly and looked at me as if all my words were useless: he understood everything at once. And he answered me with a gesture and two expressions on his face, an unexpected gesture that did not at all correspond to any thought of mine; for example, he picked up three combs that were lying near the mirror (combs similar to those I use here, but larger) and he put them in his hair. He planted one comb in the middle of his head and the two others on each side, as if to gather all his hair over his temples. He was literally COIFFED with these three combs, which gave him a kind of crown. And I immediately understood that by this he meant that he was adopting my conception: You see, I embrace your conception of things, and I coif myself with it; it is my will. Anyway, I remained there for one hour.
--
Sri Aurobindo gave me two days of thistotal bliss. But all the same, by the end of the second day I realized that I could not continue to remain there, for the work was not advancing. The work must be done in the body; the realization must be attained here in this physical world, for otherwise it is not complete. So I withdrew from that world and set to work here again.
And yet, it would take little, very little, to pass from this world to the other, or for the other to become the real world. A little click would be enough, or rather a little reversal in the inner attitude. How should I put it? It is imperceptible to the ordinary consciousness; a very little inner shift would be enough, a change in quality.
--
In fact, when I walk back and forth in my room, I dont cut myself off from the rest of the worldalthough it would be so much more convenient! All kinds of things come to mesuggestions, wills, aspirations. But automatically I make a movement of offering: things come to me and just as they are about to touch my head, I turn them upwards and offer them to the Light. They dont enter into me. For example, if someone speaks to me while I am saying my japa, I hear quite well what is being said, I may even answer, but the words remain a little outside, at a certain distance from the head. And yet sometimes, there are things that insist, more defined wills that present themselves to me, so then I have to do a little work, but all that without a pause in the japa. If that happens, there is sometimes a change in the quality of my japa, and instead of being fully the power, fully the light, it is certainly something that produces results, but results more or less sure, more or less long to fructify; it becomes uncertain, as with all things of this physical world. Yet the difference between the two japas is imperceptible; its not a difference between saying the japa in a more or less mechanical way and saying it consciously, because even while I work I remain fully conscious of the japa I continue to repeat it putting the full meaning into each syllable. But nevertheless, there is a difference. One is the all-powerful japa; the other, an almost ordinary japa There is a difference in the inner attitude. Perhaps for the japa to become true, a kind of joy, an elation, a warmth of enthusiasm has to be added but especially joy. Then everything changes.
Well, it is the same thing, the same imperceptible difference, when it comes to entering the world of Truth. On one side there is the falsehood, and on the other, close by, like the lining of this one, the true life. Only a little difference in the inner quality, a little reversal, is enough to pass to the other side, into the Truth and Light.
0 1959-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Sweet Mother, I have such a yearning for everything in my consciousness to harmonize and for the tantric discipline, the japa, etc., not to separate me from you. I want to be your child, open to you, without any contradictions. I would like so much to find your almost physical Presence within me again, as before. May all be clear, pure, one.
I would wish to be like Sujata, completely transparent, your child with her at your feet. Mother, help me. I need you. Sujata is healing something that was very painful in me, as though it were flayed or wounded, and which threw me into revolt. With this calming influence, I would like to begin a new life of self-giving. This change of residence is for me like the symbol of another change. Oh, Mother! may the painful road be over, and may all be achieved in the joy of your Will.
0 1959-11-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The deathless state is what can be envisaged for the human physical body in the future: it is constant rebirth. Instead of again tumbling backwards and falling apart due to a lack of plasticity and an incapacity to adapt to the universal movement, the body is undone futurewards, as it were.
There is one element that remains fixed: for each type of atom, the inner organization of the elements is different, which is what creates the difference in their substance. So perhaps similarly, each individual has a different, particular way of organizing the cells of his body, and it is this particular way that persists through all the outer changes. All the rest is undone and redone, but undone in a forward thrust towards the new instead of collapsing backwards into death, and redone in a constant aspiration to follow the progressive movement of the divine Truth.
0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Of all forms of ego, you might think that the physical ego is the most difficult to conquer (or rather, the body ego, because the work was already done long ago on the physical ego). It might be thought that the form of the body is a point of concentration, and that without this concentration or hardness, physical life would not be possible. But thats not true. The body is really a wonderful instrument; its capable of widening and of becoming vast in such a way that everything, everything the slightest gesture, the least little taskis done in a wonderful harmony and with a remarkable plasticity. Then all of a sudden, for something quite stupid, a draft, a mere nothing, it forgetsit shrinks back into itself, it gets afraid of disappearing, afraid of not being. And everything has to be started again from scratch. So in the yoga of matter you start realizing how much endurance is needed. I calculated it would take 200 years to say ten crore of my japa. Well, Im ready to struggle 200 years if necessary, but the work will be done.
Sri Aurobindo had made it clear to me when I was still in France that this yoga in matter is the most difficult of all. For the other yogas, the paths have been well laid, you know where to tread, how to proceed, what to do in such-and-such a case. But for the yoga of matter, nothing has ever been done, never, so at each moment everything has to be invented.
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 1960-03-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But what is surprising is that in a flash, no one was there any longer. No one, you understand I was gone. Perhaps I was everywhere (but in fact I am always everywhere, I am always conscious of being everywhere at the same time), though normally there is the sense of the body, a physical center, but that evening there was no more center! Nothing, no one, not even the sense that there was no onenothing. I was gone. There was indeed something handing out the medals which felt the joy of giving the medal, the joy of receiving it, the joy of mutually looking at each other. It was simply the joy of the action taking place, the joy of looking, this joy everywhere, but me?Nothing, no one, gone. Only later, afterwards, did I see what had happened, for everything had disappeared, even the higher mind that understands and organizes things (by understand I mean contain, which contains things). That also was gone. And this lasted the entire distribution. Only when that [the body] had gone back upstairs to the room did the consciousness of what is me return.
There is a line by Sri Aurobindo in Savitri which expresses this very well: to annul oneself so that only the Supreme Lord may be.
0 1960-04-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Things are better physically. But its always a terrible physical shock for me to take the train.
***
0 1960-04-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
To compensate for that, however, I had the joy of finding your two letters. Yes, for some time I have been feeling your physical Presence more clearly. But then, why am I so blocked, where is the flaw? It constantly feels as though I am living at the outskirts of myself, or more precisely in a miniscule region of myself, and Im unable to be conscious of the resta perpetual amnesic. It is unpleasant and quite stupid. What is it that will explode this shell?
I am anxious to return to you.
0 1960-05-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I saw this Secret (which is getting more and more perceptible as the Supramental becomes clear), I saw it in the everyday, outer life, precisely in this very physical life which all spirituality rejects a kind of accuracy or exactitude right down to the atom.
I am not saying that the Divine becomes perfect in Matter the Divine is already there but that THE SUPREME becomes perfect in Matter.
0 1960-05-16, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I was sick two days ago with a cold and fever. I know whya point to be transformed. The body may have put too much zeal into it, so it teetered a little. But thanks to that, I had an interesting experience. X 1 had put his force on me to speed up the healing. And of course, according to each ones nature, the force gets colored, so to speakit clothes itself in a different color. In me, this was translated by a new physical experience which lasted from 4 in the morning till 6:30, when I had to start speaking with people and deal with outer things. It was a kind of eternity, a kind of absolute phySICAL immobility which contained no possibility of illness within itas a matter of fact, nothing remained in this immobility, it was a sort of nirvana. But it did not keep me from going through all my usual motions of getting dressed.
I spent the whole day yesterday trying to understand this experience.
And in that kind of physical eternity (which lasted two and a half hoursits a long time for an experience), I was aware of something missing, something not there: the joy of the consciousness. Because throughout my life I have developed the habit of being conscious of everything, always, at each second. And the joy of the consciousness was not there. So I thanked the Grace that made me see that this kind of nirvana was quite simply physical tamas.2
(silence)
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Well, I tried hard but I couldnt really find the way. At times, I almost seemed to have it, a mere nothing would have been enough; it was just a matter of getting the knack (and at heart, this is what Power is all aboutto get the knack, to suddenly seize upon the means, the right vibration, what in India is called siddhi). Well, after his departure, all of a sudden it came. It happened while I was doing my japa, while I was walking up and down my room As if I were holding all that in my armsit was so concrete and lifting it up towards the Light, along with this ascending OM, rising from the very depths, OM!and I was carrying all these people, and it was spreading forth, phySICALLY spreading, and I was carrying the earth, I was carrying the whole universe, but in such a tangible, concrete wayall towards the Supreme Lord.
And this was not the invisible power: it was concrete, it was tangible, it was MATERIAL.
0 1960-05-24 - supramental flood, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
It happened last night. For approximately three hours, the physical ego disintegrated for the first time in such a total way.
Nothing remained but the Force, nothing remained but Sat-Chit-Ananda,1 and not only in the consciousness but in the physical sensation the divine Satchidananda spreading in a constant flood throughout the universe.
