TERMS STARTING WITH
psychagogic ::: a. --> Attractive; persuasive.
psychagogue ::: n. --> A necromancer.
psychal ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the soul; psychical.
psychedelicware /si:"k*-del"-ik-weir/ [UK] Synonym {display hack}. See also {smoking clover}. [{Jargon File}]
psychedelicware ::: /si:k*-del-ik-weir/ [UK] Synonym display hack. See also smoking clover.[Jargon File]
psyche: Jungs term for the totality of each persons psychic contents.
psyche ::: n. --> A lovely maiden, daughter of a king and mistress of Eros, or Cupid. She is regarded as the personification of the soul.
The soul; the vital principle; the mind.
A cheval glass.
psyche ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . that spark of the Divine which is the true psyche.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
psychian ::: n. --> Any small moth of the genus Psyche and allied genera (family Psychidae). The larvae are called basket worms. See Basket worm, under Basket.
psychiatria ::: n. --> Alt. of Psychiatry
psychiatric ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to psychiatria.
psychiatrists: medical doctors who possess an M.D. degree and may prescribe medications for the treatment of psychological disorders.
psychiatry ::: n. --> The application of the healing art to mental diseases.
psychic ::: a. --> Alt. of Psychical
psychical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the human soul, or to the living principle in man.
Of or pertaining to the mind, or its functions and diseases; mental; -- contrasted with physical.
psychic being ::: the evolving soul of the individual, the divine portion in him which evolves from life to life, growing by its experiences until it becomes a fully conscious being. From its place behind the heart-centre, the psychic being supports the mind, life and body, aiding their growth and development. The term "soul" is often used as a synonym for "psychic being", but strictly speaking there is a distinction: the soul is the psychic essence, the psychic being is the soul-personality put forward and developed by the psychic essence to represent it in the evolution. ::: See also psychic.
psychic entity ::: psychic essence.
psychic essence ::: the soul in its essence; the divine essence in the individual, the divine spark which supports the evolution of the being in Nature. In the course of the evolution the psychic essence grows and takes form as the psychic being.
psychicisation (psychic transformation) ::: the psychic change in which the psychic being comes forward to dominate the mind, vital and physical and change the lower nature.
psychic ::: of or relating to the soul (as distinguished from the mind and vital). Used in the sense of the Greek word "psyche", meaning "soul", the term "psychic" refers to all the movements and experiences of the soul, those which rise >from or directly touch the psychic being. It does not refer to all the more inward and all the abnormal experiences in which the mind and vital predominate; such experiences, in Sri Aurobindo's terminology, would be called psychological (surface or occult), not psychic.
psychic ::: Psychic This widely used word, which can be both an adjective and a noun, means of the soul or mind. It is the quality of being attuned to or adept at interpreting the more subtle psychic, or soul, faculties and energies. One who is so attuned, such as a medium or an accomplished Yogi. Psychic faculties include such extra-sensory perception as clairvoyance, clairaudience, retrocognition and psychometry (see below) amongst others.
psychics ::: n. --> Psychology.
psychic (the) ::: psychic being; psychic essence; soul.
psychism ::: n. --> The doctrine of Quesne, that there is a fluid universally diffused, end equally animating all living beings, the difference in their actions being due to the difference of the individual organizations.
psycho- ::: --> A combining form from Gr. psychh` the soul, the mind, the understanding; as, psychology.
psychoanalysis: a type of psychodynamic therapy devised by Freud, in line with the assumptions of unconscious conflict and psychosexual development. Therapyaims for the patient to gain a deeper understanding of their own unconsciousthoughts and feelings through free association and transference.
psycho-analysis
psychoanalytic theory: is a general term for approaches to psychoanalysis which attempt to provide a conceptual framework more-or-less independent of clinical practice rather than based on empirical analysis of clinical cases.
psychodynamic approach: a perspective that views behaviour in terms of past childhood experiences, and the influence of unconscious processes, drives and conflicts.
psychodynamics: the branch of social psychology that deals with the processes and emotions that determine psychology and motivation.
psychogenesis ::: n. --> Genesis through an internal force, as opposed to natural selection.
psychography ::: n. --> A description of the phenomena of mind.
Spirit writing.
psychokinesis ::: Psychokinesis Psychokinesis, or PK, is the more commonly used term today for what in the past was known as telekinesis. It is a term used in parapsychology (see above) to describe the ability to influence an inanimate physical object just by thinking about it (mind over matter), i.e. by exercising psychic powers. The term 'remote influencing' is now also used extensively.
psychologic ::: a. --> Alt. of Psychological
psychological ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to psychology. See Note under Psychic.
psychological behaviorism ::: A variety of behaviorism based upon a program of human research involving various types of human behavior, as proposed by Arthur W. Staats.
psychological dependence: the reliance upon and beliefs that are held when individuals become addicted to drugs.
psychological disorder: a psychological disorder of thought or emotion; a more neutral term than mental illness.
psychological egoism ::: The descriptive view that humans are always motivated by self-interest.
psychological: relating to the way that living things function rather than to their shape or structure i.e. mental or emotional as opposed to physical in nature.
psychologies ::: pl. --> of Psychology
psychologism ::: The philosophy that holds that human knowledge can be expanded solely through philosophical study.
psychologist: means a person who by years of study, training and experience has achieved professional recognition and standing in the field of clinical psychology.
psychologist ::: n. --> One who is versed in, devoted to, psychology.
psychologue ::: n. --> A psychologist.
psychology ::: n. --> The science of the human soul; specifically, the systematic or scientific knowledge of the powers and functions of the human soul, so far as they are known by consciousness; a treatise on the human soul.
psychology ::: Psychology The scientific study of human behaviour and mental processes and how they affect an individual's or a group's physical and mental state. Its goal is to describe, understand, predict, and modify behaviour (where necessary).
psychology: the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes.
psychomachy ::: n. --> A conflict of the soul with the body.
psychomancy ::: n. --> Necromancy.
psychometric testing: the testing of individuals to measure competence in a specific area of functioning, e.g. intelligence, personality.
psychometry ::: n. --> The art of measuring the duration of mental processes, or of determining the time relations of mental phenomena.
psychometry ::: Psychometry This is the ability to glean information about a person or a place just by touching or holding a physical object that is somehow 'linked' to that person or place.
psycho-motor ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to movement produced by action of the mind or will.
psychopannychism ::: n. --> The doctrine that the soul falls asleep at death, and does not wake until the resurrection of the body.
psychopath: see anti-social personality disorder.
psychopathy ::: n. --> Mental disease. See Psychosis, 2.
psychopharmacology: the study of the effects that drugs have on behaviour.
psychophysical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to psychophysics; involving the action or mutual relations of the psychical and physical in man.
psychophysics ::: n. --> The science of the connection between nerve action and consciousness; the science which treats of the relations of the psychical and physical in their conjoint operation in man; the doctrine of the relation of function or dependence between body and soul.
psychophysics: the study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the mental events that arise as a result of these stimuli. The methods developed are fundamental to sensation and perception.
psychophysiology: the branch of psychology that is concerned with thephysiological bases of psychological processes.
psychopomp ::: n. --> A leader or guide of souls .
psychopompoi.
psychosexual development: in psychoanalytic theory, a description of how a child progresses through set stages that vary according to the focus of gratification(oral, anal, genital) and by the person towards which this feeling is directed at.
psychosis: any major mental disorder that involves loss of contact with reality. This usually includes delusions and/or hallucinations.
psychosis ::: n. --> Any vital action or activity.
A disease of the mind; especially, a functional mental disorder, that is, one unattended with evident organic changes.
psychosocial: the psychological and/or social aspects of health, disease, treatment, and/or rehabilitation.
psychosurgery: surgical procedures conducted on brain tissue to alleviate the symptoms of severe psychological disorder.
psychotherapy: any variety of treatment for abnormal behaviour which is primarily verbal in nature, rather than based on the use of drugs.
psychotic: a person afflicted with psychosis.
psychotropic ::: Referring to drugs that alter behavior, mood, and perception.
psychozoic ::: a. --> Designating, or applied to the Era of man; as, the psychozoic era.
psychrometer ::: n. --> An instrument for measuring the tension of the aqueous vapor in the atmosphere, being essentially a wet and dry bulb hygrometer.
psychrometrical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the psychrometer or psychrometry.
psychrometry ::: n. --> Hygrometry.
psyllae ::: pl. --> of Psylla
psylla ::: n. --> Any leaping plant louse of the genus Psylla, or family Psyllidae.
psyton "humour" /si:'ton/ (From {TMRC}) The elementary particle carrying the sinister force. The probability of a process losing is proportional to the number of psytons falling on it. Psytons are generated by observers, which is why demos are more likely to fail when lots of people are watching. This term appears to have been largely superseded by {bogon}; see also {quantum bogodynamics}. (1997-04-26)
psyton ::: (humour) /si:'ton/ (From TMRC) The elementary particle carrying the sinister force. The probability of a process losing is proportional to the why demos are more likely to fail when lots of people are watching. This term appears to have been largely superseded by bogon; see also quantum bogodynamics. (1997-04-26)
Psyche (Greek) [from psycho breathe, blow; cf Greek pneuma from pneo to breathe, blow; Latin anima, spiritus all connected with breath, wind, spirit, life, soul] Used in classic Greek as vaguely as is our word soul; but in Platonic philosophy and theosophical usage, the lower or carnally influenced aspect of the mind or soul, as contrasted with the higher or spiritually influenced aspect: kama-manas as against buddhi-manas, the latter represented by the Greek nous. From these two words are derived the adjectives psychic and noetic.
Psyche—in gnosticism, the name of Valen¬
Psyche: In the Greek philosophy prior to the sixth century B.C., the religious factor in man, the indestructible but not immortal soul. In later Greek philosophy, the religious factor in man, closely identified with nous (q.v.).
Psyche ::: On this site we use the term to refer to the aspects of a, more-or-less, stable self-identity that make up the everyday motions and structures of the Lunar Personality.
Psyche ::: “… that spark of the Divine which is the true psyche.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Psychiatrist ::: A medical doctor with training in mental illness.
Psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin was the first to draw a distinction between what he termed dementia praecox ("premature dementia") and other psychotic illnesses. In 1911, dementia praecox was renamed schizophrenia by psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who found Kraepelin's term to be misleading, as the disorder is not a form of dementia, premature or otherwise.
PSYCHICAL—Pertaining to the mind or soul; mental as distinguished from the physical of physiological.
Psychical Research: The term used in Great Britain for parapsychology (q.v.).
Psychic awakening means the conscious action of the psychic from behind. When it comes to the front, it invades the mind and vital and body and psychidscs their movement. It comes best by aspiration and an unquestioning and entire turning and surrender to the Mother. But also it sometimes comes of itself when the ddhara is ready.
Psychic being and Jivatma ::: It is the central being above the evolution (always the same) that we call the Jivatma ; the psychic being is the same in evolution, it is a spark of the
Psychic being has in itself no desires, it has only aspiration and a seeking and love for the Divine and all things that are or tend towards the Divine.
Psychic being is quite di/Terent from the mind or vital; it stands behind them where they meet in the heart. Its central place is there, but behind the heart rather than in the heart ; for what men call usually the heart is the seat of emotion, and human emotions are mental-vital impulses, not ordinarily psychic in their nature. This mostly secret power behind, other than the mind and the life-force, is the true soul, the psychic being in us. The power of the psychic, however, can act upon the mind and vital and body, purifying thought and perception and emotion (which then becomes psychic feeling) and sensaUon and action and everything else in us and preparing them to be divine movements. The psychic being may be described in Indian lan- guage as the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha, but the inner or secret heart must be understood, hrdaye guhayom, not the outer vital-emotional centre. The supramental change can take place only if the psychic is awake and is made the chief support of the descending supramental power.
Psychic body: In spiritualistic terminology, this term is applied to mean either the soul itself or an intermediary between the soul and the physical body.
Psychic, psychical (adjective): Mental; relating to, emanating from, dealing with or based on the soul or psyche; non-physical.
Psychic centre is behind the heart and it is through the puri- fied emotions that the psychic most easily finds an outlet.
Psychic contribution ::: The contribution of the psychic being to the sadhana is ; love and bhakti, a love not vital, demanding and egoistic but unconditioned and without claims, self-existent ; the contact or the presence of the Mother within ; the unerring guidance from within ; a quieting and purification of the mind, vital and physical consciousness by their subjection to the psychic influence and guidance ; the opening up of all this lower cons- ciousness to the higher spiritual consciousness above for its des- cent into a nature prepared to receive it with a complete recepti- vity and right attitude — for the psychic brings in everything, right thought, right perception, right feeling, right attitude.
Psychic conversion ::: The conversion which- keeps Ihe cons- ciousness turned towards the light and makes the right attitude spontaneous and natural and abiding and rejection also spon- taneous.
Psychic emergence ::: When the psychic being comes in front, there is an automatic perception of the true and untrue, the divine and the undivine, the spiritual right and wrong of things, and the false vital and mental movements and attacks are imme- diately exposed and fall away and can do nothing ; gradually the vital and physical as well as flte mind get full of this psychic licht and truth and sound feeling and purit>'.
Psychic Entity ::: Our soul, the secret indwelling psychic entity, is a portion of the Divine Consciousness and Essence.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 403
Psychic expression ::: It is through the emotional being that the psychic most easily expresses, for it stands just behind it in the heart.
Psychic feelins • There is a fundamental psychic feeling which is the same for all, but there can also be a special psychic feeling for one or another.
Psychic fire is the fire of aspiration, purification and tapasyS which comes from the psychic being. It is not the psychic being but a power of the psychic being.
Psychic force: In spiritualistic terminology, a force emanating from the body of the medium, observable through its manifestations beyond the periphery of the medium’s body, without physical contact, subject to the direction and control of the medium. It is also subject to an ebb and flow, depending on factors such as the psychological atmosphere in the seance room, etc.
Psychic Fusion: The supposed merging of a number of separate psychic states to form a new state. The possibility of psychic fusion is highly questionable and alleged instances of it may be interpreted as the associative revival of images based on the memory of physical mixture. -- L.W.
Psychic healing: The method, believed in by a great many adherents to occult doctrines, of healing and curing by the influence of the mind or thoughts over material nature and natural conditions.
PSYCHICISATION. ::: Change of the lower nature bringing right vision into the mind, right impulse and feeling into the vital, ri^t movement and habit into the physical — all turned towards the Divine, all based on love, adoration, bhakti — finally the vision and sense of the Mother everywhere in all as w’ell as in the heart, her Force working in the being, faith, con- secration, surrender.
Psychicisation is not enough, it is only a beginning ; spiritualisa- tion and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term ; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the Supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by (he mdivi- dual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definite stride forward it must take one time or other.
Psychicism ::: The general categorization for eclectic activities and practices that are related to perceiving, interacting with, and channeling spirits. Sometimes includes forms of divination like fortune-telling and palmistry and usually intended for the general public or for mundane purposes as opposed to for spiritual advancement.
Psychic junction ::: To work on each plane so as to help each to awaken to the true truth and the Divine Reality.
Psychic love and spiriitial ::: The true love for the Divine is in its fundamental nature psychic and spiritual. The psychic element is the need of the inmost being for self-giving, love, adoration, union which can only be fully satisfied by the Divine
Psychic love does not exclude discrimination.
Psychic love finds itself wholly when it is the radiation of the diviner consciousness for t^hich uc arc seeking; till then it is diflicult for it to put out its undimmed integral self and figure.
Psychic love is distingubhed by an essential purity and selfless- ness, but the vital can put on a very brilliant imitation of that character, when it likes.
Psychic mind: A Rosicrucian term for Ego.
Psychic (noun): A medium.
Psychic opening ::: When the psychic being opens, you grow conscious of your soul ; you know your self.
Psychic or psychical: (Gr. psychikos, from psyche, the soul) (a) In the general sense, psychic is applied to any mental phenomenon. See Psychosis, Mental, (b) In the special sense, psychic is restricted to unusual mental phenomena such as mediumship, telepathy, prescience, etc. which are the subjects of "Psychic Research." See Telepathy, Prescience, Parapsychology. -- L.W.
Psychic ::: Ordinarily, all the more inward and all the abnormal psychological experiences are called psychic. I use the word psychic for the soul as distinguished from the mind and vital. All movements and experiences of the soul would in that sense be called psychic, those which rise from or directly touch the psychic being; where mind and vital predominate, the experience would be called psychological (surface or occult).
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 151
Psychic phenomena: The material manifestations produced by a medium or a sensitive (q.v.); psi phenomena (q.v.).
Psychic Powers Powers pertaining to the lower intermediate human nature — i.e, between the mental-emotional and the physical — including powers of perception such as astral vision, the lower clairvoyance and clairaudience, the lower psychometry and seership, etc.; and lower biases or tendencies such as hypnotism, the power to produce minor occult phenomena of many kinds, and in connection with the power of automatic astral projection. In their nature they are morally neutral, being susceptible of use or misuse just as are physical powers. If used with an evil or selfish purpose, the action is black magic; and even if used without such motive or with good intention, they may prove confusing and therefore misleading for one who ventures to use them.
Psychic Powers ::: The lowest powers of the intermediate or soul-nature in the human being, and we are exercising andusing them all the time -- yes, and we cannot even control them properly! Men's emotional thoughts arevagrant, wandering, uncertain, lacking precision, without positive direction, and feebly governed. Theaverage man cannot even keep his emotions and thoughts in the grip of his self-conscious will. Hisweakest passions lead him astray. It is this part of his nature whence flow his "psychic powers." It isman's work to transmute them and to turn them to employment which is good and useful and holy.Indeed, the average man cannot control the ordinary psycho-astral-physical powers that he commonlyuses; and when, forsooth, people talk about cultivating occult powers, by which they mean merelypsychic powers, it simply shows that through ignorance they know not to what they refer. Their mindsare clouded as regards the actual facts. Those who talk so glibly of cultivating occult powers are just thepeople who cannot be trusted as real guides, for before they themselves can crawl in these mysteriousregions of life, they seem to desire to teach other people how to run and to leap. What most people reallymean, apparently, when they speak of cultivating occult powers is "I want to get power over otherpeople." Such individuals are totally unfit to wield occult powers of any kind, for the motive is in mostcases purely selfish, and their minds are beclouded and darkened with ignorance.The so-called psychic powers have the same relation to genuine spiritual powers that baby-talk has to thediscourse of a wise philosopher. Before occult powers of any kind can be cultivated safely, man mustlearn the first lesson of the mystic knowledge, which is to control himself; and all powers that later hegains must be laid on the altar of impersonal service -- on the altar of service to mankind.Psychic powers will come to men as a natural development of their inner faculties, as evolution performsits wonderful work in future ages. New senses, and new organs corresponding to these new senses, bothinterior and exterior, will come into active functioning in the distant future. But it is perilous both tosanity and to health to attempt to force the development of these prematurely, and unless the training anddiscipline be done under the watchful and compassionate eye of a genuine occult teacher who knowswhat he is about. The world even today contains hundreds of thousands of "sensitives" who are the firstfeeble forerunners of what future evolution will make common in the human race; but these sensitivesare usually in a very unfortunate and trying situation, for they themselves misunderstand what is in them,and they are misunderstood by their fellows. (See also Occultism)
PSYCHIC POWERS. ::: The range of the psychic consciousness and its experiences is almost illimitable and the variety and com- plexity of its phenomena almost infinite The first and most prominent is the activity of the psychic senses of which the sight is the most developed ordinarily and the first to manifest itself with any largeness when the veil of the absorption in the surface consciousness which prevents the inner vision is broken. But all the physical senses have their corresponding powers in the psychical being, there is a p^hical hearing, touch, smell, taste ::: indeed the physical senses are themselves in reality only a pro- jection of the inner sense into a limited and externalised opera- tion in and through and upon the phenomena of gross matter.
Psychic sadness ::: “ Painful longing ” belongs to the vital, not
Psychic Science: Defined by N. Fodor as “a system of facts to demonstrate the existence of spirits independent of the body, and their ability to communicate with humanity.”
Psychic self: A Rosicrucian term for the Ego.
Psychic
Psychic Summation: See Psychic Fusion. Psycho-analysis: The psychological method and therapeutic technique developed by Freud (see Freud, Sigmund). This method consists in the use of such procedures as free association, automatic writing and especially dream-analysis to recover forgotten memories, suppressed desires and other subconscious items which exert a disturbing influence on the conscious life of an individual. The cure of the psychic disturbances is effected by bringing the suppressed items into the full of consciousness of the individual. Psycho-analytic theory has posited a subconscious mind as a repository for the suppressed elements. Freud exaggerated the sexual origin of the suppressed desires but other psycho-analysts, notably Jung and Adler, corrected this exaggeration. The psycho-analytical school has developed its terminology in which the following are characteristic. Free association is the method of encouraging the patient to recall in random fashion experiences, particularly of childhood. A "complex" is a more or less permanent emotional system or mechjnism responsible for the mental disturbances of the patient. Libido designates the underlying sexual drive or impulse, the suppression of which is responsible for the psychic disturbance. Suppression or repression is the rejection from consciousness of desires and urges which it finds intolerable. Sublimation is the transference of a suppressed desire to a new object. These terms are only a few samples of the elaborate and at times highly mythological terminology of psycho-analysis. -- L.W.
PSYCHIC. ::: The psychic is the soul or spark of the Divine
Psychic; This level of thinking is the one right above "hylic". It's drive is the intellect, or normal understanding of the mind.
Psychic Transformation ::: In the psychic transformation there are three main elements:
Psychic yvorld ; The psychic being stands behind mind, life and body, supporting them ; so also the psychic world is not one world in the scale like the mental, vital or physical worlds, but stands behind all these and it is there that the souls evolving here retire for the time between life and life. It is a plane where it (evolutionary being) retires into itself for rest, for a spiritual assimilation of what it has experienced and for a replunging into its own fundamental consciousness and psychic nature.
Psychikos. See PSUCHIKOS
Psychism: Psi phenomena (q.v.).
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND YOGA. ::: There are many things in the ordinary man of which he is not conscious, because the vital hides them from the mind and gratifies them without the mind realising what is the force that is moving the action — thus things that are done under the plea of altruism, philanthropy, service etc. are largely moved by ego which hides itself behind these justifications ; in yoga the secret motive has to be pulled out from behind the veil, exposed and got rid of. Secondly, some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated ; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is the real cause. This has l«cn recently dis- covered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis. Here again, tti sadhana one has to become conscious of these suppressed impulses and eliminate them ; that does not mean that they have to be raised up into action but only raised up before the con- sciousness so as to be cleared out of the being.
Psychoanalysis ::: Developed by Sigmund Freud, this type of therapy is known for long term treatment, typically several times per week, where the unresolved issues from the individual&
Psychoanalysis: The system and school of psychotherapy originated by Sigmund Freud. This method consists in the use of such procedures as free association, automatic writing and especially dream-analysis to recover forgotten events, suppressed desires and other subconscious items which exert a disturbing influence on the conscious life of an individual. The cure of the psychic disturbances is effected by bringing the suppressed items into the full consciousness of the individual.
Psychoanalytic Theory ::: Theory developed by Freud consisting of the structural model of personality, topographical model of personality, defense mechanisms, drives, and the psychosexual stages of development. The primary driving force behind the theory is the id, ego and superego and the division of consciousness into the conscious mind, the pre/subconscious, and the unconscious.
Psychodynamic Therapy ::: A modern adaptation of psychoanalytic therapy which has made sometimes minor and sometimes major changes to Freud&
Psychograph: An instrument designed to facilitate and test the mediumistic phenomenon of automatic writing (q.v.); it consists of a rotating disk which carries an index over an alphabet.
Psychography: In spiritualism and psychical research, direct writing (q.v.). In theosophy, the term is used for “writing under the dictation or the influence of one’s ‘soul power’” (The Theosophical Glossary).
Psychography Soul-writing; coined by theosophical writers on occult phenomena for various kinds of inspirational or phenomenally produced writing. In its highest sense it may mean writing under the influence of inspiration from a high source, whether within or without the nature of the writer, as when one writes things which in his ordinary state of mind he would be incapable of rising to. Or it may refer to physical mediumship, where the writing is produced unconsciously by the astrally controlled hand of the medium, and the ideas come from some source in the astral light. It can also include automatic writing of various kinds, and writing by precipitation. As regards the advisability of seeking or cultivating such powers, any practice which involves a surrender of control, either of the mind or the body, to an extraneous influence is detrimental. A writer in full possession of his faculties may by sincere aspiration draw upon higher sources within himself or upon the aid given by those Helpers who stand ready to respond to such aspirations. Self-deception, however, is one of the commonest failings of human nature.
Psychoid: Term applied by the German neo-vitalist, H. Driesch to the psychic factor which guides the growth of organisms. -- L.W.
Psychokinesis: The moving of, or in general the exertion of direct influence on a material with any known physical agency or means.
Psychological Atomism: Theory of the structure of mind: any mental state is analyzable into simple, discrete components and that which the total mental state was produced by fusion and composition of the atomic states. See Associationism, Mind-Stuff Theory. -- L.W.
Psychological Egoism: See Egoism, Psychological. -- C.A.B.
Psychological pillow
Psychological pricing - A pricing strategy where particular attention is paid to the effect that the price of a product will have upon consumers'.
Psychologism: (Ger. Psychologismus) The tendency of such philosophers as Hume, J. S. Mill and William James to approach philosophical problems, whether ethical, logical, aesthetic or metaphysical, from the stand-point of psychology. Psychologismus is used by Husserl and other German writers as a term of reproach which suggests the exaggeration of the psychological to the neglect of the logical and epistemological considerations. -- L.W.
Psychologists' Fallacy: The confusion of the standpoint of the psychologist with that of the subject upon whose introspective report the psychologist relies. See Wm. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 196. -- L.W.
Psychologization. See HYPNOTISM
Psychologizing a person to heal him of disease or rid him of some injurious habit is also harmful. Bodily ills, in themselves, are the cleansing processes by which past inner wrongs of thought and feeling, having reached the material plane, can be worked out of the system. As for karmic faults and failings in character, the person restrained from them by hypnotism or psychologization merely loses a timely opportunity to develop his spiritual will by which alone every human being must consciously work out his own destiny. The apparent cure of disease, or of a weakness, means that these have been driven inwards, dammed back, inevitably to reappear with accumulated force at a less opportune time in this or a future life. Nor does the practice of self-hypnotization or self-psychologization prevent a disjunction of the person’s intermediate nature from his immortal self. The results finally appear as mental disease resulting in crime or as physical disease which is the minor evil.
Psychology: (Gr. psyche, mind or soul + logos, law) The science of the mind, its functions, structure and behavioral effects. In Aristotle, the science of mind, (De Anima), emphasizes mental functionsl; the Scholastics employed a faculty psychology. In Hume and the Mills, study of the data of conscious experience, termed association psychology. In Freud, the study of the unconscious (depth psychology). In behaviorism, the physiological study of physical and chemical responses. In Gestalt psychology, the study of organized psychic activity, .revealing the mind's tendency toward the completion of patterns. Since Kant, psychology has been able to establish itself as an empirical, natural science without a priori metaphysical or theological commitments. The German romanticists (q.v.) and Hegel, who had developed a metaphysical psychology, had turned to cultural history to illustrate their theories of how the mind, conceived as an absolute, must manifest itself. Empirically they have suggested a possible field of exploration for the psychologist, namely, the study of mind in its cultural effects, viz. works of art, science, religion, social organization, etc. which are customarily studied by anthropologists in the case of "primitive" peoples. But it would be as difficult to separate anthropology from social psychology as to sharply distinguish so-called "primitive" peoples from "civilized" ones.
Psychology In philosophy, the systematic study of mind, as opposed to physics or the study of matter. Applied in theosophy to the attributes, qualities, and powers of the human intermediate nature, contrasted with physiology. In ancient times psychology was the science of soul; and this science being the causative, and physiology the effective or consequential, no one was considered an informed or expert physiologist who was not previously trained in psychology. In modern days, due to an almost utter ignorance of the inner nature of man, psychology has largely been based on physiology, if indeed not a vague type of physiology itself.
Psychology ::: Psychology is the science of consciousness and its status and operations in Nature and, if that can be glimpsed or experienced, its status and operations beyond what we know as Nature.Psychology is the knowledge of consciousness and its operations. A complete psychology must be a complex of the science of mind, its operations and its relations to life and body with intuitive and experimental knowledge of the nature of mind and its relations to supermind and spirit. A complete psychology cannot be a pure natural science, but must be a compound of science and metaphysical knowledge.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 12, 12 Page: 316-17, 305
Psychology: The science and study of the human mind, its structure and functions.
PSYCHOLOGY. ::: The science of consciousness and its states and operations in Nature and, if that be glimpsed or experi- enced, its states and operations beyond what we know as Nature.
PSYCHOLOGY—The science which treats of the mind, its functions, condition of activity and development, its essential nature and place in nature at large.
Psychology ::: The study of emotion, cognition, and behavior, and their interaction.
Psychology ::: This word is ordinarily used to signify in our days, and in the seats of learning in the Occident, a studymostly beclouded with doubts and hypotheses, and often actual guesswork, meaning little more than akind of mental physiology, practically nothing more than the working of the brain-mind in the lowestastral-psychical apparatus of the human constitution. But in the theosophical philosophy, the wordpsychology is used to mean something very different and of a far nobler character: we might call itpneumatology, or the science or the study of spirit and its rays, because all the inner faculties and powersof man ultimately spring from his spiritual nature. The term psychology ought really to connote the studyof the inner intermediate economy of man, and the interconnection of his principles and elements orcenters of energy or force -- what the man really is inwardly.In days of the far bygone past, psychology was indeed what the word signifies: "the science of soul"; andupon this science was securely based the collateral and subordinate science of genuine physiology.Today, however, it is physiology which serves as the basis for psychology because of a mistaken view ofman's constitution. It is a case of hysteron proteron -- putting the cart before the horse.
Psychomental Referring to the human intermediate nature, manas and kama.
Psychometry In its scientific sense, the measuring of the time taken by mental processes and sensations; borrowed by Prof. J. R. Buchanan to signify the occult power of receiving from various articles impressions as to their owners or as to events connected with them. It is the seeing or reading with the inner sight of incidents that have taken place in the neighborhood of physical articles. The art has been applied to such objects as fossils, fragments of ancient ruins, and old manuscripts, and the psychometers have been able by touching these articles, putting them to their forehead, etc., to describe ancient civilizations and bygone, forgotten, or unknown pages in human or world history. These phenomena show that material objects retain the impressions of events with which they have been associated, and presumably exert an influence even upon people who do not have psychometric power. This throws light on the subject of talismans, amulets, relics, etc.
Psychometry: The psychic faculty of certain persons to divine events connected with material objects when in close contact with the latter. The material objects are considered to be acting as catalysts for the psi faculty. Occultists call it “reading or seeing” with the inner sight.
Psychonaut ::: An explorer of the mind. This generally covers entheogenic journeying or lesser variants thereof but can be used to describe a kind of personality inclined toward such practices or to an oneironaut or similar traveler.
Psychopathology is a term which refers to either the study of mental illness or mental distress or to the manifestation of behaviours and experiences which may be indicative of mental illness or psychological impairment.
Psychopathology
Psychopathology: The scientific study of mental disorders.
Psychophobia Fear of soul; coined by Blavatsky (IU 1:46), and applied to all-denying materialists who refuse to believe anything outside of their experience of the physical world.
Psycho-Physical Parallelism: See Parallelism, Psycho-Physical. Psycho-Physical Problem: (Gr. psyche, soul -- physikos, physical) See Mind-Body Problem. Psychosis: (Gr. psychosis, a giving of life or soul) (a) In the general sense, psychosis designates any mental or psychical process, just as a neurosis, in the wide sense is any neural process. (b) In the restricted sense, psychosis designates a pathological condition of mind, just as "neurosis" is an abnormal condition of the nervous system. -- L.W.
Psychoplasm: A synonym for ectoplasm (q.v.).
Psychopomp ::: A type of entity, akin to a guardian or Higher Self, that guides one in an unfamiliar plane. Classically, referred to those entities that guided the souls of the dead in the afterlife.
Psychopomp (Greek) A conductor of souls; applied to Charon, Apollo, and especially to Hermes, who was the conductor of souls to Hades or the Underworld and back again, an office assigned by Christians to Jesus Christ after his resurrection. The mystery of death, descent into Hades, and resurrection were enacted in initiation ceremonies, as depicted in Egyptian glyphs, where the dog-headed Anubis — the Egyptian Hermes — conducts the candidate.
Psychopompoi—soul-escorting angels (with
Psychopomp (us)—Elijah (Sandalphon) in Par¬
Psychosis ::: Break from reality, usually identified by hallucinations, delusions, and/or disorientation.
Psychosomatic: Relating to, effecting or originating in both mind and body.
Psychotherapy: The science and method of cure of mental and psychosomatic disorders by the use of suggestion, persuasion, rationalization, psychoanalysis, etc. Faith healing (q.v.), too, may be included under this heading.
Psychotherapy ::: The treatment of mental illness or related issues based on psychological theory.
Psychotropic Medication ::: Prescription medication used primarily to treat mental illness.
Psydtlc light ::: The colour of the psychic light is according to what it manifests, e.g. psychic love is pink or rose, the psychic purity is white etc.
Psylli: Individuals believed to possess the magic power to charm snakes. (Africa.)
Psythic Bhakti which gives itself asks for nothing but the
TERMS ANYWHERE
"1. ‘The Golden Embryo" in Hindu cosmology; the name given to the golden-hued Egg which floated on the surface of the primeval waters. In time the egg divided into two parts, the golden top half of the shell becoming the heavens and the silver lower half the earth. 2. ‘God imaginative and therefore creative"; the ‘Spirit in the middle or Dream State"; Lord of Dream-Life who takes from the ocean of subconsciously intelligent spiritual being the conscious psychic forces which He materializes or encases in various forms of gross living matter. (Enc. Br.; A)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
“1. ‘The Golden Embryo’ in Hindu cosmology; the name given to the golden-hued Egg which floated on the surface of the primeval waters. In time the egg divided into two parts, the golden top half of the shell becoming the heavens and the silver lower half the earth. 2. ‘God imaginative and therefore creative’; the ‘Spirit in the middle or Dream State’; Lord of Dream-Life who takes from the ocean of subconsciously intelligent spiritual being the conscious psychic forces which He materializes or encases in various forms of gross living matter. (Enc. Br.; A)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works.
(1) the region from the throat lo the heart, {2} the heart (it is a double centre, belonging in front to the emotiona! and sital and behind to the psychic), (3) from the heart to the navel,
*96 Psychic
ablepsy ::: n. --> Blindness.
acatalepsy ::: n. --> Incomprehensibility of things; the doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.
A child — especially a new-born child — usually signifies the birth (or awakening) of the soul or psychic being in the outward nature.
achromatopsy ::: n. --> Color blindness; inability to distinguish colors; Daltonism.
acritochromacy ::: n. --> Color blindness; achromatopsy.
adipsy ::: n. --> Absence of thirst.
“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
affinity ::: 1. Causal relationship or connexion (as flowing the one from the other, or having a common source). 2. A psychical or spiritual attraction believed by some sects to exist between persons.
AGNI. ::: Fire; Fire of Sacrifice; the Fire-God; Flame of Divine Force; illumined will; Divine Will; Fire of human aspiration; flame of purification or transformation in the psychic being; psychic fire.
The psychic fire is the fire of aspiration, purification and Tapasya.
Without Agni the sacrificial flame cannot bum on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.
Agni and colours ::: the principle of Fire can manifest all the colours and the pure white fire is that which contains in itself all the colours.
“All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.”
"All birds of that region are relatives. But this is the bird of eternal Ananda, while the Hippogriff is the divinised Thought and the Bird of Fire is the Agni-bird, psychic and tapas. All that however is to mentalise too much and mentalising always takes most of the life out of spiritual things. That is why I say it can be seen but nothing said about it.” ::: "The question was: ‘In the mystical region, is the dragon bird any relation of your Bird of Fire with ‘gold-white wings" or your Hippogriff with ‘face lustred, pale-blue-lined"? And why do you write: ‘What to say about him? One can only see"?” Letters on Savitri
"All depends on the meaning you attach to words used; it is a matter of nomenclature. Ordinarily, one says a man has intellect if he can think well; the nature and process and field of the thought do not matter. If you take intellect in that sense, then you can say that intellect has different strata, and Ford belongs to one stratum of intellect, Einstein to another — Ford has a practical and executive business intellect, Einstein a scientific discovering and theorising intellect. But Ford too in his own field theorises, invents, discovers. Yet would you call Ford an intellectual or a man of intellect? I would prefer to use for the general faculty of mind the word intelligence. Ford has a great and forceful practical intelligence, keen, quick, successful, dynamic. He has a brain that can deal with thoughts also, but even there his drive is towards practicality. He believes in rebirth (metempsychosis), for instance, not for any philosophic reason, but because it explains life as a school of experience in which one gathers more and more experience and develops by it. Einstein has, on the other hand, a great discovering scientific intellect, not, like Marconi, a powerful practical inventive intelligence for the application of scientific discovery. All men have, of course, an ‘intellect" of a kind; all, for instance, can discuss and debate (for which you say rightly intellect is needed); but it is only when one rises to the realm of ideas and moves freely in it that you say, ‘This man has an intellect".” Letters on Yoga
“All depends on the meaning you attach to words used; it is a matter of nomenclature. Ordinarily, one says a man has intellect if he can think well; the nature and process and field of the thought do not matter. If you take intellect in that sense, then you can say that intellect has different strata, and Ford belongs to one stratum of intellect, Einstein to another—Ford has a practical and executive business intellect, Einstein a scientific discovering and theorising intellect. But Ford too in his own field theorises, invents, discovers. Yet would you call Ford an intellectual or a man of intellect? I would prefer to use for the general faculty of mind the word intelligence. Ford has a great and forceful practical intelligence, keen, quick, successful, dynamic. He has a brain that can deal with thoughts also, but even there his drive is towards practicality. He believes in rebirth (metempsychosis), for instance, not for any philosophic reason, but because it explains life as a school of experience in which one gathers more and more experience and develops by it. Einstein has, on the other hand, a great discovering scientific intellect, not, like Marconi, a powerful practical inventive intelligence for the application of scientific discovery. All men have, of course, an ‘intellect’ of a kind; all, for instance, can discuss and debate (for which you say rightly intellect is needed); but it is only when one rises to the realm of ideas and moves freely in it that you say, ‘This man has an intellect’.” Letters on Yoga
All depends upon the order of thin gs which the colours indi- cate in a particular case. There is an order of significances in which they indicate various psycbolo^cal dynamisms, c.g. faith, love, protection, etc. There is another order of significances In which they indicate the aura or the activity of divine beings,
::: ". . . 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 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: “Again a reference to the psychic being with its several aspects, one of which is called ‘the Mystic courts’. I believe these ‘courts’ are where we enter first.”
Amal: “A reference to the psychic being, the true soul in us which is hidden in our inner self and is like a ‘sacred hill’ towards which Heaven leans ‘low’ in love to ‘kiss’ it, responding to that being’s aspiration.”
Amal: It must be the psychic being, but the psychic being in its high origin in the superconscient sun of truth.”
Amal: “‘The divine Dwarf’ is the psychic being in its initial state.”
Amal: “‘The garden of the Spouse’ is the psychic domain of love.
Amal: “‘The garden of the Spouse’ is the psychic domain of love.”
Amal: “The ‘inner prophet’ is the psychic being who corresponds in the lower hemisphere of the cosmos to the higher hemisphere’s ananda planes.”
Amal: “The phrase strikes me as referring to the psychic being because in the preceding line the ‘Grandeur’ is called ‘a seer, a strong creator’ and is said to be ‘within’. But I am not quite sure, because the ‘Grandeur’ is said to ‘brood upon your days’, suggesting that it is above and not within. Perhaps two different though allied powers are suggested: the inner soul and the Spirit or the Atman which is one ultimately with Brahman.”
Amal: “The phrase ‘The Angel of the Vigil Tower’ connotes the inner watcher (of one’s lower actions) from either the Higher Mind or the psychic being.”
Amal: “The phrase ‘The Animal browses in the sacred fence’ connotes the defilement of the psycho-spiritual nature by one’s lower vital being.”
analepsy ::: --> Recovery of strength after sickness.
A species of epileptic attack, originating from gastric disorder.
analepsis ::: --> Alt. of Analepsy
Ananda in the consciousness, their workings there, the realisation of the divine or spiritual love, the perception of on€’s own psy- chic being, the discovery of one’s own true mental being, true wtal being, true physical being, the realisation of the overmind or the Supramental consciousness, the clear perception of the relation of all these things to our present inferior nature and their action on it to change that lower nature. These things also are often called experiences when they only come in flashes, snatches or rare visitations ; they are spoken of as full realisa- tions only when they become very positive or frequent or con- tinuous or normal.
anasarca ::: n. --> Dropsy of the subcutaneous cellular tissue; an effusion of serum into the cellular substance, occasioning a soft, pale, inelastic swelling of the skin.
anasarcous ::: a. --> Belonging, or affected by, anasarca, or dropsy; dropsical.
And these are in fact always acting upon our subliminal selves unknown to our vvaking mind and with considerable effect on our life and nature. The physical mind is only a little part of us and there is much more considerable range of our being in which the presence, infiuence and powers of the other planes are active upon us and help to shape our external being and its activities. The awakening of the psychical consciousness enables us fb become aware of these powers, presences and influences in and around us ; and while in the impure or yet ignorant and imperfect mind this unveiled contact has its dangers, it enables us too, if lightly used and directed, to be no longer their subject but their master and to coroe into conscious and seJf-confroJled possession of the inner secrets of our nature. The psychical consciousness reveals this interaction between the inner and the outer planes, this world and others, partly by an awareness, which may be very constant, vast and vivid, of their impacts, suggestions, communications to our inner thought and conscious being and a capacity of reaction upon them there, partly ako through many kinds of symbolic, transcriptive or representative images presented to the different psychical senses. But also
animastic ::: a. --> Pertaining to mind or spirit; spiritual. ::: n. --> Psychology.
anopsy ::: a. --> Want or defect of sight; blindness.
anopsia ::: a. --> Alt. of Anopsy
antepileptic ::: a. --> Good against epilepsy. ::: n. --> A medicine for epilepsy.
antihydropic ::: a. --> Good against dropsy. ::: n. --> A remedy for dropsy.
ANUBHAVA. ::: The system of getting rid of things by anubhava* has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by vicāra+ t or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place. The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability ; for in order to reject anything from the being, one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is en entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement.
apepsy ::: n. --> Defective digestion, indigestion.
A relation can be established in a sure basis only when it is free from attachment or when it is predominantly psychic on both sides.
ascites ::: n. --> A collection of serous fluid in the cavity of the abdomen; dropsy of the peritoneum.
Aspiration, constant and sincere, and the will to turn to the Divine alone are the best means to bring forward the psychic.
ASPIRATION. ::: The call in the being for the Divine or for the higher things that belong to the Divine Consciousness.
A call to the Divine; aspiration for the discovery and embodiment of the Divine Truth and to nothing else whatever.
An aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing- the mind’s will, the heart’s seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature.