These experiences are always absolute, as long as they last; then, through certain signs that I know (I am accustomed to it), I notice that the body consciousness begins closing up again. Or rather, somethingevidently a Supreme Wisdomdecides its sufficient for this time and that the body has had enough. It ought not to break, which is why certain precautions are taken. So this comes in several little stages that I know quite well. The final one is always a bit unpleasant because my body gets into rather peculiar positions as a result of the work. As its only a sort of machine, towards the end I have some difficulty straightening my knees, for example, or opening my fingers I think they even make a noise, like something forced into one position whose life has become purely spontaneous and mechanical. There are plenty of people like that, plenty, who enter into trance and then can no longer get out by themselves; they get themselves into a certain position and someone has to free them. This has never happened to me; I have always managed to extricate myself. But yesterday evening, the experience lasted a very long time. There was even a little cracking at the end, as when people have rheumatism.
--
You see, when something goes beyond thought, a sort of conception of it, or superconception rather, remains behind. But in this case, in my experience, there was no question of thoughtit was a question of physical sensation. It was not beyond thought, it was beyond sensation. I was LIVING this thing. And there was no more I. There was nothing but this thing, and yet there was a sensation. I cant explain it!
When I went back to bed, the transitional period lasted 45 minutes. During this time, I tried to locate the role of the individual consciousness on earth. In a flash, I understood its purpose. For you see, as long as the experience lasted, I did not feel any necessity at all of an individuality for this supreme flood to manifest. Then I understood, precisely, that the individuality served to put into contact, in this flood, all that reached out towards what is called Ithis individualized representation of the Divinein order to receive help and support from it, and to be put into contact. I did not say put into contact WITH this flood but put into contact IN this flood, for it was not happening outsidenothing was outside this flood, nothing exists outside it.
--
And of course, the whole ordinary and higher mind (as well as the physical mind, it goes without saying, for that must be abolished before going into trance), everything here in the head, above the head, around the headabsolutely immobile.
After all that, towards the end of the night, at two in the morning, only a kind of faint suggestion was left: How can this statewhich I knew in trance, in samadhi, and which necessitates lying downbecome constant in a physical body which moves about? There is something to discover there. And what form will it take? For in my consciousness, you see, it is constantly like that, this universal flood, but the problem is IN THE BODY: its the problem of the Force in its most material form.
And during the time my experience lasted, I had no feeling of anything exceptional, but rather simply the fact that after all its preparation, the body consciousness was ready for a total identification with Thatin my consciousness its always the same, a perpetual, constant and eternal state in that it never leaves me. Its like that, and it never varies. What diminishes the immensity of the Vibration are the limitations of the material consciousness which can color it and even sometimes change it by giving it a personal appearance. Thus, when I see someone and speak to him, for example, when my eyes concentrate on the person, I have almost the sensation of this flood flowing from me towards the person or of it passing through me to go onto the person. There is an awareness of the eyes, the body. And it is this which limits or even changes a little the immensity of the thing But already this feeling has almost disappeared; this immensity seems to be acting almost constantly. There are moments when I am less interiorized, when I am more on the surface, and it feels like its passing through a bodymoments when the body consciousness comes back a little. And this is what diminishes the thing.
0 1960-05-28 - death of K - the death process- the subtle physical, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
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 1960-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
something has to break, phySICALLY break. It could keep on turning like that for centuries.
Hmm! But life is like that. physical life is like that for everyone. This feeling of it turning round and round and round and round and its the same for people, objects, countries, the whole world.
Something changes, of course, but its so phew! I mean, at the speed its going, it will take us millions of years to make any perceptible progress. We might just as well say its not moving.
--
Im talking about our relationship, nothing exterior or physical.
Its strange, but I rarely see you in a very physical wayyou, just as you are.2
Do you only see me physically?
No, on the contrary, I have difficulty
But my little one, its useless to see me physically!
Its rather something which has no image that I call Mother.
--
But note that this is not something particular to you, for as I have told you, all physical life feels like that to me, as though people were confined in a kind of shellthis feeling of separation, isolation. This division everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Its dreadful. Every encounter is a shock.
(silence)
--
The disciple means in meditationto imagine Mother in her physical form or to use her physical form as an 'object' of meditation. In fact, he was very afraid of getting caught.
***
0 1960-06-Undated, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Isnt this reason enough to be discouraged? In any case, these questions are stirring in meand the vital is not happy [nor the mental, nor the physical].
Excuse me if I speak too frankly.
0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I had a startling experience one day when X was doing his pujas to encircle the titans. He was in difficulty and I was about to intervene to help him when I was abruptly stopped. I was faced by a massive blackness (blacker than the blackest physical thing) and suddenly, right at its center, I saw the Divine Love shining with such a splendor I had never seen it so splendid.
And now it has become constant; each time I hear or see something ugly or horrible, or each time something ugly or horrible happens, something which is a negation of the divine life just behind is this flameso wonderful. And then the effect is annulled.
0 1960-07-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Although it is still in a region of the physical mind, it is a mind striving towards a luminous organization and clearly aspiring to rise towards the higher realms.
And last night especially I had a very positive impression (a sort of feeling) that I can count on you.
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The vehicles path was not on earth, but up above (probably in interstellar regions!), a special path for this vehicle. And I didnt know where the water was coming from; I couldnt see its origin, which was off beyond the horizon. But it came raging down in torrentsnot precipitously like a waterfall, but rather like a rushing torrent. My path passed between the torrents of water and the earth below. And I saw the water before me, everywhere, in front and behindit was so extraordinary, for it looked like it was everywhere, you see, except along my path (and even then, there was some seepage). Water speeding everywhere. But there was a kind of conscious will in this onrush, and I had to reach the Great Passage before this conscious will. This water resembled something physical, but there was a consciousness, a conscious will, and I had to it was like a battle between the will I represented and that will. And I passed each fissure just in time. Only when I reached the Great Turning did I see the will that impelled this water. And I reached there just before it. And passed through at a fantastic speedlike lightning. Even time ceased I crossed over like a flash of lightning. And then, suddenly, respite and it was blue. A square.
At the time, I didnt know what it all meant. Then this morning, I thought, It must have something to do with the world situation.
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Later on, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, I said to myself, If only I knew what he had known, it would be easier! So when Swami and later X came, I thought, I am going to take advantage of this opportunity. I had written to Swami that I was working on transforming the cells of the body and that I had noticed the work was going faster with Xs influence. So it was understood that X would help when he came thats how things began, and this idea has remained with X. But I have raced on I dont wait. Ive raced on, Ive gone like wildfire. And now the situation is reversed. What I wanted to find out, I found out. I experienced what I wanted to experience, but he is still He is very kind, actually, he wants really to help me. So, when I identified with him the other day during our meditation, I realized that he wanted to give silence, control and perfect peace to the physical mind. My own trick, if you will, is to have as little relationship with the physical mind as possible, to go up above and stay therethis (Mother indicates her forehead), silent, motionless, turned upwards, while That (gesture above the head) sees, acts, knows, decidesall is done from there. Only there can you feel at ease.
Along the way, I once went down into this physical mind for awhile to try to set it right, to organize it a little (it was done rather quickly, I didnt stay there long). So when I went inside X, I saw It was rather curious, for its the opposite of the method we follow. In his material consciousness ( physical and vital), he has trained himself to be impersonal, open, limitless, in communication with all the universal forces. In the physical mind, silence, immobility. But in the speculative mind, the one there at the very top of the head what an organization, phew! All the tradition in its most superb organization, but such a ri-gi-dity! And it had a pretty quality of light, a silver blueVERY pretty. Oh, it was very calm, wonderfully calm and quiet and still. But what a ceiling it had!the outer form resembled rigid cubes. Everything inside was beautiful, but that There was a very large cube right at the top, I recall, bordered by a purple line, which is a line of powerall this was quite luminous. It looked like a pyramid; the smaller cubes formed a kind of base, the lower part of which faded into something cloudy, and then this passed imperceptibly downwards to a more material realm, or in other words, the physical mind. The cube on top was the largest and most luminous, and the least yieldingeven inflexible, you could say. The others were somewhat less defined, and at the bottom it was very blurred. But up at the top!thats where I wanted to go, right to the top.
When I got there, I felt a moment of anguish; my feeling was that nothing could be done. Not for him in particular, but universally, for all those in his categoryit seemed hopeless.6 If that was perfection, then nothing more could be done. This lasted only a second, but it was painful. And then I tried that is, I wanted to bring my consciousness down into the highest cubethis eternal, universal and infinite consciousness which is the first and foremost expression of the manifestation but nothing doing. It was impossible. I tried for several minutes and saw that it was absolutely impossible. So I had to make a curious movement (I couldnt get through it, it was impassable), I had to come back down into the so-called lower consciousness (not lower, actuallyit was vast and impersonal), and from there I came out and regained my equilibrium. This is what gave me that splitting headache I told you about. I came out of there as if I were carrying the weight the weight of an irreducible absoluteit was dreadful. Unfortunately, I was unable to rest afterwards, and as people were waiting to see me, I had to talkwhich is very tiring for me. And this produced a bubbling in my head, like a this dark blue light of power in matter was there, shot through with streaks of white and gold, and all this was flashing back and forth in my head, this way and that way I thought I was going to have a stroke! (Mother laughs)
This lasted a good half hour before I could calm it down, make it quiet, quiet. And I saw that this came from the fact that he wanted to bring the Power down, to transmit the Power into the physical mind! But as soon as Im put in contact with the Power, you understand, it makes everything explode! (Mother laughs) It felt exactly like my head was going to explode!
I felt better that night because I was concentrated, but my head was still hurting a little. Then the following day I said to myself, or rather I told him inwardly, Whether you like it or not, I am bringing down whats up above; it is the only way I can feel comfortable! And I told you what happenedas soon as I sat down I was so surprised, for he didnt start doing what he had done the day before; I myself did the same thing, I participated, so to speak, in his will (so as to find out), but with the resolve to remain consciously in contact with the highest consciousness, as always, and to bring it down. And it came in a marvelous flood. He was quite happy, he did not protest! All the pain was gone, there was nothing left, it was perfect. Only towards the end of the meditation did he again want to start doing his little trick of enclosing my physical mind in this construction, but it didnt last I watched all this from above.
And he isnt aware of this, actually, he isnt aware at all. If he were told, he would absolutely deny it for him, its an opening onto Infinity! But in fact, its always like that, we are always shut in, each of useach one is enclosed inside certain limits which he doesnt feel, for should he feel it, he would get out! Oh, I know this feeling very well, for when I was with Sri Aurobindo I was open in this way (gesture towards the heights), and I always had this feeling of Yes, my child He tolerated me the way I was and waited for it to change. Thats truly how things are, you know. And now I feel my limits, which are the limits of the world as it is at present, but beyond that theres an unmanifested immensity, eternity and infinityto which we are closed. It merely seeps init is not the great opening. What I am trying to bring about is the great opening. Only when it has opened wide will there really be the (how should I put it?) the irreducible thing, and all the worlds resistance, all its inertia, even its obscurity will be unable to swallow it up the determining and transforming thing I dont know when it will come.
--
Its an almost physical discipline. Moreover, I have seen that the japa has an organizing effect on the subconscient, on the inconscient, on matter, on the bodys cellsit takes time, but by persistently repeating it, in the long run it has an effect. It is the same principle as doing daily exercises on the piano, for example. You keep mechanically repeating them, and in the end your hands are filled with consciousness it fills the body with consciousness.
I have a hard time making X understand that I have work to do when Im with him. He doesnt understand that one can work.
--
From the material point of view, its almost hellish the noise, the smella nauseating smell. I had to apply all my will not to be physically disturbed they made me climb up narrow little stairs, go down, climb back up, look into deep pits. At some places there werent even guardrails, so I had really to control myself.
I was watching all this sugar canepiles of sugar canewhich is thrown into the machine, and then it travels along and falls down to be crushed, crushed, and crushed some more. And then it comes back up to be distilled. And then I saw all this is living when its thrown in, you see, its full of its vital force, for it has just been cut. As a result, the vital force is suddenly hurled out of the substance with an extreme violence the vital force comes out the English word angry is quite expressive of what I meanlike a snarling dog. An angry force.10
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Doing japa seems to exert a pressure on my physical consciousness, which goes on turning! How can I silence it? As soon as my concentration is not absolute, the physical mind starts upit grabs at anything, anything at all, any word, fact or event that comes along, and it starts turning, turning. If you stop it, if you put some pressure on it, then it springs back up two minutes later And there is no inner consent at all. It chews on words, it chews on ideas or feelingsinterminably. What should I do?
Yes, its the physical mind. The japa is made precisely to control the physical mind.
I myself use it for a very special reason, because You see, I invoke (the words are a bit strange) the Lord of Tomorrow. Not the unmanifest Lord, but the Lord as he will manifest tomorrow, or in Sri Aurobindos words, the divine manifestation in its supramental form.
0 1960-10-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Those people deny the reality of all physical needs.
Its quite all right when youve come TO THE END, when you have totally mastered the body by means of the spiritual consciousness. But until then, I dont agree I do not at all agree.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I entered into your sleep last night. I saw you and told you certain things, I even gave you some explanations: You see, you must do it this way you must go like this I also said, One day, we shall meditate together. But more precisely, you had once spoken to me about the problem in your physical mind that it keeps on turning interminably and you had told me that it happens during your japa. So last night I told you, I would like you to do your japa for a few minutes with me one day so that I may see what goes on inside you, in your physical mind.
But I wasnt speaking to you with words Everything I see at night has a special color and a special vibration. Its strange, but it looks sketched When I said that to you, for example, there was a kind of patch,1 a white patch, as I recallwhite, exactly like a piece of white papera patch with a pink border around it, then this same blue light I keep telling you aboutdeep blueencircling the rest, as it were. And beyond that, it was swarminga swarming of black and dark gray vibrations in a terrible agitation. When I saw this, I said to you, You must repeat your mantra once in my presence so that I may see if there is anything I can do about this swarming. And then I dont know whyyou objected, and this objection was red, like a tongue of fire lashing out from the white, like this (Mother draws an arabesque). So I said, No, dont worry, it doesnt matter, I wont disturb a thing2! (Mother laughs mischievously)
All this took place in a realm which is constantly active, everywhere; it is like a permanent mental transcription of everything that physically takes place They arent actually thoughts; when I see this, I dont really get the impression of thinking, but its a transcription its the result of thoughts on a certain mental atmosphere which records things.
And I see it all the time now. If someone is speaking or if Im doing something, I see the two things at the same time I see the physical thing, his words or my action, and then this colored, luminous transcription at the same time. The two things are superimposed. For example, when someone speaks to me, it gets translated into some kind of picture, a play of light or color (which is not always so luminous!)this is why most of the time, in fact, I dont even know what has been said to me. I recall the first time this phenomenon happened, I said to myself, Ah, so thats what these modern artists see! Only, as they themselves arent very coherent, what they see is not very coherent either!
And thats how it worksit is translated by patches and moving forms, which is how it gets registered in the earths memory. So when things from this realm enter into peoples active consciousness, they get translated into each ones language and the words and thoughts that each one is accustomed tobecause that doesnt belong to any language or to any idea: it is the exact IMPRINT of what is happening.
--
I didnt notice you being bothered by these things of the physical mind you had mentioned. However, I had first done this (gesture of cleansing the atmosphere), right at the beginning, so that nothing would come to disturb us Did you feel anything?
I felt that you were there. I felt your Force.
--
If you want to prevent these disturbances in your physical mind, then when you sit for japa You know my Force, dont you? Well then, wrap it around you, like this, twelve times, from top to bottom.
Original English.
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
But I know in an absolute way that once this whole mass of the physical mind is mastered and the Brahmic consciousness is brought into it in a continuous way, you CAN you become the MASTER of your health.
This is why I tell people (not that I expect them to do it, at least not now, but its good they know) that its NOT a matter of fate, NOT something that completely escapes our control, NOT some sort of Law of Nature over which we have no powerit is not so. We are truly the masters of everything which has been brought together to create our transitory individuality; we have been given the power of control, if only we knew how to use it.
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Then suddenly I went into a little trance. And in it I saw you, but you were physically, you were on one plane, and then I saw another man on a different plane (I saw him quite concretely; he was rather tall, broad-shoulderednot so tall as broad, with a dark, European suit). And he took your hands and started shaking them enthusiastically!but you were quite indifferent, just as you are now, dressed in Indian fashion and sitting cross-legged. He took both your hands and started shaking them! And then I distinctly heard the words: Congratulations, its a great success!it had to do with your book.3 And at the same time, I saw all sorts of people and things who were touched by your bookall kinds of people, obviously French, or Westerners in any case women, men. There was even one woman (she must have been an actress or a singer or anyway, someone whose life was she was even dressed for the stage, with some kind of tightsa beautiful girl!) and she said to someone, Ah, it has even given me a taste for the spiritual life! It was extremely interesting All kinds of things of this nature. And then once again I came out of this trance and In the end, I tried to do some certain thing for you and it turned out well. It turned out quite well.
But then, just before that, there was this powdering of golden light coming down. And as it descended, it was white with a touch of gold (but it was white) and it came down in a column, with such POWER! And then, just at the end, this powdering of gold came and settled into this white light which had remained there the whole timeoh, it was so abundant. A great power of realization. I had a hard time coming out of it! At the start, I had decided to come out of it at half past, so I came out, but still not completely
--
The physical vibration is important. The circumstances relating to the work of transformation make the physical vibration important. I feel it, for as soon as I want to do something with someone on the physical plane ( physical, mind you), it all comes into the body. And the body is simply seized I see that absolutely physical vibrations are being used all the time. Its really so different. All the work which is done at a distance (gesture indicating action stemming from the mind)it acts, of course, but
You know, even now, all this (Mother touches her body, her hands) feels so vibrant and alive that its difficult to sense its limits as if it extends beyond the body in all directions. It no longer has any limits.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Theres a certain sensibility which makes any increase in humidity felt. Before it starts raining, even several hours before, it feels like there are drops falling on my body. I can always say when its going to rain. Its entirely physical, actually, merely a heightened sensitivity. It feels like very tiny drops (you know, like drizzle), the feeling of a very fine spray falling on the body. And yet the sky is clear; I say, Hmm, its going to rain. And it rains I felt it. I feel the water, and it never fails to come a few hours later.