There is no need of words in aspiration. It can be expressed or unexpressed in words.
Aspiration need not be in the form of thought; it can be a feeling within that remains even when the mind is attending to the work.
Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.
In aspiration there is a self-giving for the higher consciousness to descend and take possession ; the more intense the call, the greater the self-giving.
Aspiration keeps the consciousness open, prevents an inert state of acquiescence in all that comes and exercises a sort of pull on the sources of the higher consciousness.
The intensity of aspiration brings the intensity of the experience and by repeated intensity of the experience, the change. It is the psychic that gives the true aspiration; if the vital is purified and subjected to the psychic, then the vital gives intensity.
Aspiration in the physical consciousness ::: the physical consciousness is always in everybody in its own nature a little inert and in it a constant strong aspiration is not natural, it has to be created. But first there must be the opening, a purification, a fixed quietude, otherwise the physical vital will turn the strong aspiration into over-eagerness and impatience or rather it will try to give it that turn.
ASURA. ::: Titan; a being of ignorant egoism as opposed to the Deva or god, who is a being of Light; sons of Darkness and Division.
Asuras are really the dark side of the mental, or more strictly, of the vital mind plane. This mind is the very field of the Asuras. Their main characteristic is egoistic strength and struggle, which refuse the higher law. The Asura has self-control, tapas, and intelligence, but all that for the sake of his ego.
There are no Asuras on the higher planes where the Truth prevails, except in the Vedic sense -“ the Divine in its strength “. The mental and vital Asuras are only a deviation of that power.
There are two kinds of Asuras - one kind were divine in their origin but have fallen from their divinity by self-will and opposition to the intention of the Divine; they are spoken in the Hindu scriptures as the former or earlier gods; these can be converted and their conversion is indeed necessary for the ultimate purpose of the universe. But the ordinary Asura is not of this character, is not an evolutionary but a typal being and represents a fixed principle of the creation which does not evolve or change and is not intended to do so. These Asuras, as also the other hostile beings, Rakshasas, Pishachas and others resemble the devils of the Christian tradition and oppose the divine intention and the evolutionary purpose in the human being; they don’t change the purpose in them for which they exist which is evil, but have to be destroyed like the evil. The Asura has no soul, no psychic being which has to evolve to a higher state; he has only an ego and usually a very powerful ego; he has a mind, sometimes even a highly intellectual mind; but the basis of his thinking and feeling is vital and not mental, at the service of his desire and not truth. He is a formation assumed by the life-principle for a particular kind of work and not a divine formation or soul.
Some kinds of Asuras are very religious, very fanatical about their religion, very strict about rules of ethical conduct. There are others who use spiritual ideas without believing in them to give them a perverted twist and delude the sadhaka.
ATTACHMENT. ::: All attachment is a hindrance to sadhana. Goodwāl you should have for all, psychic kindness for all, but no vital attachment.
To become indifferent to the attraction of outer objects is one of the first rules of yoga, for this non-attachment liberates the inner being into peace and the true consciousness.
Even after the liberation, one has to remain vigilant, for often these things go out and remain at a far distance, waiting to see if under any circumstances in any condition they can make a rush and recover their kingdom. If there has been an entire purification down to the depths and nothing is there to open the gate, then they cannot do it.
Attachment to things ::: the physical rejection of them is not the best way to get rid of it. Accept what is given you, ask for what is needed and think no more of it - attaching no importance, using them when you have, not troubled if you have not. That is the best way of getting rid of the attachment.
Attitude in work: What is of first importance is not the character of the work done, but the inner attitude in which it is done. If the attitude is vital and not psychic, then one throsys oneself out in the work and loses the inner contact. If it is psychic, the inner contact remains, the Force is felt supporting or doing the work and (be sadhana progresses.
aura ::: n. --> Any subtile, invisible emanation, effluvium, or exhalation from a substance, as the aroma of flowers, the odor of the blood, a supposed fertilizing emanation from the pollen of flowers, etc.
The peculiar sensation, as of a light vapor, or cold air, rising from the trunk or limbs towards the head, a premonitory symptom of epilepsy or hysterics.
autopsy ::: a. --> Personal observation or examination; seeing with one&
autopsical ::: a. --> Pertaining to autopsy; autoptical.
averroist ::: n. --> One of a sect of peripatetic philosophers, who appeared in Italy before the restoration of learning; so denominated from Averroes, or Averrhoes, a celebrated Arabian philosopher. He held the doctrine of monopsychism.
Awake by your aspiration the psychic fire in the heart that burns steadily towards the Divine; that is the one way to libe- rate and fulfil the emotional nature.
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.
balance ::: n. **1. A state of equilibrium or equipoise; mental, psychological or emotional. 2. A weighing device, especially one consisting of a rigid beam horizontally suspended by a low-friction support at its center, with identical weighing pans hung at either end, one of which holds an unknown weight while the effective weight in the other is increased by known amounts until the beam is level and motionless. 3. An undecided or uncertain state in which issues are unresolved. v. 4. To have an equality or equivalence in weight, parts, etc.; be in equilibrium. adj. 5. Being in harmonious or proper arrangement or adjustment, proportion. 6. Mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behaviour, judgement. balanced, balancing.**
Being or a Presence — sometimes one of these, sometimes several of them or all together. The movement of ascension has diffe- rent results ; it may liberate the consciousness so that one feels no longer in he body, but above it or else spread in wideness with the body whether almost non-existent or only a point in one’s free expanse. It may enable the being or some part of the being to go out from the body and move elsewhere, and this action is usually accompanied by some kind of partial Samadhi or else a complete trance. Or, it may result in empowering the cons- ciousness, no longer limited by the body and the habits of the external nature, to go within, to enter the inner mental depths, the inner vital, the inner (subtle) physical, the psychic, to become aware of its inmost psychic self or its inner mental, vital, and subtle physical being, and it may be, to move and live in the domains, the planes, the worlds that correspond to these parts of the nature. It is the repeated and constant ascent of the lower consciousness that enables the mind, the vital, the physical to come into touch with the higher planes up to the Supramental and get impregnated with their light and power and influence.
Being (true) ::: the true being is the inner with all its vast possibilities of reaching and expressing the Divine and especially the inmost, the soul, the psychic Purusha which is always in its essence pure, divine, turned to all that is good and true and beautiful, The exterior being has to be taken hold of by the inner being and turned into an instrument no longer of the upsurging of the ignorant subconscient Nature, but of the Divine.
Besides these transcriptions or impresses the psychical vision receives thought Images and other forms created by constant activity of consciousaess in ourselves or in other human beings, and these may be according to the character of the activity, images of truth or falsehood or else mixed things, partly true, partly false, and may be too either mere shells and representa- tions or images inspired wth a temporary life and consciousness and, it may be, canjing in them in one way or another some kind of beneficent or maleficent action or some willed or unwilled effectiveness on our minds or vital being or through them e^'cn on the body. These transcriptions, impresses, thought images, life images, projections of the consciousness may also be representa- tions or creations not of the physical wxtrJd, but of vital, psychic or mental worlds beyond us, seen in our own minds or projected from other than human beings. And as there is this psychical vision of which some of the more cxremaf ana’ ordinary marrr- festaUons arc well enough known by the name of clairvoyance, so there is a psychical hearing and psychical touch, taste, smell
bohemian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Bohemia, or to the language of its ancient inhabitants or their descendants. See Bohemian, n., 2. ::: n. --> Of or pertaining to a social gypsy or "Bohemian" (see Bohemian, n., 3); vagabond; unconventional; free and easy.
A native of Bohemia.
psyche ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . that spark of the Divine which is the true psyche.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
::: psycho-analysis
psycho-analysis
bruised ::: hurt, especially psychologically, beaten; pounded; crushed.
But conversion may also come as the culmination of a long process of aspiration and tapasya. if the psychic being comes to the front, then conversion becomes easy or may come instanta- neously or the conversion may bring the psychic being to the front.
But it is mostly people who live much in the vital that so fall ; with a strong and free and calm mind and a psychic awake and alive, such petdnesses ate not likely to occur. As for those who live in the true Divine Consciousness, certain powers are not powers at all and in that sense, not, that is to say, supernatural or abnormal, but rather their normal way of seeing and acting, part of the consciousness — and how can they be forbidden or refuse to act according to tbelr consciousness and its nature ?
But still it is the personal effort that Is prominent and assumes most of the burden. The other way is that of the psychic being, the consciousness opening to the Divine, not only opening the psychic and bringing it forward, but opening the mind, the vital and the physical, receiving the Light, perceiving what is to be done, feeling and seeing it done by the Divine Force itself and helping constantly by its own vigilant and conscious assent to and call for the Divine working.
but the Mother’s. There will be a sort of transfer, a taking up of the forces at work in the personal Adhar — a transfer not suddenly complete but progressive. But the psychic poise is necessary ::: the discrimination must develop which sees accurately
". . . by knowledge we mean in yoga not thought or ideas about spiritual things but psychic understanding from within and spiritual illumination from above.” Letters on Yoga
“… by knowledge we mean in yoga not thought or ideas about spiritual things but psychic understanding from within and spiritual illumination from above.” Letters on Yoga
catalepsy ::: n. --> Alt. of Catalepsis
cataleptic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or resembling, catalepsy; affected with catalepsy; as, a cataleptic fit.
CENTRAL BEING. ::: The portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This centra! being has two forms ::: above, it is Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-know- ledge comes ; below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides over it ; the psychic being stands behind the manifestation in life and supports it,
cephalotribe ::: n. --> An obstetrical instrument for performing cephalotripsy.
cephalotripsy ::: n. --> The act or operation of crushing the head of a fetus in the womb in order to effect delivery.
cerebralism ::: n. --> The doctrine or theory that psychical phenomena are functions or products of the brain only.
chance ::: n. --> A supposed material or psychical agent or mode of activity other than a force, law, or purpose; fortune; fate; -- in this sense often personified.
The operation or activity of such agent.
The supposed effect of such an agent; something that befalls, as the result of unknown or unconsidered forces; the issue of uncertain conditions; an event not calculated upon; an unexpected occurrence; a happening; accident; fortuity; casualty.
CHANGE OF NATURE. ::: The first step is to become cons- cious and separate from the old surface nature. For this rajasic vital naturepsychic. The true being is calm, wide, peaceful. By drawing back and becoming separate one creates the possibility of living in the peace of this inner Purusha and no longer identified with the surface Prakriti. Afterwards it will be much easier to change by the force of the psychic perception and the Peace and Power and Light from above the surface being.
CHEIROMANCY. ::: Each man is an individual by himself with his own peculiar formation different from others and made by minute variations in the general human plan, — this is true of small physical characteristics, it is evidently equally true of psychological characteristics ; it is not unreasonable to suppose a correlation between the two. On that basis cheiromancy may very well have a truth in it, for it is a known fact that the lines in an individual hand are different from the lines in others and that this, as well as differences of physiognomy, may carry in it psychological indications is not impossible.
Child ::: .Usually signifies the psychic being — new-born in the sense that it at last comes to the surface.
\cil of sleep — very largely indeed these two elements get mixed up together. For in fact a large part of our consciousness in sleep docs not sink into this subconscious slate ; it passes beyond the veil into other planes of being which arc connected with our own inner planes, planes of supraphj'sical existence, w'orlds of a larger life, mind or psychic which arc there behind and whose influences come to us without our knowledge. Occasionally we get a dream from these planes, something more than a dream, — a dream experience which is a record direct or symbolic of what happens to us or around us there. As the inner consciousness grows by sadhana, these dream experiences increase In number, dearness, coherence, accuracy and after some growth of experi- ence and consciousness, we can, if we observe, come to under- stand them and their significance to our loner life. Even we can by training become so coosetous as to follow our own passage, usually veiled to our arvarencss and memory, through many realms and the process of the return to the waking state. At a certain pitch of this inner wakefulness this kind of sleep, a sleep experience, can replace the ordinary subconscious slumber.
CIRCUMSTANCES. ::: When someone is destined for the Path, all circumstances, through all deviations of mind and life, help in one way or another to lead him to it. It is his own psychic being within him and Divine Power above that use to that end the vicissitudes both of mind and outward circumstance.
cittakasa. These may be transcriptions there or impresses of physical things, persons, scenes, happenings, whatever is, was or will be or may be in the ph^ical universe. These images are very variously seen and under all kinds of conditions ; in samadhi or in the waking stale, and in the latter with the bodily eyes closed or open, projected on or into a physical object or medium or seen as if materialised in the physical atmosphere or only in a psychical ether revealing itself through this grosser physical atmosphere ; seen through the physical eyes themselves as a secondary instrument and as if under the conditions of the physical vision or by the psychical vision alone and indepen- dently of the relations of our ordinary sight to space. The real agent is always the psychical sight and the power indicates that the consciousness is more or less awake, intermittently or nor- mally and more or less perfectly, in the psj’chical body. It is possible to see In this way the transcriptions or impressions of things at any distance beyond the range of the physical vision or the images of the past or the future.
clepsydra ::: n. --> A water clock; a contrivance for measuring time by the graduated flow of a liquid, as of water, through a small aperture. See Illust. in Appendix.
copsy ::: a. --> Characterized by copses.
conation ::: n. --> The power or act which directs or impels to effort of any kind, whether muscular or psychical.
Consciousness and mind ; For human beings who have not got deeper into themselves, mind and consciousness are synony- mous. Only when one becomes more aware of oneself by a growingpsytJiic, spiiiiuai.
Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our God- ward endeavour. The working of the DIvme Force in m under the conditions of the transition and the tight of the psychic being turning us alw’aj'S towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instiga- tions of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner Jaw of our action which continues rilJ the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature.
corny ::: a. --> Strong, stiff, or hard, like a horn; resembling horn.
Producing corn or grain; furnished with grains of corn.
Containing corn; tasting well of malt.
Tipsy.
Cosmic love depends on the realisation of oneness of self with all. Psychic love or feeling for all can exist without this realisation.
“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*
Death and after ::: at the time of death the being goes out of the body through the head ; it goes out in the subtle body and goes to different planes of existence for a short time until it has gone through certain experiences which are the result of its earthly existence. Afterwards it reaches the psychic world where it rests in a kind of sleep, until it is time for it to start a new life on earth.
deep ::: n. 1. A vast extent, as of space or time; an abyss. 2. Fig. Difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge; as an unfathomable thought, idea, esp. poetic. Deep, deep"s, deeps. adj. 3. Extending far downward below a surface. 4. Having great spatial extension or penetration downward or inward from an outer surface or backward or laterally or outward from a center; sometimes used in combination. 5. Coming from or penetrating to a great depth. 6. Situated far down, in, or back. 7. Lying below the surface; not superficial; profound. 8. Of great intensity; as extreme deep happiness, deep trouble. 9. Absorbing; engrossing. 10. Grave or serious. 11. Profoundly or intensely. 12. Mysterious; obscure; difficult to penetrate or understand. 13. Low in pitch or tone. 14. Profoundly cunning, crafty or artful. 15. The central and most intense or profound part; "in the deep of night”; "in the deep of winter”. deeper, deepest, deep-browed, deep-caved, deep-concealed, deep-etched, deep-fraught, deep-guarded, deep-hid, deep-honied, deep-pooled, deep-thoughted. *adv. *16. to a great depth psychologically or profoundly.
descend ::: “The word ‘descend’ has various meanings according to the context—I used it here in the sense of the psychic being coming down into the human consciousness and body ready for it.” Letters on Yoga
Desire-rejection ::: the rejection of desire is essentially the rejection of the element of craving, putting that out from the consciousness itself as a foreign clement not belonging to the true self and the inner nature. But refusal to indulge the sugges- tions of desire is also a part of the rejection ; to abstain from the action suggested, if it is not the right action, must be included in the yogic discipline. The first condition for getting rid of desire is, therefore, to become conscious with the true consciousness *, for then it becomes much easier to dismiss it than when one has to struggle with it as if it were a constituent part of oneself to be thrown out from the being. When the psychic being is in front, then also to get rid of desire becomes easy ; for the psychic being has in itself no desires, it has only aspirations and a seeking and love for the Divine and all things that are or tend towards the Divine.
Desire-soiil ::: The vital with its mixed aspirations, desires, hungers of all kinds, good and bad, its emotions, finer and grosser, or sensational urges crossed by the mind’s idealismgs and psychic stresses.
::: "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 ; (2) All personal (psychic-spiritual) relations to proceed from the Divine Mother, determined by her to be part of this single relation with the Divine Mother,
Divine. A feeling abo means a perception of something felt — a perception in the vital or psychic or in the essential substance of the consciousness.
DIVINE AND FORM. ::: The personal realisation of the Divine may be sometimes with Form, sometimes without Form. Without Form, it is the Presence of the living Divine Person, felt in everything. With Form, it comes with the image of the One to whom worship is offered. The Divine can always manifest himself in a form to the Bhakta or seeker. One sees him in the form in which one worships or seeks him or in a form suitable to the Divine Personality who is the object of the adoration. How it manifests depends upon many things and it is too various to be reduced to a single rule. Sometimes it is in the heart that the Presence with the form is seen, sometimes in any of the other centres, sometimes above and guiding from there, sometimes it is seen outside and in front as if an embodied person. Its advantages are an intimate relation and constant guidance or if felt or seen within, a very strong and concrete realisation of the constant Presence. But one must be very sure of the purity of one’s adoration and seekings for the disadvantage of this kind of embodied relation is that other Forces can imitate the Form or counterfeit the voice and the guidance and this gets more force if it is associated with a constructed image which is not the true thing. Several have been misled in this way because pride, vanity or desire was strong in them and robbed them of the fine psychic perception that is not mental.
Divine and receiving the Light and materialising the psychic contact, and so long as it is done in the right spirit and (hey arc used for the true purpose they have their place. It is^ only if they arc misused or the approach is not right because tainted y
Divine is as necessary to it as to the psychic.
Divine Love and psychic love ::: The Divine’s love is that which comes from above poured down from the Divine Oneness and its Ananda on the being ; psychic love is a form taken by divine love in the human being according to the need and pos- sibilities of the human consciousness.
Divine supporting it there — this psychic being takes charge of the sadhana and turns the whole being to the Truth, the Divine, with results in the mind, the wtal and the physical conscious- ness ; that is the first transformation.
DIVISION. ::: Division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.
Division of being ■ A necessary stage In the yogic develop- ment and experience. One feels that there is a twofold being, the inner psychic which is the true one and the other, the outer human being which is instrumentaf for the outward life. To live in the inner psychic being in union with the Divine while doing the outward work is the first stage in Karmayoga.
Live always in the psychic being, your true being. The psychic will, in due time, awaken and turn to the Divine all the rest of the nature, so that even the outer being will feel itself in touch with the Divine and moved by the Divine in all it is and feels and does.
DOUBLE FOUNDATION OF YOGA. ::: If you Leep the wide- ness and calm and also the love for the Mother in the heart, then all is safe for it means the double foundation of the Yoga ::: the descent of the higher consciousness with its peace, freedom and serenity from above and the openness of the psychic which keeps all the effort or all the spontaneous movement turned towards the true goal.
DOUBLE SYSTEM IN THE BEING. ::: There are two sys- tems simultaneously active in the organisation of the being and its pans ::: one is concentric, a series of tings or sheaths with the psychic at the centre ; another is vertical, an ascension and descent, like a flight of steps, a series of superimposed planes with the Supermind-Overmind as the crucial nodus of the transi- tion beyond the human into the Divine.
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
dropsy ::: n. --> An unnatural collection of serous fluid in any serous cavity of the body, or in the subcutaneous cellular tissue.
dropsical ::: a. --> Diseased with dropsy; hydropical; tending to dropsy; as, a dropsical patient.
Of or pertaining to dropsy.
dropsies ::: pl. --> of Dropsy
DRY PERIOD. ::: There is a long stage of preparation neces- sary in order to arrive at the moer psychologic^ condition in which the doors of experience can open and one can walk from vista to vista — though even then new gates may present them- selves and refuse to open until all is ready. This period can be dry and desert-like unless one has the ardour of self-introspec- tion and self-conquest and finds every step of the effort and struggle interesting or unless one has or gets the secret of trust and self-giving which secs the hand of the Divine in every step of the path and even in the difficulty the grace or the guidance.
Such interval periods come to all and cannot be avoided.
The main thing is to meet them with quietude and not become restless, depressed or despondent. A constant fire can be there only when a certain stage has been reached, that is when one is always inside consciously living in the psychic being, but for that all this preparation of the mind, vital, physical is necessary.
For this fire belongs to the psychic and one cannot command it always merely by the mind's effort. The psychic has to be fully liberated and that is what the Force is working to make fully possible.
The difficulty comes when either the vital with its desires or the physical with its past habitual movements comes in — as they do with almost everyone. It is then that the dryness and difficulty of spontaneous aspiration come. This dryness is a well- known obstacle in all sadhana. But one has to persist and not be discouraged. If one keep? the will fixed even in these barren periods, they pass and after their passage a greater force of aspiration and experience becomes possible.
Dryness comes usually when the vital dislikes a movement or' condition or the refusal of its desires and starts non-co-operation.
But sometimes it is a condition that has to be crossed through, e.g. the neutral or dry quietude which sometimes comes when the ordinary movements have been thrown out but nothing positive has yet come to take their place, i.e, peace, joy, a higher know- ledge or force or action.
dyspepsy ::: --> A kind of indigestion; a state of the stomach in which its functions are disturbed, without the presence of other diseases, or, if others are present, they are of minor importance. Its symptoms are loss of appetite, nausea, heartburn, acrid or fetid eructations, a sense of weight or fullness in the stomach, etc.
dyspepsia ::: --> Alt. of Dyspepsy
ebrious ::: a. --> Inclined to drink to excess; intoxicated; tipsy.
eclampsy ::: n. --> Same as Eclampsia.
eclampsia ::: n. --> A fancied perception of flashes of light, a symptom of epilepsy; hence, epilepsy itself; convulsions.
Effort and surrender ::: Surrender is not a thing that can be done in a day. The mind has its ideas and clings to them ; the human vital resists surrender, for what it calls surrender in the early stages is a doubtful kind of self-giving with a demand in it ; the physical consciousness is like a stone and what it calls surrender is often no more Ilian Inertia. It is only the psychic that knows how to surrender and the psychic is usually very much veiled in the beginning. When the psychic awakes, it can bring a sudden and true surrender of the whole being, for the difficulty of the rest is rapidly dealt with and disappears. But till then effort is indispensable. Or else it is necessary till the
EFFORT. ::: It is not advisable in the early stages of the sadhana to leave everything to the Divine or expect everything from it without the need of one’s own endeavour. That is only possible when the psychic being is in front and influencing the whole action (and even then vigilance and a constant assent is necessary), or else later on in the ultimate stages of the yoga when a direct or almost direct supramental force b taking up the consciousness.
EGO. ::: A perverse reflection of the psychic or the Jivatma.
ego ::: n. --> The conscious and permanent subject of all psychical experiences, whether held to be directly known or the product of reflective thought; -- opposed to non-ego.
egyptian ::: a. --> Pertaining to Egypt, in Africa. ::: n. --> A native, or one of the people, of Egypt; also, the Egyptian language.
A gypsy.
emotion ::: “Emotion itself is not a bad thing; it is a necessary part of the nature, and psychic emotion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed: …” Letters on Yoga
"Emptiness is not in itself a bad condition, only if it is a sad and restless emptiness of the dissatisfied vital. In sadhana emptiness is very usually a necessary transition from one state to another. When mind and vital fall quiet and their restless movements, thoughts and desires cease, then one feels empty. This is at first often a neutral emptiness with nothing in it, nothing in it either good or bad, happy or unhappy, no impulse or movement. This neutral state is often or even usually followed by the opening to inner experience. There is also an emptiness made of peace and silence, when the peace and silence come out from the psychic within or descend from the higher consciousness above. This is not neutral, for in it there is the sense of peace, often also of wideness and freedom. There is also a happy emptiness with the sense of something close or drawing near which is not yet there, e.g. the closeness of the Mother or some other preparing experience.” Letters on Yoga*
“Emptiness is not in itself a bad condition, only if it is a sad and restless emptiness of the dissatisfied vital. In sadhana emptiness is very usually a necessary transition from one state to another. When mind and vital fall quiet and their restless movements, thoughts and desires cease, then one feels empty. This is at first often a neutral emptiness with nothing in it, nothing in it either good or bad, happy or unhappy, no impulse or movement. This neutral state is often or even usually followed by the opening to inner experience. There is also an emptiness made of peace and silence, when the peace and silence come out from the psychic within or descend from the higher consciousness above. This is not neutral, for in it there is the sense of peace, often also of wideness and freedom. There is also a happy emptiness with the sense of something close or drawing near which is not yet there, e.g. the closeness of the Mother or some other preparing experience.” Letters on Yoga
epilepsy ::: n. --> The "falling sickness," so called because the patient falls suddenly to the ground; a disease characterized by paroxysms (or fits) occurring at interval and attended by sudden loss of consciousness, and convulsive motions of the muscles.
EPILEPSY. ::: Epilepsy is not possession ; it is an attack or at most a temporary seizure. Insanity always indicates posses- sion. The hereditary conditions create a predisposition. It is not possible for a vital Force or Being to invade or take possession unless there are doors open for it to enter. The door may be a vital consent or affinity or a physical defect in the being.
epileptic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, affected with, or of the nature of, epilepsy. ::: n. --> One affected with epilepsy.
A medicine for the cure of epilepsy.
epileptiform ::: a. --> Resembling epilepsy.
epileptogenous ::: a. --> Producing epilepsy or epileptoid convulsions; -- applied to areas of the body or of the nervous system, stimulation of which produces convulsions.
epileptoid ::: a. --> Resembling epilepsy; as, epileptoid convulsions.
eupepsy ::: n. --> Soundness of the nutritive or digestive organs; good concoction or digestion; -- opposed to dyspepsia.
eupepsia ::: n. --> Alt. of Eupepsy
Every sadbaka Is faced with two elements in him, the inner being which wants the Divine and the sadhana and the outer mainly vital and physical being which does not want them but remains attached to the things of the ordinary life. The mind is sometimes led by one, someUoves by the other. One of the most important things he has to do, therefore, is to decide fundamentally the quarrel between these two parts and to persuade or compel by psychic aspiration, by steadiness of the mind’s thought and will, by the choice of the higher vital in his emotional being, the opposing elements to be first quiescent and then consenting. So long as he is not able to do that his progress must be either very slow or fluctuating and chequered as the aspiration within cannot have a continuous action or a continuous result. Besides so long as thb is so, there are likely to be periodical revolts of the vita! repining at the slow progress, des- pairing, desponding, declaring the Adhar unfit ; calls from old life will come ; circumstances will be attracted which seem to justify it, suggestions will come from men and unseen powers pressing the sadhaka away from the sadhana and pointing back- ward to the former life. And yet in that life he is not likely to get any real satisfaction.
Experience and feeling ::: Experiences are of all kinds and take all forms in the consciousness. When the consciousness undergoes, sees or feeb anything spiritual or psychic or even occult, that b an experience.
::: "Experiences are of all kinds and take all forms in the consciousness. When the consciousness undergoes, sees or feels anything spiritual or psychic or even occult, that is an experience — in the technical yogic sense, for there are of course all sorts of experiences that are not of that character.” Letters on Yoga
faculty ::: n. --> Ability to act or perform, whether inborn or cultivated; capacity for any natural function; especially, an original mental power or capacity for any of the well-known classes of mental activity; psychical or soul capacity; capacity for any of the leading kinds of soul activity, as knowledge, feeling, volition; intellectual endowment or gift; power; as, faculties of the mind or the soul.
Special mental endowment; characteristic knack.
Power; prerogative or attribute of office.
Faith — fouf kinds ::: Mental fmth combats doubt and helps to open to the true knowledge ; \Ual faith prevents the attacks of the hostile forces or defeats them and helps to open to the true spiritual will and action ; physical faith keeps one firm through all physical obscurity, inertia or suffering and helps to open to the foundation of the true consciousness ; psychic faith
Fire supporting the individual evolution on the earth and the psychic being is the soul-coosciousoess developing itself or rather its manifestation from life to life with the mind, vital and body as Its instruments until all is ready for the union with the
flame ::: “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
flea-louse ::: n. --> A jumping plant louse of the family Psyllidae, of many species. That of the pear tree is Psylla pyri.
fleawort ::: n. --> An herb used in medicine (Plantago Psyllium), named from the shape of its seeds.
fn sleep one very commonly passes from consciousness to deeper consciousness in a long succession until one reaches the psychic and rests there or else from higher to higher consciousness until one reaches rest in some silence and peace.
::: Footnote: "E.g. the Russellian fear of emptiness which is the form the active mind gives to Silence. Yet it was on what you call emptiness, on the Silence, that my whole yoga was founded and it was through it that there came afterwards all the inexhaustible riches of a greater Knowledge, Will and Joy — all the experiences of greater mental, psychic and vital realms, all the ranges up to overmind and beyond. The cup has often to be emptied before it can be new-filled; the yogin, the sadhak ought not to be afraid of emptiness or silence.” Letters on Yoga
Footnote: “E.g. the Russellian fear of emptiness which is the form the active mind gives to Silence. Yet it was on what you call emptiness, on the Silence, that my whole yoga was founded and it was through it that there came afterwards all the inexhaustible riches of a greater Knowledge, Will and Joy—all the experiences of greater mental, psychic and vital realms, all the ranges up to overmind and beyond. The cup has often to be emptied before it can be new-filled; the yogin, the sadhak ought not to be afraid of emptiness or silence.” Letters on Yoga
"For the main business of the heart, its true function is love. It is our destined instrument of complete union and oneness; for to see oneness in the world by the understanding is not enough unless we also feel it with the heart and in the psychic being, and this means a delight in the One and in all existences in the world in him, a love of God and all beings. The heart"s faith and will in good are founded on a perception of the one Divine immanent in all things and leading the world.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
“For the main business of the heart, its true function is love. It is our destined instrument of complete union and oneness; for to see oneness in the world by the understanding is not enough unless we also feel it with the heart and in the psychic being, and this means a delight in the One and in all existences in the world in him, a love of God and all beings. The heart’s faith and will in good are founded on a perception of the one Divine immanent in all things and leading the world.” The Synthesis of Yoga
For the others, the “ baby monkey ” type or those who are still more independent, following their own ideas, doing their own sadhana, asking only for some instruction or help, the grace of the Guru is there, but it acts according to the nature of the sadhaka and counts upon his efforts to a greater or less degree ; it helps, succours in difficulty, saves in the time of danger ; the disciple is not always, is perhaps hardly at all aware of what is being done as he is absorbed in himself and his endeavour. In such cases the decisive psychological movement, the touch that makes all clear, may lake longer to come.
For there is a continuous scale of the planes of consciousness, beginning with the psychical and other belts attached to and dependent on the earth plane and proceeding through the true independent vital and psychical worlds to the worlds of the gods and the highest supramental and spiritual planes of existence.
Four M'ays of changins the Nature ::: either the higher cons- ciousness has to make a dynamic descent into the whole being and change it ; or it must establish itself in the inne'r being down to the inner physical so that the latter feels itself separate from the outer and is able to act freely upon it ; or the psychic must come forward and change the nature ; or the inner will must awake and force the nature to change.
FREUD’S PSYCHO-ANALYSIS. ::: The last thing that one should associate with yoga. It takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealtbiest part of the nature, the lower vital sub-consctous layer. Isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in 'the nature.
gipsyism ::: n. --> See Gypsyism.
gipsy ::: n. a. --> See Gypsy.
GOVERNANCE BY THE DIVINE. ::: A constant aspiration for that is the first thing ; next a sort of stillness within and a draw- ing back from the outward action into the stillness and a sort of listening expectancy, not for a sound but for the spiritual feeling or direction of the consciousness that comes through the psychic.
groggy ::: a. --> Overcome with grog; tipsy; unsteady on the legs.
Weakened in a fight so as to stagger; -- said of pugilists.
Moving in a hobbling manner, owing to ten der feet; -- said of a horse.
guide ::: “The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness.” The Life Divine
Guiding Unv of experience ::: The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human conscious~ ness to the Divine Consciousness ; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control ; it is that surrender and that control which bring tbs guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is so absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind fonnaljons and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the bands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine^tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within. That is the inner light we must Uberate ; for the light of thb inmost soul is our one sure illumioation so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-
gypsyism ::: n. --> The arts and practices or habits of gypsies; deception; cheating; flattery.
The state of a gypsy.
gypsy ::: n. --> One of a vagabond race, whose tribes, coming originally from India, entered Europe in 14th or 15th centry, and are now scattered over Turkey, Russia, Hungary, Spain, England, etc., living by theft, fortune telling, horsejockeying, tinkering, etc. Cf. Bohemian, Romany.
The language used by the gypsies.
A dark-complexioned person.
A cunning or crafty person
gypsywort ::: n. --> A labiate plant (the Lycopus Europaeus). Gypsies are said to stain their skin with its juice.
gypsey ::: n. --> A gypsy. See Gypsy.
gypsies ::: pl. --> of Gypsy
harm ::: n. 1. Physical or psychological injury or damage. harms. v. 2. To injure physically, morally, or mentally.
Heart-lotus — emotional centre. The psychic is behind it.
Heart-lotus—emotional centre. The psychic is behind it.
Heart opening ::: The heart opens to the psychic being and the mind centres open to the higher consciousness and the nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the siddhi.
heart ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.” *The Secret of the Veda
heart ::: “The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.” The Secret of the Veda
heredity ::: n. --> Hereditary transmission of the physical and psychical qualities of parents to their offspring; the biological law by which living beings tend to repeat their characteristics in their descendants. See Pangenesis.
HHART. ::: The scat of tuo pouers, in front the hicher vital or emotional beinc. behind and concealed the soul or psychic being.
higgledy-piggledy ::: adv. --> In confusion; topsy-turvy.
however, others which are equally of a Rajayogic character, since they use the mental and psychical being as key. Some of them are directed rather to the quiescence of the mind than to its immediate absorption, as the discipline by which the mind is simply watched and allowed to exhaust its habit of vagrant thought in a purposeless running from which it feels all sanction, purpose and interest withdrawn, and that, more strenuous and rapidly effective, by which all outward-going thought is excluded and the mind forced to sink into itself where in its absolute quietude it can only reflect the pure Being or pass away into its superconscient existence. The method differs, the object and the result are the same.
hydragogue ::: a. --> Causing a discharge of water; expelling serum effused into any part of the body, as in dropsy. ::: n. --> A hydragogue medicine, usually a cathartic or diuretic.
hydropsy ::: n. --> Same as Dropsy.
hydrocele ::: n. --> A collection of serous fluid in the areolar texture of the scrotum or in the coverings, especially in the serous sac, investing the testicle or the spermatic cord; dropsy of the testicle.
hydrocephalic ::: a. --> Relating to, or connected with, hydrocephalus, or dropsy of the brain.
hydrocephalus ::: n. --> An accumulation of liquid within the cavity of the cranium, especially within the ventricles of the brain; dropsy of the brain. It is due usually to tubercular meningitis. When it occurs in infancy, it often enlarges the head enormously.
hydropical ::: a. --> Dropsical, or resembling dropsy.
hysteroepilepsy ::: n. --> A disease resembling hysteria in its nature, and characterized by the occurrence of epileptiform convulsions, which can often be controlled or excited by pressure on the ovaries, and upon other definite points in the body.
"I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights, — yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam.” Letters on Yoga
“I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,—yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam.” Letters on Yoga
IGNORANCE. ::: 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.
Sevenfold Ignorance ::: If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, ip a spatial and temporal universe, wc see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many- sided self-ignorance. We are Ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming ; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence — that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self ; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becom- ing in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence — that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming ; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-sclf — that is the tViTid, \Vie egoistic ignorance. V/c aie ignorant of oat eteinai becoming in Time ; we take this Uttle life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space for our beginning, our middle and our end, — that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is super-conscient, sub- conscient, intraconscient, circumcooscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence — that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming ; we take the mind or life or body or any two or all three tor our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to deter- mine sovereignly by its emergence from their operations, — that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoy- ment of our life in the world ; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal, — that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.
Ignorance ; she has descended there and is not all above. Partly she veils and partly she unveils her knowledge and her power, often holds them back from her instruments and personalities and follows that she may transform them the way of the seeking mind, the way of the aspiring psychic, the way of the battling vital, the way of the imprisoned and suffering physical nature.
impulse ::: 1. An impelling force or motion; thrust; impetus. 2. The motion produced by such a force. 3. A sudden wish, stimulus or urge that prompts an unpremeditated act or feeling; an abrupt inclination. 4. A psychic drive or instinctual urge. impulses, impulses", impulsed, million-impulsed.
Independence or by an act or course of betrayal that severs him from his own psychic being. Even then, except perhaps in the last case if it goes to an extreme, a return to grace is not impos- sible.
INNER CONSCIOUSNESS (Divisions) ::: There are five main divisions. At the top above the head arc layers (or as we call them planes) of which we arc not conscious and which become conscious to us only by sadhana — those above the human mind — that is the higher consciousness. Below from the crown of the head to the throat are the layers (there are many of them) of the mind, the three principal being one at the top of the head communicating with the higher consciousness, another between the eye-brows where is the thought, sight and will, a third in the throat which is the externalising mind. A second division is from the shoulders to the navel ; these are the layers of the higher vital presided over by the heart centre where is the emotional being with the psychic behind it. From the navel downwards is the rest of the vital being containing several layers. From the bottom of the spine downward are the layers of the physical consciousness proper, the material, and below the feet is the sub- conscient which has also many levels.
Inner consciousness ::: means the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical and behind them the psychic which is their inmost being. But the inner mind is not the higher mind ; ft is more in touch with the universal forces and more open to the higher consciousness and capable of an immensely deeper and larger range of action than the outer or surface mind — but it is of the same essential nature.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
INTERMEDIATE ZONE. ::: Any one passing the border of ordinary consciousness can enter into this mtermediate zone of vital world, if he does not take care to enter into the psychic.
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.
In the psychic there are two aspects, the psychic existence or soul behind and in front the form of individuality it takes in its evolution in Nature. • p . . *■
In the process of our yoga the centres, called tectmlcally lotuses or circles {cakra), have each a fi.ted psychological use and general function which bases all theif special powers and func- tionings.
In this joga the consciousness (after the lower field has been prepared by a certain amount of psycho-spiritual-occult experi- ence) is drawn upwards above the Brahmarandhra to ranges above belonging to the spiritual consciousness proper and instead of merely receiving from there has to live there and from there change the lower consciousness altogether. For there is a dyna- mism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light,
Inward opening ::: An opening inwards of the inner mind, vital, physical to the inmost part of us, the psychic.
(in which there is much ima gina tion and fantasy) are useful for opening up the consciousness ; but it is when iey are replaced by the spiritual and psychic consciousness that there is the begia- ning of the true progress.
ipecacuanha ::: n. --> The root of a Brazilian rubiaceous herb (Cephaelis Ipecacuanha), largely employed as an emetic; also, the plant itself; also, a medicinal extract of the root. Many other plants are used as a substitutes; among them are the black or Peruvian ipecac (Psychotria emetica), the white ipecac (Ionidium Ipecacuanha), the bastard or wild ipecac (Asclepias Curassavica), and the undulated ipecac (Richardsonia scabra).
— is a characteristic working of the lower vital nature. The only way to get rid of it is to meet it with a fixed resolution of the higher vital and the mind and the psychic being to combat, reject and master it.
"It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, ``Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you — if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time, — do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey."" Letters on Yoga
“It is because of our experience won at a tremendous price that we can urge upon you and others, ``Take the psychic attitude; follow the straight sunlit path, with the Divine openly or secretly upbearing you—if secretly, he will yet show himself in good time,—do not insist on the hard, hampered, roundabout and difficult journey.’’ Letters on Yoga
It is deficiency of psychic perception and spiritual discrimination that makes people to ignore the importance of obedience.
It is here, when this foundation has been secured, that the practice of Asana and Franayama come in and can then bear their perfect fruits. By itself the control of the mind and moral being only puts our normal consciousness into the right preli- minary condition ; it cannot bring about that evolution or mani- festation of the higher psychic being which is neccssaiy for the greater aims of Yoga. In order fo bring about this manifesta- tion the present nodus of the rrital and physical body with the mental being has to be loosened and the way made clear for the ascent through the greater psychic being to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Franayama.
"It is necessary to understand clearly the difference between the evolving soul (psychic being) and the pure Atman, self or spirit. The pure self is unborn, does not pass through death or birth, is independent of birth or body, mind or life or this manifested Nature.” Letters on Yoga
“It is necessary to understand clearly the difference between the evolving soul (psychic being) and the pure Atman, self or spirit. The pure self is unborn, does not pass through death or birth, is independent of birth or body, mind or life or this manifested Nature.” Letters on Yoga
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.
It is only the ordinaiy vital emotions which waste the energy and disturb the concentration and peace that have to be dis- couraged. Emotion itself is not a bad thing ; it is a necessary part of nature and psychic emoiion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed ::: it is only a vital mixture that brings disturbance in the sadhana.
". . . it is the seat of two powers, in front the higher vital or emotional being, behind and concealed the soul or psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
“… it is the seat of two powers, in front the higher vital or emotional being, behind and concealed the soul or psychic being.” 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.” 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.” 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
"It is when the true soul (psyche) comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire and grow towards a divine nature.” *Letters on Yoga
“It is when the true soul (psyche) comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire and grow towards a divine nature.” Letters on Yoga
"It [the psychic] is constantly in contact with the immanent Divine — the Divine secret in the individual.” Letters on Yoga
“It [the psychic] is constantly in contact with the immanent Divine—the Divine secret in the individual.” Letters on Yoga
J3S Jivafnuin and t/ie Psyddc Dtlna
jigger ::: n. --> A species of flea (Sarcopsylla, / Pulex, penetrans), which burrows beneath the skin. See Chigoe.
A pendulum rolling machine for slicking or graining leather; same as Jack, 4 (i). ::: n. & v. --> One who, or that which, jigs; specifically, a miner
JIVATMAN AND THE PSYCHIC BEING. ::: Jivafman is the
Jivatman, soul, psychic being ::: The Jivatma or spirit is self- existent above the manifested or instrumental being ; It is supe- rior to birth and death, always the same, the individual Self or Atman. It is the eternal true being of the individual.
KNOWLEDGE. ::: By Knowledge we mean in yoga not thought or ideas about spiritual things but psychic understanding from within and spiritual illumination from above.
Last comes the crossing of the border, ft ts not a falling asleep or a loss of consciousness, for the consciousness is there all the time ; only it shifts from the outer and physical, becomes closed to external things and recedes into the inner psychic and vital parts of the being. There it passes through many experiences and of these some can and should be felt in the waking state also ; for both movements arc necessary, the coming out of the inner being to the front as well as the going in of the conscious- ness to fcccoific ajvare of (he inner self and nature. But for many the ingoing movement is indispensable. Its effect is to break
liberation ::: “The sense of release as if from jail always accompanies the emergence of the psychic being or the realisation of the self above. It is therefore spoken of as a liberation, mukti. It is a release into peace, happiness, the soul’s freedom not tied down by the thousand ties and cares of the outward ignorant existence.” Letters on Yoga
Light. False lights exist and misleading lustres, lower lights too that belong to the being's inferior teaches. One must therefore be on one’s guard and distinguish ; the true discrimination has to come by growth of the psychic feeling and a purified mind and experience.
limpsy ::: a. --> Alt. of Limsy
lithotripsy ::: n. --> The operation of crushing a stone in the bladder with an instrument called lithotriptor or lithotrite; lithotrity.