(silence)
--
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).
--
The Ashram's annual physical education demonstration at the Sportsground.
The actual aphorism reads: 'When I read a wearisome book through and with pleasure, yet perceived all the perfection of its wearisomeness, then I knew that my mind was conquered.'
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
So I understood that this must correspond to a certain realm of experience; I understood all those who say, If it has to be like this, if it can never be otherwise, then (this opposition, this abyss between a TRUE life, a TRUE consciousness, a TRUE activity, something living, powerful, fulfilling and life as it now is), if there must always be this difference between the physical expression as it is or as it can be in the present circumstances, and the true life, then For if despite everythingdespite this tremendous distance Ive covered in my life (these memories go back more than sixty years) and all the evolutionary effort upwards I have made since that time IN MATTER (Im not speaking of leaving Matter behind, but IN MATTER, IN action)if that doesnt further reduce this gap between the true consciousness and the possible material realization, then I understand I understand why people say, Its hopeless. (Of course, this hopeless is meaningless to me.)
But I (how can I put this?) I lived their experience, I lived it; and even events which seem quite extraordinary when seen from afar, which is the way they appear to most people, even historical things which have furthered the earths transformation and its upheavals the crucial events, the great works, you might sayare woven from the SAME fabric, they are the SAME thing! When you look at all this from afar, on the whole it can make an impression, but the life of each minute, of each hour, of each second is woven from this SAME fabric, drab, dull, insipid, WITHOUT ANY TRUE LIFEa mere reflection of life, an illusion of lifepowerless, void of any light or anything that resembles joy in the least. Oh! if it has always to remain like that, then we dont want any of it.
0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Not last night but the night before, I touched at least one of the causes (at that time it felt like THE cause) of a certain powerlessness to act directly on Matter You see, when the Will and the Power come, they are extremely effective everywhere UP TO A CERTAIN REGION (in other words, whether people are receptive or not, open or not, makes no differencewhen the Will is applied it is all-powerful UP TO a certain region) but once it arrives here, at the most material material, its efficacy depends on many thingsand a power which depends on something is no power! For a long, long time I have been searching for the reasons behind this powerlessness. Ive located a few, one after another, and upon these points there was an immediate effect. But some things resisted (oh, quite a number, in a number of ways), for example it had difficulty acting on illnesses, on the cells, on doubt (not mental doubt, but rather the doubt of the physical consciousness which cant accept certain things that seem impossible to itwhat Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief,1 not a mental doubt, but the disbelief of the physical consciousness which cant accept what is contrary to its own nature and its own working). And as for illnesses, sometimes it has an immediate effect, but sometimes it drags on and has to follow its so-called normal course. On all these three points, I clearly felt that something was hampering it. These are the Enemys strongholds; all that doesnt want the Divine seizes upon it and even the working of the Power coming from above is obstructed, for when it must work here in the body, it is stopped or deformed or altered or diminished.
All this goes on in the subconscient; these are things that were pushed out of the physical consciousness down into the subconscient, so theyre there and they come back up whenever they please.
Two nights ago (no, three the night before Darshan), I had one of those experiences that that leaves you pensive the whole day
--
So, its very simple. The sickness was due to one part of your being going faster than the rest. A part of the physical consciousness probably remained behind, and that created this imbalance and triggered the sickness.
It took a huge effort in my dream.
--
But its only to make me find the to make me go through the experience and to find the strength. And also to give the body this absolute faith in its Divine Realityto show it that the Divine is there and that He wants to be there and that He shall be there. And its only at such moments as thesewhen logically, according to the ordinary physical logic, its all over that you can seize the key.
You have to go right through everything without flinching.
--
This interests me, for these things do not at all enter through the mind (he doesnt receive a thing there, hes closed there). So in his letter he says that this thing or that is necessary (he describes it in his own words), and he adds, This is why we must be so grateful to have among us the the great Mother7 (as he puts it), the great Mother who knows these things.Good! I said to myself. (It had to do with something specific concerning the capacity for discrimination in the outside world, the different qualities and different functions of different beings, all of which depends on ones inner construction, as it were.) So I see that even this, even these physical experiences, is received (and yet I hadnt tried, I had never tried to make him receive it); it merely works like this, you see (gesture of a widespread diffusion), and the experience is veryhow should I say?drastic, with a kind of (power of radiation). Imperative.
Original English.
0 1960-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Its what Sri Aurobindo calls disbelief, and its located in the most material physical consciousness it isnt doubt (which mainly belongs to the mind), it is almost like a refusal to accept the obvious as soon as it doesnt belong to the little daily routine of ordinary sensations and reactionsa sort of incapacity to accept and recognize the exceptional.
This disbelief is the bedrock of the consciousness. And it comes with a (thought is too big a word for such an ordinary thing) a mental- physical activity which makes you (I am forced to use the word) think things and which always foresees, imagines or draws conclusions (depending on the case) in a way which I myself call DEFEATIST. In other words, it automatically leads you to imagine all the bad things that can happen. And this occurs in a realm which is absolutely run-of-the-mill, in the most ordinary, restricted, banal activities of lifesuch as eating, moving in short, the coarsest of things.
--
Later, Mother added the following: 'In this regard I don't know where, but somewhereSri Aurobindo spoke of this physical mind, and he said that there was nothing you could do with it; it must only be destroyed.'
Mother may be alluding to the following passage from The Synthesis of Yoga: 'There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing clement.'
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Its a sort of oscillationreally, its so interestingbetween two extremes, one of which is the all-powerfulness and capital or primordial importance of the physical, and the other its utter unreality.
And its constantly going back and forth between the two (seesaw motion). And both are equally false, equally true.
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Mother later discovered that this world of complications is the symbol of the physical mind.
Mother later narrated the end of her 'dream' with X:
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But as its all-powerful, a certain receptivity must be prepared on earth so its effects are not devastating. Sri Aurobindo has explained it in one of his letters. Someone asked him, Why doesnt this Love come now?, and he replied something like this: If divine Love in its essence were to manifest on earth, it would be like an explosion; for the earth is not supple enough or receptive enough to widen to the measure of this Love. The earth must not only open itself but become wide and supple. Matternot just physical Matter, but the substance of the physical consciousness as wellis still much too rigid.
***
--
(A little later, Mother made the following remark concerning the Agenda of December 13, 1960, where she speaks of the physical Minds. disbelief and defeatist reactions as intimately linked to the bodys illnesses.)
This defeatist Mind is still functioning and in full swing!
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If one always remained in this state of consciousness, keeping alive the flame of Agni, the flame of purification and progress, then after some time, not only could one prevent these movements from taking an active form in oneself and becoming expressed physically, but one could act upon the very nature of the movement and transform it. Needless to say, however, that unless one has attained a very high degree of realization it is virtually impossible to keep this state of consciousness for long. Almost immediately one falls back into the egoistic consciousness of the separate self, and all the difficulties return: disgust, the revolt against certain things and the horror they create in us, and so on.
It is probableeven certain that until one is completely transformed these movements of disgust and revolt are necessary to make one do WITHIN ONESELF what is needed to slam the door on them. For after all, the point is to not let them manifest.
0 1961-01-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No. Its purely physical. Its because people. When I came down, I felt fine. Only they kept me standing there, on and on. When I am seated, its all right; but beyond a certain point, speaking also becomes difficult.
***
0 1961-01-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother had been unwell the past few days. She speaks here of the causes behind the physical disorder.)
Ah! How are you?
--
Japa: the continuous repetition of a mantra. Mother's mantra is a song of the cells, the sole material or physical process used by her for awakening the cells and stabilizing the Supramental Force in her body.
Later, Mother specified: 'These are elements in the material substance entirely possessed by adverse forces and opposed to the transformation.'
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then yesterday afternoon, when I went upstairs to walk,1 a couple of things occurrednot personal, but of a general natureconcerning, for instance, certain old-fashioned conventions having to do with women and their particular nature (not psychological, physical)old ideas like that which had always seemed utterly stupid to me suddenly provoked a kind of reprobation completely out of proportion to the fact itself. Then one or two other things2 happened in regard to certain people, certain circumstances (nothing to do with me personally: it came from here and there). Then suddenly, I saw a Force coming (coming, well, manifesting) which was the same as that thing I had felt within me but even bigger; it began whirling upon the earth and within circumstances oh, like a cyclone of compact power moving forward with the intention of changing all this! It had to change. At all costs, it must change!
I was above, as usual (Mother points above her head, indicating the higher consciousness), and I looked at that (Mother bends over, as if looking down at the earth), and said to myself, Hmm, this is getting dangerous. If it continues like this, it will result in in a war or a revolution or some catastrophea tidal wave or an earthquake. So I tried to counteract it by applying the highest consciousness to it, that of a perfect serenity. And I saw especially that this consciousness has been missioned to transform the earth through the Supermind and by the supramental Force, avoiding all catastrophes as far as possible: the Work is to be done as luminously and harmoniously as the earth would allow, even by going at a slower pace if need be. That was the idea. And I tried to counteract that whirlwind power with this consciousness.
--
At midnight I was lying in bed. (And I remained there from midnight until I oclock fully awake. I dont know if my eyes were open or closed, but I was wide awake, NOT IN TRANCEI could hear all the noises, the clocks, and so forth.) Then, lying flat, my entire body (but a slightly enlarged body, exceeding the purely physical form) became ONE vibration, extremely rapid and intense but immobile. I dont know how to explain this, because it did not move in space but was a vibration (that is, it wasnt motionless); yet it was motionless in space. And the exact form of my body was absolutely the most brilliant white Light of the supreme Consciousness, the consciousness OF the Supreme. It was IN the body and it was as though in EACH cell there was a vibration, and it was all part of a single BLOCK of vibration. It extended this much beyond the body (gesture indicating about six centimeters). I was absolutely immobile in my bed. Then, WITHOUT MOVING, without shifting, it began consciously to rise upwithout moving, you understand: I remained like this (Mother holds her two joined and motionless hands at the level of her forehead, as if her entire body were mounting in prayer)consciously like an ascension of this consciousness6 towards the supreme Consciousness.
The body was stretched out flat.
--
I have studied the problem very closely, because when you come from Europe you bring all your European ideas with you and you dont know or understand a thing about the way it really is. I immediately came into contact with Brahmin servants and pariah servants, but I didnt know that some were Brahmins and others pariahs, nobody had told me anything; it depended upon the people I was with and the places I went. But the contact, the atmosphere (gesture of fingering the air). You know, I didnt even need to touch them physically! There was such a difference that I asked Sri Aurobindo, But what is it? So he explained the whole thing to me.
You see, originally these pariahs were people who took their delight (their pleasure) in filth and falsehood, in crime, in violence and robberyit was a joy for them. They had castes among themselves; there is still a caste of brigands nearby I once went to their village to have a lookpeople who always keep a dagger on them, they love to play with daggers. They stea l not so much out of need as out of pleasure. And dirty-they abhor cleanliness! And they will lie even if they have to contradict themselves fifteen minutes later, for the sheer delight of lying.
--
Indra represents the king of the gods, the master of mental power freed from the limitations and obscurities of the physical consciousness.
The body-consciousness.
0 1961-01-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This consciousness of immortality is OUR becoming conscious of the realms where immortality exists; but to bring immortality into the physical consciousness requires not only a transformation of physical consciousness but a transformation of physical substance as well. So.
***
0 1961-01-31, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the moment of my coming out of the trance, I had a very concrete, positive perception (not a mental understanding, it didnt come from the beings intellectual part, the part that understands and explains everything and Is symbolized, I think, by Indra; it wasnt in any way conveyed through that higher intelligence, it wasnt mental). A kind of perception (not really a sensation, it was more than a sensation) of the almost total unimportance of the external, material expression of the bodys condition: the consciousness OF THE BODY was absolutely indifferent to external, physical signs, whether they were like this or like that (the BODYS consciousness was what had experienced the identity). And this body-consciousness had the perception of the EXTREME RELATIVITY of the most material expression.
I am translating it to make myself understoodit wasnt like that at the time of the experience. Suppose, for example, that there was a disorder here or there in the body, not actually an illness (because illness implies some important inner factor such as an attack or the necessity for some transformation, many different things), but the outer expression of a disorder, such as swollen legs or a malfunctioning liver not an illness, a disorder, a functional disorder. Well, it was all utterly unimportant: IT IN NO WAY CHANGES THE BODYS TRUE CONSCIOUSNESS. Although we are in the habit of thinking that the body is very disturbed when its ill, when something is going wrong, its not so. It isnt disturbed in the way we understand it.
--
Oh, its the physical mind, this stupid mind! It makes all the trouble, always.
It isnt the body at all?
--
Suffering also comes through the physical mind, because if this entity is calmed down, we no longer sufferexactly what happened to me!
The physical mind, you see, makes use of the nervous substance; if we withdraw it from the nervous substance, we no longer feel anything, for thats what gives us the perception of sensation. We know something is wrong, but we no longer suffer from it.
This was a very important experience. Afterwards (especially yesterday afternoon and this morning), I gradually began to realize that this kind of indifferent detachment is the ESSENTIAL condition for the establishment of true Harmony in the most material Matter the most external, physical Matter (Mother pinches the skin of her hand).
This experience has been like a stagean indispensable stage for establishing this complete detachment; an indispensable stage so that the harmony of the body-consciousness (which came with the bodys experience of the Divine) might have its effect upon the most external, superficial part of the body.
--
With my japa the contrast is the same, its absolutely astounding: I feel I am saying the words in the same way, with the same sound, exactly the same rhythm, but in some cases, with a particular inner attitude, the time by the clock is different! Yet nevertheless, bound up as we are in our physical Matter, we imagine it has taken exactly the same amount of time! Thats what is so strange, this extraordinary relativity vis--vis the clock.
This must be what they tried to express by Joshua making the sun stand still.
--
In the equations of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, quantities as 'immutable' as the mass of a body, the frequency of a vibration, or the time separating two events, are linked to the speed of the system where the physical event takes place. Recent experiments in outer space have allowed the validity of Einstein's equations to be verified. Thus a clock on a satellite in constant rotation around the Earth will measure sixty seconds between two audio signals, while an identical clock on Earth measures sixty-one seconds between the same two signals: time 'slows down' as speed increases. It is like the story of the space traveler returning to Earth less aged than his twin: you pass into another 'frame of reference.'
It is striking that Mother's body-experiences very often parallel recent theories of modern physics, as if mathematical equations were the means of formulating in human language certain complex phenomena, remote from our day to day reality, which Mother was living spontaneously in her bodyperhaps 'at the speed of light.'
***
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What does the serpent represent physically? What does it embody in the material world?
The vibration of evolution.
I dont mean symbolically, but physically, materially: the animal itself.
A formidable concentration of vitalityof all animals, the serpent has the most vitality. Its tremendous! And energy progressive energy, energy of movement (progressive in the mechanical sense). Its meaning has been changed to a psychological one, but its a force of movement.
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I have had no indication of this, neither by night nor by day, neither awake nor in tranceno indication. The indication rather points to all that must be clarified, purified so the physical may keep what it received from that experience [of January 24, 1961].
From an ordinary standpoint, I believe the situation is dangerous, because (laughing) the doctor refuses to tell me what the consequences might be. I asked him but he wouldnt tell me, so thats what it must mean! But I really have no indications and I hope I wont be told, Now you must go, only at the very last minute!
--
But I have no doubts about that! It just came to menot because I was consciously concerned about Your physical future: this dream simply came so unexpectedly and vividly.
No, no I know that! I tell you, it can only be one of two things: either a good kick from the Enemy who is still trying to find a support in someones mentality, or else premonitory.
--
Since 'Bohr's atom' at the beginning of the century, which with its electrons orbiting around a central nucleus like planets around a sun was to have been the mathematical model representing the ultimate constituent of matter, nuclear physicists have discovered many new elementary particles in the universe: from leptons to baryons, with neutrinos, pions, kaons, psi and khi particles in between!
A recentand unifying (!)theory postulated by the American Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann, would reduce this somewhat startling enumeration to more reasonable proportions through the introduction of a unique sub-particle constituting all matter: the quark. Nevertheless, there would still exist several kinds of quarks (e.g., 'strange,' 'charmed,' 'colored' in red, yellow and blue) for accommodating the various qualities of matter. A proton, for example, would consist of three quarks: red, yellow and blue. However, it should be noted that quarks are basically mathematical intermediaries to facilitate the comprehension or interpretation of certain experiments thus far unexplained. Moreover, the simple question still remains, even if they do exist materially: 'What are quarks made of?'
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.
--
A great deal has been brought to light since that experience. It has been the starting point for such turmoil, even physically, such strong jolts that I might have wondered, Was I dreaming or was it real?. And more and more I am coming to understand that this is the INDISPENSABLE preparation in the most material world for that experience to become definitively established, to express itself outwardly, constantlythis is obvious.
If the experience remained permanently, it would be something very close to omnipotence. I felt at the time that there was no such thing as an impossibility: it was truly the sensation of omnipotence. It is not omnipotence, because there is always a greater Omnipotence (one knows this only in the higher realms). But in terms of the material world, it was clearly something very, very different from all that has ever been seen or heard or told by all extant traditionsit all seems like the babbling of a child in comparison. At that moment itself there was only the Something which sees, decidesand it is done.