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
MADNESS. ::: People go mad because they have a physical predisposition due either to heredity or to some kind of organic cause or secret illness Eke syphilis, the action being often brought up by some psychological factor (ambition turning to megalomania, hypochondria, melancholia etc.). There may be an invasion of an alien Force bringing about the upsetting, but it is not the Divine Force, it is a vital Force that invades. The
Man alive, your proposed emendations are an admirable exposition of the art of bringing a line down the steps till my poor "slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete portrayal of an act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor thrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative poetic intelligence. First of all, you shift my "dimly” out of the way and transfer it to something to which it does not inwardly belongs make it an epithet of the gesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies the atmosphere in which the act of the Godhead takes place. That is a preliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its atmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture, but forcing its way through the black quietude it comes dimly. Then again the bald phrase "a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply something that "happened”, "came” being a poetic equivalent for "happened”, instead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture. The words "slow” and "dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word"s sense here. Remove one or both whether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the vision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly in your penultimate version and as for the last its "came” gets another meaning and one feels that somebody very slowly decided to let out the gesture from himself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all! "Dimly miraculous” means what precisely or what "miraculously dim” — it was miraculous that it managed to be so dim or there was something vaguely miraculous about it after all? No doubt they try to mean something else — but these interpretations come in their way and trip them over. The only thing that can stand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is that it does not give the effect I wanted to give, the effect which is necessary for the dawn"s inner significance. Moreover, what becomes of the slow lingering rhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable? Letters on Savitri
Man alive, your proposed emendations are an admirable exposition of the art of bringing a line down the steps till my poor”slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete portrayal of an act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor thrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative poetic intelligence. First of all, you shift my”dimly” out of the way and transfer it to something to which it does not inwardly belongs make it an epithet of the gesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies the atmosphere in which the act of the Godhead takes place. That is a preliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its atmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture, but forcing its way through the black quietude it comes dimly. Then again the bald phrase”a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply something that”happened”,”came” being a poetic equivalent for”happened”, instead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture. The words”slow” and”dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word’s sense here. Remove one or both whether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the vision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly in your penultimate version and as for the last its”came” gets another meaning and one feels that somebody very slowly decided to let out the gesture from himself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all!”Dimly miraculous” means what precisely or what”miraculously dim”—it was miraculous that it managed to be so dim or there was something vaguely miraculous about it after all? No doubt they try to mean something else—but these interpretations come in their way and trip them over. The only thing that can stand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is that it does not give the effect I wanted to give, the effect which is necessary for the dawn’s inner significance. Moreover, what becomes of the slow lingering rhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable? Letters on Savitri
Materialistic psychology calls this hidden part the Inconscient, although practically admitting that it is far greater, more power- ful and profound than the surface coasclous self, — very much as the Upanishads called the superconsclent in us the Sleep-self, although this Sleep-self is said to be an iniuiitely greater Intelli- gence, omniscient, omnipotent, Prajna, the Ishwara. Psychic science calls this hidden consciousness the subliminal self, and here loo it is seen that this subliminal self has more powers, more knowledge, a freer field of movement than the smaller self that is on the surface. But the truth is that all this that is behind, this sea of which our waking consciousness is only a wave or series of waves, cannot be described by any one term, for it is very complex. Part of it is subconscient, lower than our waking consciousness, part of it is on a level with it but behind and much larger than it ; part is above and superconscient to us.
Maya, are extraordinarily skilful ; the reason is an insufficient guide and often turns traitor ; vital desire is always with us tempting to follow any alluring call. This is the reason why in this yoga we insist so much on what we call samarpaifa — rather inadequately rendered by the English word surrender. If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question ; all is safe. But the psychic can at any moment be veiled by a lower upsurge. It is only a few who are exempt from these dangers and it is precisely those to whom surrender is easily possible. The guidance of one who is himself, by identity or represents the Divine is in this difficult endeavour imperative and indispensable.
Maya ::: “Maya in its original sense meant a comprehending and containing consciousness capable of embracing, measuring and limiting and therefore formative; it is that which outlines, measures out, moulds forms in the formless, psychologises and seems to make knowable the Unknowable, geometrises and seems to make measurable the limitless. Later the word came from its original sense of knowledge, skill, intelligence to acquire a pejorative sense of cunning, fraud or illusion, and it is in the figure of an enchantment or illusion that it is used by the philosophical systems.” The Life Divine
Maya ::: Sri Aurobindo: “Maya in its original sense meant a comprehending and containing consciousness capable of embracing, measuring and limiting and therefore formative; it is that which outlines, measures out, moulds forms in the formless, psychologises and seems to make knowable the Unknowable, geometrises and seems to make measurable the limitless. Later the word came from its original sense of knowledge, skill, intelligence to acquire a pejorative sense of cunning, fraud or illusion, and it is in the figure of an enchantment or illusion that it is used by the philosophical systems.” The Life Divine
maya ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Maya in its original sense meant a comprehending and containing consciousness capable of embracing, measuring and limiting and therefore formative; it is that which outlines, measures out, moulds forms in the formless, psychologises and seems to make knowable the Unknowable, geometrises and seems to make measurable the limitless. Later the word came from its original sense of knowledge, skill, intelligence to acquire a pejorative sense of cunning, fraud or illusion, and it is in the figure of an enchantment or illusion that it is used by the philosophical systems.” *The Life Divine
megalopsychy ::: n. --> Greatness of soul.
metalepsy ::: n. --> Exchange; replacement; substitution; metathesis.
metaleptic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a metalepsis.
Transverse; as, the metaleptic motion of a muscle.
Of, pertaining to, concerned in, or occurring by, metalepsy.
metempsychosed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Metempsychose
metempsychose ::: v. t. --> To translate or transfer, as the soul, from one body to another.
metempsychosing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Metempsychose
metempsychosis ::: n. --> The passage of the soul, as an immortal essence, at the death of the animal body it had inhabited, into another living body, whether of a brute or a human being; transmigration of souls.
Mind and the Divine Sakti ::: Be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that arc beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and com- plexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehen- sion ; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth.
Mind, vital, physical are properly instruments for the soul and spirit ; when they work for themselves then they produce ignorant and imperfect things — if they can be made into conscious instruments of the psychic and the spirit, then they get their own diviner fulfilment ; that Is the idea contained in what we call transformation in this yoga.
mind ::: v. --> The intellectual or rational faculty in man; the understanding; the intellect; the power that conceives, judges, or reasons; also, the entire spiritual nature; the soul; -- often in distinction from the body.
The state, at any given time, of the faculties of thinking, willing, choosing, and the like; psychical activity or state; as: (a) Opinion; judgment; belief.
Choice; inclination; liking; intent; will.
mopsy ::: n. --> A moppet.
A slatternly, untidy woman.
Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind — to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of Nature in its narrow- terms — runs riot here.
monopsychism ::: n. --> The doctrine that there is but one immortal soul or intellect with which all men are endowed.
mopsey ::: n. --> Alt. of Mopsy
“My researches first convinced me that words, like plants, like animals, are in no sense artificial products, but growths,—living growths of sound with certain seed-sounds as their basis. Out of these seed-sounds develop a small number of primitive root-words with an immense progeny which have their successive generations and arrange themselves in tribes, clans, families, selective groups each having a common stock and a common psychological history. For the factor which presided over the development of language was the association, by the nervous mind of primitive man, of certain general significances or rather of certain general utilities and sense-values with articulate sounds. The process of this association was also in no sense artificial but natural, governed by simple and definite psychological laws.” The Secret of the Veda
NADI. ::: Subtle nervous organisation of the psychic body ; nerve channel.
NATURE (CHANGE OF). Merely to have experiences of the higher consciousness will not change the nature. Either the higher consciousness has to make a dynamic descent into the whole being and change it ; or it must establish itself in the inner being down to the inner physical so that the latter feels itself separate from the outer and is able to act freely upon it ; or the psychic must come forward and change the nature ; or the inner will must awake and force the nature to change.
Occult and spiritual ::: The spiritual realisation is of primary importance and indispensable. I would consider it best to have the spiritual and psychic development first and have it with the same fullness before entering the occult regions. Those who enter the latter first may find their spiritual realisation much delayed ; others fall into the ma^ traps of the occult and do not come out in this life. Some no doubt can cany on both together, the occult and the spiritual, and make them help each other ; but the process I suggest is the safer.
of things, on various planes not only by these sensible images, but by a species of thought perception or of thought, reception and impression analogous, to that phenomenon of consciousness which in modern psychical science, has ' been given the. name of telepathy. i m _ i .r '
on the satisfaction of cgo-dcsire or on the eating up of the fuel it embraces. It is a while flame, not a red one ; but white heat is not inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human rela- tions and human nature ; it finds the fullness of -its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine. In the human relation the psychic love gets mixed up with other ele- ments which seek at once to use it and overshadow it. It gels an outlet for its o^vn full intensities only at rare moments. Other- wise it comes in only as an element, but even so it contributes all the higher things in a love fundamentally vital-— all the finer sweetness, tenderness, fidelity, self-giving, self-sacrifice, rcachings of soul to soul, idealising sublimations that lift up human love beyond itself, come from the psychic. If it could dominate and govern and transmute the other elements, mental, vital, phj-sieal, of human love, then love could be on the earth some reflection or preparation of the real thing, an integral union of the soul and its instruments in a dual life.
oppressed ::: v. 1. Overwhelmed or crushed, esp. in battle. 2. To lie heavy on; burdened (the mind, imagination, etc.). oppresses, oppressed, oppressing.* *n. oppressed. 3. Those who are subjugated by cruelty, force, etc.; trampled down. adj. oppressed. 4.** Afflicted or tormented; burdened psychologically or mentally; caused to suffer.
Or universal Self brings the sense of liberation, it is this which is necessary for the supreme spiritual deliverance ::: but for the transformation of the life and nature the awakening of the psy- chic being and its rule over the nature are indispensable.
"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.
pamful, first, because it is obscure and docs not understand and, secondly, because there arc parts of it that want to be left to their crude notions and not to change. That is why the inter- vention of a psychic attitude is so heJpfuI. For the psychic has the happy confidence, the ready understanding and response, the spontaneous surrender ; it knows that the touch of the Guru is meant to help and not to hurt, or, like Radha in the poem, that whatever the Beloved does is meant to lead to the Divine
PATH. ::: Rising to a station above the mind and opening out of the cosmic consciousness ; psychic opening ; descent of a higher consciousness with its peace, light, force, knowledge, Ananda etc. into all the planes of the being down to the most physical. All this has to be done by the working of the Mother’s force aided by your aspiration, devotion and surrender.
Peace and psychic ::: The psychic has indeed the quality of
Peace and joy can be there perraanenlly, but the condition of this permanence is that one should have the constant contact or indwelling of the Divine, and this comes naturally not to the outer mind or vital but to the inner soul or psychic being. There- fore one who wants his yoga to be a path of peace or joy must be prepared to dwell in Ws soul rather than In his outer mental and emotkmaJ nature.
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
::: ". . . 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
Pink or Pale-Rose ::: characteristic colour of the psychic ; psychic love. Reddish pink rose; psychic love or surrender.
POSSESSION. ::: The first attempt of the possessing entity is to separate the person from his psychic and it is that that creates the struggle.
Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, infinite Wideness and that must be possessed and descend into the whole being. Otherwise one can get multi but not perfection or transformation (except a relative psycho-spiritual change).
Powers undivine in their nature present themselves as the Sup- reme Lord or as the Divine Mother and claim the being’s service and surrender. 1C these (hiags are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sSdhaka to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a rejection of all egoistic force or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego are innumerable, the ilfusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasi Maya, are e.ttraordinariIy skilful ; the reason is an insulBdent guide and often turns traitor; vital desire is ahvays with us tempting to follow any alluring call. This is the reason why in this Yoga we insist so much on what we call samarpana — rather inade- quately rendered by the Engikh word surrender. If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question ; all fe Safe. But the psychic can at any moment be veiled by a lower upsurge. It is only a few who arc exempt from these dangers and it is precisely those to whom surrender is easily possible. The guidance of one who is himself
Prema Nandakumar: “The title itself, at any rate to Hindu ears, is charged with untold significance. A very gem of a title, Savitri has a self-sufficing beauty of its own; trisyllabic, trinitarian, a union of light, strength and silence, three circles radiating from one centre, Love. Again, ‘Savitri’, being the other name of the holiest and hoariest of the Vedic mantras—the Gayatri—which for some thousands of years Hindus have chanted morning, noon and evening, at once starts psychic vibrations of incommensurable potency.” A Study of Savitri
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.
Psj'chic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation of the indiridnal Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is that spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and phyrical as the psychic being until
Psyche ::: “… that spark of the Divine which is the true psyche.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Psychic awakening means the conscious action of the psychic from behind. When it comes to the front, it invades the mind and vital and body and psychidscs their movement. It comes best by aspiration and an unquestioning and entire turning and surrender to the Mother. But also it sometimes comes of itself when the ddhara is ready.
Psychic being and Jivatma ::: It is the central being above the evolution (always the same) that we call the Jivatma ; the psychic being is the same in evolution, it is a spark of the
Psychic being has in itself no desires, it has only aspiration and a seeking and love for the Divine and all things that are or tend towards the Divine.
Psychic being is quite di/Terent from the mind or vital; it stands behind them where they meet in the heart. Its central place is there, but behind the heart rather than in the heart ; for what men call usually the heart is the seat of emotion, and human emotions are mental-vital impulses, not ordinarily psychic in their nature. This mostly secret power behind, other than the mind and the life-force, is the true soul, the psychic being in us. The power of the psychic, however, can act upon the mind and vital and body, purifying thought and perception and emotion (which then becomes psychic feeling) and sensaUon and action and everything else in us and preparing them to be divine movements. The psychic being may be described in Indian lan- guage as the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha, but the inner or secret heart must be understood, hrdaye guhayom, not the outer vital-emotional centre. The supramental change can take place only if the psychic is awake and is made the chief support of the descending supramental power.
Psychic centre is behind the heart and it is through the puri- fied emotions that the psychic most easily finds an outlet.
Psychic contribution ::: The contribution of the psychic being to the sadhana is ; love and bhakti, a love not vital, demanding and egoistic but unconditioned and without claims, self-existent ; the contact or the presence of the Mother within ; the unerring guidance from within ; a quieting and purification of the mind, vital and physical consciousness by their subjection to the psychic influence and guidance ; the opening up of all this lower cons- ciousness to the higher spiritual consciousness above for its des- cent into a nature prepared to receive it with a complete recepti- vity and right attitude — for the psychic brings in everything, right thought, right perception, right feeling, right attitude.
Psychic conversion ::: The conversion which- keeps Ihe cons- ciousness turned towards the light and makes the right attitude spontaneous and natural and abiding and rejection also spon- taneous.
Psychic emergence ::: When the psychic being comes in front, there is an automatic perception of the true and untrue, the divine and the undivine, the spiritual right and wrong of things, and the false vital and mental movements and attacks are imme- diately exposed and fall away and can do nothing ; gradually the vital and physical as well as flte mind get full of this psychic licht and truth and sound feeling and purit>'.
Psychic expression ::: It is through the emotional being that the psychic most easily expresses, for it stands just behind it in the heart.
Psychic feelins • There is a fundamental psychic feeling which is the same for all, but there can also be a special psychic feeling for one or another.
Psychic fire is the fire of aspiration, purification and tapasyS which comes from the psychic being. It is not the psychic being but a power of the psychic being.
PSYCHICISATION. ::: Change of the lower nature bringing right vision into the mind, right impulse and feeling into the vital, ri^t movement and habit into the physical — all turned towards the Divine, all based on love, adoration, bhakti — finally the vision and sense of the Mother everywhere in all as w’ell as in the heart, her Force working in the being, faith, con- secration, surrender.
Psychicisation is not enough, it is only a beginning ; spiritualisa- tion and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term ; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the Supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by (he mdivi- dual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definite stride forward it must take one time or other.
Psychic junction ::: To work on each plane so as to help each to awaken to the true truth and the Divine Reality.
Psychic love and spiriitial ::: The true love for the Divine is in its fundamental nature psychic and spiritual. The psychic element is the need of the inmost being for self-giving, love, adoration, union which can only be fully satisfied by the Divine
Psychic love does not exclude discrimination.
Psychic love finds itself wholly when it is the radiation of the diviner consciousness for t^hich uc arc seeking; till then it is diflicult for it to put out its undimmed integral self and figure.
Psychic love is distingubhed by an essential purity and selfless- ness, but the vital can put on a very brilliant imitation of that character, when it likes.
.‘.Psychic mind ::: ^Vhen the mind is turned towards the Divine and the Truth and feels and responds to that only or mainly, it can be called a psychic mind — it is something formed by the influence of the psychic being on the mental pLnnc.
Psychic opening ::: When the psychic being opens, you grow conscious of your soul ; you know your self.
PSYCHIC POWERS. ::: The range of the psychic consciousness and its experiences is almost illimitable and the variety and com- plexity of its phenomena almost infinite The first and most prominent is the activity of the psychic senses of which the sight is the most developed ordinarily and the first to manifest itself with any largeness when the veil of the absorption in the surface consciousness which prevents the inner vision is broken. But all the physical senses have their corresponding powers in the psychical being, there is a p^hical hearing, touch, smell, taste ::: indeed the physical senses are themselves in reality only a pro- jection of the inner sense into a limited and externalised opera- tion in and through and upon the phenomena of gross matter.
Psychic sadness ::: “ Painful longing ” belongs to the vital, not
Psychic
PSYCHIC. ::: The psychic is the soul or spark of the Divine
Psychic yvorld ; The psychic being stands behind mind, life and body, supporting them ; so also the psychic world is not one world in the scale like the mental, vital or physical worlds, but stands behind all these and it is there that the souls evolving here retire for the time between life and life. It is a plane where it (evolutionary being) retires into itself for rest, for a spiritual assimilation of what it has experienced and for a replunging into its own fundamental consciousness and psychic nature.
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND YOGA. ::: There are many things in the ordinary man of which he is not conscious, because the vital hides them from the mind and gratifies them without the mind realising what is the force that is moving the action — thus things that are done under the plea of altruism, philanthropy, service etc. are largely moved by ego which hides itself behind these justifications ; in yoga the secret motive has to be pulled out from behind the veil, exposed and got rid of. Secondly, some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated ; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is the real cause. This has l«cn recently dis- covered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis. Here again, tti sadhana one has to become conscious of these suppressed impulses and eliminate them ; that does not mean that they have to be raised up into action but only raised up before the con- sciousness so as to be cleared out of the being.
PSYCHOLOGY. ::: The science of consciousness and its states and operations in Nature and, if that be glimpsed or experi- enced, its states and operations beyond what we know as Nature.
Psydtlc light ::: The colour of the psychic light is according to what it manifests, e.g. psychic love is pink or rose, the psychic purity is white etc.
Psythic Bhakti which gives itself asks for nothing but the
Purity, simple sincerity and capacity of an unegoistic, unmIxed self-offering without pretension or demand are the conditions of an entire opening of the psychic being.
Purusha is there on all the planes ::: there is a mental Purusha, manomaya, leader of the life and body, as the Upanishad puts it, a vital, a physical Purusha ; there is the psychic being or
Quietude, peace and silence in the heart and therefore in the vital of the being are necessary to reach the psychic, to plunge in it, for the perturbations of the vital nature, desire, emotion turned ego-wards or world-wards are the main part of the screen that bides the bdu\ iiom tlw watorc.
RADHA-KRISHNA. ::: The true symbol for it would not be the human sex-attraction, but the soul, the psychic, hearing the call of the Divine and flowering into the complete love and sur- render that brings the supreme Ananda.
Rajayoga must cod. For its action is the stilling of the waves of consciousness, its manifold activities, cinovfUl, first, through a habitual replacing of the turbid rajaslc activities by the quiet and luminous sattwic, then, by the stilling of all activities, and its object is to enter into silent communion of soul and unity with the Divine. As a matter of fact we find that the system of Raja- yoga includes other objects, — such as the practice and use of occult powers, — some of which seem to be unconnected with and even inconsistent with its main purpose. These powers or siddhis arc indeed frequently condemned as dangers and dis- tractions wWch draw away the Yogin from his sole legitimate aim of divine union. On the way, therefore, it would naturally seem as if they ought to bfe* avoided; and once the goal is reached, it would seem that they are then frivolous and super- fluous. But Rajayoga is a psychic science and it includes the attainment of all the higher slates of consciousness and their powers by which the mental being rises towards the super- conscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union wnth the Highest. Moreover, the Yo^n, while in the body, is not always mentally inactive and sunk in Samadhi and an account of the powers and states which arc possible to him on the higher planes of his being is necessary to the completeness of the science.
Red ; Deep red is the Divine Love. Deep red light is tlic light that comes down into the physical for its change. It is associated with the sunlight and the golden light. Golden red is the colour of the supramcntal physical light. The golden red light has a strong transforming power. Rosy red is the psychic love.
Sadhana is the opening of the consciousness to the Divine, the change of the present consciousness to the psychic and spiritual consciousness. In this yoga it means also the offering of all consciousness and its activities to the Divine for possession and use by the Divine and for transformation.
SAFEGUARD. ::: An inner purity and sincerity, in which one is motivated only by the higher call, is one’s best safeguard against the lures of the intermediate stage. It keeps one on the right track and guards from deviation, until the psychic being is fully awake and in front and, once that happens, there is no further danger. If in addition to this purity and sincerity, there is a clear mind with a power of discrimination, that increases the safety in the earlier stages.
seed-sounds ::: Sri Aurobindo: "My researches first convinced me that words, like plants, like animals, are in no sense artificial products, but growths, — living growths of sound with certain seed-sounds as their basis. Out of these seed-sounds develop a small number of primitive root-words with an immense progeny which have their successive generations and arrange themselves in tribes, clans, families, selective groups each having a common stock and a common psychological history. For the factor which presided over the development of language was the association, by the nervous mind of primitive man, of certain general significances or rather of certain general utilities and sense-values with articulate sounds. The process of this association was also in no sense artificial but natural, governed by simple and definite psychological laws.” *The Secret of the Veda
Self and soul ::: The true being may be realised in one or both of two aspects — the Self or Atman and the soul or antaratman, psychic being or caitya puruya. The difference is that one is felt as universal, the other as individual supporting the mind, life and body.
Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger, deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of concentration. Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The con- centration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psy- chic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the conscious- ness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and
self-knowledge ::: knowing of oneself, without help from another.
Sri Aurobindo: The possibility of a cosmic consciousness in humanity is coming slowly to be admitted in modern Psychology, like the possibility of more elastic instruments of knowledge, although still classified, even when its value and power are admitted, as a hallucination. In the psychology of the East it has always been recognised as a reality and the aim of our subjective progress. The essence of the passage over to this goal is the exceeding of the limits imposed on us by the ego-sense and at least a partaking, at most an identification with the self-knowledge which broods secret in all life and in all that seems to us inanimate. *The Life Divine
"Therefore the only final goal possible is the emergence of the infinite consciousness in the individual; it is his recovery of the truth of himself by self-knowledge and by self-realisation, the truth of the Infinite in being, the Infinite in consciousness, the Infinite in delight repossessed as his own Self and Reality of which the finite is only a mask and an instrument for various expression.” The Life Divine
"The Truth-Consciousness is everywhere present in the universe as an ordering self-knowledge by which the One manifests the harmonies of its infinite potential multiplicity.” The Life Divine
"Silence means freedom from thoughts and vital movements —- when the whole consciousness is quite still.” The Mother - Flowers and Their Messages, Glossary Of Philosophical And Psychological Terms.
“Silence means freedom from thoughts and vital movements—when the whole consciousness is quite still.” The Mother—Flowers and Their Messages, Glossary Of Philosophical And Psychological Terms.
Sky ::: A symbol of the mental consciousness (or the psychic) or other consciousnesses above the mind. The higher conscious- ness In any of its levels is seen usually us a sky or ether but when felt through the vital it is often p>erceived as a sea. In this yoga one sees many levels of consciousness which appear as skies or seas.
“… some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis.” Letters on Yoga
Soul and pjyc/iic being ::: The soul, representative of the central being, is a spark of the Divine supporting all individual existence in Nature ; the psychic being is a conscious form of that soul growing in the evolution — in the persistent process that develops first life in matter, mind in life, until finally mind can develop into overniind and ovetmind into the Supramental Truth.
Soul-rule ::: The rule and guidance of the soul brings into an experience the tendency of light, of integration, of harmony and intimate rightness which is native to the psychic essence.
SOUL. ::: Soul is something of the Divine that descends into evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the IgnoraR<% into the Light. It deve- lops 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 evolu- tion of the individual.
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.
soul ::: “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
special reference to the psychic or the psychidsed dial, menial and physical consciousness. Usually indicate a psychic activity.
Spiritual conversion ::: begins when the soul begins to insist on a deeper life and is complete when the psychic being becomes the basis or the leader of Ae consciousness, and mind and vital and body are led by it and obey it.
Sri Aurobindo: A symbol, as I understand it, is the form on one plane that represents a truth of another. For instance, a flag is the symbol of a nation…. But generally all forms are symbols. This body of ours is a symbol of our real being and everything is a symbol of some higher reality. There are, however, different kinds of symbols: 1. Conventional symbols, such as the Vedic Rishis formed with objects taken from their surroundings. The cow stood for light because the same word `go ‘ meant both ray and cow, and because the cow was their most precious possession which maintained their life and was constantly in danger of being robbed and concealed. But once created, such a symbol becomes alive. The Rishis vitalised it and it became a part of their realisation. It appeared in their visions as an image of spiritual light. The horse also was one of their favourite symbols, and a more easily adaptable one, since its force and energy were quite evident. 2. What we might call Life-symbols, such as are not artificially chosen or mentally interpreted in a conscious deliberate way, but derive naturally from our day-to-day life and grow out of the surroundings which condition our normal path of living. To the ancients the mountain was a symbol of the path of yoga, level above level, peak upon peak. A journey, involving the crossing of rivers and the facing of lurking enemies, both animal and human, conveyed a similar idea. Nowadays I dare say we would liken yoga to a motor-ride or a railway-trip. 3. Symbols that have an inherent appositeness and power of their own. Akasha or etheric space is a symbol of the infinite all-pervading eternal Brahman. In any nationality it would convey the same meaning. Also, the Sun stands universally for the supramental Light, the divine Gnosis. 4.* Mental symbols, instances of which are numbers or alphabets. Once they are accepted, they too become active and may be useful. Thus geometrical figures have been variously interpreted. In my experience the square symbolises the supermind. I cannot say how it came to do so. Somebody or some force may have built it before it came to my mind. Of the triangle, too, there are different explanations. In one position it can symbolise the three lower planes, in another the symbol is of the three higher ones: so both can be combined together in a single sign. The ancients liked to indulge in similar speculations concerning numbers, but their systems were mostly mental. It is no doubt true that supramental realities exist which we translate into mental formulas such as Karma, Psychic evolution, etc. But they are, so to speak, infinite realities which cannot be limited by these symbolic forms, though they may be somewhat expressed by them; they might be expressed as well by other symbols, and the same symbol may also express many different ideas. Letters on Yoga
*Sri Aurobindo: "Emotion itself is not a bad thing; it is a necessary part of the nature, and psychic emotion is one of the most powerful helps to the sadhana. Psychic emotion, bringing tears of love for the Divine or tears of Ananda, ought not to be suppressed: . . . .” Letters on 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: ". . . some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness.” *The Life Divine
*Sri Aurobindo: "The Mask is mentioned not twice but four times in this opening passage and it is purposely done to keep up the central connection of the idea running through the whole. The ambassadors wear this grey Mask, so your criticism cannot stand since there is no separate mask coming as part of a new idea but a very pointed return to the principal note indicating the identity of the influence throughout. It is not a random recurrence but a purposeful touch carrying a psychological meaning.” — 1948 Letters on Savitri*
Sri Aurobindo: "The sense of release as if from jail always accompanies the emergence of the psychic being or the realisation of the self above. It is therefore spoken of as a liberation, mukti. It is a release into peace, happiness, the soul"s freedom not tied down by the thousand ties and cares of the outward ignorant existence.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "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
Sri Aurobindo: "The wideness comes when one exceeds or begins to exceed the individual consciousness and spread out towards the universal. But the psychic can be active even in the individual consciousness.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘descend" has various meanings according to the context — I used it here in the sense of the psychic being coming down into the human consciousness and body ready for it.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Vitality means life-force — wherever there is life, in plant or animal or man, there is life-force — without the vital there can be no life in matter and no living action. The vital is a necessary force and nothing can be done or created in the bodily existence, if the vital is not there as an instrument.” *Letters on Yoga
"The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, desires, ambitions, etc., having as their highest centre what we may call the outer heart of emotion, while there is an inner heart where are the higher or psychic feelings and sensibilities, the emotions or intuitive yearnings and impulses of the soul. The vital part of us is, of course, necessary to our completeness, but it is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . the vital is the Life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul in man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of the nature. Letters on Yoga
The Mother: "The vital is the dynamism of action. It is the seat of the will, of impulses, desires, revolts, etc.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15*.
"Stability and movement, we must remember, are only our psychological representations of the Absolute, even as are oneness and multitude. The Absolute is beyond stability and movement as it is beyond unity and multiplicity. But it takes its eternal poise in the one and the stable and whirls round itself infinitely, inconceivably, securely in the moving and multitudinous.” The Life Divine
“Stability and movement, we must remember, are only our psychological representations of the Absolute, even as are oneness and multitude. The Absolute is beyond stability and movement as it is beyond unity and multiplicity. But it takes its eternal poise in the one and the stable and whirls round itself infinitely, inconceivably, securely in the moving and multitudinous.” The Life Divine
Statuses of transformation ::: First is the psychic transforation in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individua psyciiic consciousness.
Still what is important is to develop the psychic within and bring down the higher consciousness from above. The psychic, as it grows and manifests, detects immediately all wrong move- ments or elements and at the same lime supplies almost auto- matically the true element or movement which will replace them ; this process is much easier and more effective than that of a severe tapasy& of purification. The higher consciousness In des-
STRAIGHT ROAD. ::: Take the psychic attitude ; follow the stimght sunlit path, with the Divine openly and secretly upbear- ing you — if secretly, he will yet show himself in good lime.
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
subtle vision ("s) ::: Sri Aurobindo: " This power of vision is sometimes inborn and habitual even without any effort of development, sometimes it wakes up of itself and becomes abundant or needs only a little practice to develop; it is not necessarily a sign of spiritual attainment, but usually when by practice of yoga one begins to go inside or live within, the power of subtle vision awakes to a greater or less extent; . . . .”*Letters on Yoga
"It is not necessary to have the mind quiet in order to see the lights — that depends only on the opening of the subtle vision in the centre which is in the forehead between the eyebrows. Many people get that as soon as they start sadhana. It can even be developed by effort and concentration without sadhana by some who have it to a small extent as an inborn faculty.” Letters on Yoga
"When the centres begin to open, inner experiences such as the seeing of light or images through the subtle vision in the forehead centre or psychic experiences and perceptions in the heart, become frequent — gradually one becomes aware of one"s inner being as separate from the outer, and what can be called a yogic consciousness with all its deeper movements develops in the place of the ordinary superficial mental and vital movements.” Letters on Yoga
Supporting from its place behind the heart-centre the mental, vital, physical, psychic evolution of the being in Nature. Its realisation brings Bhakti, self-^ving, surrender, turning of all the 'movements Godward, discrimination and choice of all that
symbol ::: A symbol, as I understand it, is the form on one plane that represents a truth of another. For instance, a flag is the symbol of a nation…. But generally all forms are symbols. This body of ours is a symbol of our real being and everything is a symbol of some higher reality. There are, however, different kinds of symbols: 1. Conventional symbols, such as the Vedic Rishis formed with objects taken from their surroundings. The cow stood for light because the same word `go ‘ meant both ray and cow, and because the cow was their most precious possession which maintained their life and was constantly in danger of being robbed and concealed. But once created, such a symbol becomes alive. The Rishis vitalised it and it became a part of their realisation. It appeared in their visions as an image of spiritual light. The horse also was one of their favourite symbols, and a more easily adaptable one, since its force and energy were quite evident. 2. What we might call Life-symbols, such as are not artificially chosen or mentally interpreted in a conscious deliberate way, but derive naturally from our day-to-day life and grow out of the surroundings which condition our normal path of living. To the ancients the mountain was a symbol of the path of yoga, level above level, peak upon peak. A journey, involving the crossing of rivers and the facing of lurking enemies, both animal and human, conveyed a similar idea. Nowadays I dare say we would liken yoga to a motor-ride or a railway-trip. 3. Symbols that have an inherent appositeness and power of their own. Akasha or etheric space is a symbol of the infinite all-pervading eternal Brahman. In any nationality it would convey the same meaning. Also, the Sun stands universally for the supramental Light, the divine Gnosis. 4. Mental symbols, instances of which are numbers or alphabets. Once they are accepted, they too become active and may be useful. Thus geometrical figures have been variously interpreted. In my experience the square symbolises the supermind. I cannot say how it came to do so. Somebody or some force may have built it before it came to my mind. Of the triangle, too, there are different explanations. In one position it can symbolise the three lower planes, in another the symbol is of the three higher ones: so both can be combined together in a single sign. The ancients liked to indulge in similar speculations concerning numbers, but their systems were mostly mental. It is no doubt true that supramental realities exist which we translate into mental formulas such as Karma, Psychic evolution, etc. But they are, so to speak, infinite realities which cannot be limited by these symbolic forms, though they may be somewhat expressed by them; they might be expressed as well by other symbols, and the same symbol may also express many different ideas. Letters on Yoga
Tehmi: “The psychic being is the passenger.”
Tehmi: “The psychic being.”
that way, it becomes ready for the moment when the psychic has only (o give a slight pusli for it to fa!! away in each field of its activity from its loosened roots.
" . . . the psyche, the soul, the inmost entity in us, . . .” The Life Divine
“… the psyche, the soul, the inmost entity in us, …” The Life Divine
The psychical sight receives characteristically the images that arc formed in the subtle matter of the mental or psychical ether.
the psychic and emotional energy associated with instinctual biological drives. world-libido"s.
The psychic being gives true bhakti for God or for the Guru.
The psychic being is lomcd by the soul in its cvoJuUon, It supports the mind, vital, body, grows by their experiences, carries the nature from life to life. It is the psychic or co/iyo purufa.
The psychic being realises its oneness with the true being, the Jivatman, but it docs not change into it.
The psychic grows through a certain inner attitude behind the work and the adhara becomes open both to the psychic intui- tions and influences from within and to the descent from above.
The psychic has indeed the quality of peace— -but that is not its main character as it is of the &If or Atman. The psychic is the Divine element in the individual being and its characteristic power Is to turn everything towards the Divine, to bring a fire of purification, aspiration, devotion, true light of discernment, feeling, will, action, which transforms by degrees the whole nature.
The psychic is realised as the Purusha behind the heart. It Is not universalised like the Jivatman, but is the individual soul
The psychic knows that the Divine Is and affirms its knowledge against all appearances.
The psychic opening through the heart puts us primarily into connection with the individual Divine, the Divine in his inner relation with us ; it is especially the source of love and bhakti.
The psychic part oS us is something that comes direct from the Divine and is in touch with the Divine. In its origin Jt is the nucleus pregnant with divine possibilities that supports this lower triple ma^estation of mind, life and body. There is this divine element in all living beings, but it stands bidden behind the ordinary cemsdousness, is not at first developed and, even when developed, is not always or often in the front ; it expresses itself so far as the imperfection of the instruments anon’s, by their means and imdcr their limitations. It grows in the cons- ciousness by Godward experience, gaining strength every time there is a Wgher movement in us, and, finally, by the accumu- lation of these deeper and higher movements, there is developed a psychic individuality, — that which we call usually the psychic being, ft is afways tius p^-chic hem? ffcif £f c&e reaf, often the secret cause of man’s turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it.
::: "The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing that one should associate with yoga. It takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind — to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of Nature in its narrow terms — runs riot here. Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can have a nasty influence and tend to make the mind and vital more and not less fundamentally impure than before.
“The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing that one should associate with yoga. It takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind—to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of Nature in its narrow terms—runs riot here. Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can have a nasty influence and tend to make the mind and vital more and not less fundamentally impure than before.
The centre of the psychic being is behind the centre of the emotional being ; it is the emotional that is nearest dynamically to the psychic and in most men it is through the emotional centre that the psychic can be most easily reached and through the psychicised emotion that it can be most easily e;tpressed.
"The child usually signifies the psychic being — new-born in the sense that it at last comes to the surface.” Letters on Yoga
“The child usually signifies the psychic being—new-born in the sense that it at last comes to the surface.” Letters on Yoga
"The child (when it does not mean the psychic being) is usually the symbol of something new-born in some part of the consciousness.” Letters on Yoga
“The child (when it does not mean the psychic being) is usually the symbol of something new-born in some part of the consciousness.” Letters on Yoga
The child (when it does not mean the psychic being) is usually the symbol of something new-born in some part of the conscious- ness.
"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 condition of the souls that retire into the psychic world is entirely static, each withdraws into himself and is not inter- acting with the others. When they come out of their trance, they are ready to go down into a new life, but meanwhile they do not act upon the earth life. There are other beings, guardians of the psychic world, but they are concerned only with the psychic world itself and the return of the souls to reincarnation, not with the earth.
The conditions of the future birth arc determined fundamental- ly not during the stay in the psychic world but at the time of death — the psychic being then chooses what it should work out in the next appearance and the conditions arrange themselves accordingly.
"The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one"s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one"s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one"s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces — for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness — and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in ::: —the nature.” Letters on Yoga*
“The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one’s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one’s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one’s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces—for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness—and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in—the nature.” Letters on Yoga
The deeper the emotion, the more intense the Bhakti, the greater is the force for realisation and transformation. It is oftenest through intensity of emotion that the psychic being awakes and there is an opening of the inner doors to the Divine.
The direct opening of the psychic centre is easy only when the ego-centricity is greatly diminished and also if there is a strong bhakti for the Mother. A spiritual humility and a sense of submission and dependence is necessary.
"The Divine Grace is something not calculable, not bound by anything the intellect can fix as a condition, — though ordinarily some call, aspiration, intensity of the psychic being can awaken it, yet it acts sometimes without any apparent cause even of that kind.” Letters on Yoga*
“The Divine Grace is something not calculable, not bound by anything the intellect can fix as a condition,—though ordinarily some call, aspiration, intensity of the psychic being can awaken it, yet it acts sometimes without any apparent cause even of that kind.” Letters on Yoga
The Divine Grace is something not calculable, not bound by anything the intellect can fix as a condition, — though ordinarily some call, aspiration, intensity of the psychic being can awaken it, yet it acts sometimes without any apparent cause even of that kind.
The feelings tbemseives are of many kinds. The word feeling is often used for an emotion, and there can be psychic or spiri- tual emotions which are numbered among yogic experiences, such as a wave of Suddha bhakti or the rising of love towards the
The field of vision, like every other field of activity of the human mind, is a mixed world and there is in it not only truth but much half-inith and error. For the rash and unwary to enter into it may bring confusion and misleading inspiration and false voices, and it is safer to have some sure guidance from those who know and have spiritual and psychic experience One must look at this field calmly and with discrimination, but to shut the gates and reject this or other supraphysical experiences is to limit oneself and arrest the inner development.
The ghost or spirit who turns up at seances js not the psychic being. What comes tlirough the medium is a mixture of the medium’s subconscient (using subconscient in the ordinary, not in the yogic sense) and that ot the sitters, vital sheaths left by the departed or perhaps occupied or used by some spirit or some vital being, the departed himself in his vital sheath or else something assumed for the occasion (but it is the vital part that communicates), elementals, spirits of the lowest vital physical world near earth etc. A horrible confusion for the most part — a hotch-potch of all sorts of things coming through a medium of
The governing factors for us must be the spirit and the psychic being united with the Divine ; the occult laws and phenomena have to be known only as an instrumentation, not as the govern* ing principles. The occult is a vast field and complicated and not without its dangers. It need not be abandoned but it should not be given the first place.
The heart centre commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it gov'ems the emotional being.
The heart centre, hrdpadma or andJiata, commanding the high- er emotional being with the psychic deep behind it, governs the emotional being. (Colour: golden pinV ; petals: twelve.)
"The heart is the centre of the being and commands the rest, as the psychic being or caitya purusa is there. It is only in that sense that all flows from it, for it is the psychic being who each time creates a new mind, vital and body for himself.” *Letters on Yoga
“The heart is the centre of the being and commands the rest, as the psychic being or caitya purusa is there. It is only in that sense that all flows from it, for it is the psychic being who each time creates a new mind, vital and body for himself.” Letters on Yoga
::: "The heart is the centre of the emotional being and the emotions are vital movements. When the heart is purified, the vital emotions change into psychic feelings or else psychicised vital movements.” Letters on Yoga
“The heart is the centre of the emotional being and the emotions are vital movements. When the heart is purified, the vital emotions change into psychic feelings or else psychicised vital movements.” Letters on Yoga
The heart is the centre of the Iwing and commands the rest, as the psychic being or cahya pisruja is there.
::: "The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.” The Life Divine*
“The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.” The Life Divine
"The mantra is one of these psycho-spiritual means, at once a symbol, an instrument and a sound body for the divine manifestation, . . . .” The Life Divine
“The mantra is one of these psycho-spiritual means, at once a symbol, an instrument and a sound body for the divine manifestation, . . . ” The Life Divine
“The mantra is one of these psycho-spiritual means, at once a symbol, an instrument and a sound body for the divine manifestation, …” The Life Divine
the method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts, in order to free psychic energy for mature love and work.
The most notable of these more powerful but rarer phenomena are those which attend the power of exterioration of our cons- ciousness for various lands of action otherwise and elsewhere than in the physical body, communication in the psychical body or some emanation or reproduction of it, oftenest, though by no means necessarily, during sleep or trance and the setting up of relations or communtcatioo by various means rvith the denizens of another plane of existence.
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 natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the Child, the Son of God, the Bhakta; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference.” Letters on Yoga
“The natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the Child, the Son of God, the Bhakta; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference.”
"The other parts of our natural composition are not only mutable but perishable; but the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential possibilities of our manifestation but is not constituted by them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame.” *The Life Divine
“The other parts of our natural composition are not only mutable but perishable; but the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always: it contains all essential possibilities of our manifestation but is not constituted by them; it is not limited by what it manifests, not contained by the incomplete forms of the manifestation, not tarnished by the imperfections and impurities, the defects and depravations of the surface being. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame.” The Life Divine
"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 possibility of a cosmic consciousness in humanity is coming slowly to be admitted in modern Psychology, like the possibility of more elastic instruments of knowledge, although still classified, even when its value and power are admitted, as a hallucination. In the psychology of the East it has always been recognised as a reality and the aim of our subjective progress. The essence of the passage over to this goal is the exceeding of the limits imposed on us by the ego-sense and at least a partaking, at most an identification with the self-knowledge which broods secret in all life and in all that seems to us inanimate. The Life Divine
The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears- theaiervous system ; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will nccarding to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being ; it gives us control of all the five habitual opera- tions of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality arc possible (o the norma! life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings Into (he waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Furusba on each of the as^nding planes. Cbupled with (be use of the mantra it brings the ^vine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadbi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method.