--
It has given the physical consciousness a certain self-confidence in the sense that when I see something now, I am sure of it, there are no hesitations: Is this right or not? Is this true, is this.All that has vanishedwhen I see, there is certainty. That is, there has really been a great change in the material CONSCIOUSNESS; but that formidable power is not there. I tell you, had that power stayed here, had I remained constantly as I was during those hours that night, well, many things would obviously have changed.
All this must be a preparation; there is a lot to be cleared out before the experience can be firmly established. Thats logical, it is quite natural.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Darshan went rather well, much better than I was expecting; but the following two days it was difficult here [in the body]. Then one night (I dont remember which), I I cant say grumbled, but (it wasnt my body grumbling, it is very docile and doesnt protest), but I sometimes find that well, I found it a little exaggerated that day. All the same, I said, this may be demanding a bit too much of it! And then (Mother laughs) the whole night through, each time I awoke and looked (not with my physical eyes), I saw serpents! They were drawn up straight in a circlemagnificent cobras with white bellies, pearl gray backs and flecks of gold on their hoods! They surrounded me, watching, exactly as though they were saying, All the necessary energy is there! You neednt worry! So I concluded that this whole affair11 must have its utilityit cant be simply the bodys lack of plasticity and incapacity to receive. It must have a usefulness but what? I havent understood. Perhaps I will get the explanation later, once its over.
And the next afternoon, I closed my eyes while I was bathing and what did I see but an enormous, magnificent cobra! It gazed at me, almost smiling, and stuck out its tongue! Good, I said, then everything is all right! (laughing) I have only to hold on.
--
The physical disorder that had principally attacked Mother's legs.
The following is the exact text of Mother's reply to this American gentleman:
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have brought you a whole discourse! (Mother gives Satprem some flowers) First, the goal of the Vedas: Immortality.1 That was their goal: the Truth that led to Immortality. Immortality was their ambition. I dont think it was physical immortality but I am not sure, because they do speak of the forefa thers and this refers to the initiatory tradition prior to the Vedas as well as the Kabbala, and immortality on earth is spoken of there: the earth transformedSri Aurobindos idea. So although they didnt explicitly state it, perhaps they knew.
(Mother gives more flowers) This one is more on the personal side: Friendship with the Divine2, the friendly relationship you can have with the Divineyou understand each other, you dont fear each other, youre good friends! And this one is a wonder! (Mother gives Divine Love Governing the World3) What strength! Its generous, expansive, without narrowness, pettiness, or limitationswhen that comes.
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then I had to return here that is, to my home in India, to Sri Aurobindos home: I had to return to Sri Aurobindos home. Pavitra was also working there and he didnt want to let me leave; when he saw me going he came and tried to stop me. You, on the contrary, were helping. Shall I take anything with me or not? I asked myself Oh, I dont need anything, Ill go all alone. That worried you a little because of the journey ahead, and you said, There will be many complications. It doesnt matter! I replied (laughing). But if you only knew how living and concrete it was! The impressions were so there was the feeling of making a long voyageit was a LONG voyage, as if I were crossing the sea (but not physically), a long voyage. I remember setting off (I was with you, you were there) and telling myself, At last hes here! At last I have found a reasonable being who doesnt try to stop me from doing what I must do! I had (laughing mischievously) a very high opinion of you, thats why I am telling you this!
I was abruptly awakened by the clock striking (I didnt count), and my immediate feeling was, Well, he is really very nice! Now theres a good companion!
--
This is the origin of such legends as Shangri-la. But 'psychics' most often confuse two planes of reality, attri buting to their SUBTLE vision a physical reality which it does not have or no longer has: they have merely entered into contact with the memory of a place for places, like beings, have a memory.
At first, Mother had said, 'But it's impossible.' Then, laughing, she had the word deleted.
0 1961-03-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Generally speaking, the progress is undeniable, but the physical body has a terrible need of rest. Its annoying, for it prevents me from working.
How to explain it? Its rather strange: the cells attitude and their state of consciousness is changing with extraordinary rapidity; yet from the ordinary viewpoint of health, there is no corresponding progress, quite the contrary. One could say things arent going too well, but I see clearly that its not true. I see that it isnt true, its only an appearance but reconciling the two is difficult.
--
And within oh! Its like waves, constantly, the equivalent of those nuances of color I was speaking about, waves of this joy of life, the joy of life rippling past, touching; but instead of being. At times, you see, the body is in a sort of equilibrium (what we, in our ordinary outer consciousness, call equilibrium that is, good health), and then this joy is constant, like swells on the sea (Mother shapes great waves): it seems to flow on behind everything; it comes and shows its face for a moment, then vanishes. In the very tiny things of lifeyes, physical life the joy of these things, the joy life contains, this luminous, special kind of vibration, rises up as if to remind us that its here; it is here, it mustnt be forgotten, its here but its kept down by this tension.
Then, from time to time, everything seems to be on the edge of a precipice; the body doesnt fall simply because it keeps its balance but without this higher state of perfect faith, one would surely fall!
--
In other words, this coexistence or simultaneity of joy and tension, combat and peace, progress in the cellular consciousness and physical disequilibrium, form a physiological whole which is ... strange.
***
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, on the mental plane (the physical-mind, the material mind) I saw an individual. I am not entirely certain of his identity (when I saw him last night I didnt associate him with anyone in particular) but from his outer appearance he is evidently a sannyasi. He was pursuing me, blocking my way and trying to stop me from doing my work (it was a long, long affair). But I was very conscious and could foresee everything he was about to do, so it had no effect. After a long while I emerged from this I had something else to do and I leftand on my way home he was everywhere, hiding and trying to catch me; but he didnt succeed in doing anything. And I knew he had been acting in this manner for a long time.
Then I woke up (I always wake up three or four times during the night) and when I went back to bed I had an attack of what the doctor and I have taken to be filariasis but a strange type of filariasis, for as soon as I master it in one spot it appears in another, and when I master it there it reappears somewhere else. Last night it was in the arms (it lasted quite a while, between 2:30 and 4 a.m.); but I was fully conscious, and each time the attack came, I went like this (gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material subtle physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in my room there (an immense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didnt pay attention, presuming it was one of the people usually around me. Then suddenly I had such an unpleasant sensation in my body that I raised my head and looked, and I saw someone there. Do you know how the magicians in Europe dress, in short satin breeches and a shirt? He was wearing something like that. He was Indian, tall and rather dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young man. He seemed to have been drawn1 there becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the moment I saw him, there was the same sensation in all my cells as I have with what Ive been calling filariasis (its a special, minute kind of pain) and simultaneously all the cells felt disgusta tremendous will of rejection. Then I sat up straight (I didnt stand up) and said to him as forcefully as possible, How do you dare to come in here! I said it so loudly that the noise woke me up! I dont know what happened then, but things went much better afterwards.
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.
Before that experience, as part of the attack, I also got a sore throat. I didnt believe it would manifest, but around 9:30 this morning when I came downstairs for meditation with X,2 it did. Its nothing at all, though. The whole time I was with X (and even before, when I was waiting for him), it was halted completelyeverything in that room came to a halt. It started up again only after he left and I came here. But its nothing.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I probably needed the experience. You remember that type of detachment I spoke of when I had that experiencewhen the BODY had that experience of January 24, 1961well, it has increased to such an extent that it now applies to anything and everything linked with action on earth. This detachment was probably necessary. It began with something like things dissolving (Mother makes a gesture of crumbling something between her fingers); certain kinds of links between my consciousness and the Work were dissolving (not links with me, because I dont have any, but with the body; the whole physical consciousness, all that attaches it to the things in its environment, to the Work and to the entourage I spoke to you about that in regard to physical immortality; well, thats what is happening now). Its like things dissolvingdissolving, dissolving, dissolving. And its more and more pronounced. During these last days, things have been becoming increasingly difficultdifficulties have been coming one after another, one after another. Formerly, I had the power to get a grip on them and hold them (Mother tightens her grip as though mastering circumstances); but now that this type of detachment has begun, things drift away everywhereeverywhere, everywhere.
So this episode with X is probably part of the same process. What has been affected is a certain confidence in the REALITY of the Power, the REALITY of spiritual action; there seems to be no communication between here (above) and there (below).
--
Yes, its as if I were living, as if the BODY were living (despite all the illnesses and attacks, all the ill will besetting it), living in a bath of the divine vibrationbathing in something immenseimmense, immense limitless, and so stable! The body lives in it like this (gesture as if Mother were floating). So even when there is what we call physical pain, even when there are blows to morale (like having a cashier ask you for money and you have none to give him5), well, despite it all, despite all the possible complications (coming all at the same time), EVERYTHING, everything that happens now, even things which seem extremely unpleasant to our mental conceptions or our mental reactions, everything is a bath, a bath of the vibration of divine Love. So much so that if I didnt control my body, I would be smiling at everything all the time like an idiot. A beatific smile for everything (I dont show it because I control myself).
(silence, the clock strikes the hour)
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Would remain the same? You mean they would physically be the same as they are now, but would be seen in a different way?
That's it. I don't know if we will ever be able to express ourselves with our present vocabulary! ... We need another language!
--
Once again, Mother's experience coincides with modern science, which is beginning to discover that time and space are not fixed and INDEPENDENT quantitiesas, from the Greeks right up to Newton, we had been accustomed to believe but a four-dimensional system, with three coordinates of space and one of time, DEPENDENT UPON THE phySICAL PHENOMENA DEVELOPING THEREIN. Such is 'Riemann's Space,' used by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity. Thus, a trajectoryi.e., in principle, a fixed distance, a quantity of space to be traversed-is a function of the time taken to traverse it: there is no straight line between two points, or rather the I straight' line is a function of the rate of speed. There is no 'fixed' quantity of space, but rather rates of speed which determine their own space (or their own measure of space). Space-time is thus no longer a fixed quantity, but, according to science, the PRODUCT ... of what? Of a certain rate of unfolding? But what is unfolding? A rocket, a train, muscles?... Or a certain brain which has generated increasingly perfected instruments adapted to its own mode of being, like a flying fish flying farther and farther (and faster and faster) but finally failing back into its own oceanic fishbowl. Yet what would this space-time be for another kind of fishbowl, another kind of consciousness: a supramental consciousness, for example, which can be instantaneously at any point in 'space'there is no more space! And no more time. There is no more 'trajectory': the trajectory is within itself. The fishbowl is shattered, and the whole evolutionary succession of little fishbowls as well. Thus, as Mother tells it, space and time are a 'PRODUCT Of the movement of consciousness.' A variable space-time, which not only changes according to our mechanical equipment, but according to the consciousness utilizing the equipment, and which ultimately utilizes only itself; consciousness, at the end of the evolutionary curve, has become its own equipment and the sole mechanism of the universe.
***
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This paucity, this narrowness. Its relatively easy to get out of mental paucity, mental narrowness: one has only to pierce a hole, go beyond, and view things from above; and yes, immediately, it all widens. Thats relatively easy. But this vital and phySICAL paucity, material narrowness ohh!
For mental narrowness, we know the meansone has only to go beyond itwe know the means. But this (Mother touches her body), however much one keeps bringing in, bringing in, bringing in the Light and the Force. Yes, for a few moments one can live a universal life, even in the sensations but in the body.
--
And so, in an individual consciousness its expressed by an infinitesimal pointa physical body and everything dependent on it; but its exactly the same thing as the Supreme Point and everything depending on that. Its the same thing. It is only like the shifting of a glanceif it can be called a glancelike a needle point occupying no space.12 And yet it is the same consciousness: is it consciousness? Something like that. It is not consciousness as we understand it, nor is it perception; it is a kind of will to see (good God, what words!), and with such absolute freedom and omnipotence: it can be this or that, or yet another, and it is EXACTLY the same thing.
Dont try to understand!
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, Ive had some very interesting revelations on this point, on the way people think and feel about it. I remember someone once made a little statue of Sri Aurobindo; he gave it a potbelly and anyway, to me it was ridiculous. So I said, How could you make such a thing?! He explained that even if its a caricature for the ordinary eye, since its an image of the one you consider God, or a god, or an Avatar, since its the image of the one you worship, even if only a guru, it contains the spirit and the force of his presence, and this is what you worship, even in a crude form, even if the form is a caricature to the physical eye.
Someone made a large painting of Sri Aurobindo and myself, and they brought it here to show me. I said, Oh, its dreadful! It was to the physical eye it was really dreadful. Its dreadful, I said, we cant keep it. Then immediately someone asked me for it, saying, Im going to put it up in my house and do my puja before it. Ah! I couldnt help saying, But how could you put up a thing like that! (It wasnt so much ugly as frightfully banal.) How can you do puja before something so commonplace and empty! This person replied, Oh, to me its not empty! It contains all the presence and all the force, and I shall worship it as that: the Presence and the Force.
All this is based on the old idea that whatever the imagewhich we disdainfully call an idolwhatever the external form of the deity may be, the presence of the thing represented is always there. And there is always someonewhe ther priest or initiate, sadhu or sannyasisomeone who has the power and (usually this is the priests work) who draws the Force and the Presence down into it. And its true, its quite real the Force and the Presence are THERE; and this (not the form in wood or stone or metal) is what is worshipped: this Presence.
0 1961-05-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I dont know. I dont know if they had it phySICALLYin the inner worlds of course, certainly! Its all very well, one is very happy living in those worlds. But it is hereHERE! How to make of this life here, this world here, something really worth living. Havent yet found the trick.
Thats all I can say. Thats what I am up against.
--
Yet there are worthwhile things in the physical life. I dont know, but I still feel a nostalgia for
Nostalgia for what? Have you actually known something worth being nostalgic about? What?
--
But its a wide physical life, and not without its beauty!
The physical lifeyes, its nothing at all. All these things of the physical lifenothing at all, nothing at all! Its childish, not worth thinking about for a second.
Unless one has the sense of the TRUE LIFE, of the Truthit is nothing, nothing. All the rest is nothing, nothingpastimes, childish amusements, the business of people who have nothing else to do. Ah, no! Its not worth a seconds thought.
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This feeling was so warm, so intimate, so I dont know how to express it. At once so soft and so powerful and so. Oh, it was concrete! The whole atmosphere, the whole atmosphere became solidall, all had the taste of the Lord. I dont know how to make it clear. It was quite material, as if you had a mouthful of it, everything was full of itit was like that. In such a phySICAL way! Like. You might compare it to the most delicious taste you could ever haveit was the sense of touch and of tastevery, very material. It was like closing your hand on something solidsuch a warm, soft vibration, and SO STRONG, so powerful, so concrete!
It is evidently proof of an evolution in this direction, within this whole cluster of cells, but.
--
This was the first time I had this experience. It was much more substantial than the physical contact, which, as I told you, I had already had.1 It was much more material, and related to taste. It was as if the whole atmosphere and all the things in it were a marvelous food an ecstatic nourishment.
I had already had the experience for the sense of smell the divine vibration, the vibration of Ananda in odors. Just under my window, you know, Nripendra has his kitchen, where every morning and afternoon food is prepared for the children2it all comes wafting up on gusts of air. And when the Samadhi tree is in flower, the scent wafts up to me on gusts of air; when people burn incense down below, it comes wafting up here on gusts of aireach and every fragrance (fragrancelets say odor). And generally it all comes while I am walking for my japaan Ananda of odors, each one with its meaning, its expression, its (how to say it?) its motivation and its goal. Marvelous! And there are no longer any good or bad odors that notion is gone completely. Each one has its meaningits meaning and its raison dtre. I have been experiencing this for a long time.
--
The physical mind.
Mother is alluding in particular to the physical mind ('this kind of mind-like activity in matter').
***
0 1961-05-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I never knew Vivekananda. I only know what I have heard or read about him, but that isnt what I call knowing. So I cant say anything, and above all I dont want to seem to give credence to all the gossip that has been spread about him. I have had no personal contact with him, neither in the physical nor elsewherenot with him personally. Naturally I could if I made an effort, but.
To tell the truth, this question seems stupid to me, because one can have mastery over circumstances only if one becomes the Supremebecause the Supreme alone has mastery over circumstances. So the question is senseless.
0 1961-06-06, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take absolutely identical circumstances: the same outer circumstances, the same inner circumstances the psychological condition is the same; circumstances of life, the same; events, the same; people, no appreciable difference. Identical circumstances, a few hoursnot even a dayapart. And in one case, the body that is, the cellular consciousness feels a sort of eurhythmy and general harmony, everything dovetails in such a marvelous way, without rubbing, without frictioneverything functions and organizes itself in a total harmony. Its a peace and a joy (without the vital intensity, of courseits something physical). All, all is so harmonious and truly you feel a sense of the divine organization of everything, of all the cellsall is marvelous and the body feels well. Then in the other case everything is the same, the consciousness is the same and something escapes the perception of harmony is no longer there. For what reason? One doesnt understand anymore. And then the body begins to function wrongly. Yet everything is absolutely identicalmental conditions, vital conditions, physical conditions, all identical and suddenly it all seems meaningless. One still has the consciousness, the full consciousness of the divine Presence, and one senses somewhere something escaping, and all becomes its like running after something that escapes. Things become meaningless. In absolutely identical conditionseven the movements of the body (functional movements, I mean) may be identical, but they are felt to be disharmonious (these words are much too crude, its more subtle than that), meaningless, disharmonious. And what escapes? You cant make it out.
What is it?
--
And when the body makes this movement (gesture of stepping back from physical appearances)what to call it? This movement of fusion (is it fusion?), of no longer being a separate body, of being the Divine there is something which. There is a sort of abstraction of something (and even that is putting it too concretely). And sometimes it succeeds, the body floats in the Light; sometimes its only partial. Sometimes all the inner consciousness is there, full and total but HERE things remain as they are, stupid, stupid, utterly stupid! Blind, in shifting sands, painful (and its not a thought, its not even a sensation; I dont know what it is).