"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 after death a period In which one passes through the vital world and lives there for a time, it is only the first part of this transit that can be dangerous or painful ; in the rest one vsorks out, under certain surroundings, the remnant of the vital desires which one had in the body. As soon as one is tired of these and able to go beyond, the vital sheath is dropped and the soul, after a time needed to get rid of some mental survivals, passes into a state of rest in the psychic world and remains there till the next life on earth.
There is also the intervention of the psychic ; if the psychic being is sufficiently awake and active to intervene each time you are going to speak at random and say “No”, then the change becomes more easy.
There is also the way -of the psychic, — when the psychic being comes out in its inherent power, its consecration, adoration, love of the Divine, self-^ving, surrendei and imposes these on the mind, vital and physical consciousness and compels them to turn all their movements Godward. If the psychic is strong and master throughout, then there is no or little subjective suffering and the objective cannot affect either the sou! or the other parts of the consciousness the way is sunlit and a great joy and sweetness are the note of the whole sadhana.
• • There is and can be no psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura ; there can be none in a god who does not need one for his existence. But what the god has is a
There is only one psychic being for each human being, but the beings of the higher planes, eg. the Gods of the Overmind can manifest in more than one human body at a time by send- ing different emanations into different bodies.
These and other phenomena create an indirect, a representa- tive range of psychical experience ; but the psychical sense has also the power of putting us in a more direct communication with earthly or supra-terrestrial beings through their psychical selves or their psychical bodies or even with things, for things also have a psychical reality and souls or presences supporting them which can communicate with our psychical consciousness.
“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 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, on the contrary, is something. that comes down into birth and passes through death — although it does not itself die, for it is immortal — from one state to another, from the earth plane to other planes and back again to the earth'cxisteoce. ft goes on with this progression from life to life through an evolu- tion which leads it up to the human state and evolves through it all a being of itself which we call the psychic being that sup- ports the evolution and develops a physical, a vital, a mental human consciousness as its instruments of world-experience and of a disguised, imperfect, but growing self-expression. All this it does from behind a veil showing something of its divine self only in so far as the imperfection of the instrumental being will allow it. But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, take command and turn all the instru- mental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life. The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human — it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual to the supramental state. _ ,
::: "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 soul or psyche is immutable only^ in the sense that it contains all the possibilities of the Divine within it, but it has to evolve them and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing ps3'cbic individual evolving in tbS manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part Jn the evolution. It is the spark of the Divine J^re that grows behind the mind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until h is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge. This evolving psychic being is not therefore at any time all that the soul or essential psychic existence bears within it.
“The soul or 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
The soul, the psychic being, once having reached the human consciousness cannot go back to the inferior animal conscious-
The spiritual element is the need of the being for contact, merging, union wth its own highest and uhole sell and source of being and consciousness and bliss, the Ditinc. These two are two sides of the same thing. The mind, vital, physical can be the supports and recipients of this lose, but they can be fully that only when they become remoulded in harmony with the psychic and spiritual elements of the being and no longer bring in the lower insistences of the ego.
"The sunlit path can only be followed if the psychic is constantly or usually in front or if one has a natural spirit of faith and surrender or a face turned habitually towards the sun or psychic predisposition (e.g. a faith in one"s spiritual destiny) or, if one has acquired the psychic turn. That does not mean that the sunlit man has no difficulties; he may have many, but he regards them cheerfully as all in the day's work''. If he gets a bad beating, he is capable of saying,Well, that was a queer go but the Divine is evidently in a queer mood and if that is his way of doing things, it must be the right one; I am surely a still queerer fellow myself and that, I suppose, was the only means of putting me right."" Letters on Yoga
“The sunlit path can only be followed if the psychic is constantly or usually in front or if one has a natural spirit of faith and surrender or a face turned habitually towards the sun or psychic predisposition (e.g. a faith in one’s spiritual destiny) or, if one has acquired the psychic turn. That does not mean that the sunlit man has no difficulties; he may have many, but he regards them cheerfully as all in the day’s work’’. If he gets a bad beating, he is capable of saying,Well, that was a queer go but the Divine is evidently in a queer mood and if that is his way of doing things, it must be the right one; I am surely a still queerer fellow myself and that, I suppose, was the only means of putting me right.’’ Letters on Yoga
The surrender must be total and seize all the parts of the being. It is not enough that the psychic should respond and the higher mental accept or even the inner vital submit and the inner physical consciousness feel the influence. There must be in no part of the being,' even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or refuses.
"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 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 mentaland vital atmosphere which result ineffects, in actions and even in theproduction of material forms on the physical plane.” The Upanishads
::: "The third step is to know the Divine Being who is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness ever living within us and the conscious instrument of its light and power and joy and beauty.” *The Life Divine
“The third step is to know the Divine Being who is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness ever living within us and the conscious instrument of its light and power and joy and beauty.” 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
"The Veda is thus the spiritual and psychological seed of Indian culture . . . ." The Renaissance in India
“The Veda is thus the spiritual and psychological seed of Indian culture . . . .“ The Renaissance in India
The vital beings (possessing men) take a delight In struggle and suffering and disorder; it is their natural atmosphere. They want besides to get the taste of the physical world without being under the obligation of taking on birth and developing the psychic being and evolving towards the Divine. They wish to remain what they are and yet amuse themselves svith the physical world and physical body,
The vital part of us normally exists after the dissolution of the body for some time and passes away into the vital piano where it remains til! the vital sheath dissolves. Afterwards it passes, if it is mentally evolved, in the mental sheath to some mental world and finally the psychic leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If the mental is strongly developed, then the mental part of us can remain ; so also can the vital, provided they are organised by and centred round the true psychic being — for they then share the immortality of the psychic. Otherwise the psychic draws mind and life into itself and enters into^an intematal quiescence.
“The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, desires, ambitions, etc., having as their highest centre what we may call the outer heart of emotion, while there is an inner heart where are the higher or psychic feelings and sensibilities, the emotions or intuitive yearnings and impulses of the soul. The vital part of us is, of course, necessary to our completeness, but it is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power.” 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
“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
“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
“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 conception of the Person and Personality, if accepted, must modify at the same time our current ideas about the immortality of the soul; for, normally, when we insist on the soul"s undying existence, what is meant is the survival after death of a definite unchanging personality which was and will always remain the same throughout eternity. It is the very imperfect superficial I'' of the moment, evidently regarded by Nature as a temporary form and not worth preservation, for which we demand this stupendous right to survival and immortality. But the demand is extravagant and cannot be conceded; theI"" of the moment can only merit survival if it consents to change, to be no longer itself but something else, greater, better, more luminous in knowledge, more moulded in the image of the eternal inner beauty, more and more progressive towards the divinity of the secret Spirit. It is that secret Spirit or divinity of Self in us which is imperishable, because it is unborn and eternal. The psychic entity within, its representative, the spiritual individual in us, is the Person that we are; but the I'' of this moment, theI"" of this life is only a formation, a temporary personality of this inner Person: it is one step of the many steps of our evolutionary change, and it serves its true purpose only when we pass beyond it to a farther step leading nearer to a higher degree of consciousness and being. It is the inner Person that survives death, even as it pre-exists before birth; for this constant survival is a rendering of the eternity of our timeless Spirit into the terms of Time.” The Life Divine
“This conception of the Person and Personality, if accepted, must modify at the same time our current ideas about the immortality of the soul; for, normally, when we insist on the soul’s undying existence, what is meant is the survival after death of a definite unchanging personality which was and will always remain the same throughout eternity. It is the very imperfect superficial I’’ of the moment, evidently regarded by Nature as a temporary form and not worth preservation, for which we demand this stupendous right to survival and immortality. But the demand is extravagant and cannot be conceded; theI’’ of the moment can only merit survival if it consents to change, to be no longer itself but something else, greater, better, more luminous in knowledge, more moulded in the image of the eternal inner beauty, more and more progressive towards the divinity of the secret Spirit. It is that secret Spirit or divinity of Self in us which is imperishable, because it is unborn and eternal. The psychic entity within, its representative, the spiritual individual in us, is the Person that we are; but the I’’ of this moment, theI’’ of this life is only a formation, a temporary personality of this inner Person: it is one step of the many steps of our evolutionary change, and it serves its true purpose only when we pass beyond it to a farther step leading nearer to a higher degree of consciousness and being. It is the inner Person that survives death, even as it pre-exists before birth; for this constant survival is a rendering of the eternity of our timeless Spirit into the terms of Time.” The Life Divine
This decisive touch comes most easily to the baby cat ” people, those who have at some point between the psychic and the emotional vital a quick and decisive movement of surrender to the Guru or the Divine. I have seen that when that is there and there is the conscious central dependence compelling the mind also and the rest of the vital, then the fundamental diffi- culty disappears. If others remain they are not felt as difficulties, but simply as things that have just to be done and need cause no worry. Sometimes no tapasya is necessary — one just refers things to the Power that one feels guiding or doing the sadhana and assents to its action, rejecting all that is contrary to it, and the Power removes what has to be removed or changes what
This inner self once awoke opens in its turn to our true real eternal self. It opens inw-ardly 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.
"This inner vision is one form of psychological experience; but the inner experience is not confined to that seeing; vision only opens, it does not embrace.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“This inner vision is one form of psychological experience; but the inner experience is not confined to that seeing; vision only opens, it does not embrace.” The Synthesis of Yoga
' Th’o rvnj'J of doing the yoga ::: One by the action of a vigi- lant mind and s’ital seeing, observing, thinking and deciding wbat is or not to be done. The other way h that of the psychic being, the consciousness opening to the Divine, not only opening the psychic and bringing it forward, but opening the mind, the vital and the physical, receiving the light, perceiving what is to be done, feeling and seeing it done by the Divine Force itself and helping constantly by its own vigilant and conscious assent to and call for the Divine Worldng.
Three transformations ::: In this yoga one can realise the psychic being as a portion of the Divine seated in the heart with the
.Thus the soul or psychic essence, which is the Purusha entering into the evolution and supporting it, carries in itself all the divine potentialities ; but the individual psychic being which it puts forth as its representative assumes the imperfection of Nature and evolves in it till it has recovered its full psychic essence and united itself with the Self above of which the soul is the individual projection in the evolution. This duality in the being on all its planes, — for it is true in different ways not only of the Self and the psychic, but of the mental, vital and physical
THw iVpjvftf /Uvfty if that in which Ihe.re is mitnup of ihe turbid Ignorant movements of the loner nature. The Divine Purity is a more wide and all-embracing experience than the psychic.
Tlie lose that belongs to the spiritual planes is of a dillcrcni kind; the psychic has its own more personal lose, bhalti, sur- render. Love in the higher or spiritual mind is more unisenal and impersonal. The two must go together to male the highest divine los'C.
"To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote "His anger climbed against me in a stream", it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
“To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote ’His anger climbed against me in a stream’, it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
to the psychic. The psychic never feels a sadness from disap- pointed desire, because that is not in its nature ; the sorrow it sometimes feels is when it sees the Divine rejected or the mental, vital, physical in man or in nature turning away from the Truth to follow perversion, darkness or ignorance.
Transformation and supramentalisation . To merge the cons- ciousness in the Divine and lo keep the psychic being controlling and changing all the nature and keeping it turned to the Divine till the whole being can live in the Divine is the transformation we seek. There is further the supramentalisation, but this only carries the transformation to its own highest and largest possi-
“‘Transformation’ is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind’) to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence’ of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change—the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” Letters on Yoga
transformation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above; if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body — and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended — they can only be mended by transformation.” *Letters on Yoga
"‘Transformation" is a word that I have brought in myself (like ‘supermind") to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them. Purification of the nature by the ‘influence" of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change — the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” *Letters on Yoga
"It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the spirit conquer. All may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but whatever does open must that extent undergo the change. That will be the principle of transformation.” The Supramental Manifestation
The Mother: "Transformation. The change by which all the elements and all the movements of the being become ready to manifest the supramental Truth.”
"One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15.
TUBERCULOSIS. ::: T.B. Is the result of a strong psychic-vitaf depression. Sex cannot directly cause T.B. though it may be a factor in bringing about a fall of the vital forces and withdrawal of the psychic supporting forces leading to T.B. The lact of vitality which easily comes as a result of modem civilisation is therefore a very strong contributing force. Modems have not the solid nervous system and the natural (as opp>osed to the artificial and morbid) zest of life that their ancestors had.
Two transformations ::: The first is when the psychic being comes forward and controls and changes the nature. The second is the descent of the Mother’s consciousness from above the head and its transformation of the whole being and nature.
Universal love is always universal ; psychic love can indivi- dualise itself.
VIRAHA.* A transitional experience on the plane of the vital seeking for the Spirit. The pure feeling of viraha is psy- chic ; but if rajasic or tamasic movements come in (such as depression, complaint, revolt, etc.) then it becomes tantasic or rSjasic.
Visions do not come from the spiritual plane ; they come from the subtle physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from the planes above the Mind. What comes from the spiritual plane are experiences of the Dirae, c.g. the experience of Self every- where. of the Divine in all etc.
Vital energy (rn/e) comes from within and is in consonance with the psychic being — it is the energy of the true vital being, but in the ordinary ignorant vital it is deformed into desire.
Vital joy ::: Though it is a very helpful thing for the ordinary human life, vital joy is something excited, eager, mobile wnfhout a settled basis — that is why it soon gels tired and cannot con- tinue. Vital joy has to be replaced by a quiet settled psychic gladness with the mind and vital very clear and very peaceful.
WEEPING. ::: Weeping brings in the forces that should be kept outside ; for weeping is a giving way of the inner control and an expression of vital reaction and ego. Tt is only the psychic weeping that does not open the door to these forces ; but that weeping is without affliction, tears of Bhakti, spiritual emotion, or Ananda.
Welt (deep): The psychic is often seen as a deep well or abyss into which one plunges.
"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 I mean by surrender is this inner surrender of the mind and vital. There is, of course, the outer surrender also ::: the giving up of all that is found to conflict with the spirit or need of the sadhanS, the offering, the obedience to the guidance of the Divine, whether directly, if one has reached that stage, or through the psychic or to the guidance of the Guru.
When it enters the psychic world, it begins to assimilate the essence of its experience and by that assimilation is formed the future psychic personality in accordance with the fixation already made. When this assimilation is over, it is ready for a new birth ; but' the less developed beings do not work out the whole thing for themselves, there are beings and forces of the higher world who have that svork.
When mind and vital fall quiet and their restless movements, thoughts and desires cease, then one feels empty. This is at first a neutral emptiness with nothing in it either good or bad, happy or unhappy, no impulse or movement. The neutral state is often or usually followed by the opening to inner experience. There is also an emptiness made of peace and silence, when the peace and silence come out from the psychic within or descend from the higher consciousness above. This is not neutral, for in it there is the sense of peace, often also of wideness and freedom.
When the psychic being comes to the surface, it feels sad when the mental or vital being is making a fool -of itself. That sadness is purity offended.
When the psychic being is awake, it begins to take hold of the rest of the being, to iofluence it and change it so that al! may become the true expression of the inner soul. Jt is this change that is called the inner conversion. There can be no conversion without the awakening of the psychic being.
(When the psychic comes in front) one is aware of the psy- chic being with its simple, spontaneous self-giving and feels its increasing direct control (not merely a veiled or half-veiled influence) over mind, vital and physical. Especially there is the psychic discernment which at once lights up the thoughts, emo- tional movements, vital pushes, physical habits and leaves nothing there obscure, substituting the right movements for the wrong ones.
When the psychic is in the fiont, the sadhana becomes natural and easy and it is only a question of time and natural develop- ment. When the mind or the vital or the physical consciousness is on the top, then the sadhana is a tapasya and a struggle.
“When the centres begin to open, inner experiences such as the seeing of light or images through the subtle vision in the forehead centre or psychic experiences and perceptions in the heart, become frequent—gradually one becomes aware of one’s inner being as separate from the outer, and what can be called a yogic consciousness with all its deeper movements develops in the place of the ordinary superficial mental and vital movements.” 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. 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
wideness ::: “The wideness comes when one exceeds or begins to exceed the individual consciousness and spread out towards the universal. But the psychic can be active even in the individual consciousness.” Letters on Yoga
Without the liberation of the psychic and the realization of the true Self the ego cannot go, both arc necessary.
WORLDS. ::: The physical is not the only world ; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, Intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds ; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds ; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home ; others above with which we have littfe contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as w’cll as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the cons- ciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into conoeciion with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a sub- conscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds. In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happen- ings, come across formations, influences, suggestions which belong to these planes. Even when we are awake, part of us moves in these planes, but their activity goes on behind the veil ; our waking minds are not aware of it. Dreams are often only incoherent constructions of our subcooscient, but others are records (often much mixed and distorted) or transcripts of experiences in these supraphystcal planes. When we do sadbana, this kind of dream becomes very common ; then subconscious dreams cease to predominate.
Worship with physical means ::: Physical means can be and arc used in the approach to divine Jove and worship ; they have not been allowed merely as a concession to human weakness, nor is it the fact that in the psychic way there is no place for such things. On the contrary they arc one means of approaching the
You have to quiet and purify the vital and let the true vital emerge. Or you have to bring the psychic in front and the psychic will purify and psychicisc the vital and then you will have the true sntal cnerg)’.
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*** WISDOM TROVE ***
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:God, you’re sexy when you talk Psy. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
2:It’s like she’s encased in a shell, more so than other Psy. Everything’s ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
3:The Psy race’s greatest advantage was the mind; the changelings’, the body. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
4:A on żeni się z córką kelnera, z taką dziobatą Jadzią, co to psy na nią wyją, bo i ruda do tego. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
5:Like all power, psychic power had a flip side. Changelings could turn feral. Psy could turn murderously insane. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
6:Creativity is the art that can give rise to visionary metaphorical relationships, as opposed to purely psy-chological ones. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
7:I'm psychic," she said, and looked at me looking nervously at the lock. "Psychic. Not pshycho. I'm Jazz Parker. ~ Cath Crowley, #NFDB
8:Since he wasn’t part of the Psy race’s armed forces, she thought it was because he had curls; Psy hated anything that was out of control. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
9:vlci a ovce dohodli na odzbrojení a jak ovce na znamení toho, že konají v dobré víře, poslaly hlídací psy pryč – a vlci je pak snědli. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
10:The brain was the single thing that remained sacred among the Psy. To rewire that would equal the erasure of the individual, making the PsyNet a true hive mind. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
11:year by year, I see more and more darkness creep into their world. They’re slowly going beyond cold, to a place that makes me scared for the Psy race as a whole. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
12:(..)how a force of six or eight fighting men could have done so unobserved is beyond me. We shall soon know, however, for here comes the royal psychologist. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs, #NFDB
13:IN THE YEAR 1979, the Psy race made the decision to embrace Silence and condition all emotion out of their young; to become without hope or despair, anger or fear, sorrow or joy. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
14:Ach, jakże cudowne były czasy, gdyśmy jeszcze pełzali jako salamandry albo kwitli jako skrzypy, jakieś pięćdziesiąt czy sześćdziesiąt tysięcy lat temu. Mój Boże, jakeśmy tymczasem zeszli na psy... ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
15:The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think they themselves are crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info. ~ David Foster, #NFDB
16:I‘ll be gentle." Solemn words that made him want to smile. "I know you‘re a virgin. Psy don‘t have sex do they?"
"No." Intimate touch was forbidden in the PsyNet. "But I think I have the concept figured out. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
17:When, in a desperate attempt to save their people from the twin scourges of murder and insanity, the Psy race decided to embrace the Silence Protocol and eliminate emotion from their lives, it was by no means an easy decision. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
18:The transition will not be easy, ended the decree, and it will not be without cost. But we are not cowards to hide from the powers that define us. We are Psy and we are capable of greatness.
It is time to step out of the dark. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
19:At that moment, she saw not the man but the leopard within. And she realized the truth far too late - he wasn't human, wasn't Psy, was *changeling*. The leopard lived in every aspect of him, from his strength to his anger to his rage. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
20:The M-Psy assured him the injury could be repaired, filled in, but Ming had no intention of taking her up on it. Not at least, until Sienna Lauren was dead. The girl had just proven she was too dangerous to keep alive, even on a leash. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
21:True Psy are Silent.”
“Correction,” he said. “Psy in the Net are Silent. Psy outside the Net are not. Both are Psy.” And none of them affected him as viscerally as this woman who’d been dumped outside his home like so much garbage. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
22:Sascha nodded. "Want me to wait?"
"Do I want my mate to wait in a deserted forest while a dangerous Psy fugitive remains on the loose? Wait, let me think."
"Sarcasm does not suit you." She kissed him again, laughter in her eyes. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
23:It's already years ago now, but there's that South Korean music artist Psy, who had that hit song and it was a hit song here. I'm like, "Wait a minute. There's a chance. There's a way we can have language not be such an important part of comedy." ~ Fred Armisen, #NFDB
24:So this book, while continuing the Psy-Changeling storyline—because nothing is ever static in this world—is also a walk through the interconnected lives of many of the characters who’ve become important to us over the past books and novellas. With ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
25:I ain't no Psy, Ms. Aleine, but even us dumb animals know when two people start exchanging thoughts, something's going on."
She narrowed her eyes at his smug tone. "It was a coincidence."
"Baby, when I think about my body, I don't focus on my cock. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
26:The Protocol. Silence. A choice made generations ago to wipe out violence, but that had also succeeded in wiping out joy, laughter, and love. It had made the Psy an emotionless, robotic race that excelled in business and technology but produced no forms of art, no great music, no works of literature. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
27:I could be wrong, but red hair is common in one particular family in this area of the Psy. The NightStar line has an unusually high incidence of the recessive gene." Sascha sounded utterly Psy at that moment. That was to be expected. She hadn't been cat for much more than a few months. It would take time. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
28:People always say it's changelings who most crave touch, but that's not the truth. A long time ago, long before Silence, Psy craved it more than any other."
He let her words was over him like affectionate rain. His mate, his mate, was trying to temper his grief, trying to tell him they weren't so very different after all. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
29:Insanity, blood-soaked death, murderous aggression, this is who the Psy were before Silence. No other race, it is said, bred more vicious, more intelligent, or more sadistic serial killers. But worse was the clawing madness that destroyed so many of them, saints and sinners alike, until it became known as the flip side to their incredible psychic gifts. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
30:Hawke continued to walk beside his lieutenant— a man who, as a result of his incredible feats during the battle in San Francisco, now had a fan club. Complete with “I (heart) Judd” and “Judd Is My Boyfriend” memorabilia. In the normal course of events, civilians wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the former Arrow, but it had been impossible to evacuate the entire city prior to the Pure Psy attack. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
31:A civil war that has awakened a whispering understanding in the populace about the ugly irony of Silence: in creating a society that rewards lack of emotion, the Psy have created fertile ground for the rise of psychopathic personalities to the leadership of their race. An individual who feels nothing is, after all, the perfect graduate of Silence. Ruthless. Cold-blooded. Without mercy . . . without conscience. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
32:Król francuski Ludwik XI poddawał im swoje ulubione psy, a Ludwik XIII miał w jednym roku 212 lewatyw, poza tym 215 sesji wymiotów oraz 47 zabiegów upuszczania krwi. Ludwik XIV, istny król lewatyw, przeszedł ich ponad dwa tysiące, a niekiedy poddawał się im nawet po cztery razy dziennie. Najwyraźniej działały – pozostał bowiem na tronie przez siedemdziesiąt dwa lata, pomyślnie przeprowadzając wojnę o sukcesję hiszpańską i usuwając ostatnie pozostałości feudalizmu. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
33:Have you ever even met a thief? Hollow certainly hasn’t, or he would know well that thieves have reasons beyond compulsion or selfishness for stealing, most of the time. But he made absolutely no attempt to dig deeper into Masters’s motives. Into his psychology.” She said psychology so wrongly it took him a moment to realize what she meant—she pronounced the P at the beginning, and the ch as the usual ch rather than like a k. “Psy . . . psychology. It’s pronounced psychology. ~ Roseanna M White, #NFDB
34:Pamiętam, że w każdym obejściu na wsi był pies łańcuchowy i każdy z tych psów w swoim obłędzie rzucał się na łańcuchu, szczekając wściekle i histerycznie, i każdy wabił się Murzyn albo Cygan, jak był bardziej czarny, to Murzyn, jak bardziej podpalany, to Cygan. Nie było żadnych Burków ani Azorów, psy nie nosiły też ludzkich imion, jak Kuba albo Ziutek, żaden też na przykład Atos czy Portos, wszystkie nieodmiennie wabiły się Murzyn lub Cygan, tak bardzo ograniczona była pomysłowość tych ludzi. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
35:Then I almost pity Judd.” Leaning in, she whispered, “Make him uncomfortable. Don’t take no for an answer. Push. Push him until he loses control. Remember, fire melts ice.”
Brenna looked into those eerie night-sky eyes as Faith drew back. “Could be a dangerous game.”
“You don’t seem to be the kind of woman content with safe and easy.”
“No.” She also wasn’t the kind of woman who gave up at the first obstacle. Judd might be categorically Psy, but she was a SnowDancer. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
36:Dev?" This time, she got a grunt. Smiling, she pressed her lips to his jaw, loving the roughness under her lips. "I like sex."
She saw the edge of a smile, and it made her own lips curve. "I really like it." Rubbing her heel over the back of his leg, she ran her hand down his muscled arm, wanting only to touch him. "When can we do it again?"
He sounded like he was chocking as he said, "You're not acting like a Psy."
"Maybe if they tried sex with you, the others would change their minds, too. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
37:To GIP (GIP) v.a. To take out the guts of herrings.Bailey. GIPSY (GI'PSY) n.s.[Corrupted from Egyptian; for when they first appeared in Europe they declared, and perhaps truly, that they were driven from Egypt by the Turks. They are now mingled with all nations.]1. A vagabond who pretends to foretell futurity, commonly by palmestry or physiognomy. The butler, though he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon every time his fortune is told him, shuts himself up in the pantry with an old gipsy for above half an hour.Addison. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
38:One word then can sum up these two studies: suggestion is always an idea isolated from the great mass ' L. Laurent, Des ^tats seconds, variations pathologiques du champ de la conscience, 1892, p. 155. ' Myers, Proc. Soc. Psy. Research, 1889, p. 524. Suggestion and Subconscious Acts 267 of the other thoughts; it has an independent development. " The suggested idea or group of ideas," said M. Charcot, very justly, " find themselves in their isolation sheltered against the control of that great collection of personal ideas, a long time accumulated and organised, which constitute consciousness properly so called, the Ego. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
39:Why shouldn't we kill you?" he asked the black-garbed male who came forward to meet him.
"We have no quarrel with you." The man's eyes were flat, his voice toneless. "We ask permission to enter your territory to hunt a Psy fugitive."
"Permission denied." Lucas folded his arms. "I don't make a habit of allowing enemies into my territory."
"This fugitive may be dangerous to you and your people."
Lucas smiled and it was nothing friendly. "Then the fugitive will die."
"We would prefer to capture this one alive."
"Didn't your mother ever tell you - you don't always get what you want? ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
40:I assume you have a reason for manhandling my mate?” Cool words but his amusement was apparent.
“Riley likes Mercy,” she stage-whispered, trying to twist around to look at her mate. “But she told him that h—oomph.” Riley set her on her feet without warning.
She swayed, but Judd's hands on her hips kept her upright. Pushing her hair off her face, she leaned into her sexy Psy mate and smirked at Riley. “Sooo...”
“Judd.” Riley ignored her. “You're obviously not interesting enough for my sister—she's got way too much time to poke her nose into other people's business.”
Judd wrapped his arms around her from behind, his chin on her hair. “I'm more interested in you and Mercy. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
41:The boy reported - after the Sergeant had slept for a few hours, which was not nearly enough - that YouTube had actually gone down for ten minutes under the weight of traffic. The story was truly global, truly immense: not Obama, not Justin Bieber, not Psy and not Bin Laden had ever touched this, he said. Not Khaled Saeed and not Mohamed Bouazizi, either. If Pippa Middleton and Megan Fox had announced their intention to marry during a live theatrical production of 50 Shades of Grey starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and then taken off their clothes to reveal their bodies tattooed with the text of the eighth Harry Potter novel, they might have approached this level of frenzy. But probably not, the boy said, because not everyone liked Benedict Cumberbatch. ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
42:What do you ask from Judd in exchange for giving sanctuary to the kids?'
His pale eyes iced over. 'Judd is a fully trained Psy assassin with experience in covert wet work. I’d be a fool if I didn’t utilize his skills.' She choked back a cry. 'How can you ask that of him?' An alpha looked after his own.
He didn’t destroy them. But maybe Hawke didn’t consider the Laurens his own. After all, and for reasons she’d never known, he hated the Psy as much as her brothers did.
His face gentled, an unexpected softening of harsh masculine lines. Closing the distance between them, he cupped her cheek. 'He is who and what he is, Brenna. If you want something different, you shouldn’t be with him.'
'He’s the only one I want to be with.'
'Then accept his beast like you do your own. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
43:I'll buy you a blow-up doll. I'm sure my mate won't mind when I explain how hard up you are."
She didn't bother to punch him this time, just glared with promise of future retaliation. "Very funny. You wouldn't be laughing if you knew how sexually frustrated I am right now." [...] "The last time was when that SilverBlade sentinel was in town for a communications meeting."
All amusement left Dorian's face. "You serious? That was months ago." A very long time to go without intimate touch. "Merce, that could get dangerous."
"I know. Do you think I don't know?" She thrust her hands through her hair. "Damn it Dorian! It's getting to the point where I'm starting to wonder if some of the wolves would be good in bed. [...]
"Cat and wolf isn't a ... um ... normal combination."
"And Psy and cat is?" She made a face at him. "Yeah, yeah I know. Cat and wolf is strange." [...]
"How about one of the Rats?" Dorian's eyes gleamed. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
44:nie żadne emocjonalne sprawy. Z kolei dla NT spojrzenie ma duże znaczenie. Wyczytują oni w oczach różne rzeczy, które niekoniecznie są prawdziwe. Źle spojrzysz i masz przerąbane. To też odstrasza, bo nigdy nie wiesz, czy dobrze patrzysz. Bolesność może zależeć od różnych rzeczy — wspomniane poczucie nienaturalności, jest to po prostu męczące. Niektórzy Aspi czują zagrożenie przy dłuższym kontakcie wzrokowym, tak samo jak wiele gatunków zwierząt (psy czy koty też czują się nieswojo). Z tym kontaktem wzrokowym to różnie bywa. NT widzą jednocześnie całą twarz. My widzimy każdy detal osobno. Dla niektórych patrzenie w oczy wymaga zbytniego wytężenia umysłowego, ponieważ nie odczytujemy automatycznie sygnałów niewerbalnych. NT patrzy na czyjąś twarz i widzi radość, smutek, wyrzut. My widzimy nadęte policzki, zmarszczone brwi, niesymetryczne zmarszczki, krótkie rzęsy. Nie wiem, jak dla innych, ale dla mnie oczy zdają się nieskończone. Maja głębie, która faktycznie 12 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
45:Later, as they sat at one another’s elbows, eating dinner at the employee house where they lived, Roan detected a subtle sense of happiness around Shiloh. Again, nothing obvious, but his operator’s senses told him that. “You said you were writing a chapter? On your latest book? The one that’s due to your editor’s desk?”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “I woke up this morning WANTING to write for the first time since coming here.” She met his gray gaze, seeing interest in them. Roan, she was discovering, missed nothing. He listened to her without ever interrupting her flow of thought. “First time.”
“Is this a good thing?” he wondered, adding more spoonfuls of whipped potatoes onto his plate.
“Sure is,” she sighed, giving him a look of relief. “I’ve had writer’s block for the last six months. I just haven’t felt the driving passion to write.” She added some green beans onto her plate. “Ever since the stalker came into my life, my writing has turned off.”
“Kind of expected?”
“I suppose,” Shiloh muttered. “It’s hurt me in so many ways, seen and unseen.”
“It’s what we in the military call psy ops or psychological warfare. ~ Lindsay McKenna,#NFDB
46:Incompatible with one another (and often at odds with themselves), the three
were widely seen as plotting the course of modernity toward a future without reli-
gion and indeed without normative ethics. Today these threats, if not vanished, are
diminished, almost to mockeries of their former magnitude and hubris. The Soviet
embodiment of the Marxist idea has collapsed, as untenable politically and
economically as apartheid proved to be. Logical positivism is now a historical cu-
riosity. Philosophers who want to dig up the roots of our current philosophical
plantings often find it necessary to explain just what positivism was and tell the
story of the rival ideas that motivated otherwise intelligent thinkers to suppose that
verificationism circumscribed the possibilities of meaning. And, of course, the
doctrinaire behaviorism of Watson and Skinner that once proposed to do psy-
chology without any idea of minds or thoughts, intentions or even dispositions,
and dismissed as outmoded the ideals of human freedom and dignity, is itself a thing of the past, quaint as the brass microscopes that might decorate an antique
shop window, no longer proposed for serious scientific use. ~ Lenn Evan Goodman,#NFDB
47:But Talin was scared of him. She had told him that to his face, and the sharp knife of it was still buried in his heart. The man wasn’t sure he wanted to chance another rejection. Keeping the animal’s instincts in check, he finally stepped out of the shadows. “Do you want to be held, Talin?” Her damp eyes widened at the blunt question, then she nodded in a little jerking motion. Something in him quieted, waiting. “Then come here.” A pause during which the entire forest seemed to freeze, the night creatures aware of the leopard’s tense watchfulness.
“Oh, God, Clay.” Suddenly her arms were wrapped around his back, her cheek pressed against the white cotton of his T-shirt.
Hardly daring to breathe, he closed his own arms around her feminine warmth, blindingly aware of every inch of her pressed into him, every spot of wetness soaking through his T-shirt. She was so small, so damn soft, her humanity apparent in the delicacy of her skin, the lightness of her bones. The Psy might be fragile in comparison to changelings, but they had powers of the mind to compensate. Humans had the same fragility but none of the psychic abilities. A wave of protectiveness washed over him. “Shh, Tally.” He used the nickname because, at this moment, he knew her. She had always had a heart too big for her body, a heart that felt such pain for others while ignoring its own. “I’ll find your lost one.”
She shook her head against him. “It’s too late. Three bodies already. Jonquil is probably dead, too.”
“Then I’ll find who did this to them and stop him.”
She stilled against him. “I didn’t come here to turn you into a killer again. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
48:Since Sienna was in an unusually cooperative mood, the session went well. He was returning from it midmorning - after a short detour - when a small naked body barreled into him in one of the main corridors. Steadying the boy with Tk, he looked down. The child lifted a finger to his lips. "Shh. I'm hiding." With that, he went behind Judd and scrambled into a small alcove. "Quickly!
Not sure why he obeyed the order, Judd backed up to stand in front of the alcove, arms crossed.
A flustered Lara came running around the corner a few seconds later. "Have you seen Ben? Four-year-old. Naked as a jaybird?"
"How tall is he?" Judd asked in his most overbearing Psy manner.
Lara stared. "He's four. How tall do you think he is? Have you seen him or not?"
"Let me think...did you say he was naked?"
"He was about to be bathed. Slippery little monkey."
A giggle from behind Judd.
Lara's eyes widened and then her lips twitched. "So you haven't seen him?"
"Without a proper description, I can't be sure."
The healer was obviously trying not to laugh. "You shouldn't encourage him - he's incorrigible as it is."
Judd felt childish hands on his left calf and then Ben poked his head out. "I'm incorwigeable, did ya hear?"
Judd nodded. "I do believe you've been found. Why don't you go have your bath?"
"Come on, munchkin." Lara held out a hand.
Surprisingly strong baby arms and legs wrapped around Judd's leg. "No. I wanna stay with Uncle Judd."
Lara anticipated his question. "Ben spends a lot of time with Marlee."
"I spend a lot of time with Marlee," a small voice piped up. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
49:She went to bed mentally exhausted but woke after only a few hours of disrupted sleep…because she could smell Judd’s scent in her quarters. Getting out of bed still half-asleep, she saw it was four a.m. She walked out wearing the satin slip she used as her nightgown, her feet bare.
“Judd?” For a second, she couldn’t locate him. Then her night vision kicked in and she found him seated in an armchair close to the coffee table.
He was watching her, his entire body motionless. It didn’t strike her that she should be afraid or even wary. Yawning, she walked over and sat on his lap, curling her body into the armchair. His arms came around her without hesitation, one hand curving around her shoulders, the other sliding to close over the bare skin of her upper thigh.
The sensual contact brought her to full wakefulness. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she nuzzled at his throat. “Are you okay?”
His hand shifted to slide between her thighs, surprising a shocked feminine sound out of her. “Judd? Baby?” Something was wrong. With a changeling male, she would’ve let her body soothe him, used touch to connect. But Judd was Psy…and hers. At that moment, she knew the answer to the question that had tormented her all day—she would hold him, accept him, no matter what.
That was what mates did.
She didn’t care if there was no bond—no one was going to tell her she wasn’t meant to be with this man. “What do you want?” she asked, but he remained silent. Deciding to let instinct guide her, she softened for him.
His other hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back in a sharp move. She went rather than resist. A woman who loved a dominant male had to know when to bend…and when to bite. ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
50:The industrial world of pipelines relies heavily on push. Consumers are accessed through specific marketing and communication channels that the business owns or pays for. In a world of scarcity, options were limited, and getting heard often sufficed to get marketers and their messages in front of consumers. In this environment, the traditional advertising and public relations industries focused almost solely on awareness creation—the classic technique for “pushing” a product or service into the consciousness of a potential customer. This model of marketing breaks down in the networked world, where access to marketing and communication channels is democratized—as illustrated, for example, by the viral global popularity of YouTube videos such as PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” In this world of abundance—where both products and the messages about them are virtually unlimited—people are more distracted, as an endless array of competing options is only a click or a swipe away. Thus, creating awareness alone doesn’t drive adoption and usage, and pushing goods and services toward customers is no longer the key to success. Instead, those goods and services must be designed to be so attractive that they naturally pull customers into their orbit. Furthermore, for a platform business, user commitment and active usage, not sign-ups or acquisitions, are the true indicators of customer adoption. That’s why platforms must attract users by structuring incentives for participation—preferably incentives that are organically connected to the interactions made possible by the platform. Traditionally, the marketing function was divorced from the product. In network businesses, marketing needs to be baked into the platform. ~ Geoffrey G Parker, #NFDB
773 Integral Yoga
99 Occultism
87 Psychology
63 Christianity
55 Philosophy
44 Yoga
32 Science
29 Fiction
17 Education
13 Poetry
11 Integral Theory
7 Mythology
6 Hinduism
3 Theosophy
3 Cybernetics
3 Buddhism
1 Thelema
1 Alchemy
487 Sri Aurobindo
445 The Mother
231 Satprem
135 Nolini Kanta Gupta
88 Carl Jung
47 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
33 Aleister Crowley
29 H P Lovecraft
28 Swami Krishnananda
24 Aldous Huxley
20 A B Purani
14 Plotinus
10 Swami Vivekananda
10 George Van Vrekhem
9 Friedrich Nietzsche
7 Sri Ramakrishna
7 Joseph Campbell
7 Franz Bardon
6 Rudolf Steiner
6 Jordan Peterson
5 Sri Ramana Maharshi
5 Plato
5 Nirodbaran
5 John Keats
4 Peter J Carroll
3 Paul Richard
3 Norbert Wiener
3 Ken Wilber
3 Bokar Rinpoche
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Robert Browning
2 Patanjali
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jean Gebser
2 James George Frazer
2 Italo Calvino
2 Edgar Allan Poe
2 Alice Bailey
99 The Synthesis Of Yoga
57 Letters On Yoga III
47 Letters On Yoga IV
43 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
42 The Life Divine
41 Letters On Yoga II
35 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
35 Mysterium Coniunctionis
32 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
31 Record of Yoga
30 Questions And Answers 1956
30 Agenda Vol 03
29 Lovecraft - Poems
29 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
28 The Study and Practice of Yoga
28 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
28 Questions And Answers 1953
26 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
25 Questions And Answers 1954
24 The Practice of Psycho therapy
24 The Perennial Philosophy
22 The Future of Man
22 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
22 Agenda Vol 10
22 Agenda Vol 08
22 Agenda Vol 02
21 Questions And Answers 1955
21 Letters On Yoga I
20 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
20 Agenda Vol 01
19 The Human Cycle
18 Magick Without Tears
17 Agenda Vol 09
16 Agenda Vol 11
15 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
15 On Education
15 Liber ABA
15 Essays On The Gita
14 Aion
13 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
13 Agenda Vol 05
12 Words Of The Mother II
12 The Secret Of The Veda
12 Some Answers From The Mother
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
12 Agenda Vol 12
11 The Phenomenon of Man
11 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
11 Agenda Vol 13
11 Agenda Vol 04
10 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
10 Preparing for the Miraculous
10 Letters On Poetry And Art
10 Let Me Explain
10 Essays Divine And Human
10 Agenda Vol 07
8 Twilight of the Idols
8 Talks
8 Agenda Vol 06
8 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
7 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
6 Vedic and Philological Studies
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
6 Raja-Yoga
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
6 Maps of Meaning
5 Words Of The Mother III
5 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
5 The Red Book Liber Novus
5 The Practice of Magical Evocation
5 The Integral Yoga
5 Keats - Poems
4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
4 On the Way to Supermanhood
4 Liber Null
4 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
4 Hymn of the Universe
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
3 Words Of The Mother I
3 Tara - The Feminine Divine
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Prayers And Meditations
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
3 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
3 Isha Upanishad
3 Cybernetics
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
2 The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
2 The Problems of Philosophy
2 The Golden Bough
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 The Essentials of Education
2 The Castle of Crossed Destinies
2 Savitri
2 Poe - Poems
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 Initiation Into Hermetics
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Browning - Poems
2 Bhakti-Yoga
2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
On the 18th January 1960; when a young sadhak met the Mother for a personal interview, She said to him: "I shall give you something special; be prepared." The next day, when he again met Her, She spoke in French first about how to kindle the psychic Flame and then in this connection started speaking about Sri Aurobindo`s great epic Savitri and continued to speak at length.
The sadhak, after returning from the Mother, wanted to note down immediately what She had said, but he could not do so because he felt a great hesitation due to his sense of incapacity to transcribe exactly the Mother`s own words.
--
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, everything, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
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.
--
It may be asked why the dog has been chosen as the symbol of Intuition. In the Vedas, the cow and the horse also play a large part; even the donkey and the frog have their own assigned roles. These objects are taken from the environment of ordinary life, and are those that are most familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent various kinds of forces and movements and subtle and occult and spiritual dynamisms. Strictly speaking, however, symbols are not chosen in a subtle or spiritual experience, that is to say, they are not arbitrarily selected and constructed by the conscious intelligence. They form part of a dramatization (to use a term of the Freudian psychology of dreams), a psychological alchemy, whose method and process and rationale are very obscure, which can be penetrated only by the vision of a third eye.
I. The Several Lights
--
From the psychological standpoint, the four oblations are movements or reactions of consciousness in its urge towards the utterance and expression of Divine Truth. Like some other elements in the cosmic play, these also form a quartetcaturvyha and work together for a common purpose in view of a perfect and all-round result.
Svh is the offering and invocation. One must dedicate everything to the Divine, cast all one has or does into the Fire of Aspiration that blazes up towards the Most High, and through the tongue of that one-pointed flame call on the Divinity.
--
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 Rasaphysically 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.
The biological process, described in what may seem to be crude and mediaeval terms, really reflects or echoes a more subtle and psychological process. The images used form perhaps part of the current popular notion about the matter, but the esoteric sense goes beyond the outer symbols. The sky seems to be the far and tenuous region where the soul rests and awaits its next birthit is the region of Soma, the own Home of Bliss and Immortality. Now when the time or call comes, the soul stirs and journeys down that is the Rain. Next, it enters the earth atmosphere and clothes itself with the earth consciousness. Then it waits and calls for the formation of the material body, first by the contri bution of the father and then by that of the mother; when these two unite and the material body is formed, the soul incarnates.
Apart from the question whether the biological phenomenon described is really a symbol and a cloak for another order of reality, and even taking it at its face value, what is to be noted here is the idea of a cosmic cycle, and a cosmic cycle that proceeds through the principle of sacrifice. If it is asked what there is wonderful or particularly spiritual in this rather naf description of a very commonplace happening that gives it an honoured place in the Upanishads, the answer is that it is wonderful to see how the Upanishadic Rishi takes from an event its local, temporal and personal colour and incorporates it in a global movement, a cosmic cycle, as a limb of the Universal Brahman. The Upanishads contain passages which a puritanical mentality may perhaps describe as 'pornographic'; these have in fact been put by some on the Index expurgatorius. But the ancients saw these matters with other eyes and through another consciousness.
--
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.
--
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.
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Fortunately many scientists in the field of psycho therapy are beginning to sense this correlation. In Francis G. Wickes' The Inner World of Choice reference is made to "the existence in every person of a galaxy of potentialities for growth marked by a succession of personalogical evolution and interaction with environments." She points out that man is not only an individual particle but "also a part of the human stream, governed by a Self greater than his own individual self."
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.
--
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.
--
A simple example is the concept of the Trinity in the Christian religion. The student is frequently amazed to learn through a study of the Qabalah that Egyptian mythology followed a similar concept with its trinity of gods, Osiris the father, Isis the virgin-mother, and Horus the son. The Qabalah indicates similar correspondences in the pantheon of Roman and Greek deities, proving the father-mother (Holy Spirit) - son principles of deity are primordial archetypes of man's psyche, rather than being, as is frequently and erroneously supposed a development peculiar to the Christian era.
At this juncture let me call attention to one set of attri butions by Rittangelius usually found as an appendix attached to the Sepher Yetzirah. It lists a series of "Intelligences" for each one of the ten Sephiros and the twenty-two Paths of the Tree of Life. It seems to me, after prolonged meditation, that the common attri butions of these Intelligences is altogether arbitrary and lacking in serious meaning.
--
Much knowledge obtained by the ancients through the use of the Qabalah has been supported by discoveries of modern scientists- anthropologists, astronomers, psychiatrists, et al. Learned Qabalists for hundreds of years have been aware of what the psychiatrist has only discovered in the last few decades-that man's concept of himself, his deities and the Universe is a constantly evolving process, changing as man himself evolves on a higher spiral. But the roots of his concepts are buried in a race-consciousness that antedated Neanderthal man by uncounted aeons of time.
What Jung calls archetypal images constantly rise to the surface of man's awareness from the vast unconscious that is the common heritage of all mankind.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
While practising the discipline of the madhur bhava, the male devotee often regards himself as a woman, in order to develop the most intense form of love for Sri Krishna, the only purusha, or man, in the universe. This assumption of the attitude of the opposite sex has a deep psychological significance. It is a matter of common experience that an idea may be cultivated to such an intense degree that every idea alien to it is driven from the mind. This peculiarity of the mind may be utilized for the subjugation of the lower desires and the development of the spiritual nature. Now, the idea which is the basis of all desires and passions in a man is the conviction of his indissoluble association with a male body. If he can inoculate himself thoroughly with the idea that he is a woman, he can get rid of the desires peculiar to his male body. Again, the idea that he is a woman may in turn be made to give way to another higher idea, namely, that he is neither man nor woman, but the Impersonal Spirit. The Impersonal Spirit alone can enjoy real communion with the Impersonal God. Hence the highest est realization of the Vaishnava draws close to the transcendental experience of the Vedantist.
A beautiful expression of the Vaishnava worship of God through love is to be found in the Vrindavan episode of the Bhagavata. The gopis, or milk-maids, of Vrindavan regarded the six-year-old Krishna as their Beloved. They sought no personal gain or happiness from this love. They surrendered to Krishna their bodies, minds, and souls. Of all the gopis, Radhika, or Radha, because of her intense love for Him, was the closest to Krishna. She manifested mahabhava and was united with her Beloved. This union represents, through sensuous language, a supersensuous experience.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But this is a more serious piece of psychology. In one's
advance towards a comprehension of the universe, one
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.
0.01 - 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
Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the force of electricity or of steam to their normal operations in Nature. And they, too, like the operations of Science, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. All
Rajayoga, for instance, depends on this perception and experience that our inner elements, combinations, functions, forces, can be separated or dissolved, can be new-combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis by fixed internal processes. Hathayoga similarly depends on this perception and experience that the vital forces and functions to which our life is normally subjected and whose ordinary operations seem set and indispensable, can be mastered and the operations changed or suspended with results that would otherwise be impossible and that seem miraculous to those who have not seized the rationale of their process. And if in some other of its forms this character of Yoga is less apparent, because they are more intuitive and less mechanical, nearer, like the Yoga of Devotion, to a supernal ecstasy or, like the Yoga of Knowledge, to a supernal infinity of consciousness and being, yet they too start from the use of some principal faculty in us by ways and for ends not contemplated in its everyday spontaneous workings. All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest.
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
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
become one with Thee") is psychologically realised.
2 August 1932
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Do such psychological conceptions correspond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They form the governing principles of our highest possible state of consciousness, our widest possible range of existence. There is, we say, a harmony of supreme faculties, corresponding roughly to the psychological faculties of revelation, inspiration and intuition, yet acting not in the intuitive reason or the divine mind, but on a still higher plane, which see Truth directly face to face, or rather live in the truth of things both universal and transcendent and are its formulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as man is at present apparently constituted, superhuman states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence, self-awareness and self-delight7 is, indeed, the metaphysical description of the supreme Atman, the self-formulation, to our awakened knowledge, of the Unknowable whether conceived as a pure Impersonality or as a cosmic Personality manifesting the universe. But in Yoga they are regarded also in their psychological aspects as states of subjective existence to which our waking consciousness is now alien, but which dwell in us in a superconscious plane and to which, therefore, we may always ascend.
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
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the psychological domain, only the patients who do not want
to recover, do not recover. Perhaps it is the same for physical
--
What is all this about psychological and physical
diseases? I understand nothing of it.
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HESE relations between the different psychological divisions of the human being and these various utilities and objects of effort founded on them, such as we have seen them in our brief survey of the natural evolution, we shall find repeated in the fundamental principles and methods of the different schools of Yoga. And if we seek to combine and harmonise their central practices and their predominant aims, we shall find that the basis provided by Nature is still our natural basis and the condition of their synthesis.
In one respect Yoga exceeds the normal operation of cosmic
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We see, then, what from the psychological point of view,
- and Yoga is nothing but practical psychology, - is the conception of Nature from which we have to start. It is the selffulfilment of the Purusha through his Energy. But the movement of Nature is twofold, higher and lower, or, as we may choose to term it, divine and undivine. The distinction exists indeed for practical purposes only; for there is nothing that is not divine, and in a larger view it is as meaningless, verbally, as the distinction between natural and supernatural, for all things that are are natural. All things are in Nature and all things are in God.
But, for practical purposes, there is a real distinction. The lower
--
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sadhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine
Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
your psychic being, you master and govern the lower being, and
then you will quite naturally take your proper place in the great
--
Go within into yourself, find your psychic being and you will
find me at the same time, living in you, life of your life, ever
--
The psychic being is constantly and invariably in contact with
the Divine and never loses this contact.
The Divine is constantly present in the psychic being and the
latter is quite conscious of this.
The psychic being is asleep in me.
The psychic being is not asleep. It is the connection with it which
is not well established because the mind makes too much noise
--
Mother, if the psychic always feels the Divine Presence,
why does the human being cry and lament the lack of
--
the outer consciousness and the psychic consciousness is not
well established. He in whom this contact is well established is
--
The suffering we experience proves that the psychic being is far away from the Divine.
It is not the psychic being which suffers, it is the mind, the vital
and the ordinary consciousness of ignorant man.
--
Certainly it was the psychic being, but it became active only
through my intervention.
--
I don't see the need of your suffering. psychic love is always
peaceful and joyous; it is the vital which dramatises and makes
--
for anything. The psychic feels my constant presence, is aware
of my love and solicitude, and is always peaceful, happy and
--
You speak here of vital love, but certainly not of psychic love
and still less of the Divine Love.
--
submit itself to the influence and the will of the psychic being
which is immortal in its very nature.
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Has the psychic flame any correspondence to the Vedic
Agni? They seem to have more or less the same leading
--
which I expect is psychic, I still do not feel that I want
this Yoga very badly. I still do not feel about this ideal
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What is the difference between the psychic change
and the spiritual change?
The psychic change is the change that puts you in contact with
the immanent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each
being and of whom the psychic being is the sheath and the
expression. By the psychic change one passes from the individual
Divine to the universal Divine and finally to the Transcendent.
--
How can one make one's psychic personality grow?
It is through all the experiences of life that the psychic personality forms, grows, develops and finally becomes a complete,
conscious and free being.
--
one is not conscious of one's psychic being - for that is the
indispensable starting-point. Through interiorisation and concentration one has to enter into conscious contact with one's
psychic being. This psychic being always has an influence on the
outer being, but that influence is almost always occult, neither
--
development of the conscious psychic personality, one should,
while concentrating, turn towards it, aspire to know it and feel
--
of the psychic being.
10 September 1959
--
the heart, the emotional centre, the door of the psychic or rather
the door leading to the psychic.
The mind by its nature is curious and interested; it sees, it
--
with one's psychic being, one must "aspire to know it
and feel it, open oneself to receive its influence, and take
--
can reveal of a passing psychological condition and fragmentary soul-state. Even if the photograph is taken under the best
possible conditions at an exceptional and particularly expressive
--
This consciousness is double, at first psychological and subjective, within oneself, expressing itself through thoughts, feelings,
emotions, sensations; then objective and concrete when one is
--
What are "the different psychological divisions of
the human being"?
--
and the psychic or soul.
Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject in great detail in
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo says: "Yoga is nothing but practical psychology."1 What does this sentence mean? The whole
paragraph is not clear to me.
Because you know nothing about psychology. Study psychology
and you will understand what he means.
--
What exactly is the soul or psychic being? And what
is meant by the evolution of the psychic being? What is
its relation to the Supreme?
The soul and the psychic being are not exactly the same thing,
although their essence is the same.
--
The psychic being is formed progressively around this divine
centre, the soul, in the course of its innumerable lives in the
terrestrial evolution, until the time comes when the psychic being, fully formed and wholly awakened, becomes the conscious
sheath of the soul around which it is formed.
--
You have said that once we have found our psychic
being, we can never lose it. Isn't that so? But can we
--
When you have established contact with your psychic being, it
is, in effect, definitive.
--
circumstances, consciously receive the psychic influence which
always produces an illumination in the being and has more or
--
The soul individualises itself and progressively transforms itself into a psychic being. What are the best
conditions for its rapid growth?
It would be more correct to say that the soul puts on a progressive individual form which becomes the psychic being. For since
the soul is itself a portion of the Supreme, it is immutable and
eternal. The psychic being is progressive and immortal.
All the methods of self-knowledge, self-control and selfmastery are good. You have to choose the one that comes to you
--
Does an outer life of evil deeds and a base consciousness have an effect on the psychic being? Is there
a possibility of its degradation?
--
outer being more and more completely from the psychic being,
which retires into the depths of the higher consciousness and
--
The psychic being itself is above all possibility of degradation.
28 July 1960
--
finding the psychic being within us?
In terrestrial man, it is only the psychic being that knows true
love. As for perfect love, it exists only in the Divine.
01.01 - The One Thing Needful, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Sadhana must be the main thing and sadhana means the purification of the nature, the consecration of the being, the opening of the psychic and the inner mind and vital, the contact and presence of the Divine, the realisation of the Divine in all things, surrender, devotion, the widening of the consciousness into the cosmic Consciousness, the Self one in all, the psychic and the spiritual transformation of the nature.
... the principle of this Yoga is not perfection of the human nature as it is but a psychic and spiritual transformation of all the parts of the being through the action of an inner consciousness and then of a higher consciousness which works on them, throws out the old movements or changes them into the image of its own and so transmutes lower into higher nature. It is not so much the perfection of the intellect as a transcendence of it, a transformation of the mind, the substitution of a larger greater principle of knowledge - and so with all the rest of the being.
This is a slow and difficult process; the road is long and it is hard to establish even the necessary basis. The old existing nature resists and obstructs and difficulties rise one after another and repeatedly till they are overcome. It is therefore necessary to be sure that this is the path to which one is called before one finally decides to tread it.
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer communion is established through a plane which is just above the mind the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
--
An organ in the human being has been especially developed to become the effective instrument of this accelerated Yogic process the self-consciousness which I referred to as being the distinctive characteristic of man is a function of this organ. It is his soul, his psychic being; originally it is the spark of the Divine Consciousness which came down and became involved in Matter and has been endeavouring ever since to release itself through the upward march of evolution. It is this which presses on continually as the stimulus to the evolutionary movement; and in man it has attained sufficient growth and power and has come so far to the front from behind the veil that it can now lead and mould his external consciousness. It is also the channel through which the Divine Consciousness can flow down into the inferior levels of human nature. It is the being no bigger than the thumb ever seated within the heart, spoken of in the Upanishads. It is likewise the basis of true individuality and personal identity. It is again the reflection or expression in evolutionary Nature of one's essential selfjivtman that is above, an eternal portion of the Divine, one with the Divine and yet not dissolved and lost in it. The psychic being is thus on the one hand in direct contact with the Divine and the higher consciousness, and on the other it is the secret upholder and controller' (bhart, antarymin) of the inferior consciousness, the hidden nucleus round which the body and the life and the mind of the individual are built up and organised.
The first decisive step in Yoga is taken when one becomes conscious of the psychic being, or, looked at from the other side, when the psychic being comes forward and takes possession of the external being, begins to initiate and influence the movements of the mind and life and body and gradually free them from the ordinary round of ignorant nature. The awakening of the psychic being means, as I have said, not only a deepening and heightening of the consciousness and its release from the obscurity and limitation of the inferior Prakriti, confined to the lower threefold status, into what is behind and beyond; it means also a return of the deeper and higher consciousness upon the lower hemisphere and a consequent purification and illumination and regeneration of the latter. Finally, when the psychic being is in full self-possession and power, it can be the vehicle of the direct supramental consciousness which will then be able to act freely and absolutely for the entire transformation of the external nature, its transfiguration into a perfect body of the Truth-consciousness in a word, its divinisation.
This then is the supreme secret, not the renunciation and annulment, but the transformation of the ordinary human nature : first of all, its psychicisation, that is to say, making it move and live and be in communion and identification with the light of the psychic being, and, secondly, through the soul and the ensouled mind and life and body, to open out into the supramental consciousness and let it come down here below and work and achieve.
The soul or the true being in man uplifted in the supramental consciousness and at the same time coming forward to possess a divinised mind and life and body as an instrument and channel of its self-expression and an embodiment of the Divine Will and Purposesuch is the goal that Nature is seeking to realise at present through her evolutionary lan. It is to this labour that man has been called so that in and through him the destined transcendence and transformation can take place.
--
Now, with regard to the time that the present stage of evolution is likely to take for its fulfilment, one can presume that since or if the specific urge and stress has manifested and come up to the front, this very fact would show that the problem has become a problem of actuality, and even that it can be dealt with as if it had to be solved now or never. We have said that in man, with man's self-consciousness or the consciousness of the psychic being as the instrument, evolution has attained the capacity of a swift and concentrated process, which is the process of Yoga; the process will become swifter and more concentrated, the more that instrument grows and gathers power and is infused with the divine afflatus. In fact, evolution has been such a process of gradual acceleration in tempo from the very beginning. The earliest stage, for example, the stage of dead Matter, of the play of the mere chemical forces was a very, very long one; it took millions and millions of years to come to the point when the manifestation of life became possible. But the period of elementary life, as manifested in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding periodit ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years oldit is fully time that a higher order of being should be created out of him.
The Dhammapada, I. 1
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 Metaphysicals. The element of metaphysics among the Metaphysicals 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 metaphysics 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 metaphysical: 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.
01.04 - Motives for Seeking the Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That involves something which throws all your reasoning out of gear. For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they existing because of him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing needed for that is, first, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet.
Your argument that because we know the union with the
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All movementswhe ther of thought or of life, whether in the individual or in the massproceed from a fundamental intuition which lies in the background as the logical presupposition, the psychological motive and the spiritual force. A certain attitude of the soul, a certain angle of vision is what is posited first; all other thingsall thoughts and feelings and activities are but necessary attempts to express, to demonstrate, to realise on the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer world, the truth which has thus already been seized in some secret core of our being. The intuition may not, of course, be present to the conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought for, one may even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and proceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is this hidden bias that judges, this secret consciousness that formulates, this unknown power that fashions.
Now, what is the intuition that lies behind the movements of the new age? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying view-point which is guiding and modelling all our efforts and achievementsour science and art, our poetry and philosophy, our religion and society? For, there is such a common and fundamental note which is being voiced forth by the human spirit through all the multitude of its present-day activities.
--
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
We take a third view of the matter and say that genius is neither unconscious or conscious but superconscious. And when one is superconscious, one can be in appearance either conscious or unconscious. Let us at the outset try to explain a little this psychological riddle.
When we say one is conscious, we usually mean that one is conscious with the mental consciousness, with the rational intelligence, with the light of the brain. But this need not be always so. For one can be conscious with other forms of consciousness or in other planes of consciousness. In the average or normal man the consciousness is linked to or identified with the brain function, the rational intelligence and so we conclude that without this wakeful brain activity there can be no consciousness. But the fact is otherwise. The experiences of the mystic prove the point. The mystic is conscious on a level which we describe as higher than the mind and reason, he has what may be called the overhead consciousness. (Apart from the normal consciousness, which is named jagrat, waking, the Upanishad speaks of three other increasingly subtler states of consciousness, swapna, sushupti and turiya.)And then one can be quite unconscious, as in samadhi that can be sushupti or turiyaorpartially consciousin swapna, for example, the external behaviour may be like that of a child or a lunatic or even a goblin. One can also remain normally conscious and still be in the superconscience. Not only so, the mystic the Yogican be conscious on infraconscious levels also; that is to say, he can enter into and identify with the consciousness involved in life and even in Matter; he can feel and realise his oneness with the animal world, the plant world and finally the world of dead earth, of "stocks and stones" too. For all these strands of existence have each its own type of consciousness and all different from the mode of mind which is normally known as consciousness. When St. Francis addresses himself to the brother Sun or the sister Moon, or when the Upanishad speaks of the tree silhouetted against the sky, as if stilled in trance, we feel there is something of this fusion and identification of consciousness with an infra-conscient existence.
I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his consciousness withdraws from the normal mental consciousness and becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that superior consciousness the artist's mentalityhis ideas and dispositions, his judgments and valuations and acquisitions, in other words, his normal psychological make-upserves as a channel, an instrument, a medium for transcription. Now, there are two stages, or rather two lines of activity in the processus, for they may be overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret or subtle worldWords-worth's "recollected in tranquillity"and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of words and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives and records and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune with what it has to receive and record; otherwise the transcription becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or confused echo, a poor show. The supreme creators are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the instrumental faculties offer the least resistance and record with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to come down and waited for an opportunity.
Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their inspiration: they look upon themselves more or less as mere instruments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond their normal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are, however, for them not a mere metaphor but concrete realities. To what extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost inanimate, instrumentnothing more than a mirror or a sensitive photographic plateis illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge. His Kubla Khan, as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the rest having gone completely out of his memory; in other words, the poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or recording instrument was faulty and failed him. Indeed, it is a common experience to hear in sleep verses or musical tunes and what seem then to be very beautiful things, but which leave no trace on the brain and are not recalled in memory.
--
Not only so, the future development of the poetic consciousness seems inevitably to lead to such a consummation in which the creative and the critical faculties will not be separate but form part of one and indivisible movement. Historically, human consciousness has grown from unconsciousness to consciousness and from consciousness to self-consciousness; man's creative and artistic genius too has moved pari passu in the same direction. The earliest and primitive poets were mostly unconscious, that is to say, they wrote or said things as they came to them spontaneously, without effort, without reflection, they do not seem to know the whence and wherefore and whither of it all, they know only that the wind bloweth as it listeth. That was when man had not yet eaten the fruit of knowledge, was still in the innocence of childhood. But as he grew up and progressed, he became more and more conscious, capable of exerting and exercising a deliberate will and initiating a purposive action, not only in the external practical field but also in the psychological domain. If the earlier group is called "primitives", the later one, that of conscious artists, usually goes by the name of "classicists." Modern creators have gone one step farther in the direction of self-consciousness, a return upon oneself, an inlook of full awareness and a free and alert activity of the critical faculties. An unconscious artist in the sense of the "primitives" is almost an impossible phenomenon in the modern world. All are scientists: an artist cannot but be consciously critical, deliberate, purposive in what he creates and how he creates. Evidently, this has cost something of the old-world spontaneity and supremacy of utterance; but it cannot be helped, we cannot comm and the tide to roll back, Canute-like. The feature has to be accepted and a remedy and new orientation discovered.
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.
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Tagore is no inventor or innovator when he posits Spirit as Beauty, the spiritual consciousness as the ardent rhythm of ecstasy. This experience is the very core of Vaishnavism and for which Tagore is sometimes called a Neo-Vaishnava. The Vaishnava sees the world pulsating in glamorous beauty as the Lila (Play) of the Lord, and the Lord, God himself, is nothing but Love and Beauty. Still Tagore is not all Vaishnava or merely a Vaishnava; he is in addition a modern (the carping voice will say, there comes the dilution and adulteration)in the sense that problems exist for himsocial, political, economic, national, humanitarianwhich have to be faced and solved: these are not merely mundane, but woven into the texture of the fundamental problem of human destiny, of Soul and Spirit and God. A Vaishnava was, in spite of his acceptance of the world, an introvert, to use a modern psychological phrase, not necessarily in the pejorative sense, but in the neutral scientific sense. He looks upon the universe' and human life as the play of the Lord, as an actuality and not mere illusion indeed; but he does not participate or even take interest in the dynamic working out of the world process, he does not care to know, has no need of knowing that there is a terrestrial purpose and a diviner fulfilment of the mortal life upon earth. The Vaishnava dwells more or less absorbed in the Vaikuntha of his inner consciousness; the outer world, although real, is only a symbolic shadowplay to which he can but be a witness-real, is only a nothing more.
A modern idealist of the type of a reformer would not be satisfied with that role. If he is merely a moralist reformer, he will revolt against the "witness business", calling it a laissez-faire mentality of bygone days. A spiritual reformer would ask for morea dynamic union with the Divine Will and Consciousness, not merely a passive enjoyment in the Bliss, so that he may be a luminous power or agent for the expression of divine values in things mundane.
01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The recent science of psycho-analysis has brought to light certain hidden springs and undercurrents of the mind; it has familiarised us with a mode of viewing the entire psychical life of man which will be fruitful for our present enquiry. Mind, it has been found, is a house divided, against itself, that is to say it is an arena where different and divergent forces continually battle against one another. There must be, however, at the same time, some sort of a resolution of these forces, some equation that holds them in balance, otherwise the mind the human being itselfwould cease to exist as an entity. What is the mechanism of this balance of power in the human mind? In order to ascertain that we must first of all know the fundamental nature of the struggle and also the character of the more elemental forces that are engaged in it.
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.
--
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."
--
The human mind naturally, without any effort on its part, takes to one or more of these devices to control and conceal the aboriginal impulses. But this spontaneous process can be organised and consciously regulated and made to serve better the purpose and urge of Nature. And this is the beginning of yoga the conscious fulfilment of Nature. The psycho-analysts have given us the first and elementary stage of this process of yoga. It is, we may say, the fourth line of control. With this man enters a new level of being, develops a new mode of life. It is when the automatism of Nature is replaced by the power of Conscious Control. Man is not here, a blind instrument of forces, his activities (both indulging and controlling) are not guided according to an ignorant submission to the laws of almost subconscious impulsions. Conscious control means that the mind does not fight shy of or seek to elude the aboriginal insistences, but allows them to come up freely, meets them squarely, recognises them and establishes an easy mastery over them.
The method of unconscious or subconscious nature is fundamentally that of repression. Apart from Defence Reaction which is a thing of pure coercion, even in Substitution and Sublimation there always remains in the background a large amount of repressed complexes in all their primitive strength. The system is never entirely purified but remains secretly pregnant with those urges; a part only is deflected and camouflaged, the surface only assumes a transformed appearance. And there is always the danger of the superstructure coming down helplessly by a sudden upheaval of the nether forces. The whole system feels, although not in a conscious manner, the tension of the repression and suffers from something that is unhealthy and ill-balanced. Dante's spiritualised passion is a supreme instance of control by Sublimation, but the Divina Comedia hardly bears the impress of a serene and tranquil soul, sovereignly above the turmoils of the tragedy of life and absolutely at peace with itself.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
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."
--
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.
The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
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
We speak very often of the psychic and the soul, but
I understand nothing about them. What are these two
--
All the psychological qualities can be cultivated as the muscles
Series Ten - To a Young Captain
--
immediately to dispel my psychological pain. For something tells me: "All that happens is done for your own
good and is done by the Divine Grace." Is it good, is it
--
That happens when he has not taken care to organise his conscious being around the psychic centre, which is the Truth of his
being.
--
sign, because this kind of discretion comes from the psychic
consciousness which would rather give than ask.
--
is not in contact with one's psychic being, it would be better to
strive always to do as well as possible and be as good as one
--
only by discovering one's psychic being and uniting with it.
22 September 1963
--
physical attachment, nothing else) and the soul (the psychic being) knows instinctively what the other needs to receive and is
always ready to give it to him.
--
and your psychic consciousness awakens from the slumber in
which it lies.
--
pull me out of the slumber and awaken my psychic
consciousness?
--
overcome desires, and aspire to find your psychic being and unite
with it. Physically, continue with what you are doing, develop
--
in some part of the being. For the psychic being knows and is
not mistaken; but more often than not, we do not listen to what
--
I ask the first to make an effort to establish not only a psychic
relation (which is always there even when they are not conscious
--
from one life to another, become richer and form the psychic personality behind the surface personality. But then
how does the psychic, weighed down by these vibrations
and memories, remain free?35
--
No, the psychic decants - that is exactly what happens.
The psychic does not retain things in their totality - it decants,
it gradually decants the vibrations.
The psychic memory is a decanted memory of events. For
example, in past lives there have been moments when, for some
reason or other, the psychic was present and participated; in that
case it retains the memory of the circumstance. But the memory
it retains is that of the psychic life of that moment; so even if it
retains the memory of the image, it is a simplified image such as
it is translated in the psychic consciousness and according to the
psychic vibration of all the people present.
--
Before knowing these things, I had had psychic memories
and always they struck me by their special character. It was as
--
of the circumstances, of the events, and that makes a psychic
memory; it is rarely the events that mentally are considered
--
the moments when the psychic has participated - consciously
participated - in the event. And that is what remains.
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.
--
Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was beforea change became inevitable even in the major note. It was a psychological cataclysm almost on a par with the geological one that formed her body; but the spirit behind which created the body was working automatically, inexorably towards the greater and more difficult synthesis demanded by the situation. Only the thing is to be done now consciously, not through an unconscious process of laissez-faire as on the inferior stages of evolution in the past. And that is the true genesis of the present conflict.
History abounds in instances of racial and cultural immixture. Indeed, all major human groupings of today are invariably composite formations. Excepting, perhaps, some primitiveaboriginal tribes there are no pure races existent. The Briton, the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Norman have combined to form the British; a Frenchman has a Gaul, a Roman, a Frank in him; and a Spaniard's blood would show an Iberian, a Latin, a Gothic, a Moorish element in it. And much more than a people, a culture in modern times has been a veritable cockpit of multifarious and even incongruous elements. There are instances also in which a perfect fusion could not be accomplished, and one element had to be rejected or crushed out. The complete disappearance of the Aztecs and Mayas in South America, the decadence of the Red Indians in North America, of the Negroes in Africa as a result of a fierce clash with European peoples and European culture illustrate the point.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the human being, is the psychic being the entire soul
or do both the soul (in its essence as a divine spark in all
creatures) and the psychic being exist together?
The soul is the eternal essence at the centre of the psychic being.
The soul is in fact like a divine spark which puts on many states
--
psychic being. When the psychic being is fully formed, it is aware
of the consciousness of the soul and manifests it perfectly.
--
around the psychic being, if we are conscious of it or at least
around the central aspiration. If this unification is not done, we
--
As for all psychological problems, here too sincerity, a total
and uncompromising sincerity, is the true remedy.
--
From what I understand, You said that the psychic beings
of the disciples of the Ashram all belong to the same family. In spite of this, there is often a lack of collaboration
--
influence of the psychic. As soon as one is united with one's
psychic, all the conflicts due to clashing bad wills can no longer
--
Spontaneity in feelings and action comes from a permanent contact with the psychic, which brings order into the thoughts and
automatically controls the vital impulses.
--
a change of psychological attitude on the part of those
who own money than any change in the law of property.
--
Only the psychological change can be a solution.
6 January 1968
--
on different colours in the light of the psychic flame.
The very notion of good and bad is completely changed.
--
It is what is usually called conscience, but in fact it is the psychic
being. And one can hear it only if one is very attentive, because
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
unified the whole of one's being around the psychic centre.
This unification is indispensable if one wants to be the
--
with the psychic being. Why do You consider it difficult?
How should I begin?
--
is voluntary. The psychic being always has an influence on the
thoughts and actions, but one is rarely conscious of it. To become
conscious of the psychic being, one must want to do so, make
one's mind as silent as possible, and enter deep into the heart
--
The discovery of the psychic being is a definite and very
concrete fact, as all who have had the experience know.
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Desire is a vital movement, aspiration is a psychic movement.
When one has had a true aspiration, unselfish and sincere,
--
(1) becoming aware of one's psychic being.
(2) putting before the psychic being, as one becomes aware
of them, all one's movements, impulses, thoughts and acts of
will, so that the psychic being may accept or reject each of these
movements, impulses, thoughts or acts of will. Those that are
--
that one must not rely on one's ego but on the psychic.
Mother, will you explain this to me?
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For you, the best way to begin is to find your psychic being,
to concentrate on it by making it the witness of all your inner
--
The psychic being is the individual sheath of the Divine Presence.
It is found deep within oneself, beyond all thoughts.
--
Communications from the psychic do not come in a mental
form. They are not ideas or reasonings. They have their own
--
By its very nature, the psychic is calm, quiet and luminous,
understanding and generous, wide and progressive. Its constant
--
The psychic sees and understands.
13 December 1971
The psychic is conscious of its progressive formation during successive lives upon earth, so it has the memory of the important
moments in its previous lives.
The more the psychic has taken part in these physical lives
on earth, the more numerous and precise its memories are.
--
To learn constantly, not just intellectually but psychologically,
to progress in regard to character, to cultivate our qualities and
--
The psychic being knows this with certainty; so, by uniting
with one's psychic, one can know it. But the first condition is
not to be subject to one's desires and mistake them for the truth
--
prepared, the ego has to disappear and give way to the psychic
being, which has slowly been formed by divine intervention in
--
It is under the psychic influence that the Divine manifests in
man and thus prepares the coming of superhumanity.
The psychic is immortal and it is through the psychic that
immortality can be manifested on earth.
So the important thing now is to find one's psychic, unite
with it and allow it to replace the ego, which will be compelled
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But actually, to tell you the truth, I think your lives are so easy that you dont exert yourselves very much! How many among you have truly an INTENSE need to find their psychic beings? To find out truly who they are? To find out what their roles are, why they are here? You just let yourselves drift. You even complain when things arent easy enough! You just take things as they come. And sometimes, should an aspiration arise in you and you encounter some difficulty in yourself, you say, Oh, Mother is there! Shell take care of it for me! And you think about something else.
Mother, previously things were very strict in the Ashram, but not now. Why?
--
So some of you people have been here since the time you were toddlerseverything has been explained to you, the whole thing has been served to you on a silver platter (not only with words, but through psychic aid and in every possible way), you have been put on the path of this inner discovery and then you just go on drifting along: When it comes, it will come.If you even spare it that much thought!
So thats how it is.
--
(Mother gets up to go, but while leaving, She says to the children around her:) If you had made just one little decision to try to feel your psychic being, my time would not have been wasted.
Ananda: Divine Joy.
0 1955-09-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
No matter where I concentrate, in my heart, above my head, between my eyes, I bang everywhere into an unyielding wall; I no longer know which way to turn, what I must do, say, pray in order to be freed from all this at last. Mother, I know that I am not making all the effort I should, but help me to make this effort, I implore your grace. I need so much to find at last this solid rock upon which to lean, this space of light where finally I may seek refuge. Mother, open the psychic being in me, open me to your sole Light which I need so much. Without your grace, I can only turn in circles, hopelessly. O Mother, may I live in you.
Your child,
0 1955-09-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother suddenly everything seems to have crystallizedall the little revolts, the little tensions, the ill will and petty vital demandsforming a single block of open, determined resistance. I have become conscious that from the beginning of my sadhana, the mind has led the gamewith the psychic behind and has held me in leash, helped muzzle all contrary movements, but at no time, or only rarely, has the vital submitted or opened to the higher influence. The rare times when the vital participated, I felt a great progress. But now, I find myself in front of this solid mass that says No and is not at all convinced of what the mind has been imposing upon it for almost two years now.
Mother, I am sufficiently awakened not to rebel against your Light and to understand that the vital is but one part of my being, but I have come to the conclusion that the only way of convincing this vital is not to force or stifle it, but to let it go through its own experience so it may understand by itself that it cannot be satisfied in this way. I feel the need to leave the Ashram for a while to see how I can get along away from here and to realize, no doubt, that one can really brea the only here.
0 1957-10-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
One of the very first results of the supramental manifestation was to give the body a freedom and an autonomy it has never before known. And when I say freedom, I dont mean some psychological perception or an inner state of consciousness, but something else and far betterit is a new phenomenon in the body, in the cells of the body. For the first time, the cells themselves have felt that they are free, that they have the power to decide. When the new vibrations came and combined with the old ones, I felt it at once and it showed me that a new world was really taking birth.
In its normal state, the body always feels that it is not its own master: illnesses invade it without its really being able to resist thema thousand factors impose themselves or exert pressure upon it. Its sole power is the power to defend itself, to react. Once the illness has got in, it can fight and overcome iteven modern medicine has acknowledged that the body is cured only when it decides to get cured; it is not the drugs per se that heal, for if the ailment is temporarily suppressed by a drug without the bodys will, it grows up again elsewhere in some other form until the body itself has decided to be cured. But this implies only a defensive power, the power to react against an invading enemyit is not true freedom.
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have one thing to add: we must not misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that henceforth everything will take place without difficulties or always in accordance with our personal desires. It is not at this level. It does not mean that when we do not want it to rain, it will not rain! Or when we want some event to take place in the world, it will immediately take place, or that all difficulties will be abolished and everything will be like a fairy tale. It is not like that. It is something more profound. Nature has accepted into her play of forces the newly manifested Force and has included it in her movements. But as always, the movements of Nature take place on a scale infinitely surpassing the human scale and invisible to the ordinary human consciousness. It is more of an inner, psychological possibility that has been born in the world than a spectacular change in earthly events.
I mention this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy tales are going to be realized upon earth. The time has not yet come.
0 1958-02-03b - The Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What I can say is that the criterion or the judgment was based EXCLUSIVELY on the substance constituting the peoplewhe ther they belonged completely to the supramental world or not, whether they were made of this very special substance. The criterion adopted was neither moral nor psychological. It is likely that their bodily substance was the result of an inner law or an inner movement which, at that time, was not in question. At least it is quite clear that the values are different.
When I came back, along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the supramental world was permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and that only a missing link is needed to allow the consciousness and the substance to connectand it is this link that is being built. At that time, my impression (an impression which remained rather long, almost the whole day) was of an extreme relativityno, not exactly that, but an impression that the relationship between this world and the other completely changes the criterion by which things are to be evaluated or judged. This criterion had nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ability to express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of looking at things! I recall one little thing that we usually consider bad actually how funny it was to see that it is something excellent! And other things that we consider important were really quite unimportant there! Whether it was like this or like that made no difference. What is very obvious is that our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is incorrect. I even laughed at certain things Our usual feeling about what is anti-divine seems artificial, based upon something untrue, unliving (besides, what we call life here appeared lifeless in comparison with that world); in any event, this feeling should be based upon our relationship between the two worlds and according to whether things make this relationship easier or more difficult. This would thus completely change our evaluation of what brings us nearer to the Divine or what takes us away from Him. With people, too, I saw that what helps them or prevents them from becoming supramental is very different from what our ordinary moral notions imagine. I felt just how ridiculous we are.
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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!
0 1958-05-11 - the ship that said OM, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Tamas: in Indian psychology, inertia and obscurity.
The waters off Pondicherry occasionally serve as a port.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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.
Does one exclude the other?
--
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 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Evidently the gods of the Puranas are a good deal worse than human beings, as we saw in that film the other day1 (and that story was absolutely true). The gods of the Overmind are infinitely more egocentric the only thing that counts for them is their power, the extent of their power. Man has in addition a psychic being, so consequently he has true love and compassionwherein lies his superiority over the gods. It was very, very clearly expressed in this film, and its very true.
The gods are faultless, for they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint; it is their godly way. But if one looks at it from a higher point of view, if one has a higher vision, a vision of the whole, they have fewer qualities than man. In this film, it was proved that through their capacity for love and self-giving, men can have as much power as the gods, and even morewhen they are not egoists, when they can overcome their egoism.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The gods of the Puranas are merciless gods who respect only power and have nothing of the true love, charity or profound goodness that the Divine has put into the human consciousness and which compensate psychically for all the outer defects. They themselves have nothing of this, they have no psychic.1 The Puranic gods have no psychic, so they act according to their power. They are restrained only when their power is not all-powerful, thats all.
But what does Anusuya represent?2
She is a portrait of the ideal woman according to the Hindu conception, the woman who worships her husb and as a god, which means that she sees the Supreme in her husband. And so this woman was much more powerful than all the gods of the Puranas precisely because she had this psychic capacity for total self-giving; and her faith in the Supremes presence in her husb and gave her a much greater power than that of all the gods.
The story narrated in the film went like this: Narada, as usual, was having fun. (Narada is a demigod with a divine position that is, he can communicate with man and with the gods as he pleases, and he serves as an intermediary, but then he likes to have fun!) So he was quarrelling with one of the goddesses, I no longer recall which one, and he told her (Ah, yes! The quarrel was with Saraswati.) Saraswati was telling him that knowledge is much greater than love (much greater in that it is much more powerful than love), and he replied to her, You dont know what youre talking about! (Mother laughs) Love is much more powerful than knowledge. So she challenged him, saying, Well then, prove it to me.I shall prove it to you, he replied. And the whole story starts there. He began creating a whole imbroglio on earth just to prove his point.
--
There is the whole Chaldean tradition, and there is also the Vedic tradition, and there was very certainly a tradition anterior to both that split into two branches. Well, all these occult experiences have been the same. Only the description differs depending upon the country and the language. The story of creation is not told from a metaphysical or psychological point of view, but from an objective point of view, and this story is as real as our stories of historical periods. Of course, its not the only way of seeing, but it is just as legitimate a way as the others, and in any event, it recognizes the concrete reality of all these divine beings. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists exhibit great similarities. The only difference is in the way they are expressed, but the manipulation of the forces is the same.
I learned all this through Theon. Probably, he was I dont know if he was Russian or Polish (a Russian or Polish Jew), he never said who he really was or where he was born, nor his age nor anything.
--
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.
0 1958-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At the time, I wondered what it meant. Later, of course, I found out, and finally this morning, I said to myself, Ah, so thats it! It came to give me my message for the new year! Then I transcribed the experienceit cant be described, of course, for it was indescribable; it was a psychological phenomenon and the form it took was only a way of describing the psychological state to oneself. Here is what I wrote down, obviously in a mental way, and I am thinking of using it as my message.
There was a hesitation in the expression, so I brought the paper and I want us to decide upon the final text together.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It can be expressed in this way (but its quite approximate, more than diminished or deformed): its as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of goldas if our entire spiritual life here were a vibration of silver, not gold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure light, pure and intense; but in the other, in the supramental world, there is a richness and a power that make all the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness that appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to the splendor of the new world.
I can explain the phenomenon like this: successive reversals such that an EVER NEW richness of creation will take place from stage to stage, making whatever came before seem so poor in comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life, appears so poor compared to this new reversal of consciousness. Such was my experience.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This is how it works: the psychic being passes from one life to another, but there are cases in which the psychic incarnates in order to to work out2 to pass through a certain experience, to learn a certain thing, to develop a certain thing through a certain experience. And so in this life, in the life where the experience is to be made, it can happen (there may be more than one reason) that the soul does not come down accurately in the place it should have, some shift or other may occur, a set of contrary circumstancesthis happens sometimesand then the incarnation miscarries entirely and the soul leaves. But in other cases, the soul is simply placed in the impossibility of doing exactly what it wants and it finds itself swept away by unfortunate circumstances. Not only unfortunate from an objective standpoint, but unfortunate for its own development, and then that creates in it the necessity to begin the experience all over again, and in much more difficult conditions.
And ifit can happenif the second attempt also miscarries, if the conditions make the experience the soul is seeking still more difficult for example, if one is in a body with an inadequate will or some distortion in the thought, or an egoism too too hardened, and it ends in suicide, it is dreadful. I have seen this many times, it creates a dreadful karma that can be repeated for lifetimes on end before the soul can conquer it and manage to do what it wants. And each time, the conditions become more difficult, each time it requires a still greater effort. And people who know this say, You cannot get out! In fact, it is this kind of desire to escape which pushes you into more foolish things3 that result in a still greater accumulation of difficulty. There are momentsmoments and circumstanceswhen no one is there to help you, and then things become so horrible, the circumstances become so abominable.