And THERE the conscious will can do nothing. Nothing. All it could do it has done, and it continues to do all it can at each minute, and its nothing, it is not THATwhat is it??
--
Mother is alluding to two extracts from Questions and Answers (dated June 19 and July 17, 1957) which she has just reviewed for inclusion in the Bulletin. In them she speaks of the causes of illness and of using the conscious will for physical development.
***
0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive known that and have always taken great care to avoid it, for it opens the door to all deformations. Lele3 was like thatLele did the same thing: he behaved like a lout; he said it wasnt himself, it was Naturehe had nothing to do with it. This is all very well, but still theres a sort of affinity between your physical comportment and what you are inside, isnt there?!
Sri Aurobindo didnt accept this tradition at all.
--
Oh, he is splendid! There is such a sweet warmth in him, so good, and a mastery (mastery of inner movements, of the vital movement) and the ability to bring into the physical this peace, this absolute immobility. Its splendid! I have been doing this for something like forty years and you cant imagine how difficult it is, how much effort it takes to achieve it! With him it comes all by itself. Thats the tantric mastery.
And to a certain extent it has a healing power (to a certain extent). But its not that supramental thing Sri Aurobindo had: he would pass his hand like this (gesture), and the disorder would be gone completely!
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was keeping I.B. near me because I already had the idea of putting him immediately back into another bodyhis soul was not satisfied, it had not finished its experience (there was a whole combination of circumstances) and it wanted to continue to live on earth. Then, that night, his inner being went to find V., lamenting, saying he was dead and hadnt wanted to die, that he had lost his body and wanted to continue to live. V. was very perplexed. He let me know about it in the morning: Heres what has happened. I sent word to him of what I was doing, that I was keeping I.B. in my atmosphere and that he should stay very calm and not get excited, for I was going to put him back into a body as soon as possible I already had something in view. The same evening I.B. again went to find V., with the same complaint. V. told him very clearly, Here is what Mother says, here is what she is going to do; come now, be calm and dont torment yourself. And he saw in I.B.s face that he had understood (the inner being was taking on I.B.s physical appearance, naturally); his face relaxed, he became content.
He went away and he never came back. That is, he stayed tranquilly with me, until I was able to put him into C.s child.
--
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.
--
At least fifty people wait for the last days of the month to see me and they imagine. One thing I have not yet comprehended: what to do to make physical time lose its physical reality? It may come. As you see, I still have to watch the clock, and when I am late, well, time gets short! Maybe Ill get the power of (what is it called?) ubiquity. I believe thats the solution! To be here, and then therejust like that! It would be very amusing.
Satprem no longer has the text of this letter.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At any rate, this simultaneity of past, present and future cant be a physical simultaneity, can it?
Ah, no! Not here.
--
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.
--
I have what could be called a tactile sensation that the contents of the subtle atmosphere are increasing. This atmosphere is not part of material space as we conceive of or see it physically, where one thing has to give place to another (Mother changes the position of an eraser on the table)and even that (laughing) I believe is an illusion! It only SEEMS like that to us! Its not on the wholly material plane, but just behind or within (how to put it?), and its contents are increasing. And as its happening within inner dimensions, it can augment, so to speak, indefinitely; things become more and more interwoven, if you see what I meanwhere there was one phenomenon of consciousness there may now be hundreds, interwoven with each other in the inner dimensions; which means, for example, considering only our tiny planet, that the earth is becoming more and more compact and rich with all that has been since the beginning of its formationbecause its all there, it is all still there.
Actually, as soon as one is not totally, totally tied down by the physical sense organs. For example, I am more and more frequently experiencing changes in the quality of vision. Quite recently, yesterday or the day before, I was sitting in the bathroom drying my face before going out and I raised my eyes (I was sitting before a mirror, although I dont usually look at myself); I raised my eyes and looked, and I saw many things (Mother laughs, greatly amused). At that moment, I had an experience which made me say to myself, Ah! Thats why, from the physical, purely material standpoint, my vision seems to be a bit blurred. Because what I was seeing was MUCH clearer and infinitely more expressive than normal physical sight. And I recalled that it is with these clearer eyes that I see and recognize all my people at balcony darshan. (From the balcony I recognize all my people.) And its that vision (but with open eyes!) which. It is of another order.
I am going to study what Sri Aurobindo says when I come to it in The Yoga of Self-Perfection. He says there comes a time when the senses changeits not that you employ the senses proper to another plane (we have always known we had senses on all the different planes); its quite different from that: the senses THEMSELVES change. He foretells this changehe says it will occur. And I believe it begins in the way I am experiencing it now.
The CONTENT is different, mon petit. I see I see, but. The state of consciousness of the person Im looking at, for instance, changes his physical appearance for my phySICAL eyes. And this has nothing to do with the banalities of ordinary psychology, where your physiognomy is said to be changed by the feelings you experience. The CONTENT of what I see is different. And then the eyes of the person I am looking at are not the sameit is rather. I couldnt sketch it, but perhaps if I made a painting it would give some idea (I would need to use a somewhat blurred technique, not too precise). The eyes are not quite the same, and the rest of the face too, even the color and the shape thats what sometimes makes me hesitate. I see people (I see my people every morning) and I recognize them, and yet they are different, they are not the same every day (some are always, always the same, like a rock, but others are not). And I even I hesitate sometimes: Is it really he? But he is very. It is indeed he, but I dont quite know him. This generally coincides with changes in the persons consciousness.
In conclusion: we know nothing.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
While walking in my room, a series of invocations or prayers have come to me2 (I didnt choose themthey were dictated to me) in which I implore the Lord to manifest his Perfection (and I am quite aware of how foolish this expression is, but it does correspond to an aspiration).3 When I say manifest, I mean to manifest in our physical, material world Im asking for the transformation of this world. And the moment I utter one of these invocations, the sense of the particular approach it represents is there; thats why I am now able to give such a lecture on PerfectionPerfection is one of these approaches. Manifest this, I tell Him, Manifest that, manifest Your Perfection. (The series is very long and it takes me quite a while to go through it all.) Well, each time I say Manifest Your Perfection, I have an awareness of what constitutes Perfectionit is something global.
Its like the word purityone could lecture endlessly on the difference between divine purity and what people call purity. Divine purity (at the lowest level) is to admit but one influence the divine Influence (but this is at the lowest level, and already terribly distorted). Divine purity means that only the Divine existsnothing else. It is perfectly pureonly the Divine exists, nothing other than He.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Stopped him physically, you mean?
Yes. What made him stop?
--
Everything depends upon the balance (not the equilibrium, the proportion) between the amount of resistance in physical substance, and the Power.
But are these merely material resistances or are they rather hostile forces?
--
In the final analysis, everything obviously depends upon the Supremes Will because, if one looks deeply enough into the question, even physical laws and resistances are nothing for Him. But this kind of direct intervention takes place only at the extreme limit; if His Will is to be expressed in opposition, as it were, to the whole set of laws governing the Manifestationwell, that only comes at the very last second. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this so well in Savitri, so well! At least three times in the book he has expressed this Will that abolishes all established laws, all of them, and all the consequences of these laws, the whole formidable colossus of the Manifestation, so that in the face of it all, That can express itself and this takes place at the very last second, so to speak, at the extreme limit of possibility.
I must say that there was a time when, as Sri Aurobindo had entrusted his work to me, there was a kind of tension to do it (it cant be called an anxiety); a tension in the will. This too has now ended (Mother stretches her arms into the Infinite). Its finished. But there MAY still be something tense lurking somewhere in the subconscient or the inconscient I dont know, its possible. Why? I dont know. I mean I have never been told, at any time, neither through Sri Aurobindo nor directly, whether or not I would go right to the end. I have never been told the contrary, either. I have been told nothing at all. And if at times I turn towards Thatnot to question, but simply to know the answer is always the same: Carry on, its not your problem; dont worry about it. So now I have learned not to worry about it; I am consciously not worried about it.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have always known that cruelty, like sadism, is the need to cut through a thick layer of totally insensitive tamas1 by means of extremely violent sensationan extreme is needed if anything is to be felt through that tamas. I was always told, for example (in Japan it was strongly emphasized to me), that the people of the Far East are very tamasic physically. The Chinese in particular are said to be the remnants of a race that inhabited the moon before it froze over and forced them to seek refuge on earth (this is supposed to account for their round faces and the shape of their eyes!). Anyway (laughing), its a story people tell! But theyre extremely tamasic; their physical sensibility is almost nilappalling things are required to make them feel anything! And since they naturally presume that what applies to them applies to everyone, they are capable of appalling cruelty. Not all of them, of course! But this is their reputation. Have you read Mirbeaus book? (I believe thats his name.) I read it sixty years ago something on Chinese torture.
Yes, its well-known.
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