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What interested me is that in their case (those who follow tantric or other initiations), what is doubtful is whether or not they can succeed in receiving the response of the true Power, the divine power, the supreme power; they do everything they can, but this question still remains. Whereas for me, it is the opposite situation: the Power is there, I have it, but how can I make it act here in matter? The process for making it act immediately was missingthough not totally; I know from the psychological standpoint, but there is something other than the psychological power, there is the whole play of conscious, individualized forces that are everywhere in Nature and that have the right to exist. Since it was created this way, it must express something of the supreme Will, otherwise He wouldnt have made use of intermediaries but in His plan, it is obvious that the intermediary has a legitimate place.
It is like the story X told me of his guru2 who could comm and the coming of Kali (something which seems quite natural to me when one is sufficiently developed); well, not only could he commend the coming of Kali, but Kali with I dont know how many crores of her warriors! For me, Kali was Kali, after all, and she did her work; but in the universal organization, her action, the innumerable multiplicity of her action, is expressed by an innumerable multitude of conscious entities at work. It is this individualization, as it were, that gives to these forces a consciousness and a certain play of freedom, and this is what makes all the difference in action. It is in this respect that the occult system is an absolutely indispensable complement to spiritual action.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
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!
I could have begun this work on the body thirty years ago, but I was constantly caught up in this harassing ashram life. It took this illness2 to enable me truly to begin doing the sadhana of the body. It does not mean that thirty years were wasted, for it is likely that had I been able to start this work thirty years ago, it would have been premature. The consciousness of the others also had to develop the two are linked, the individual progress and the collective progress, and one cannot advance if the other does not advance.
I have also come to realize that for this sadhana of the body, the mantra is essential. Sri Aurobindo gave none; he said that one should be able to do all the work without having to resort to external means. Had he reached the point where we are now, he would have seen that the purely psychological method is inadequate and that a japa is necessary, because only japa has a direct action on the body. So I had to find the method all alone, to find my mantra by myself. But now that things are ready, I have done ten years of work in a few months. That is the difficulty, it requires time
And I repeat my mantra constantlywhen I am awake and even when I sleep. I say it even when I am getting dressed, when I eat, when I work, when I speak with others; it is there, just behind in the background, all the time, all the time.
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Formations, in occult language, refer to all the psychological movements and impulses, conscious or unconscious, constantly emanating from the disciples and others, and which leave an imprint in the subtle atmosphere or a wandering entity seeking to fulfill itself.
***
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, #Zen
But there is something else the psychological condition that you yourself create, the asuric hell you live in when you cultivate an asuric nature within you.
***
0 1960-08-10 - questions from center of Education - reading Sri Aurobindo, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
What a comparison! (Mother laughs) Oh, they have such psychological subtleties!
But its especially for the spelling of verbs. I believe I know how to conjugate!
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It all began the day I received the news of Zs arrival. All right, I thought, heres a chunk of life sent back to me for clarifying. I must work on it. But it didnt stop there Its strange how all this past had been swept clean I could no longer remember dates, I couldnt even remember when Z had been here before, I no longer knew what had happened, it had all been wiped cleanwhich means that it had all been pushed down into the subconscient. I didnt even know how I used to speak to him when I saw him, nothing, it was all gone. All that had remained alive were one or two movements or facts which were clearly connected to the psychic life, the psychic consciousness but just one or two or three such memories; all the rest was gone.
So a whole slice of my life came back, but it didnt stop there! It keeps extending back further and further, and memories keep on coming, things that go back sixty years now, even beyond, seventy, seventy-five yearsthey are all coming back. And so it all has to be put in order.
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have this experience when for some reason or other, depending on the case, you come into contact with the universal consciousness not in its limitless essence but on any level of Matter. There is an atomic consciousness, a purely material consciousness and an even more generally prevailing psychological consciousness. When, through interiorization or a sort of withdrawal from the ego you enter into contact with that zone of consciousness we can call psychological terrestrial or human collective (there is a difference: human collective is restricted, while terrestrial includes many animal and even plant vibrations; but in the present case, since the moral notion of guilt, sin and evil belongs exclusively to human consciousness, let us simply say human collective psychological consciousness); when you contact that through identification, you naturally feel or see or know yourself capable of any human movement whatsoever. To some extent, this constitutes a Truth-Consciousness, or at such times the egoistical sense of what does or doesnt belong to you, of what you can or cannot do, disappears; you realize that the fundamental construction of human consciousness makes any human being capable of doing anything. And since you are in a truth-consciousness, you are aware at the same time that to feel judgmental or disgusted or revolted would be an absurdity, for EVERYTHING is potentially there inside you. And should you happen to be penetrated by certain currents of force (which we usually cant follow: we see them come and go but we are generally unaware of their origin and direction), if any one of these currents penetrates you, it can make you do anything.
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.
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.
0 1961-02-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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.
Then why do these creatures always seem so evil to us?
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The terminology used by Mother and Sri Aurobindo is distinct from the terminology of Western psychology. This is how Sri Aurobindo defines 'inconscient' and 'subconscient': 'All upon earth is based on the Inconscient, as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete "sub"-conscience, a suppressed or involved consciousness, in which there is everything but nothing is formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body.'
Cent. Ed., XXII, p. 354
0 1961-02-14, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo wants to make the distinction between the progressive soul (the soul which has experiences and progresses from life to life), what can be called the lower soul, and the higher soul, that is, the eternal, immutable and divine soulessentially divine. He wrote this when he was in contact with certain Theosophical writings, before I introduced Theons vocabulary to him. For Theon, there is the divine center which is the eternal soul, and the psychic being; similarly, to avoid using the same word in both cases, Sri Aurobindo speaks in later writings of the psychic being and of the divine center or central being the essential soul.
What if we translate it la partie suprieure de lme, [the higher part of the soul], rather than me suprieure?
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even the body, the body itself, has the constant perception of bathing in the vibration of the CONCRETE divine Presence; so certainly from a psychological standpoint there is not the slightest shadow in the picture. Even from the material standpoint, this Presence is here. Yet although it is here, felt, perceived and experienced, there is still this disorder! (I call it disorder.)
(long silence)
--
To be perfect, the equality must be invariable and spontaneous, effortless, towards all circumstances, all happenings, all contacts, material or psychological, irrespective of their character and impact.
The absolute and indisputable certainty of an infallible knowledge through identity.
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From an historical viewpoint (not psychological, but historical), based on my memories (only I cant prove it, nothing can be proved, and I dont believe any truly historical proof has come down to usor in any case, it hasnt been found yet), but according to my memories. (Mother shuts her eyes as if she were going off in search of her memories; she will speak all the rest of the time with eyes closed.) Certainly at one period of the earths history there was a kind of earthly paradise, in the sense that there was a perfectly harmonious and perfectly natural life: the manifestation of Mind was in accordwas STILL in complete accord and in total harmony with the ascending march of Nature, without perversion or deformation. This was the first stage of Minds manifestation in material forms.
How long did it last? Its hard to say. But for man it was a life like a sort of flowering of animal life. My memory is of a life where the body was perfectly adapted to its natural surroundings. The climate was in harmony with the needs of the body, the body with the demands of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, as a more luminous and conscious animal life would be, with absolutely none of the complications and deformations brought in later by the mind as it developed.
--
The tree of knowledge symbolizes this kind of knowledge a material knowledge, no longer divine because its origin was the sense of division and this is what began to spoil everything. How long did this period last? I am unable to say. (Because my recollection is of an almost immortal life; it seems that it was through some sort of evolutionary accident that the destruction of forms became necessary for progress.) And where did it take place? From certain impressions (but these are only impressions), it would seem that it was in the vicinity of either this side of Ceylon and India or the other, I dont know exactly (Mother indicates the Indian Ocean either west of Ceylon and India or to the east between Ceylon and Java), although certainly the place no longer exists; it must have been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of the place and a consciousness of that life and its forms, but I cant give precise material details. Did it last for centuries, was it ? I dont know. To tell the truth, when I was reliving those moments I wasnt curious about such details (for one is in another mental state where there is no curiosity about material details: all things turn into psychological facts). It was something so simple, luminous, harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupationsthose very preoccupations with time and space. It was a spontaneous life, extremely beautiful, and so close to Naturea natural flowering of animal life. There were no oppositions or contradictions, nothing of the kindeverything happened in the best way possible.
(silence)
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Along with the mind came individualization, an acute sense of separation and a more or less precise feeling of a freedom of choiceall of that, all these psychological states, are the natural consequences of mental life and open the door to everything we see now, from the worst aberrations to the most rigorous principles. Mans impression of being free to choose between one thing and another is the deformation of a true principle that will be totally realizable only when the soul or psychic being becomes conscious in him; were the soul to govern the being, mans life would truly be a conscious expression of the supreme Will translated individually. But in the normal human state, such a case is still extremely rare and doesnt seem at all natural to ordinary human consciousness it seems almost supernatural!
Man questions himself because the mental instrument is made for seeing all possibilities and because the human being feels he has freedom of choice and the immediate consequences are the notions of good and evil, right and wrong, and all the ensuing miseries. This cant be called a bad thing: its an intermediate stagenot a very pleasant stage, but nevertheless it was certainly inevitable for a total development.
0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was mainly on your right side I banged on it. But strangely enough, it didnt break it became supple, but then it lost its beauty. (It was so beautiful, as though sculptured!) I tried to pass through it, but to do so (this is what I found interesting), instead of passing through at this level (the chest), the psychic plane the level of the souls vibration I had to climb up above and then descend; and finally, without even realizing it, I found myself inside I had entered through sheer force of concentration. There, at the vital level, the emotional vital (solar plexus), I put two flowers: one very large Endurance in the Most Material Vital [zinnia] and another flower like the one X just gave me [cosmos] but bigger and pure white (it concerns sexual movements, light in sexual movements). But curiously enough, I passed inside through a trance; I was quite busy trying to make it more fluid when all at once, poof! I found myself inside. But since I entered through a trance it became completely objective: no more thought, nothing. And I saw I had put these two flowers there (at the levels of the abdomen and chest), one more active, a very large, dark purple Endurance flower, and another much smaller, pure white, slightly lower down. While I was watching this I think the clock must have struck something pulled me and it all faded away.
And I found it interesting that when I received your letter yesterday evening I concentrated for a moment, almost out of curiosity: Why doesnt he ever feel he has an experience? Why doesnt he feel anything? I wanted to know precisely what type of experience would give you the feeling of having an experience!
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The adverse force is what keeps the Divine from blossoming miraculously whenever He appears. Because I know that wherever Matter is not under the influence of this adverse will to any degree, it blossoms immediately. And everything in the human heart, in human consciousness, in human thought, all that is slightly sheltered from this adverse influencesheltered by the psychic, the divine Presenceblossoms, becomes immediately becomes marvelous, without any obstacleall the obstacles come from that source. So its all very well to call it an accident, but.
Its obviously reparable, theres no doubt about that, but at what price? And how it complicates things!
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was one I know I SAW it: when he died there was already the embryo of a psychic being, ready for a human incarnation. I made them progress like wildfire.
Well, petit.
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had this experience, and I remember it even went on for several days; I saw all material circumstances as an absolutean absolute that we perceive as an unfolding, but which is an eternally existing absolute. I had this experience, and at the same time I had a very clear perception of what falsehood is the lie; what, from the psychological, the mental point of view, Sri Aurobindo, translating from the Sanskrit, called crookedness.3 We attribute the course of circumstances to our psychological reactionsand indeed, they are used momentarily because everything collaborates either consciously or unconsciously to make things be what they have to be but things could be what they have to be without the intervention of this falsehood. I lived in that consciousness for several days, and it became apparent that this was what separated falsehood from truth. In this state of knowledge-consciousness, the distinction can be made between falsehood and truth; and when seen in that truth-consciousness, material circumstances change character.
Now I no longer have the experience of that state except as a memory, so I cant formulate it accurately. But what was very clear and comes very oftenvery oftenis the perception of a superimposition of falsehood over a real fact. This brings us back to what I was telling you some time ago,4 that everything is very simple in its truth, that human consciousness is what complicates everything. But the former was an even more total experience of it.
--
Once during the night, I went exploring inside this head; some cells still had fresh imprints of things registered during the day for whatever reason they hadnt had time to be combined into the whole, so they showed up as tiny, very clear images, minuscule things utterly devoid of any mental or psychological movementsimply like tiny photographic images. There were three or four images like that, and it was so shocking to see them in this Presence that all at once I said to myself, Am I going mad?! It was that shocking. And I had to bring in a peace, a peacenot to make the movement of possession stop, but to accompany it simultaneously with a mighty peace so I wouldnt tell myself, Youre losing your head. Thats how shocking it was.
A tiny, very tiny image, just like a little photograph, clear! Everything else was in a vibration of transformationsplendid!
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?
--
More and more I have the impression ofwhat? How can it be explained? A question of vibrations in Matter. Its incomprehensible, completely eluding all mental law, all psychological law: a self-existent something.
So many question marks!
0 1961-06-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All the psychics tell you such stories!
It was the same thing yesterday, the same Experience, only less strong and less continuous. But all these petty imageries dont interest me.
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As soon as I came upon Theons teaching (even before meeting him personally), and read and understood all kinds of things which I hadnt known before, I began to work quite systematically. Every night, at the same hour, I was working to constructbetween the purely terrestrial atmosphere and the psychic atmospherea path of protection across the vital, so that people wouldnt have to pass through it (for those who are conscious but without knowledge its a very difficult passageinfernal.) I was preparing this path, doing this work (it must have been around 1903 or 1904, I dont remember exactly) for months and months and months. All sorts of extraordinary things happened during that timeextraordinary. I could tell long stories.
Then, when I went to Tlemcen, I told Madame Theon about it. Yes, she told me, it is part of the work you have come on earth to do. Everyone with even a slightly awakened psychic being who can see your Light will go to your Light at the moment of dying, no matter where they die, and you will help them to pass through. And this work is constant. Constant. It has given me a considerable number of experiences concerning what happens to people when they leave their bodies. Ive had all sorts of experiences, all kinds of examplesits really very interesting.
Lately it has increased, become more precise.
--
Not long ago M.s sister died ( psychologically, she was in a terrible stateshe had no faith). Well, on that day,5 just when I came to know that she was passing away, I remember being upstairs in the bathroom communicating with Sri Aurobindo, having a sort of conversation with him (it happens very often), and I asked him, What happens to such people when they die here at the Ashram? Look, he replied, and I saw her passing away; and on her forehead, I saw Sri Aurobindos symbol in a SOLID golden light (not very luminous, but very concrete). There it was. And with the presence of this sign the psychological state no longer matterednothing touched her. And she departed tranquilly, tranquilly. Then Sri Aurobindo told me, All who have lived at the Ashram and who die there have automatically the same protection, whatever their inner state.
I cant say I was surprised, but I admired the mighty power by which the simple fact of having been here and died here was sufficient to help you to the utmost in that transition.
But there are all sorts of cases. Take N.D., for example, a man who lived his whole life with the idea of serving Sri Aurobindohe died clasping my photo to his breast. This was a consecrated man, very conscious, with an unfailing dedication, and all the parts of his being well organized around the psychic.6 The day he was going to leave his body little M. was meditating next to the Samadhi when suddenly she had a vision: she saw all the flowers of the tree next to the Samadhi (those yellow flowers I have called Service) gathering themselves together to form a big bouquet, and rising, rising straight up. And in her vision these flowers were linked with the image of N.D. She ran quickly to their house andhe was dead.
I only knew about this vision later, but on my side, when he left, I saw his whole being gathered together, well united, thoroughly homogenous, in a great aspiration, and rising, rising without dispersing, without deviating, straight up to the frontier of what Sri Aurobindo has called the higher hemisphere, there where Sri Aurobindo in his supramental action presides over earth. And he melted into that light.
--
And then one understands all, allall the details. Some things can be understood intellectually or psychologically (which is very good, it has an effect and it helps you), but that always seems so hazy; it works through an imprecision. But now the vibrations mechanism is understoodits MECHANICS; and thus it becomes precise. All these attitudes the yoga recommendsbeginning with action done as offering, then complete detachment from the result (leaving the result to the Lord), then perfect equanimity in all circumstances, all these stages which one understands intellectually, feels sentimentally, and has fully experiencedwell, all this takes on its TRUE MEANING only when it becomes what could be called a mechanical action of vibrationat that point one understands why it must be like it is.
And these last few days, especially yesterday and this morning, oh! Extraordinary discoveries! We are on the right track.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had an oft repeated experience of reliving the past1 (its a phenomenon of consciousness, possible because everything is preserved and continues to exist somewhere), with a kind of willwhich would be the sign of a powerto change it. I dont know, but at the moment of reliving it, instead of reliving the past just as it had been preserved, a power to make it different was introduced. I am not speaking of the power to change the consequences of the past (that is obvious and functions all the time)it wasnt that; it was the power to change the circumstances themselves (circumstances not quite material but of the subtle physical, with a predominantly psychological content). And since the will was there, from the standpoint of consciousness it actually happened that is, instead of circumstances developing in one direction, they developed in another. So it must correspond to something real, otherwise I would not have had the experience. It wasnt a product of the imagination; it wasnt something one thinks of and would really like to be differentit wasnt that; it was a phenomenon of consciousness: my consciousness was reliving certain circumstances (which are still quite living and obviously continue to exist within their own domain), but reliving them with the power and the knowledge acquired between that past moment and the present, and with a power to change the past moment. A new power entered the scene and turned the circumstance being relived in a new direction. I have had this experience many times and it has always surprised meits not a phenomenon of mental imagination, which is something else entirely.
It opens the door to everything.
--
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 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The incomprehension generated by doubt (the kind of doubt that always results from an egoistic movement) is very dangerous. Very dangerous. Its not even necessary to be in a psychic consciousness even for an enlightened vital consciousness, it produces no effect; but HERE, in this material swarm.
But I dont see how all this work could be done in the solitude of the Himalayas or the forest. Theres a great risk of entering into that very impersonal, universal consciousness where things are relatively easy the material consequences are so far below that it doesnt much matter! One can act directly only in the MIDST of things.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is always what could almost be called a popular way of presenting things. Take the whole Story of the Creation, of how things have come about: it can be told as an unfolding story (this is what Theon did in a book he called The Traditionhe told the whole story in the Biblical manner, with psychological knowledge hidden in symbols and forms). There is a psychological manner of telling things and a metaphysical manner. The metaphysical, for me, is almost incomprehensible; its uninteresting (or interesting only to minds that are made that way). An almost childish, illustrative way of telling things seems more evocative to me than any metaphysical theory (but this is a personal opinion and of no great moment!). The psychological approach is more dynamic for transformation, and Sri Aurobindo usually adopted it. He doesnt tell us stories (I was the one who told him stories! Images are very evocative for me). But if one combines the two approaches. Actually, to be philosophical, one would have to combine the three. But I have always found the metaphysical approach ineffective; it doesnt lead to realization but only gives people the IDEA that they know, when they really know nothing at all. From the standpoint of push, of a dynamic urge towards transformation, the psychological approach is obviously the most powerful. But the other [the symbolic approach] is lovelier!
In The Hour of God, theres a whole diagram of the Manifestation made by Sri Aurobindo3: first comes this, then comes that, then comes the other, and so fortha whole sequence. They published this in the book in all seriousness, but I must say that Sri Aurobindo did it for fun (I saw him do it). Someone had spoken to him about different religions, different philosophical methods Theosophy, Madame Blavatski, all those people (there was Theon, too). Well, each one had made his diagram. So Sri Aurobindo said, I can make a diagram, too, and mine will be much more complete! When he finished it, he laughed and said, But its only a diagram, its just for fun. They published it very solemnly, as if he had made a very serious proclamation. Oh, its a very complicated diagram!
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, they have no psychic being, so that whole side of life does not exist for them.
In all the traditions here in India (and in other countries and other religions as well), most of the time these gods behave impossibly! This is simply because they have no psychic being. The psychic being is the one thing belonging specifically to terrestrial life; it has been given as a grace to repair, to undo what had been done.
Yes, but arent the gods conscious of the Divine?
--
I knew how it was with her because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. Theres a ledge above the pillars there, where all the gods used to sitShiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them the little ones, the big ones, they all used to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely sight. But they didnt have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no use for that concepteach one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the others (such was the basis of popular worship,7 and they knew it). They felt they were a kind of community, but they had none of those qualities that the psychic life gives: no deep love, no deep sympathy, no sense of union. They had only the sense of their OWN divinity. They had certain very particular movements, but not this adoration for the Supreme nor the feeling of being instruments: they felt they were representing the Supreme, and so each one was perfectly satisfied with his particular representation.
Except for Krishna. In 1926, I had begun a sort of overmental creation, that is, I had brought the Overmind down into matter, here on earth (miracles and all kinds of things were beginning to happen). I asked all these gods to incarnate, to identify themselves with a body (some of them absolutely refused). Well, with my very own eyes I saw Krishna, who had always been in rapport with Sri Aurobindo, consent to come down into his body. It was on November 24th, and it was the beginning of Mother.8
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First of all, in the Questions and Answers you speak of the reversal of consciousness. Is this synonymous with the psychic realization? Because in one Conversation you connect the two things: the reversal of consciousness and the discovery of the psychic being.
Its the result of this discovery. In fact, its the result of union with the psychic being.
Another detail. In several places, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the circumconscient or environmental consciousness through which we enter into contact with the external world. Is this the same as the subtle physical, the subtle envelope? What is this circumconscient?
--
Then comes what Theon called the nervous sub-level, which lies between this subtle physical and the vital. And it acts as a protection: if it is stable, harmonious and strong, it protects youit protects you even physicallyfrom contagious diseases, for instance, and even from accidents. I experienced it when I was living at Val-de-Grce. It was the year I resolved to attain union with the psychic being and I was concentrated on this from morning to night and night to morning. Every day I spent some time in the Luxembourg Gardens. They were right near the house, but to get there I had to go all the way down Rue du Val-de-Grce and cross Boulevard Saint Michel, where there were streetcars, automobiles, buses the whole circus. I would remain in my concentration the whole time, and once, while crossing the boulevard, I felt a shock about this far from my body [slightly more than arms length], so spontaneously I jumped backjust enough for the streetcar to pass by. I hadnt heard anything; I was totally absorbed, and without that warning I would surely have been run over; instead, I jumped back just in time, and the streetcar sped by. I understood then that this nervous sheath was something entirely concrete, because what I had felt was not an idea of danger but a shocka material SHOCK.
So its true that as long as this envelope is strong and undamaged, you are protected. But for instance, if you are over-tired or worried or flusteredanything that brings disorder into the atmosphere seems to make holes in this envelope, and all kinds of things can enter.
0 1961-10-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The story began with an entirely concrete and material incident something very amusing; this is not the first time it has happened, but it was so concrete and so precise that it became interesting. Someone was complaining of being ill, quite a serious, psychological illness: periodic possession by a spirit of falsehood, recurring regularly every month, of more or less long duration. This person comes to see me, and the moment shes here theres an upwelling of that profound Compassion of Love, with a considerable, concentrated Power to drive away the possession; and all of this accompanied, even outwardly, by quite an affectionate gesture. This person leaves and within half an hour I receive a letter: Now I know: you hate me, you want me to be ill and you want me to die because I disgust you.
It was interesting because it was so concrete. I was conscious of my movement of compassion and love and of what it had become in the other persons consciousness!
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When he first read the Vedastranslated by Western Sanskritists or Indian pandits they appeared to Sri Aurobindo as an important document of [Indian] history, but seemed of scant value or importance for the history of thought or for a living spiritual experience.2 Fifteen years later, however, Sri Aurobindo would reread the Vedas in the original Sanskrit and find there a constant vein of the richest gold of thought and spiritual experience.3 Meanwhile, Sri Aurobindo had had certain psychological experiences of my own for which I had found no sufficient explanation either in European psychology or in the teachings of Yoga or of Vedanta, and which the mantras of the Veda illuminated with a clear and exact light.4 And it was through these experiences of his own that Sri Aurobindo came to discover, from within, the true meaning of the Vedas (and especially the most ancient of the four, the Rig-veda, which he studied with special care). What the Vedas brought him was no more than a confirmation of what he had received directly. But didnt the Rishis themselves speak of Secret words, clairvoyant wisdoms, that reveal their inner meaning to the seer (Rig-veda IV, 3.16)?
It is not surprising, therefore, that exegetes have seen the Vedas primarily as a collection of propitiatory rites centered around sacrificial fires and obscure incantations to Nature divinities (water, fire, dawn, the moon, the sun, etc.), for bringing rain and rich harvests to the tribes, male progeny, blessings upon their journeys or protection against the thieves of the sunas though these shepherds were barbarous enough to fear that one inauspicious day their sun might no longer rise, stolen away once and for all. Only here and there, in a few of the more modern hymns, was there the apparently inadvertent intrusion of a few luminous passages that might have justifiedjust barely the respect which the Upanishads, at the beginning of recorded history, accorded to the Veda. In Indian tradition, the Upanishads had become the real Veda, the Book of Knowledge, while the Veda, product of a still stammering humanity, was a Book of Worksacclaimed by everyone, to be sure, as the venerable Authority, but no longer listened to. With Sri Aurobindo we might ask why the Upanishads, whose depth of wisdom the whole world has acknowledged, could claim to take inspiration from the Veda if the latter contained no more than a tapestry of primitive rites; or how it happened that humanity could pass so abruptly from these so-called stammerings to the manifold richness of the Upanishadic Age; or how we in the West were able to evolve from the simplicity of Arcadian shepherds to the wisdom of Greek philosophers. We cannot assume that there was nothing between the early savage and Plato or the Upanishads.5
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These past few days Ive had some interesting experiences from this standpoint. I had what is commonly called fever, but it wasnt feverit was a resurfacing from the subconscient of all the struggles, all the tensions this body has had for what will soon be eighty-three years. I went through a period in my life when the tension was tremendous, because it was psychological and vital as well as physical: a perpetual struggle against adverse forces; and during my stay in Japan, particularly oh, it was terrible! So at night, everything that had been part of that life in Japanpeople, things, movements, circumstancesall of it seemed to be surrounding my body in the form of vital3 vibrations, and to be taking the place of my present state, which had completely vanished. For hours during the night, the body was reliving all the terrible tensions it had during those four years in Japan. And I realized how much (because at the time you pay no attention; the consciousness is busy with something else and not concentrated on the body), how much the body resists and is tense. And just as I was realizing this, I had a communication with Sri Aurobindo: But youre keeping it up! he told me. Your body still has the habit of being tense. (Its much less now, of course; its quite different since the inner consciousness is in perfect peace, but the BODY keeps the habit of being tense.) For instance, in the short interval between the time I get up and the time I come down to the balcony,4 when I am getting ready (I have to get this body ready to come down) well, the body is tense about being ready in time. And thats why accidents happen at that moment. So the following morning I said, All right, no more tension, and I was exclusively concerned with keeping my body perfectly tranquil I was no later than usual! So its obviously just one of the bodys bad habits. Everything went off the same as usual, and since then things are better. But its a nasty habit.
And so I looked. Is it something particular to this body? I wondered. To everyone who has lived closely with it, my body gives the impression of two things: a very concentrated, very stubborn will, and such endurance! Sri Aurobindo used to tell me he had never dreamed a body could have such endurance. And thats probably why. But I dont want to curtail this ability in any way, because it is a CELLULAR will, and a cellular endurance toowhich is quite intriguing. Its not a central will and central endurance (thats something else altogether)its cellular. Thats why Sri Aurobindo used to tell me this body had been specially prepared and chosen for the Workbecause of its capacity for obstinate endurance and will. But thats no reason to exercise this ability uselessly! So I am making sure it relaxes now; I tell it constantly, Now, now! Just let go! Relax, have some fun, wheres the harm in it? I have to tell it to be quiet, very quiet. And its very surprised to hear that: Ah! Can I live that way? I dont have to hurry? I can live that way?
--
This need for relaxation was never psychological with me. And I have seen that the habit people have of slackening has the same origin: its not necessarily negligence or vital weakness, the body simply gets winded. It bears up under the tension of vital energy, but eventually it gets winded, tired out, and needs rest.
Given the worlds present set-up, this is normal but if the supramental world were to be realized, it shouldnt remain normal. Clearly, a considerable change has to take place in the physical substance. That will probably be the essential difference between the bodies fashioned by Natures methods and those to be fashioned by supramental knowledgea new element will come in, and we will no longer be natural. But so long as this natural element is present, well, a certain amount of patience is probably requiredlet the body catch its breath, otherwise something gives way.
--
psychologically, there was no struggle, no tension, no effortnot ONCE; I was living in total and confident serenity. On the material plane there were attacks, but even these he took upon himself. Well, I saw it all, all those thirty years of life; not for a SECOND did I have any sense of responsibility, in spite of all the work I was doing, all the organizing and everything. He had supposedly passed on the responsibility to me, you see, but he was standing behindHE was actually doing everything! I was active, but with absolutely no responsibility. I never felt responsible for a single minutehe took the full responsibility. It was really.
For the first seven years he was doing the work, not me. He was the one who saw people; I looked after his personal affairs, his housekeeping, his food, his clothes and so forth. I kept myself quietly busy with that, doing nothing else, not seeing people, simply looking after his material lifelike a child at play. It was seven years of integral peace.
--
They immediately called me back. Thats how it was. Then when he came to me, when I really saw what had happened, when he went out of his body and entered into mine (the most material part of him, the part involved with external things) and I understood that I had the entire responsibility for all the work AND for the sadhana7well, then I locked a part of me away, a deep psychic8 part that was living, beyond all responsibility, in the ECSTASY of the realization: the Supreme. I took it and locked it away, I sealed it off and said, Youre not moving until until all the rest is ready.
(silence)
--
That, more than anything else, may be why I needed a bit of solitude: to reactivate that part of the psychic being which was the individual intermediary between true Consciousness and the body-consciousness: the part which had lived THAT, was aware of THAT, knew THATknew that wondrous miracle.
(silence)
--
The criterion or the judgment [for passing the tests] was based EXCLUSIVELY on the substance constituting the peoplewhe ther they belonged completely to the supramental world or not, whether they were made of this very special substance. The criterion adopted was neither moral nor psychological. It is likely that their bodily substance was the result of an inner law or an inner movement which, at that time, was not in question. At least it is quite clear that the values are different.
And then you add:
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I mentioned the principal psychological requirement in my answer to that American: a state of perfect equality. This is an ABSOLUTE condition. Over the years since that experience I have observed that no supramental vibration whatsoever can be transmitted without this perfect equality. The slightest contradiction of that equalityin other words, the least movement of ego, of egoistic preference and everything is blocked, transmission stops. This is already quite a large stumbling block.
And, over and above this, for the realization to be total, there are two other conditions, which arent easy either. Intellectually, theyre not too difficult; in fact, for someone who has practiced yoga, followed a discipline (I am not speaking here of just anyone), theyre relatively easy. psychologically too, given this equality, theres no great difficulty. But as soon as you come to the material plane the physical plane and then to the body, it isnt easy. These two conditions are first, the power to expand, to widen almost indefinitely, enabling you to widen to the dimensions of the supramental consciousness which is total. The supramental consciousness is the consciousness of the Supreme in his totality. By totality, I mean the Supreme in his aspect of Manifestation. Naturally, from a higher point of view, from the viewpoint of the essence the essence of that which in Manifestation becomes the Supermindwhats necessary is a capacity for total identification with the Supreme, not only in his aspect of Manifestation, but in his static or nirvanic aspect, outside of the Manifestation: Nonbeing. But in addition, one must be capable of identifying with the Supreme in the Becoming. And that implies both these things: an expansion that is nothing less than indefinite, and that should simultaneously be a total plasticity enabling one to follow the Supreme in his Becoming. You dont merely have to be as vast as the universe at one point in time, but indefinitely in the Becoming. These are the two conditions. They must be potentially present.
Down to the vital, we are still in the realm of things that are more than feasible they are done. But on the material level it results in my misadventures of the other day.2
--
So long as theres no question of physical transformation, the psychological and in large part, the subjective point of view is sufficientand thats relatively easy. But when it comes to incorporating matter into the work, matter as it is in this world where the very starting point is false (we start off in unconsciousness and ignorance), well, its very difficult. Because, to recover the consciousness it has lost, Matter has had to individualize itself, and for that for the form to last and retain this possibility of individualityit has been created with a certain indispensable measure of rigidity. And that rigidity is the main obstacle to the expansion, to the plasticity and suppleness necessary for receiving the Supermind. I constantly find myself facing this problem, which is utterly concrete, absolutely material when youre dealing with cells that have to remain cells and not vaporize into some nonphysical reality, and at the same time have to have a suppleness, a lack of rigidity, enabling them to widen indefinitely.
There have been times, while working in the most material mind (the mind ingrained in the material substance), when I felt my brain swelling and swelling and swelling, and my head becoming so large it seemed about to burst! On two occasions I was forced to stop, because it was (was it only an impression, or was it a fact?) in any event it seemed dangerous, as if the head would burst, because what was inside was becoming too tremendous (it was that power in Matter, that very powerful deep blue light which has such powerful vibrations; it is able to heal, for example, and change the functioning of the organsreally a very powerful thing materially). Well then, thats what was filling my head, more and more, more and more, and I had the feeling that my skull was (it was painful, you know) that there was a pressure inside my skull pushing out, pushing everything out. I wondered what was going to happen. Then, instead of following the movement, helping it along and going with it, I became immobile, passive, to see what would happen. And both times it stopped. I was no longer helping the movement along, you see, I simply remained passive and it came to a halt, there was a sort of stabilization.
--
If we continue along this path, we will surely be able to do some worthwhile work, because its all new. Its quite new I never spoke of this with Sri Aurobindo because at the time I didnt have those experiences. I had all the psychological experiences, experiences in the mind, even the most material mind, or in the vital or the physical consciousness the physical CONSCIOUSNESS but not in the body. Thats something new, it started only three or four years ago.
All the rest is easy. Everything up to that point is settledsettled very nicely.
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Two letters of Sri Aurobindo on psychoanalysis)
Your practice of psycho-analysis was a mistake. It has, for the time at least, made the work of purification more complicated, not easier. The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing that one should associate with yoga. It takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mindto take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of Nature in its narrow termsruns riot here. Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can have a nasty influence and tend to make the mind and vital more and not less fundamentally impure than before.
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. If one wishes to purify and transform the nature, it is the power of these higher ranges to which one must open and raise to them and change by them both the subliminal and the surface being. Even this should be done with care, not prematurely or rashly, following a higher guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for otherwise the force that is drawn down may be too strong for an obscure and weak frame of nature. But to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul or obscure in it, is to go out of ones way to invite trouble. First, one should make the higher mind and vital strong and firm and full of light and peace from above; afterwards one can open up or even dive into the subconscious with more safety and some chance of a rapid and successful change.
The system of getting rid of things by anubhava [experience] can also be a dangerous one; for on this way one can easily become more entangled instead of arriving at freedom. This method has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by vicra [intellectual reflection] or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhak has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds only when there is a very strong will in the being towards realisation; for then indulgence brings a strong dissatisfaction and reaction, vairagya, and the will towards perfection can be carried down into the recalcitrant part of the nature.
The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability; for in order to reject anything from the being one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement. It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely and improperly with a rudimentary and insufficient knowledge in the system of psycho-analysis. The process of raising up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there can be no complete change without it. But it can truly succeed only when a higher light and force are sufficiently at work to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency that is held up for change. Many, under the pretext of anubhava, not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with their consent instead of rejecting it, find justifications for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with it, indulging its return, eternising it; afterwards when they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that they find themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate them.Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others out of sheer ignorance; but in yoga, as in life, ignorance is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge. Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising up of itself to give you as much of the anubhava as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a higher internal guidance.
***
I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing.4
Questioned about the meaning of these words, Mother said, "The state I was in was like a memory."
--
When Satprem published extracts from this conversation in the Ashram Bulletin of April 1962, Mother had this passage modified (over his protests). Instead of "Do not try to be virtuous," she put "Do not try to seem virtuous"; and she added: "There's a drawback here. People never understand anything, or rather they understand everything in their own way. They would take this sentence as an encouragement to get into mischief, to misbehave, to entertain wrong feelings, and then proclaim, 'We are the Lord's favorites!' ... There was something like it in one of Sri Aurobindo's letters, you remembera letter to people who wanted to bring all the impurities in themselves out to the surface; he told them that was definitely not the way!" (See Sri Aurobindo's two letters on psychoanalysis in the Addendum)
Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., XXIV. 1605 ff.
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, they were not surrendered in the way a psychic being can be, because they had no psychic in them. The psychic being is the result of that descent. Only human beings have it. And thats what makes humanity so superior to the gods. Theon insisted greatly on this: throughout his story, humans are far superior to gods and should not obey themthey should only be in contact with the Supreme in his aspect of perfect Love.
I dont know how to put it. To me, those gods always seemed (not those described in the Puranas, theyre different well, not so very different!) but the way Theon presented them, they seemed just like a bunch of marshmallows! Its not that they had no powerthey had a lot of power, but they lacked that psychic flame.
And to Theon, the God of the Jews and Christians was an Asura. This Asura wanted to be unique; and so he became the most terrible despot imaginable. Anatole France said the same thing (I now know that Anatole France had never read Theons story, but I cant imagine where he picked this up). Its in The Revolt of the Angels. He says that Satan is the true God and that Jehovah, the only God, is the monster. And when the angels wanted Satan to become the one and only God, Satan realized he was immediately taking on all Jehovahs failings! So he refused: Oh, nothank you very much! Its a wonderful story, and in exactly the same spirit as what Theon used to say. The very first thing I asked Anatole France (I told you I met him oncemutual friends introduced us), the first thing I asked him was, Have you ever read The Tradition? He said no. I explained why I had asked, and he was interested. He said his source was his own imagination. He had caught that idea intuitively.
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I mean, if they themselves discover the experiences they had in their past life, then its part of a whole inner, psychic awakening, and very useful. But if some guru or other comes along and tells you, Here, this was your karma. I dont think its useful, to put it mildly!
If you discover the line of a former life on your own, thats different; its part of an inner, psychic awakening, and its very good. But I dont think its helpful when someone sees something and comes and tells you, You know, you have been this, you have done that. I feel it makes things worse instead of betterit puts you back in touch with things you were in the process of eliminating.
(silence)
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately, absolute sincerity is the great deciding factor for those who predict or foresee. Unfortunately, because of peoples curiosity, their insistence and the pressure they exert (which very few can resist), an almost involuntary mechanism of inner imagination comes to add just that small missing element to something not seen with precision or exactness. Thats what causes flaws in prediction. Very few have the courage to say, Ah no, I dont know this, I dont see that, this eludes me. They dont even have the courage to say it to themselves! So then, with a tiny drop of imagination, which acts almost subconsciously, the vision or information gets rounded outit can turn out to be anything at all! Very few people can resist this tendency. I have known many, many psychics, many extraordinarily gifted beings, and only a handful were able to stop just at the point where their knowledge stopped. Or else they embellish. Thats what gives these faculties their slightly dubious quality. One would have to be a great saint, a great sage, and completely free from other peoples influences (I dont speak of those who seek fame: they fall into the most flagrant traps); because even goodwillwanting to satisfy people, please them, help themis enough to distort the vision.
(Smiling) Are you satisfied? Have I answered everything?
--
I have had hundreds and hundreds of experiences like thatinformed just at the last moment (not one second too soon)and in very different circumstances. Once in Paris I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel (I had resolved to attain union with the psychic presence, the inner Divine, within a certain number of months, and these were the last weeks I was thinking of nothing but that, engrossed in that alone). I lived near the Luxembourg Gardens and was going there for a stroll, to sit in the gardens that eveningstill indrawn. I came to a kind of intersectionnot a very sensible place to cross when youre interiorized! So, in that state, I started to cross when all of a sudden I had a shock, as if something had hit me, and I instinctively jumped back. As I jumped back a streetcar rushed by. I had felt the streetcar at a little more than arms length. It had touched my aura, the protective aura (that aura was very strong at the time I was deep into occultism and knew how to maintain it). My protective aura was touched, and it literally threw me backwards, just like a physical shock. Accompanied by the drivers insults!
I leapt back just in time, and the streetcar passed by.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Only its perfectly true that to deal with those realms one must either be fully protected by a guru, a real guru, a man with knowledge, or else have purity (not saintliness), an unmixed vital and mental purity. Very, very often, bhaktas [devotees] of Sri Aurobindo or mewhen they are sincere, truly sincere, that is, people of great spiritual purityhave dozens of beings appear to them, saying, I am Sri Aurobindo. It happens all the time, with all the right external appearancesits very easy for such beings to put on a disguise. It takes the inner psychic purity not to be deceivedyou invariably FEEL something that makes it impossible for you to be duped. But otherwise, many, many people are taken in.
I dont like to talk about this because people here have no discrimination; they would be left with nothing but fear and would no longer believe in anything, forever asking me, Oh, isnt this a trick? Which paralyzes everything. Thats why I didnt speak about that in this Talk.
0 1962-05-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(A bit later, regarding the Talk of August 22, 1956, to be published in the next Bulletin, in which Mother says: When you are in a condition to receive it, you receive from the Divine the TOTALITY of the relationship you are CAPABLE of having; it is neither a share nor a part nor a repetition, but exclusively and uniquely the relationship each one is capable of having with the Divine. Thus, from the psychological point of view, YOU ALONE have this direct relationship with the Divine. Mother then adds, in a voice that seems to come from far, far away:)
One is all alone with the Supreme.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Later, when I had that second vision April 3, 1962, I saw that the same being was behind this would-be Sri Aurobindo (and with a whole group organized around himpeople, ceremonies and so on). So from that I concluded that the thing had been developing. But when I first encountered those people [in 1959] it was merely something in the Subconscient and the effect was only psychological (an hour or two was enough to sort things out and put them in order). It didnt affect my health. But this time.
So it was in 59 that I first saw them, and it must have been the end of June or the beginning of July. This note [the desk-calendar page] is what gave me the clue, because I know that the other experience [of Sri Aurobindo in the subtle physical] came a few weeks later.
0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the reason behind the idea was my physical condition. I hadnt thought of Sujata at first; I simply saw I dont know. Im tired all the time, its true. My reserves are all used up. Anything extra exhausts me. And on top of it, theres also a discouraging psychological state. For one thing, my nights are totally unconscious the mind turns round and round and I cant sleep. My meditations are always the same. You know, the feeling of nothing, nothing, nothing. So I think the cause of all this lies in the kind of physical life I lead.2
A lack of vitality.
--
(After a silence) Among those who have gone beyond the stage of needing successive reincarnations to develop their psychic beings, among those whose souls are conscious, fully developed, there are some who (what shall I say?) who are chosen or destined to participate in a certain terrestrial action. And in the process of reincarnation, there is always always some degree of confusion and disarray, you see. I can speak of my own case, if you like; despite every precaution, certain kinds of confusion couldnt be avoided and of course this complicated the work. It was the same for Sri Aurobindo. And all this confusion sometimes greatly disrupts the work.
But there are a certain number of beingsnot manywho have come back on earth ONLY to take part in a particular work, in a particular way. And outer things, personal and individual things, are virtually sacrificed to that. Certain faculties, for instance, whose source is the higher entity, faculties that in an ordinary life would result in a measure of power or fame or success or realization, are placed under conditions where their outer effect is subordinated to the needs of a particular work.
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the past, a dream like that would nag me for hours, I would worry, wondering what calamities were going to befall me (this was long, long agoages ago). But that was idiotic, as I later understood; its a certain something in the subconscient, a symbolic form of well, of certain bad psychological habits we have, thats all. And I used to torment myself: How can I get rid of this? (Were all loaded with a multitude of such weaknesses built into the body.) And then through experience I understood I saw it was merely certain bad habits.
The only thing to do is not torment yourself and to say to the Lord (in all sincerity, of course), Its up to You. Rid me of this. And it is very effective. Very effective. At times I have had old things like that dissolved in a flash; certain inveterate little habitsso stupid, but so ingrained you cant get rid of them. Then, while doing japa or walking or meditating or whatever, suddenly the flame flares up and (you have really had enough of it; it disgusts you, you want it to change, you really want the change) and you say to the Lord, I cant do it on my own. (You very sincerely know you cant do it; you have tried and tried and tried and have achieved exactly nothingyou cant do it.) Well then, I offer it to YouYou do it. Just like that. And all at once you see the thing fading away. It is simply wonderful. You know how Sri Aurobindo used to take away someones pain? Its exactly the same. Certain habits bound up with the bodys formation.
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Events can be changed: wherever the state of consciousness comes into play, you can change events. I have had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of examples of that, as I have had the experience of changing a persons state of consciousness3 and the resulting circumstances of that state of consciousness. All that belongs to the realm of psychological life; but what I am speaking of is this (Mother vigorously strikes the table).
There is indeed the case of Madame Thons sandals, which came and put themselves on her feet instead of her feet going and putting themselves in the sandals, but that that belongs to yet another realm. It wasnt what you would call a natural phenomenon: she was applying her will and her action, and the substance of the sandals was becoming receptive. But does that mean the world will be that way? I dont know.
0 1962-06-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, this is much more easily expressed in psychological terms psychologically, its very simple, crystal clear but even MATERIALLY its like that.
***
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
None of those beings, those gods and deities of various pantheons, have the same rapport with the Supreme that man has; for man has a psychic being, in other words, the Supremes presence within him. These gods are emanationsindependent emanationscreated for a special purpose and a particular action which they fulfill SPONTANEOUSLY; they do it not with a sense of constant surrender to the Divine but simply because thats what they are, and why they are, and all they know is what they are. They dont have the conscious link with the Supreme that man hasman carries the Supreme within himself.
That makes a considerable difference.
--
I.e., with the psychic being or soul IN MAN, the direct incarnation of the Supreme in man: "This has come with humankind."
Satprem subsequently asked Mother:
--
Vedism is in contact with the gods and, THROUGH THE GODS, with the Supreme; but it is not in direct contact with the Supreme there is no inner, psychic contact. That's what Sri Aurobindo says (I myself know nothing about it!). But with the Vedanta and the devotees of Krishna, it is the god within: they had a direct contact with the god within (as in the Gita).
Shortly afterwards, Satprem asked:
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Given the state he was in, it made NO difference to him whether he was dead or alive; thats what was interesting! He remained in a blissful, trusting, peaceful state and I probably would have gently led him either to the psychic world or elsewhere, according to the indication I received as to what he had to do. He would never have known he was dead.2
This opened a door for me.3
--
Later, Mother commented: "This experience is interesting. He would have been able to EXIST in a psychic state ( psychically, of course, one is immortal), he would have existed not knowing that he was dead ... if they hadn't burned him."
Recall the conversation of June 12: "I don't know whether I am dead or alive.... A type of life vibration which is completely independent of.... I can't say 'I am alive,' it's something else entirely."
--
One week later, Mother added: "It has worked out: he has gone to the psychic domain for a while (I think it's only for a while) to concentrate."
***
0 1962-07-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But after this prologue, I intend to tackle the problem practically, to speak of the moment when people reach the limits of the mind, when they start going round in circles and find nothing; then I will tell them of zones beyond the mind, and of what can be discovered when one goes within: mental silence. Ill talk about a practical discipline. That was my idea. My idea isnt to give an abstract explanation but to take up yoga from a practical angle: try to do this, and heres what you may expectmental transformation, change in the vital, dreams, etc. All practical things. Id like to explore the psychological aspect.
Thats good. From the standpoint of the Work, of what you create, of course its very good, very interesting; it needs to be said, it MUST be said. But is the gentleman who wrote you that letter capable of understanding anything of it? Thats where I put a question mark.
--
I see a psychological book. I mean, someone doing research on himself, seeking to understand. Not a philosophical but a psychological booksomeone whos experimenting on himself.
What!
--
No, go ahead. Theyre simply going to tell you, Your book is very nice, but it drags in places. If youll let us cut them out (Mother laughs). Thats it. And whatever is truly psychological, well, theyll take big scissors and (Mother laughs).
But all that can be published separately.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being the part of us thats organized around the divine center, the small divine flame deep within human beings. You see, this divine flame exists inside each human being, and little by little, through all the incarnations and karma and so on, a being takes shape around it, which Thon called the psychic being. And when the psychic being reaches its full development, it becomes a kind of bodily or at any rate individual raiment of the soul. The soul is a portion of the Supreme the jiva is the Supreme in individual form. And since there is only one Supreme, there is only one jiva, but with millions of individual forms. This jiva begins as a divine sparkimmutable, eternal and infinite too (infinite in possibility rather than dimension). And through all the incarnations, whatever has received and responded to the divine Influence progressively crystallizes around the jiva, which becomes more and more conscious as well as more and more organized. Ultimately it becomes a completely conscious individual being, master of itself and moved exclusively by the divine Will. That is to say, an individual expression of the Supreme. This is what we call the psychic being.
Generally speaking, those who practice yoga have either a fully developed, independent psychic being which has taken birth again to do the Divines work, or else a psychic being in its last incarnation wanting to complete its development and realize itself.
This is what aspires, this is what has the contact.
So, when youre told become conscious of your psychic being, its for the being formed by external Nature to contact the divine Presence through the psychic being. Then the psychic takes charge of the whole being; in fact, it is the inner Guide. Well, when I was a little child, this person (which wasnt a person, but an expression of a certain consciousness and will) was actually the psychic presence; there was something else behind, but thats a rather special case. And what happened to me happens to everyone whose psychic being has deliberately incarnated: the psychic being guides your life, and if you let it act freely, it arranges ALL circumstancesits truly wonderful! I have seennot only for myself but for so many people who also had conscious psychic beings that everything is arranged with a view to not at all your personal egoistic satisfaction, but your ultimate progress and realization. And all circumstances of life, even those you call disastrous, are there to lead you where you have to go as swiftly as possible.
Yours is more than a psychic being. As I have told you, your psychic being is accompanied by something which has come for a special purpose, with a particular intellectual powera luminous, conscious powerwhich has come from regions higher than the mind, regions Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, to do a special work. It is here (gesture enveloping the chest and head) and, along with the psychic, its trying to organize everything. This, in your psychic, is what you are feeling. It must have great power. Dont you feel a kind of luminous force?
Oh, yes, I feel it!
--
Its psychic, the psychic contact.
Oh, then its not going to be so difficult.
0 1962-07-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From 1911 or 12, up to 1914, there was the whole series of inner experiences, psychic experiences, preparing me to meet Sri Aurobindo (so this ran parallel to my mental development).
In practice, these periods overlap, but approximately every twelve years a particular type of development predominated, in this order: consciousness first, then the vital (mainly from the aesthetic point of view, but a study of sensations as well), then the mind, then spiritual realization. And in between the vital and mental phases came the brief period of occultism, serving both as a transition and a basis for spiritual development.
0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, to them concrete means telling what Sri Aurobindo did physically. Thats what they call concrete. psychology is something abstract for them.
Oh, I dont know what to do!
--
psychology: thats abstract. What they want is: on such and such a date he went to this place, saw these people and did thisall the most external and banal sorts of things. Even yoga boils down to: he sat down and stayed there for so many hours, he had this vision, he tried out that method, he did asanas and breathing exercises. That, for them, is concrete. That and that alone. psychology is thoroughly abstractthoroughly. Its unreal to them.
But Ive tried to be as concrete as possible! Like cutting up a rat on a dissecting table to see whats inside it.
0 1962-08-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And each one is beginning to reveal its own particular nature. There are those stemming from peoples thoughts (I sense them in my body, not in the mind: the material consequence of peoples psychological state, and even their state of health). Some things are general and last a bit longer; others are momentary, lasting only a few seconds. The first step is to study the different vibrational qualitiesyou could practically draw diagrams: if we had a machine sensitive enough to record these things, it would produce all kinds of zigs and zags.2 Certain vibrations immediately stop or change or are dissolved or repelled. Others are adopted, as it were, and transformed. The majority are simply pushed back and worked on from a distancequite a distance! I keep them at a fair distance (Mother laughs). Very few are let in. But some are let in for the sake of the experience, to see how much they upset the body. Theres also the effect of peoples permanent auras: I know a certain person is arriving by his auras effect on the body; because (laughing) each vibration has its particular effect on the bodyperfectly prosaic things, maybe, but by studying them you realize that each thing has its own law.
The interchange of vibrations among people is something tremendous, and were swimming in it all, all, all the timeeven when were alone! Because these things travel: for instance, its enough for someones thought to come and strike against yours, and for you to think of him (which means responding)there is an immediate effect in the body. So to imagine that solitude would make yoga any easier is sheer childishness.
0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I have noticed that now. You see, the body used to be like a little child, complaining when things werent right; it wouldnt revolt, but it moaned. But this time its only reaction was, Why am I not transformed? Why am I not transformed? I want to be transformed, I want to be transformed. Not with words, because there was nothing mental about it, but simply with a kind of tension the tension you feel when the door to the psychic being is shut and you push, push, push to get to the other side. The same thing, the same kind of tension: pushing, pushing, pushing towards what? I dont know. We call it the transformation because we dont know what it isif we did know, it would mean we had already begun to realize it. Theres a faint impression of what that state could be (but its very, very faint). And theres this feeling of tension, of pushingpleading and imploring. That was the bodys only reaction this time, nothing else, not even any sorrow. Because at one time something like fifty years agoit used to say, Why do I deserve this? and similar stupidities; thats been gone for more than fifty years. Then for a long while after, something disordered, unharmonious or nasty could bring me sorrow; thats gone too. But thats recent, it disappeared with the experience of April 13. And now: transformation, transformation, transformation; thats the only idea left, the only will.
(silence)
0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, at the beginning you remember very, very little. As you advance, you remember more I am referring to the experience of the psychic being.
Of course, I am not speaking of what the universal Mother can know, thats quite another category! I am speaking of the experience of the psychic being, the purely terrestrial experience. Well, very few things seem in fact, none of them seem alien or unknown to me. The human state of mind, ah yes! Since my early childhood, I have been flabbergasted by the way people think and feelit seemed monstrous. But as for the circumstances and events of life, thats all more or less old hat.
The experiences that left the most acute impressions on me (Mother makes a poignant gesture)you know, the kind of things that make you say, Oh, no, not that again, Ive had enough!are connected with my lives as a monarch: empress, queen and the like oh! Those are painful impressions, the most painful of all. And I have a keen memory of a resolution taken in my last life as an empress: Never again! I said. Ive had enough, I want no more of it! Id rather be not even Id rather be, I chose deliberately: I WANT to be an obscure being in an obscure family, free at last to do what I want! And thats the first thing I remembered this time: Yes, its an obscure family, an obscure being in an obscure milieu, so I may be free to do what I want; there isnt a horde of people watching me and spying on everything I do and plaguing me with rules about what I ought to be doing.
--
Thats the first thing I told Sri Aurobindo: This was the resolution made by my psychic being (my psychic being was in a certain person I know who). And when I left, it declared categorically: I want NO MORE of this!
The rest doesnt matter much to me, it didnt leave such an acute impression.
--
For a long, long time, that was also the one thing I felt was worth living forConsciousness. When I met Thon and came to understand the mechanism, I also understood why I wasnt conscious at a certain level. I think Ive told you how I spent ten months one year working to connect two layerstwo layers of consciousness; the contact wasnt established and so I couldnt have the spontaneous experience of a whole spectrum of things. Madame Thon told me, Its because theres an undeveloped layer between this part and that part. I was very conscious of all the gradations: Thon had explained it all in the simplest terms, so you didnt need to be, as I said, a genius to understand. He had made a quadruple division, and each of them was divided into four, and then again into four, making innumerable divisions of the being; but with that mental simplification you could make in-depth psychological studies of your own being. And so by observation and elimination I eventually discovered that between this and that (gesture indicating two levels of Mothers consciousness), there was an undeveloped layerit wasnt conscious. So I worked for ten months on nothing but that: absolutely no results. I didnt care, I kept right on, telling myself, Well, it may take me fifty years to get anywhere, who knows. And then I left for the country (I was living in Paris at the time). I lay down on the grass, and all at once, with the contact of earth and grass, poof! There was a sort of inner explosion the link was established, and full consciousness came, along with all the ensuing experiences. Well, I said to myself, it was worth all the trouble!
And I am sure thats how the work is done, slowly, imperceptibly, like a chick being formed in the egg: you see the shell, you see only the shell, you dont know whats inside, whether its just an egg or a chick (normally, I meanof course, you could see through with special instruments) and then the beak goes peck-peck! And then cheep! Out comes the chick, just like that. Its the same thing exactly for the contact with the psychic being. For months on end, sometimes years, you may be sitting before a closed door, push, push, pushing, and feeling, feeling the pressure (it hurts!), and theres nothing, no results. Then all at once, you dont know why or how, you sit down and poof! Everything bursts wide open, everything is ready, everything is doneits over, you emerge into a full psychic consciousness and become intimate with your psychic being. Then everything changeseverything changesyour life completely changes, its a total reversal of your whole existence.
In the end, its best not to worry, not to get agitated or depressed (thats the worst of all), not to get worked up or impatient or disgustedjust be calm and say, It will come when it comes, but with an unyielding stubbornness. Do what you feel has to be done, and keep on with it, keep on even if it seems utterly futile.
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And as all the stories tell us, sometimes the gods come to earth to have some fun. I know that some come and take on a human body to have a psychic being but not all. Most of them simply enjoy having human contact. In any case, they have bodies in their own domain theres no sense of being bodiless. They have bodiesimmortal ones.
Yes, but in the Supermind as well?
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But these are all psychological transformations. What is the knowledge needed to transform Matter, the body?
For the moment, mon petit, I cant say anything about that; I just dont know.
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have come to understand that the Chinese are a lunar racetheir origin is the moon. They came to earth when the moon got too cold and they could no longer exist there. This is something I saw at the beginning of the century and my impression was further intensified when I went to China.2 They are a lunar race. And they gave me the feeling of people who lack a psychic being: they are cold, ice-cold. But wonderfully intellectual!
I met another Chinese a few years ago, a man with a spiritual life. He came to meet me and talked for an hour about China. It made me understand China externally as if I had been born and lived my whole life there. I saw they were people who have attained the summit of the intellect, and who have a creative powerinventors. He told me, No people in the world could understand Sri Aurobindo intellectually as well as the Chinese. And it was luminously true. The highest intellectual comprehension, really at its peak.
--
They are people with no feelings. I dont know if theyve picked up a psychic being since theyve been on earth (there are all kinds of mixtures, you see; theres no such thing as a pure race any more), but they are still ice-cold. Difficult.
They could come into contact with Sri Aurobindos thought but not their troops! I dont know whether the new Chinese are much interested in philosophy. Its better they dont come!
--
Its like that famous Nirvanayou can find it behind everything. Theres a psychic nirvana, a mental nirvana, even a vital nirvana. I think I already told you about the experience I had with Tagore in Japan. Tagore always used to say that as soon as he started meditating he entered Nirvana, and he asked me to meditate with him. We sat together in meditation. I was expecting to make a very steep ascent, but he simply went into his MIND, and there (what I do, you see, is tune in to the person I am meditating with, identify with him thats how I know what happens). Well, he started meditating, and everything quite rapidly came to a halt, became absolutely immobile (this he did very well), and from there he sort of fell backwards, and it was Nothingness. And he could remain in that state indefinitely! We did in fact stay like that for a rather long time; I dont remember how long, three quarters of an hour or an hour, but anyway it was long enough. I was keeping alert the whole time to see if, by chance, he would go on into something else, but there he stayedhe stayed there nice and calm, without stirring. Then he came back, his mind started up again, and that was that.
I said nothing to him.
--
To have it (just to give you an idea) took me a year of exclusive concentration on finding that within myself that is, to enter into contact with the immanent God. I did nothing but that, thought of nothing but that, wanted nothing but that. There was even a rather funny instance, because I had resolved to do it (I had already been working for a very long time, of course; Madame Thon had told me about my mission on earth and all that, so you can imagine I am talking about the psychic being belonging to this present creation, this formationMo ther touches her body) anyway, it was New Years Eve and I decided: Within the coming year. I had a large, almost square studio, a bit bigger than this room, with a door leading onto a patio. I opened the little door and looked at the sky and there, just as I looked, was a shooting star. You know the tradition: if you formulate an aspiration just as you see a shooting star, before the star disappears, it will be realized within the year. And there, just as I opened the door, was a shooting star I was totally in my aspiration: Union with the inner Divine. And before the end of December of the following year, I had the experience.
But I was entirely concentrated on that. I was in Paris, and I did nothing else but that; when I walked down the street, I was thinking only of that. One day, as I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel, I was almost run over (Ive told you this), because I was thinking of nothing but thatconcentrating, concentrating like sitting in front of a closed door, and it was painful! (intense gesture to the chest) Physically painful, from the pressure. And then suddenly, for no apparent reason I was neither more concentrated nor anything elsepoof! It opened. And with that. It didnt just last for hours, it lasted for months, mon petit! It didnt leave me, that light, that dazzling light, that light and immensity. And the sense of THAT willing, THAT knowing, THAT ruling the whole life, THAT guiding everythingsince then, this sense has never left me for a minute. And always, whenever I had a decision to make, I would simply stop for a second and receive the indication from there.
0 1962-11-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it isnt the same as going within when you want to find your psychic being, for instance. It isnt the same movement. When you go within to find your psychic being, you feel a shift of position; while in this case theres no shiftingyou stay where you are.
You go beyond time, you go beyond space.
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One day (for me now, everything is part of an extremely precise play of forces) and one day I had a sort of sensation of one of those profound upheavals something very widespread and full of GREAT pain. So something in me spontaneously sprang up from the individual soul, the deep psychic being, and said, Oh! Lord, is it Your will that we have this experience again? Then everything stabilized, stopped, and there was a splendor of Light. But I received no response. Except for that splendor of Light something triumphant, you know. But it may just as well mean that no matter what happens, this will always be therewhich is obvious.
(silence)
0 1962-11-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And just last time, when I told you I wasnt very well, it happened during the night, and it was the equivalent of what you write here, but purely material, in the body. In your book you describe it rather psychologically, like a phenomenon of consciousness, that is; but here its a phenomenon of the cells. So hurry to bring me the triumph! (Mother laughs) I was telling myself just this morning how exhausting it was, this perpetual battleoh, what a battle.
So when you write of the victory, perhaps I too will do a victory dance!
0 1962-12-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How about youdid it take a psychological or a physical form?
psychological. It fell on me all at once, and nothing seemed to make sense any more; a sort of disgust, of decomposition as you say.
Yes; decomposition, disintegration.
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are four classifications of terrestrial formations: mineral, vegetal, animal, and psycho-intellectual or human-divine. Among the four, in order, there are no divisions.
Divine unity, embodied and manifested by collective humanity.
--
Yes, thats the superman, whom he calls psycho-intellectual. The superman the only legitimate cult.
It all seems a bit flimsy.
0 1963-01-12, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive had a very interesting experience (not personal). Did you know Benjamin3? His psychic being had left him quite some time ago and, as a result, to the surface consciousness he seemed a bit derangedhe wasnt deranged but diminished. And he lived, as I said, out of habit. The physical consciousness still held a minimum of vital and mind and he lived out of habit. But the remarkable thing is that sometimes, for a few seconds, he would live admirably, in full light, while at other times he couldnt even control his gestures. Then he left altogether: all the accumulated energy dwindled little by little, little by little, and whatever remained left his body. It was just on his birthday, on December 30 (the night of December 30). He left. So they did as is always done: they cleaned his room, took out the furniture. Since then, there had been no sign of him. Yesterday evening, after dinner (which is about the same time he left twelve days ago), I was in concentration, resting, when suddenly here comes a very agitated Benjamin who tells me, Mother, theyve taken all the furniture out of my room! What am I to do now!? I told him gently, Do not fret, you dont need anything any more. Then I put him to rest and sent him to join the rest of his being.
Which means it took twelve days for all his elements to form again. You see, they burned his body. (He was Christian, but his familyhis wife is alive and his brother toofound it less costly to let us handle it than to bury him as a Christian! So they had him cremated.) We cremated him, but I demanded a certain interval of time,4 although in his case it was really a gradual exhaustion and nothing much remained in his body; nonetheless, even then the consciousness is flung out of the cells violentlyit took twelve days to form again. It wasnt his soul (it had already left) but the spirit of his body that came to me, the body consciousness gathered in a well-dressed, neat Benjamin with his hair neatly brushed. He was quite trim when he came to me, just as he would have been in life: he always wanted to be well-groomed and impeccable to see me, that was his way. It took twelve days to gather together because I didnt see to it (I can do it in a few hours but only if I see to it), but in his case, his soul having been at rest for a long time, it didnt matter much. So over twelve days it took form again and when he was ready (laughing), he came to reoccupy his room! And there was no furniture left, nothing!
0 1963-06-08, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There were no psychological perceptions (what I call psychological perceptions are, for instance, vibrations of love, vibrations of peace, vibrations of light, vibrations of knowledge, of power), they werent there in that form, it wasnt that. Still, all that must have been there, because there were many things, many things that were all one thing, but one thing which assumed different forms; but I didnt see the forms, I didnt see the colors. It was only a question of pure sensation. A pure vibratory sensation: only vibrations, vibrations, vibrations, on a colossal scale.
It is a new experience.
--
You see, when I had that experience of the pulsations of Love in April last year, I had the perception of the color, the psychological perception of the state I was in (how can I explain?), for instance, the quality of the vibration of Love (something that has absolutely nothing to do with earthly things). At the time, I was That, I was those vibrations, but I was fully aware of the quality of those vibrations, and remained so for monthsthis is completely different! It was nothing but an action. NOTHING but an action. And an action, you know, in which the human body is less than an ant. Much less than an ant: an imperceptible point. Yet there seemed to be ONLY this body! As if this body alone were there and it were going through that. This body was a body it was THE body! And that point that comforting point of ecstasywas very small. Very small. But it was there, quite insistent, very conscious, telling me, Dont interfere; leave it to me entirely, all is wellsee, all is well. Very small, very small. Yet it was my body: I tell you, my head still seems swollen!
Strange.
0 1963-07-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately, its simply a question of consciousness: people (ordinary people) have a consciousness that reaches up to a certain point (a point not very far away generally), and whats beyond it, to them, is the unconscious (although its full of consciousness!), but its unconscious to them because they cant make contact. Its the same as when at night you wake up in another state of being, become conscious and have a dream (what people call a dream, meaning an experience), then you return to your ordinary consciousness, and as there is no contact between the two consciousnesses, you dont even remember your dream. But you can, through methodical development, extend your consciousness and make a connection between the two; and the minute the connection is mader to bring you into contact with your soul, your psychic b, it takes very little to remember everything. But whats difficult is to extend your consciousness.
Basically, the gurus real power is to fill up the gaps! To bring you into contact: when you are in the higher planes, to bring you into contact with the Highest. Or to bring you into contact with your soul, your psychic being within, or to bring you into contact with the Supreme but that not many can do.
(silence)
--
Only little by little, little by little do you learn the true functioning; because those things that are added on and spoil everything arent deliberate additions arising from a desire or impatience or overenthusiasmits none of that, its due to a habit. Its quite simply a habit. That is, the psychological element is purified and doesnt interfere: its just a habit. The SUBSTANCE has the habit of doing things that way, and so it does them that way. So it must be taught not to stir, to keep quiet, so that when the Vibration comes, the something that always rushes forward doesnt do so.
Its very interesting.
0 1963-07-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was M., his psychic being.
Ever so lovely! All luminousluminous with a golden lightand so happy, so glad! Like a baby, no bigger than this (gesture). Waving his arms and legs about, so happy! He stayed therestayed put. So naturally, I received him and did the needful.
--
But this one [M.] knew very little, he wasnt an intellectual, he was a man of action, very psychicvery much so! Lovely, oh, lovely! He was like a little child, naked, of course, a baby this big, with small arms, small legsdancing about, he was glad, laughing and laughing, he was happy. And all luminous. I immediately told his son (he did a pranam and rose with his eyes full of tears), I told him, Dont weep, he is now where he wants to be and perfectly at rest. I didnt tell him the storyhe wouldnt have understood a thing!
(Then Mother reads two letters by Sri Aurobindo which will appear in a future Bulletin:)
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The last one is probably not within everybodys reach (!) but the first three are quite obvious I know it works like that. The only point that bothered me (I told you once) is that it isnt a purely psychological experience and that enduring pain causes wear and tear in the body. But I inquired with the doctor (I casually made him talk), and he told me that if the body is taught very young to bear pain, its capacity to bear increases so much that it can effectively withstand illnesses, which means that the illness doesnt follow its course, it aborts. Thats precious.
The last experience (which Ive had these last few days), in which apparently there was a hitch (it wasnt really one) was a sort of demonstration. I told you what it was, you remember: its like a purge of all the vibrations that are false vibrations, that arent the pure and simple response to the supreme Influence (all that in the cells still responds to the vibrations of falsehood, either from habit or from the people around or the food takenfifty thousand things). Then, with an aspiration or a decision, almost a prayer for purification coming from the body, something happens which, naturally, upsets the balance; the imbalance in turn brings about a general discomfort. The form discomfort takes is habitually the same: first, pains and all kinds of sensations I need not describe; if that state goes on developing, if it is allowed to assume its full proportions, it results in the past it resulted in a faint. But this time, I followed the process for about two hours from the moment I got up: the struggle between the new balance, the new Influence that was getting established, and the resistance of all the existing elements forced to go away. That created a sort of conflict. The consciousness remained very clear the consciousness of the BODY remained very clear, very quiet, perfectly trusting. So for two hours I was able to follow the process (while going on with all my usual activities, without changing anything), until I felt, or rather was told sufficiently clearly that the Lord wanted my body to be completely immobile for a while so that He might complete His work. But I am not all alone: there are other people here to help me and watch over everything (but I dont say or explain anything to them, those are things I dont talk about I dont say what goes on, I dont say anything), so I sat there wondering, Is it really and truly indispensable? (Mother laughs) Then I felt the Lord exert a little more pressure, which heightened the intensity of the conflict, so that I had all the signs of fainting I understood (!) I stood up, let my body moan a little to make it plain it didnt feel too well (!) and I stretched out. Then I was immobile, and in that immobility, I saw the work that was being donea work that cannot be done if you go on moving about. I saw the work. It took nearly half an hour; in half an hour it was over. Which means there is really there is a fact I cannot doubt, even if all the surrounding thoughts and forces contradict it: I cannot doubt that the consciousness is increasing more and more the consciousness in the body. It is growing more and more precise, luminous, exactQUIETvery peaceful. Yet very conscious of a TREMENDOUS battle against millennial habits. Do you follow?
0 1963-08-13a, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an old "Playground Talk" of 1950 and noted from memory by a disciple, which Mother asks Satprem to scrap. The subject was Nirvana, which one was to reachor so the notation saidby withdrawing all one's energies into the psychic being or soul.)
None of that is true!
In the first place, we should say that each realm has an energy of its own. But what people generally feel as energy is vital energy; and vital energy (hem!) is vital! Therefore to say that those who withdraw withdraw all their energies and consciousness into the psychic to attain Nirvana is nonsense!
There is a nirvana behind the vital, a nirvana behind the psychic, a nirvana behind the mind; there is a nirvana on every level, even behind the physicalits death. And those who withdraw, who try to attain Nirvana, NEVER go into the psychic the psychic is something essentially linked to divine manifestation, not to divine nonintervention, not to Nirvana.
All that is fit for the wastepaper basket!1
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, of course, when I say that, people imagine its a psychic or mental vision thats not it, I dont mean that! I mean a PHYSICAL vision, with these very eyes (Mother touches her eyes). But a TRUE physical vision, instead of the distorted vision we have now.
This means, basically, that the true reality is far more marvelous than we can imagine, because all that we can imagine is always a transformation or glorification of what we see but thats not it. Thats not it!
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo told me that there are three difficulties, and they are the three things that have to be conquered for the earth to be ready (this is from the purely outward point of view, I am not speaking of psychological factors): government, money, health.
Of the three, health is the most directly connected to the inner transformation, but not completely so because it constantly depends on what comes in from outside: influences, vibrations the contagion from the outside. You have to eat: everything you receive along with foodits fantastic! Theres so much that eating represents a considerable work the physical digestion is nothing, but the work of assimilation and adaptation of all the rest is considerable. Consequently, of the three, health is the most directly under the influence of the inner progress, but, as I said, not completely so. Therefore, that too has to be conquered.
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, the remarkable thing is that the Vibration (what we could call the quality of the vibration that comes from the Lord) is constructive: it constructs, it is peaceful and luminous; while that other vibration, of desire and such like, complicates, destroys and confuses, it twists thingsconfuses and distorts them, twists them. And it takes away the light: it makes for a dullness, which can be intensified with violent movements to the point of very dark shadows. But even where there is no passion, where passion doesnt interfere, thats how it is. You see, the physical reality has become nothing but a field of vibrations mingling together and, unfortunately, clashing together too, in conflict with one another. And the clash, the conflict, is the climax of that kind of turmoil, of disorder and confusion created by certain vibrations, which are ultimately vibrations of ignorance (they come because people dont know, they are vibrations of ignorance), and are too small, too narrow, too limitedtoo short. The problem isnt seen from a psychological standpoint at all: its nothing but vibrations.
If we look at it from a psychological standpoint On the mental plane, its very easy; on the vital plane, its not too difficult; on the physical plane, its a little heavier, because desires are passed off as needs. But there too, there has been a field of experience these last few days: the study of medical and scientific conceptions on the bodys makeup, its needs, and whats good or bad for it. And all this, in its essence, again boils down to the same question of vibrations. It was quite interesting: there was an appearance (because all things as the ordinary consciousness sees them are nothing but appearances), there was an appearance of food poisoning (mushrooms that are thought to have been bad). It was the object of a particular study to find out whether there was something absolute about the poisoning, or whether it was relative, that is, based on ignorance, a wrong reaction and the absence of the true Vibration. And the conclusion was as follows: its a question of proportion between the amount, the sum of the vibrations that belong to the Supreme, and the sum of the vibrations that still belong to darkness. Depending on the proportion, the poisoning appears as something concrete, real, or else as something that can be eliminated, in other words, that doesnt resist the influence of the Vibration of Truth. And it was very interesting, because, immediately, as soon as the consciousness became aware of the cause of the trouble in the bodys functioning (the consciousness perceived where it came from and what it was), immediately the observation began, with the idea: Lets see what happens. First set the body perfectly at rest with the certainty (which is always there) that nothing happens except by the Lords Will and that the effect too is the Lords Will, all the consequences are the Lords Will, and consequently one should be very still. So the body is very still: untroubled, not agitated, it doesnt vibrate, nothingvery still. Once this is achieved, to what extent are the effects unavoidable? Because a certain quantity of matter that contained an element unfavorable to the bodys elements and life was absorbed, what is the proportion between the favorable and the unfavorable elements, or between the favorable and the unfavorable vibrations? And I saw very clearly: the proportion varies according to the amount of cells in the body that are under the direct Influence, that respond to the supreme Vibration alone, and the amount of other cells that still belong to the ordinary way of vibrating. It was very clear, because I could see all the possibilities, from the ordinary mass [of cells], which is completely upset by that intrusion and where you have to fight with all the ordinary methods to get rid of the undesirable element, to the totality of the cellular response to the supreme Force, which renders the intrusion perfectly innocuous. But this is still a dream for tomorrowwere on the way. But the proportion has become rather favorable (I cant say all-powerful, far from it, but rather favorable), so that the consequences of the ill-being didnt last very long and the damage was, so to say, minimal.
But all the experiences nowadays, one after the otherall the PHYSICAL experiences, of the bodypoint to the same conclusion: everything depends on the proportion between the elements that respond exclusively to the Supremes Influence, the half-and-half elements, on the road to transformation, and the elements that still follow Matters old vibratory process. The latter appear to be decreasing in number, to a great extent, but there are still enough of them to bring about unpleasant effects or unpleasant reactionsthings that are untransformed, that still belong to ordinary life. But all problems, whether psychological or purely material or chemical, all problems boil down to this: they are nothing but questions of vibrations. And there is the perception of that totality of vibrations and of what we could call (in a very rough and approximative way) the difference between the constructive and the destructive vibrations. We can say (to put it very simply) that all the vibrations that come from the One and express Oneness are constructive, while all the complications of the ordinary, separative consciousness lead to destruction.
(long silence)
0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once the body is no longer you at all, once it is something that has been added and TACKED onto you, once it is that way and you look at it from above (a psychological above), then you can come down into it again as its all-powerful master.
You must come out of it first, then come down again.
0 1963-12-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Putting it into words takes a sort of contraction, which is a pitya pity. I dont know when there will be a means of expressing ourselves without that contraction. I remember, I am seeing again or reliving just now the face of that boy, that Italian (he is a thirty-five or forty-year-old man, but young within, very young psychically), and there was this consciousness kneading something within, putting things back into place but smoothly, without violence or clashes or reactions. And when I told him, Now its time to go, it wasnt at all one person saying to another, Its time to go, its as if I said to myself, Now its time to go. Its very odd. Rather new. Because it has become much more conscious; it had been like that in a sort of natural and spontaneous way of being for a long time, but now its becoming conscious.
And when there is For example, when there is a relaxation in someone, or when there is a tensing up, I feel it: something in me relaxes, or tenses up; but not in me here, like this (Mother in her armchair): in me THERE (Mother in the other person).
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But he has given W a new mantraa mantra to Kali, with the sound of Kali! Yet W isnt on Kalis side,3 not in the least! Its things of this sort that I dont understand in X. Whereas I know so well the kind of force, the quality of power that not only influences but can be manifested by one person or another, here or there. X seems to do it according to tradition: you must first turn to this divinity, then to that one, then regardless of the individuals quality. He doesnt seem to have a very great psychological insight into individuals.
When I sent him D. (you know, she is always ready to believe in any miraculous power), she went to him in good faith. He made outwardly every blunder that was needed to make her withdraw! So she withdrew.
0 1964-03-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This, in the realm of thought, is something that has been there for a very long timevery long, years and years: the shock that comes from outside exactly as if it were its YOUR thought, but it comes from over there, it isnt actually here; and then the response. Since soon after the beginning of the century, this work has been going on. Afterwards, there was all the psychic work, in the same way (gesture of widening): the identification and the response. Then the vital work, which I began with Sri Aurobindo when we were staying over there [at the Guest House]; then the physical work, but there its gropingly learning ones job. Now there is a sort of certainty (not absolute and constant, but not far away), a sort of certainty: you see, you come into contact with something, and then you know instantly what should be done and how it should be done; the vibration comes, meets a response, and goes back and this is going on every minute, all the time.
A sort of assurance and confirmation came last night with that experience.
0 1964-03-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All our endeavour is to make this consciousness and this will govern our lives and action and organise all our activities. It is the way in which the Ashram has been created. Since 1926 when Sri Aurobindo retired and gave me full charge of it (at that time there were only two rented houses and a handful of disciples) all has grown up and developed like the growth of a forest, and each service was created not by any artificial planning but by a living and dynamic need. This is the secret of constant growth and endless progress. The present difficulties come chiefly from psychological resistances in the disciples who have not been able to follow the rather rapid pace of the sadhana and the yielding to the intrusion of mental methods which have corrupted the initial working.
A growth and purification of the consciousness is the only remedy.
0 1964-03-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But for myself, I know: the first time I went away from here, in 1915 (and I left my psychic being here, I didnt take it with me I knew how to do it I left it behind), in spite of that, in spite of the link, when I came to the Mediterranean, suddenly I fell ill, dreadfully ill. I was constantly ill.
So I know, I know very well!
0 1964-03-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its only when the experience becomes mental and psychological that people understand it.
Perhaps the modern scientific mind that has studied atoms would understand better. Its the same kind of understanding as that of the scientist who analyzes the constitution of Matter. I distinctly feel it is an extension of that study and that its the only true approach for the most material part of Matter. Any psychological explanation is meaningless.1
This very morning, I was following the movement, observing the control this Vibration of Truth has in the body in the presence of certain disorders (very small things in the body, you know: discomforts, disorders), I was observing how this Vibration of Truth abolishes those disorders and discomforts. It was very clear, very obvious, and ABSOLUTELY REMOVED from any spiritual notion, from any religious notion, from any psychological notion, so that the person who possessed this knowledge of opposition of one vibration to the other very clearly didnt in any way need to be a disciple or someone with philosophical knowledge or anything at all: he only had to have mastered this in order to realize a perfectly harmonious existence.
It was absolutely concrete and irrefutable. It was a lived, absolute experience.
0 1964-07-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He has quite a considerable vital capacity. But the true solution lies in the psychic development. Besides, thats how doctors cure people, much more than through medicinesmuch more. With some doctors, when the patient comes into contact with them, he feels supported, helped.
(silence)
0 1964-08-08, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So these are poor words. The experience translates itself into words at a given moment: first, there is the intensity of the experience, then spontaneouslyspontaneouslyit takes the form of words, so I note them down. But the words are thin and flat, theyre poor. But its like when you are about to come into contact with your psychic being and you feel the egos obstruction; there comes a point when you push and push to get through, its so acute that you feel as if everything is going to burst. And in fact something does burst.
Its the same thing for the earth, the same experience.
0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, as long as all those things are on the psychological plane, its very comfortable; very comfortable in the sense that you have the key, not only the key to the understanding, but the key to the actionas long as you remain on that plane. But as soon as it becomes very material, you feel you know ABSOLUTELY nothing, that with all that they know, nothing has been found yethave they found the way of creating life out of inert matter? I havent heard of it.
Some claim to have done so.
--
But all this is the psychological plane, its very comfortable; as soon as you come down to Matter you feel the work is endless! You feel youre not moving forward and you dont even know what you should do to move forward. And when it becomes very acute, very tense like that, I invariably have an experience. But at the same time with the sensation that He is laughing, that Hes making fun of me: Youre still a child, you still need some playthings! So I am a good girl.
It is clearly a transitional periodits interminable! If I start thinking and remembering what Sri Aurobindo saidhe said it would take 300 years. We have some time to wait, we neednt hurry.
0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That is why some have preached that the only important moment is the present momentwhich isnt true in practice, but from the psychological point of view, it should be true. In other words, let us live every minute to the utmost of our possibility, without foreseeing or wanting or expecting or preparing the next minute. Because we are forever in a hurry-hurry-hurry and we do everything wrong. We live in an inner tension which is totally falsetotally false.
All those who tried to be wise have always said it (the Chinese have preached it, the Indians have preached it): live with the sense of Eternity. In Europe, too, they said you should contemplate the sky, the stars, identify with their infinitudeall of which makes you wide and peaceful.
0 1964-09-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It had rather seemed to me that they should be kept at a distance. With Thon, the adverse forces and hostile beings were often mentioned, they occupied a big place in self-development and in action. As for Sri Aurobindo, he used to say that that notion was useful mostly from the psychological and personal standpoint, because struggling with difficulties is easier when you see them as coming from outside, as an attack from outside, than if you think they are part of your own nature. Not that he denied their existence, far from it, but the path depends a lot on the attitude you take and on the mental construction you have, naturally.
Sri Aurobindo insisted rather on Oneness: he used to say that even what we consider to be the worst adversaries are still a form of the Supreme, which, deliberately or not, consciously or not, helps in the general transformation. This seems to me vaster, deeper, more comprehensive.
0 1964-10-10, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats another odd thing. All of a sudden, for no apparent external reason, even for no apparent psychological reason, Ill see clearly, preciselyit lasts a few seconds, and then its over. And it happens to me in entirely different circumstances. For instance, Ill pick up a piece of paper: Ill see as clearly as I did before; Ill notice that I am seeing clearly and its finished!
It has happened a little more often lately.
0 1964-11-12, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, its at that level that the change must take place. At the mental or even vital level, its a psychological question, its nothing, its not really THE THING (its the thing expressed in a HUMAN consciousness). Because the other day the other day, suddenly I went out of humanity. My consciousness went right out of the human consciousness. And then I said to myself, But all that they say, all that they know, all that they have attempted, all that so-called knowledge which has been accumulated on earth, its nothing! Its something that belongs only to MANeliminate man and everything exists! And all the explanations man has given about things are like zero. Thats it: everything exists.
I had the experience of the universe outside the human perception of that experience; and then the vanity of that human experience was so obvious, you know, that at that point a door began to open onto something else.
0 1964-11-21, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mon petit, thats because what you call aspiration is a movement of your psychic consciousness, mentally formulated and supported by the vital but it ISNT YOUR BODY. And its only if you are very attentive to the vibration of the cells, if you are accustomed to observing them and feeling them that you can see. Well, I dont know, but I cant complain about my bodys cells. You know, it isnt a perception, it isnt a sensation, it is a LIVED FAITH in the existence of the Supreme aloneyou know, a faith that its the only Reality and the only Existence. Just that, and everything seems to swell up, as if all these cells were swelling up with such joy! Only, it doesnt take the form of a feeling, not even of a sensation, even less of a thought; so if you arent very attentive, you dont notice it. But, for instance, when I repeat the mantra, its repeated by that famous physical mind, which is so stupid (the mantra is the only thing that can keep a rein on it), and now it has become so identified that the mantra is its whole life, it is like a pulsation of its being; but then when I come to the invocation (there is a series of invocations: each one has its own effect on the body), when I come to Manifest Your Love, I see a sort of twinkling of a golden light, which represents an intense joy in all the cells.
It isnt easy to observe, you must be very, very, very detached from the movement of thought, otherwise you dont notice it. But if you see it, you see that even those cells are there waiting for the Thing.
--
God knows, never, not one minute in my life, even when things were the darkest, the blackest, the most negative, the most painful, not once did the thought come, I would like to die. And ever since I had the experience of psychic immortality, the immortality of consciousness, that is, in 1902 or 3, or 4 at the latest (sixty years ago now), all fear of death went away. Now the bodys cells have the sense of their immortality. There was also a time when I almost had a sort of curiosity about death; it was satisfied by my two experiences in which, according to the surface illusion, my body was dead, while, within, I had a wonderfully intense life (the first time, it was in the vital, the other time, way up above2). So that even that curiosity (I cant call it curiosity), even that question is no longer asked by the cells. But the possibility does present itself: according to the ordinary outer logic, if this isnt transformed, it must necessarily come to an end. And always, always, I receive the same answer, which isnt an answer with words, but an answer with a knowledge (how can I put it?), a FACTUAL knowledge: Its no solution. To say things in quite a banal way, this is the answer: Its no solution.
So we are after another solution, since death isnt considered to be a solution. And its obvious that it is no solution.
0 1965-01-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To me, its very simple. Narada was a demigod, as we know, and he belonged to the overmental world and was able to materializethose beings dont have a psychic being. The gods dont have in themselves the divine spark which is the heart of the psychic being, since only ON THE EARTH (I am not even referring to the material universe), only on the earth was there the Descent of divine Love that was the origin of the divine Presence in the heart of Matter. And naturally, as they dont have a psychic being, they dont know, they have no knowledge of the psychic being. Some of those beings even decided to take on a physical body in order to experience the psychic beingnot many.
They generally did it only partially, through an emanation, not through a complete descent. It is said, for instance, that Vivekananda was an incarnation (a vibhuti) of Shivas; but Shiva himself I have had a very close relationship with him and he clearly expressed the will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for supramental life, he will come. And almost all those beings will manifest they are waiting for that moment, they do not want the present struggle and darkness.
And, certainly, Narada was among those who used to come here. After all, it was fun! He would play a lot with circumstances. But he didnt have the knowledge of the psychic being and that must have prevented him from recognizing the psychic being when he found himself in its presence.
But all those things cannot be explained: they are personal experiences. This knowledge isnt objective enough to be taught. It comes from my relationship with all those beings, from exchanges with them I knew them even before I knew the Hindu tradition. But you cant say anything about a phenomenon that depends on a personal experience and has value only for the one who had the experience. Because everyone has the right to say, Well, yes, YOU think that way, YOUR experience is that way, but it has value only for you. And its perfectly true.
--
Yes, to be in contact with the soul, that is to say, with the psychic being, you must carry in yourself a psychic being, and only men the men of evolution, those issued from the terrestrial creationpossess a psychic being.
All those gods are without a psychic being, its only by coming down, by uniting with the psychic being of a man that they can have one, but they themselves dont have one.
***
0 1965-04-17, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In that case, one would have to switch to a new body. But a switching (from the occult point of view, thats a known thing), a switching not to a body to be born, but to an already formed body. It would take place through a sort of identification of the psychic personality of the body to be changed with the other, receiving body but that, the fusions of psychic personalities, its possible, (laughing) I know the procedure! But it requires the abolition of the egoyes, the abolition of the ego is certainly necessary; but if the abolition of the ego is sufficient in the supramentalized individuality (can I use the word individuality? I dont know its neither personality nor individuality), in the supramentalized being, if the abolition of the ego is done, completed, that being has the power to completely neutralize the presence of the ego in the other being. And then, through that neutralization, the shrinking that always comes from a reincarnation would be canceled thats the dreadful thing, you see, that time lost in the shrinking into a new being! While through that conscious passagewilled and consciousfrom one body to the other, the being whose ego no longer exists has an almost total power to abolish the other ego.
All that occult mechanism needs to be developed, but for the consciousness its almost rational.
0 1965-06-02, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for the sense of smell, the nature of my sense of smell changed long, long ago. To begin with, I practiced this (a long time ago, years, many years ago): being able to smell only when I wanted to and only what I wanted to. And it was perfectly mastered. It already prepared the instrument a great deal. I can see it was already a preparation. I can smell things I can smell the vibratory quality of things rather than simply their odor. There is a whole classification of odors: there are odors that lighten you, as if they opened up horizons to youthey lighten you, make you lighter, more joyful; there are odors that excite you (those belong to the category of odors I learnt not to smell); as for all the odors that disgust you, I smell them only when I want towhen I want to know, I smell them, but when I dont want to know, I dont. Now its automatic. But my sense of smell was very much cultivated even when I was just a child, very long ago: at that time I cultivated the eyes and the sense of smell, both. But my eyes have been used for everything, for all the visions, so its something much more complex, while the sense of smell has remained as it was: I can smell peoples psychological state when I come near them; I can smell it, it has an odorthere are very special odors a whole gamut. Ive had that for a very, very long time, its something thats quite dominated, mastered. I am able not to smell anything at all: when, for instance, there are bad odors that upset the bodys system, I can cut off the connection completely.
But I dont notice a great change in this domain because it had already been cultivated very much, while my eyes are much more (how can I put it?) ahead, in the sense that there is already a much greater difference between the old habit of seeing and the present one. I seem to be behind a veil thats really the feeling: a veil; and then, suddenly, something lives with the true vibration. But thats rare, its still rare. Probably (laughing) there arent many things worth seeing!
0 1965-07-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I mean its a pleasant distraction. It gives you the feeling of seeing very clearly all that must take place in the realm of not exactly of ideas, but of psychological reactions.
And it doesnt depend on me, I dont make an effort: it just comes. Its something that comes, then I seem to be plunged in a bath and I only have to look. It comes ready-made, effortlessly. Its a STATE in which I find myself, with, for example, the vision of the terrestrial mental progress, of the way in which the human mentality is organized (same gesture as if indicating a chessboard); and its very interesting because living conditions are conditioned by thought-states, and so I see how the thought-state must be changed in order for life to be changed (Mother draws currents of force on the chessboard). And I sit there, as if in a theater, and I watch, and it works.
0 1965-08-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The cells, the whole material consciousness, used to obey the inner individual consciousness the psychic consciousness most of the time, or the mental (but the mind had been silent for a long time). But now this material mind is organizing itself like the other one, or the other ones, rather, like the mind of all the states of beingdo you know, it is educating itself. It is learning things and organizing the ordinary science of the material world. When I write, for instance, I have noticed that it takes great care not to make spelling errors; and it doesnt know, so it inquires, it learns, it looks up in the dictionary or it asks. Thats very interesting. It wants to know. You see, all the memory that came from mental knowledge went away a long, long time ago, and I used to receive indications only like this (gesture from above). But now its a sort of memory being built from below, and with the care of a little child who educates himself but who wants to know, who doesnt want to make errorswho is perfectly conscious of his ignorance, and who wants to know. And the truly interesting thing is that it knows this knowledge to be quite more than relative, simply conventional, but it is like an instrument that would like to be free of defects, like a machine that would like to be perfect.
It is a rather recent awakening. There has been a sort of reversal of consciousness.
0 1965-11-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And for everything, you know. The one point in human life where it has assumed cardinal importance is love. Vital passions and attractions have almost in every case taken the place of the true feeling, which is tranquil, while that makes you bubble with excitement, it gives you the feeling of something living. Its very deceptive. And you can know this, feel it, perceive it clearly only when you know the True Thing; if you have touched true love through the psychic and through divine union, then it [vital love] appears hollow, thin, empty: an appearance and a dramamore often a tragedy than a comedy.
All that you can say about it, all that you can explain about it is perfectly useless, because the one who has been caught will instantly say, Oh, its not like with otherswhat happens to you is never like what happens to others (!) Whats needed is the Thing, the true experience then the whole Vital is seen as a masqueradenot an alluring one.
--
Its no use if the thought does it, if the psychic consciousness, EVEN THE PHYSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, does it: it must be the cells that do it. So the one who does it in the thought says, Here, I give myself to the Divine, I am ready for anything, I am in a state of perfect equality, and still I am ill! So what am I to believe? Thats not the point. In order to have an instantaneous action HERE (instantaneous, meaning what looks like a miracle, which isnt a miracle at all), there should instantaneously be, wherever a disorder has occurred for some reason or other, this: LordLord, this is You; Lord, we are You; Lord, You are hereeverything flies away. A sensation, an attitudeinstantaneously, hup! its over.
I have had hundreds upon hundreds of experiences like that.
0 1965-12-22, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I mean psychologically, towards others.
You dont feel like seeing them (Mother laughs). Thats very good, an excellent state, quite favorable!
0 1965-12-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Havent you any sign of a psychic presence in you?
[After a silence] For years Ive had a feeling (its a feeling, not a vision), the feeling of a great expanse of light, there, and that when I remain silent long enough, I am peaceful, tranquil, there, and its for eternity. Well, all right, thats there, always.
0 1966-02-16, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for me, I chose my parents ([laughing] dont go about repeating what I am saying!), I chose my parents in order to have a solid physical base, because I knew that the work I had to do was very very difficult and a solid base was needed. From that point of view I succeeded. But then, there were difficulties It doesnt matter, because from the physical point of view, it was good. But with you, its not just that: its psychically, you understandshe is your mother psychically, too. So its very good.
***
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mon petit, I dont know what comparison I should use, but I am certain there are some things that are invisible this way (Mother rotates her wrist in one direction), and visible that way (gesture in the other direction). My impression is that what we see as a considerable difference between the tangible, the material, and the invisible or the fluid, is only a change of position. Perhaps an internal change of position because it isnt a physical, material change of position, but it is a change of position. Because I have experienced this I dont know how many times, hundreds of times: like this (gesture in one direction), everything is what we call natural, as we are used to seeing it, then all of a sudden, like that (gesture in the other direction), the nature of things changes. And nothing has happened, except something within, something in the consciousness: a change of position. Do you remember that aphorism in which Sri Aurobindo says that everything depends on a change in the relation of the sun-consciousness and the earth-consciousness?2 When I read it the first time, I didnt understand, I thought it was something in the very subtle realms; and then, very recently, in one of those experiences, I suddenly understood, I said, But thats it! It isnt a shift since nothing moves, yet it is shift, it is a change of relation. A change of position. Its no more tangible than that, thats what is so wonderful! Oh, the other day, I found another sentence of Sri Aurobindos: Now everything is different, yet everything has remained the same. (It was on one of my birthday cards.) I read that and said to myself, Oh, thats what it means! Its true, now everything is different, yet everything has remained the same. We understand it psychologically, but its not psychological: its HERE (Mother touches matter). But until one has a solid base From the standpoint of concrete, physical, material things, I dont think theres anyone more materialistic than I was, with all the practical common sense and positivism; and now I understand why it was like that: it gave my body a marvelous base of equilibrium. It prevented me from having the very sort of madness we were talking about earlier.3 The explanations I asked for were always material, I always sought the material explanation, and it seemed obvious to me theres no need of any mystery, nothing of the sortyou just explain things materially. Therefore I am certain this isnt a tendency to mystic dreaming in me, not at all, not at all, this body had nothing mystic! Nothing Thank God!
I saw that (not in my head, because for me there are no such limits), in this sort of conglomerate, here: the nearest explanation is a shifta shift, the angle of perception becoming different. And its not really that, words are incorrect, because its far more subtle and at the same time far more complete than that. I have watched the change several times; well, this change gives you, to the outward consciousness, the sense of a shift. A motionless shift, meaning that you dont change places. And its not, as we might be tempted to think, a drawing within and a drawing without, its not that at all, not at allits an angle of perception that changes. You are in a certain angle, then you are in another. I have seen small objects of that sort for the amusement of children: when those objects are in a certain position, they look compact and hard and black, and when you turn them another way, they are clear, luminous, transparent. Its something like that, but its not that, thats an approximation.
0 1966-04-16, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And all that denies That or counters It, weakens It or dims It, becomes painful. Yes, painfulnot painful with a moral or psychological or material suffering its a strange thing, its not a physical pain: its a pain which is more material than physical, it is a sort of suffocation.
The body now really has an impression (its an impression, not a knowledgeits not a thought, not a knowledge: its an impression, but a strong one) that this is what kills, this is what makes you die: this sort of refusal of the Vibrationnot always even awilled refusal, because its not even conscious the way will is (that happens, but then it means battle), but its in Matter. One wonders if there isnt a residuea residue of dust thats incapable of any receptivity? I dont know.
0 1966-05-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But everything, absolutely everything is becoming strange. As if there were two, three, four realities (superimposed gesture) or appearances, I dont know (but they are rather realities), one behind another or one within another, like that, and in the space of a few minutes it changes (gesture as if one reality were surging forward to overtake and replace another), as though one world were just there, inside, and emerged all of a sudden. When I have peace and quiet, there is a slight not a movement, I dont know what it is: it might rather feel like pulsations, and depending on the case, there are different experiences. For instance, customary things take a usual amount of time when nothing abnormal happens, and then you have an exact sense of the time they take. So then, I am given the following experience, of the same thing done in the same way, accomplished a first time in its normal duration, and another time, when I am in another state, that is, when the consciousness seems to be placed elsewhere, the thing seems to be done in a second!Exactly the same thing: habitual gestures, things you do absolutely every day, quite ordinary things. Then, another time (and its not that I try to have it, I dont try at all: I am PUT in that state), another time I am put in another state (to me, it doesnt make much difference, they are like very small differences in the concentration), and in that state, the same thing, oh, takes a long, long time, an endless time to get done! Just to fold a towel, for instance (I am not the one who does it), someone folds a towel or someone puts a bottle away, wholly material and absolutely simple things devoid of any psychological value; someone folds a towel thats on the floor (I am giving that example): there is a normal time, which I perceive internally after a study; its the normal time, when everything is normal, that is, usual; then, I am in a certain concentration and without my even having the time to notice it, its done! I am in another state of concentration, with absolutely minimal differences as far as the concentration is concerned, and its endless! You feel it takes half an hour to get done.
If it occurred just once, youd say, Never mind, but it takes place with persistence and regularity, as when someone is trying to teach you something. A sort of insistence and regular repetition as if someone wanted to teach me something.
0 1966-05-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ninety percent subjective. Regularly, for more than a year, every night at the same time and in the same way, I entered the vital to do a special work there. It wasnt the result of my own will: I was destined to do it. It was something I had to do. So then, the entry into the vital, for instance, is often described: there are passages where beings are stationed to stop you from entering (all those things are much talked about in all books of occultism). Well, I know from experience (not a passing one: an experience I learned repeatedly) that that opposition or ill will is ninety percent psychological, in the sense that if you dont anticipate it or dont fear it, or if there is nothing in you thats afraid of the unknown and none of those movements of apprehension and so on, its like a shadow in a picture, or a projected image: it has no concrete reality.
I did have one or two real battles in the vital, yes, while going to rescue someone who had gone astray. And both times I got blows, and in the morning when I woke up, there was a mark (Mother points to her right eye). Well, I know that in both cases, there was in me, not a fear (I never had any fear there), but it was because I expected it. The idea that it may well happen and my expecting it caused the blow to come. I knew that in a definite way. And if I had been in what I might call my normal state of inner certitude, it couldnt have touched me, it couldnt. And I had that apprehension because Madame Thon had lost an eye in a battle in the vital and had told me so; so (laughing) it gave me the idea that it was possible, since it had happened to her! But when I am in my state (I cant even say that, its not personal: its a way of being), when you have the true way of being, when you are a little conscious and have the true way of being, it CANNOT touch you.
0 1966-07-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, it has made me understand something, but its something very (how can I put it?), very intimate. When Sri Aurobindo left, I knew I had to cut the link with the psychic being, otherwise I would have gone with him; and as I had promised him I would stay on and do the work, I had to do that: I literally closed the door on the psychic and said, For the moment this doesnt exist anymore. It remained like that for ten years. After ten years, it slowly, slowly began to open againit was frightening. But I was ready. It began to open again. But then, that experience surprised me when I had it; I wondered why it had been like that, why I had received that comm and and had to do it. And when there was in the body that identification with divine Love [a few days ago], after that had left, the cells were ordered to undergo a similar phenomenon [to what happened after Sri Aurobindos departure]. And I understood why the whole material world is closed: its to allow it to exist WITHOUT the experience [of divine Love]. Naturally, I had understood why I was made to close off my psychic, because because it was truly impossible, I couldnt go on existing outwardly without Sri Aurobindos presence. Well then, the cells have understood that they must go on existing and living their life without the presence of divine Love. And thats how it took place in the world: it was a necessary phenomenon for the formation and development of the material world.
But were perhaps nearing We are nearing the time when it will be allowed to open again.
0 1966-08-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There only remains the phenomenon of contagion (contagion of viruses or germs), but there, experience shows that phenomena of psychological disorderall psychological disordersappear to be, according to experience, of the same nature as the contagion of a contagious disease and of all viruses and germs (such as the plague, cholera and so on). There are psychological contagions of psychological states: states of revolt or violence, of anger AND DEPRESSION, are contagious in the same manner, its a similar phenomenon. Therefore, since its a similar phenomenon, it can be mastered. Its simply a question of words: we call them illnesses (but these [ psychological contagions] can also be called illnesses) or we can call them any name we like, its a question of words, thats all. But its similar, its the same thing: its an opening to disorder or an opening to revolt. We can call it what we like. Only, its in a different field of vibrations. But the character is identical.
And then, what discoveries I make! Extraordinary discoveries: how every experience always has an obverse and a reverse. For instance, the calm of a vision thats vast enough not to be disturbed by tiny infinitesimal points and is (I was about to say seems to be, but it doesnt seem to be: it IS) the result of a growth of consciousness and of an identification with the higher regions, and at the same time that apparent insensitiveness that looks like the negation of divine compassion; there comes a point when you see both as having become true and being able to exist not simultaneously but as ONE thing. As recently as the day before yesterday, I had the perfectly concrete experience of an extremely intense wave of divine Compassion [in the face of one of those psychological contagions], and I had the opportunity to observe how, if this Compassion is allowed to manifest on a certain plane, it becomes an emotion that may disturb or trouble the imperturbable calm; but if it manifests (they arent the same planes: there are imperceptible nuances), if it manifests in its essential truth, it retains all its power of action, of effective help, and it in no way changes the imperturbable calm of the eternal vision.
All those are experiences of nuances (or nuances of experiences, I dont know how to put it) that become necessary and concrete only in the physical consciousness. And then, it results in a perfection of realizationa perfection in the minutest detailwhich none of those realizations have in the higher realms. I am learning what the physical realization contri butes in terms of concreteness, accuracy and perfection in the Realization; and how all those experiences interpenetrate, combine with each other, complement each otherits wonderful.
--
I am not at all referring to the physical, vital, psychic consciousnesses, not to any of that: I am referring to the consciousness of the cells.
Thats how the present moment is: the will may be like this (Mother raises a finger upward), or it may be like that (finger downward). Like that, it means dissolution; like this, it means continuation and progresscontinuation with the necessity of progress. There is something which is the consciousness of the cells (a consciousness that observes, and which, when it is awakened, is a wonderful witness), and that consciousness is the one which goes like this (same gesture) or like that. This is expressed by a will to endure or to last, or by a need for the annihilation of rest. And then, when these cells are full of that light that golden light, that splendor of divine Lovethere is a sort of thirst, a need to participate in That, which takes away all that is or can be difficult in the endurance: that disappears, it becomes a glory. Then
--
But to be able to observe (this is something being worked out on a parallel line), to observe exactly what goes on in this cellular realm, one must be perfectly free from and independent of other human beings influence. And this is extremely difficult because of that habit of mixture. Its the sensitiveness of the cells which has difficulty. So constant care must be taken to fasten all that sensitiveness on to the aspiration for the Supreme alone; thats the only way, the solution. You have to do that constantly, every time you feel the influence of others contact. In ordinary life, of course, to get rid of influences you cut off the contact; well, that movement of withdrawal, recoil, isolation, all those psychological movements (through material isolation in the physical; in the vital, in the psychic, in the mind, everywhere, it always consists in cutting oneself off, in separating oneself), all that is false; its contrary to the truth. The truth is to (outspread gesture) to feel the union. And yet, for the cellular work of cellular transformation, an isolation must be reached that isnt a contradiction of the essential unity. And thats a little difficult; it makes for a very delicate, very painstaking, very microscopic work which somewhat complicates matters. But its possible, for instance, to touch someone, to take someones hand, and for union to be achieved only in the deeper truth, while outwardly there is just a bringing together of cells.
The work is very intensive, very intensive indeed.
0 1966-09-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its fairly recent, it dates from two or three days ago. I had never been told this. It was said very clearlysaid, I mean seen, shown like this (gesture of a scene offered to the sight). So my interest in Auroville has considerably increased since then. Because I have understood that it isnt just a creation of idealism, but quite a practical phenomenon, in the hope in the will, rather, to thwart and counterbalance the effects the frightful effectsof the psychological error of believing that fear can save you from a danger! Fear attracts the danger much more than it saves you from it. And all these countries, all these governments commit blunder upon blunder because of that fear of the catastrophe.
All this is simply to tell you that if nations collaborate in the work of Auroville, even to a very modest extent [such as this offer of money from the French government], it will do them goodit can do them a lot of good, a good that can be out of proportion to the appearance of their actions.
0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am absolutely convinced (because Ive had experiences that proved it to me) that the life of this body its life, what makes it move and changecan be replaced by a force; that is to say, a sort of immortality can be created, and the wear and tear can disappear. These two things are possible: the power of life can come, and the wear and tear can disappear. And it can come about psychologically, through total obedience to the divine Impulsion, so that every moment you have the force you need, you do the thing that must be doneall these things, all of them are certitudes. Certitudes. Theyre not a hope, not an imagining: they are certitudes. Of course, you must educate the body and slowly transform and change the habits. It can be done, all that can be done. But the question is, how much time would it take to do away with the necessity (to take just this problem) of the skeleton? This is still very far ahead, it seems to me. Which means many intermediary stages will be needed. Sri Aurobindo said that life can be prolonged indefinitely. Yes, thats clear. But we arent yet built with something that completely escapes dissolution, the necessity of dissolution. Bones are very durable, they can even last a thousand years if conditions are favorable, thats agreed, but it doesnt mean immortality IN PRINCIPLE. Do you understand what I mean?
No. Do you think it would have to be a nonphysical substance?
0 1966-11-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is the soul. There is the soul, which is quite simply an emanation of we can call it the supreme Consciousness, supreme Reality, supreme Truth, anything, whatever they like, its all the same to meany words they like. But anyway, the soul is an emanation of That, a direct emanation. In the body, That becomes clothed in the psychic being. The psychic being is a being which is progressively formed throughout all the existences. So are you talking about the soul, are you talking about the psychic being (which is first an embryo and eventually becomes a conscious, perfectly independent being), or are you simply talking of the life of an individual consciousness after death? Because thats yet another thing. There are proofs of that; but in that case, its a quite vital consciousness of an inferior order, and it may happen to immediately come back into another body through some combination of circumstances (it was into the same family that the father had come back), and to come back with the memory. Otherwise, according to the experiences of those who have studied the question, its only the psychic being in the process of being formed that retains the memory of its former existences. But it retains the memory of the material, purely physical existence ONLY FOR THOSE MOMENTS WHEN IT PARTICIPATED. So, instead of all those stories that are told (and are made up), you only have memories like that (Mother draws a series of points in space with her fingertips), which may be more or less detailed, more or less complete, but which are only fragmentary memories of the MOMENT when the psychic physically manifested. Lots of people do have this sort of memory, but they dont know what it is. Most of the time they regard it as dreams or imaginings. Those who know (that is to say, who are conscious of what goes on in their physical consciousness) can see that its memories.
The number of memories of this kind Ive had is almost incalculable. But it doesnt have the same character as the memories of the higher consciousness (then its not a memory: its a sort of vision the higher beings2 have of life; but thats something else). The memories I speak of are memories of the psychic being, they have a different character: a rather personal character, I mean there is the sense of a PERSON remembering something. While the others, the visions from above, are memories of an acting consciousness. But the memories of the psychic being arent mentalized, that is, if for instance at the time of the recollection you werent paying attention to the way you were dressed or the surroundings, you dont remember them. You only remember what took place and especially what took place from the point of view of the consciousness and the feelings and the inner movements.
Its generally fragmentsfragments of life that were individualized, and when in the present life you follow a normal development with the [various beings] gathering around the central consciousness, all those elements come back to gather together. They come back, each with its own memories. For instance, I had a memory like that (I tell you, Ive had hundreds of them) when I was very young (I must have been twenty or so). It wasnt at night, but I was lying down, resting: suddenly I felt myself riding a horse, with tremendous warlike power and the sense a will for victory and the POWER of victory. And I felt as if I was riding a horse: I saw a white horse, I saw my legs, with riding breeches, you understand, and a red velvet costume. And there I was, at a gallop. I couldnt tell what the head was like or anything, naturally! And also, the crowd, the armies, and the rising sun. It was so strong, the sense that it was the sense of the will for victory and the POWER of victory. It came just like that. Then, sometime later, I read somewhere the story of Murat (I forget I think his victory was Magenta3 I no longer remember all that), and I immediately understood that my vision was at the moment of launching the battle: he had an inner call to a Power, so there was an identification [with Mothers power], and thats what I remembered and what came back. If I said (as the Theosophists tell you), I was Murat, it would be stupid. But it was a consciousness coming back. It was so strong! The impression lasted long enough, with the sense of the battle but above all the sense of that POWER making you invincible. It was interesting, because at the time (it was just in the beginning, I was beginning to take interest in these things and I had just come across the Cosmic teaching), I was convinced that a womans psychic being was always reincarnated in a woman and a mans psychic being was always reincarnated in a man (many schools teach that; Thon too believed so, he insisted on it). So it came as a surprise, because it wasnt in conformity with what I thought (!). Afterwards (long afterwards), I realized that naturally all those dogmas were nonsense, but
It fits with what I told you last time: the STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS are what reincarnate, evolving, developing, growing more perfect. Thats rather how it was, thats how that memory came. Its like that with many memories. And I know that to say states of consciousness are what reincarnate, to adopt that as the sole explanation would be incorrectits absolutely incorrect but its one way of looking at the question beyond the sense of the little personality. It broadens the consciousness: one has in oneself things far more universal and far less limited than personal experiences. Just as in life some people have an exceptional life, in the same way they also have exceptional moments in their life, when they no longer are one single little person: they are a force in action. Thats how it is.
0 1967-03-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One who has an individualized psychic being can survive even in the midst of collective catastrophes, if such is the choice of his soul.
How is the soul conscious of being and existing after death, once it is separated from its physical, vital and mental beings?
0 1967-04-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I came back from That (it lasted long enough for me to have the full experience of itfull, total), there were many things I then understood. One, for instance, which I had noticed with Sri Aurobindo for all the small details of life, well all things as they are on earthmere nothings; when I went to him with an inner vision and said to him, This is how I see that (I would say it to him with words or not), it would AUTOMATICALLY become true, it would become real: things that were neither in my hands nor in his nor And it wasnt that we would take a decision: it was automatic. I noticed this several times and found it wonderful. It so happens that in a few psychological cases, that is, when it has to do with individual consciousness, since quite recently (it hasnt been like that very long), when someone is sincere (one must be sincere) and expresses an aspiration, for instance, a hope, or a vision of how he or she should be, I have seen this same phenomenon occur: it automatically becomes true.
Its not very frequent yet, but it has happened. And now I understand how it happens.
0 1967-04-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first synthesis of L.S.D. was achieved in 1938 by two Swiss scientists. On April 16, 1943, one of them, Dr. Albert Hofmann, inadvertently swallowed traces of this substance and discovered its strange psychological properties.
Here is Dr. Albert Hofmann's description: "Vertigo. Intermittent sensation of heaviness in the head and the body, as if it were filled with metal. Everything seemed to topple over. When I closed my eyes, I was overcome by an uninterrupted succession of fantastic images of extraordinary intensity. All sound perceptions (the sound of a car, for instance) were transformed into optical effects, each one creating a corresponding coloured hallucination, constantly changing form and colour. At times I felt I was outside my body."
0 1967-04-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is the description (retranslated from the French) of the "cellular level" by Dr. Timothy Leary, psychologist and professor at Harvard University: "Huge aggregates of cells are animated and the consciousness whirls about in strange landscapes for which there exist neither words nor concepts. L.S.D. reveals cellular dialogues imperceptible to the normal state of consciousness, for which we have no appropriate symbolic terms. You become aware of processes you never sensed before. You feel yourself sinking into the soft swamps of your own body's tissues, slowly drifting below dark red aqueducts, floating through endless capillary systems, gently propelled through endless systems of cells, grandfa ther clocks of fibres tirelessly jingling, clinking, tinkling, pumping. This experience is striking when you have it for the first time; it can also be a dreadful, frightening and at the same time marvellous experience..." Then his description of the "pre-cellular level": "Your nervous cells become aware, as Einstein did, that all matter, all structure is nothing but pulsating energy. Your body and the world around you dissolve into a sparkling lattice of white waves. You have penetrated matter's intimate structure and vibrate in harmony with its primeval and cosmic pulse."
Mother is referring to U Thant, secretary-general of the United Nations. U.N.O., April 10, 1967: "That a fraction of the amounts that are going to be spent in 1967 on arms could finance economic, social, national and world programs to an extent so far unimaginable is a notion within the grasp of the man in the street. Men, if they unite, are now capable of foreseeing and, to a certain point, determining the future of human development. This, however, is possible only if we stop fearing and harassing one another and if together we accept, welcome and prepare the changes that must inevitably take place. If this means a change in human nature, well, it is high time we worked for it; what must surely change is certain political attitudes and habits man has."
0 1967-04-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No one has ever told him, You must! and violated his psychic rights.
He has always been treated as a soul in evolution.
0 1967-05-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I found this very interesting (it was written years ago, in any case more than a year ago, and Pavitra told me he hadnt even found it in a letter: it was there among the files). And it was as if to tell me, See, you were already speaking like this before. Because the goodwill is the Harmony ( psychological, of course), its the will for everything to go well psychologically. I found this rather interesting.
And its good it came back; its a form quite within everyones grasp, which they can understandyou arent asked extraordinary things: you are asked goodwill. When I found this again, I smiled and found it amusing, I said, Well, I could have written the same thing about cheerfulness! I could have said, Be cheerful and you will see cheerfulness everywhere.One can say many things (Mother rotates her hand slowly as if to present various facets), it always makes me think of a kaleidoscope with colour arrangements to express something else which shrinks, becomes diminished, generalized and finally within everyones grasp. But there is something: like a FORMIDABLE conflict taking place over the earth at this moment, with this wonderful divine Grace always helping, always striving for the best and exerting a pressure, Come now, be cheerful, come now, have goodwill, come now, have, yes, have that inner Harmony of contentment, of hope, of faith. Do not accept the vibrations of decomposition the vibrations that diminish, degrade and lead towards destruction.
0 1967-06-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From the psychological point of view, the essential conditions are:
1) Being convinced of the essential human unity and having the will to collaborate in the advent of this unity.
0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, the story of the soul leaving the body, is childishness! Because I had that experience too, of leaving (not the soul! Its entirely independent, always and in everyone), of leaving the psychic being, the individual psychic being. When I left here in 1915, I left my psychic being here deliberately. I left it here, I didnt take it with me. Consequently, the body can live without the psychic being (it was rather sick, by the way, but that wasnt the reasonits again the taste for drama! Oh, always the taste for drama!).
There we are.
--
Its more difficult however, to live without the psychic being. The psychic being, of course, is the covering the individualized coveringbetween the eternal soul and the transitory body; and it becomes formed, individualized, it becomes more and more individually conscious. When that leaves the body, the rest generally follows. But I myself have had the experience of doing it deliberately, so I KNOW. One has to know how to do it, but it can be done. My psychic being stayed here with Sri Aurobindo, and I left with my mental, vital and physical beings. It was a slightly precarious condition. But as I also kept the contact quite consciously, it could be done.
What people call death I see lots of people who to me are living dead (they are those who are without their psychic being, or even those who have no contact with their soul). But to know that, one must have the inner vision. But what people call death, that is, the decomposition of the cells and dissolution of the form, is when the most material vital subdegree, which brings into contact with Lifewith the vital force, lifegoes out. That is how death occurs in animals, for example. And that vital subdegree generally goes away when the external organism is unable to continuewhen, for instance, its cut in two or the heart has been removed, or anyway when something quite radical has happened to it! Because some people have met with accidents and had many parts missing, yet they lived on. But even cardiac arrest I can say, even that doesnt necessarily mean death, since after stopping, the heart can start up again. Those who have the material knowledge tell you that during a few I dont know if it is a few seconds or a few minutes, the heart can start up again; after that, decomposition sets in. With decomposition its over, naturally.
Therefore, we could correctly say that there are kinds of GRADATIONS in death. Gradations in life and gradations in death: there are beings that are more or less alive, or if we want to put it negatively, there are beings that are more or less dead. Oh! But for those who know, and who know that this material form can manifest a supramental light, well, those who dont have the supramental light in them are already a little dead. Thats how it is. So there are gradations. What people are accustomed to call death is just a purely external phenomenon, because its something they cant deny: it falls to pieces.
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a whole field of observation thats part of the study of vibrations: how essential vibrations are distorted as they spread out, and produce the different stateson the psychological level, on the level of thought, on the level of action, and also of languages, of expression.
Two or three days ago (this is part of the same field), I saw a baby girl who was born in America just while we were having the meditation here of 4.5.67. That child was born in America (of an Indian mother and an Indian father; the father was here, the mother there), and they brought her to me: a baby no bigger than this, microscopic! Her eyes were closed, a tiny thing: a little over two months old. The child was sleeping in her mothers arms, carried by her mother, her eyes closed, naturally. Andplop!they put her in my lap without warninga tiny little thing like this. At first I stayed put, giving her time to adapt to the new vibration. She began stirring as if something was waking her up, probably the difference in the atmosphere. Then (gesture of descent) I immediately put the consciousness: the Consciousness, the Presence. And the child opened her two arms like this (gesture like a Christ with arms outstretched), she opened her eyes and lookedsuch eyes! Magnificent with light, with consciousness, it was magnificent! It lasted maybe a minute, not more, not even that long. Then she seemed to give a start, so I withdrew the Force because (laughing) I became wary. And she started wriggling and But that look and that gesturea gesture of (same gesture like a Christ), with such aspiration, such light! It was magnificent.
--
(Then Mother listens to a reading from the notebook of a disciple who asks questions on the soul or psychic being.)
He asks: From life to life, the vibrations of the being develop, enrich and give form to the psychic personality behind the frontal personality. But then, how does the psychic, weighed down by those vibrations and memories, remain free?
What? Do you understand what that means?
--
All those vibrations that contri bute to the development of the being weigh the psychic down, he says.
No, it SIFTS them. Thats precisely what happens: the psychic doesnt retain things in their totality: it sifts themit sifts the vibrations as they come along.
The psychic memory is a sifted memory of events. In previous lives, for instance, there were moments when, for some reason or other, the psychic was present and took part, and so it keeps the memory of just one circumstance. But the memory it keeps is the psyCHIC life of that moment; so even if it retains the memory of an image, it is a simplified image, translated in the psychic consciousness and according to the psychic vibration of all those present.
He wouldnt ask such a question if he had ever had a psychic memory, because when you have one its perfectly obvious.
Before I had the knowledge, before I met Thon and knew about those things, I had had memories that had always struck me because of their special character. It was like having, not exactly an emotion, but a certain emotive vibration of a circumstance. And thats what is full, what remains and lasts. And along with that, you have a perceptiona bit vague, a bit fuzzyof the people who were there, of the circumstances, the events, and that makes up a psychic memory.
What remains often the events that the mind regards as the most memorable or the most important in a life, but the moments when the psychic took partconsciously took part in the occurrence. Thats what remains.
I could have narrated many such memories, its very interesting.
I had many in Italy. I travelled in Italy with my mother when I was fifteen, and I had lived a past life in Italy which was very conscious. Upon seeing the places, that (the psychic vibration of emotion) would spring up suddenly. And it would come along with the image. Whats in the foreground is the psychic movement (the word emotion isnt good, but anyway), its the psychic movement which is in front and is important thats what comes; the rest is like a background reflection: that is, forms, situations, circumstances. I noted some down. Did you ever see something I wrote about a life in Italy? An old, old thing that I had written. At fifteen I had that experience when I was fifteen. I dont even know where I put it away, I dont think that paper is with me, I dont know where it is. I narrated it a little later. When I met Thon, I understood my experience because it was explained to me (I didnt say the thing, but I understood afterwards, once I knew the states of being, their working and all that), so I understood that was what a psychic memory was.
Before I knew anything mentally, I had had a considerable number of memories from past lives, but in that way: real psychic memories, not mental fabrications. And what comes first is emotion (emotion: the psychic feeling), its vivid, strong, you know, very strong; then, as a sort of background setting, there are the forms, appearances, circumstances, with something like the quality of a nebulous memory, and they come along with the psychic feeling.
I had that experience in Italy when I was fifteen, while travelling with my mother, and it struck me very muchit was very striking indeed! It was the memory of having been strangled in the Doges prison. Quite a story. Afterwards I enquired; I enquired about the names, the facts, the events (I was able to enquire in Italy about what had happenedit was in Venice and it tallied marvellously). But the interesting thing, from an external point of view I was visiting the entire Palazzo ducale with my mother and a group of travellers shown about by a guide: they take you underground, where the prisons were located. Then the guide started telling a story (which didnt interest me) when, all of a sudden, I was seized by a kind of force that came into me, and then, without evenwithout even being aware of it, I went to a corner and saw a written word. It was But then, there came at the same time the memory that I had written it. And the whole scene came back: I was the one who had written that word on the wall (and I saw it, saw it with my physical eyes, the writing was still there; the guide said that all the walls with writings on them made by the Doges prisoners had been kept intact). Then the scene went on: I saw, I had the sensation of people entering and catching hold of me (I was there with a prisoner I wasnt the prisoner: I was visiting him). I was there, and then some people came and seized me and (gesture to the neck) tied me up. And then (I was with a whole group of about ten people listening to the guide, near a small aperture opening onto the canal), then, the sensation of being lifted and thrown through that aperture. Well, you understand, I was fifteen, so naturally! I told my mother, Lets get out of here! (Mother laughs)
--
Ive had many such memories, a great many, but that one was interesting, so that I know precisely the nature of the things that remain, that are part of the development of the psychic being.
There was another experience I had a little later (a little later, around eighteen or nineteen), in which I suddenly found myself riding a horse, dressed as a man, leading armies to a fantastic victory; and it was the glory of the sense of the presence of the Force of Victory that made me lead the entire army to victory. Afterwards, I remembered the costume I was wearing, the peoples costumes, everything, and I saw it was Murats famous victory.3 I was (how can I put it?) the victorious spirit in Murat. And ONLY THAT. So when people tell you, I was this person, that person, its all tales: they are forces, states of consciousness that manifested in certain individuals at certain moments in their lives and which, at such moments, touched Matter concretely. And all that is gathered, collected together little by little, gradually, until it produces a conscious being.
Now, this (Mothers being) is a rather special conscious being. The psychic of this life (laughing) was rather collective! Memories of Catherine the Great, memories of Elizabeth, memories of two lives at the same time (!) at the time of Francis I,4 memories innumerable memories, and quite diverse. Each one Its not that you were in such or such person for a whole life: you were the important psychic MOMENT in those existences.
I stopped taking any interest in all that when I came here it was part of the occult knowledge, not of spiritual knowledge. I stopped taking any interest in it. But now that everything is being gathered together, it comes like that, like a part of the work, because the cells, when I had those visions, participated to some extent in the sense that they had the vibration in themselves; so all those vibrations have participated in the formation of all these cells, and now they relive it all. It gives them a possibility of breadth, of diversity, of synthesis and coordination of many, many things. And the sense of having thus lived for a long, long, long time.
0 1967-07-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Further to the previous conversation on the psychic being.)
Just in these last few days Ive had a series of experiences on that subject, very interesting experiences. With the same person, whom I see every day, lets say, or very often, the impression of the contact (an impression that remains more or less) that depends on the presence of the psychic. With the same person, you understand, the same relationship, at certain times it becomes full and you have the sense of something yes, fullnot exactly living, but (I cant say solid because theres nothing hard about it), but full, substantial; then, at other times, its thin, fleeting, neutral. And I have observed (with the same people in the same circumstances), at times you have the sense of a more than living contact (the word living isnt enough), an EXISTENT contact, rather; an existent, durable contact (but not durable in time: durable in its nature); at other times with the very same people (often in the same circumstances), its thin, flat, its dry, superficialit may be very active, apparently very living, but it has no depth. And I have seen that it is when the psychic participates and when it doesnt.
So I have now reached the point where every minute I can feel (feel, I dont mean perceive psychically, I mean feel materially) when the psychic is there and when it isnt. Its very interesting. These last few days.
And it makes all the difference, in the sense that Well, its like the difference between an image or a representation or a narration and the thing itselfbetween an image and the thing itself, between the narration and the thing itself. Thats the difference. With the one, it EXISTS; with the other, it may be living, but its superficial and momentary. And as I said the other day, it doesnt at all depend on the importance of what you are doing (importance according to the mental notion, of course), on the importance of what you are doing or the seriousness of the circumstance, none of all that: simply, the psychic is there or it isnt. Thats all.
Which amounts to saying that the CELLS THEMSELVES feel the difference, perceive the difference.
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One of the teachers has already answered me, Its impossible to know the students progress unless exams are taken. To this I didnt exactly reply what I thought, but I thought: of course, if the teacher is an idiot, he cant judge the students progress unless he makes them take exams, but if he is an intelligent man with a psychic sense, there are a thousand ways to find out if a student has understood.
So theyve had their meeting.
--
To know if a student is good needs, if the tests are abolished, a little more inner contact and psychological knowledge for the teacher. But our teachers are expected to do Yoga, so this ought not to be difficult for them.
(July 22, 1967)
0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theyve lost all their values. Yesterday I met the Vice-chancellor of Bangalore University1; can you guess what they teach in psychology at the university? They teach Freud and Jung! European psychoanalysis! In this country where there is THE knowledge, where there is everything, they go after
Theyre mad. No, the English have thoroughly spoiled them. Those two hundred years of British rule spoiled them completely. Naturally, another effect is that some people have awakened, but they dont know anything; they know nothing either of administration or of government or anything theyve lost everything, and whatever they know is what they were taught by England, which means an absolutely corrupt affair. So they dont know anything, they dont even know how to take a decision.
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But all those who were baptized and went for a time to confession are part of an inner, a whole psychological entity, and its VERY DIFFICULT to break free of it; they are bound to a wholethere is there is an invisible Church, and all those people are in its grip. To break free of it, one must be a vital hero. A true hero, you understand. Because its very strong. I saw that all religions have in that way kinds of congregations in the invisible; but the Christian one is the strongest of them all from a terrestrial standpoint. Its much stronger than that of the Buddhists, much stronger than that of the Chinese, much stronger than the ancient Hindu religionsits the strongest. And naturally stronger than the more recent religions, too the strongest. And when you are baptized, you are bound. If you dont go to mass and have never been to confession, with a little vital energy you can get out of it, but those who have gone to confessionespecially confession and when you take communion, when you are given Christ to eat (another frightful thing).
Now that girl was a true artist and a great intelligence, so I had the example. When she was awake, she understood wonderfully; and she herself was furious, but she didnt have she didnt have the power to get free of the influence on her subconscient.
0 1967-08-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, a whole region has been clarified, and not only clarified but with the key to the cure or the transformation. From the psychological, internal point of view, it has explained a great deal of thingsa great deal. It brings down considerably the number of cases of real mental derangement and cases of real lies, that is, the cases when one deliberately and consciously says the contrary of what is that must not be as frequent as we think. Many people say incorrect things like that (floating gesture), but they have perceptions in another world than the purely material world, with too close a mingling and without sufficient discernment to be aware of the mingling. Sri Aurobindo used to say that real bad will, real hostility and real falsehood are fairly rare cases (real in the sense of absolute in themselves, and conscious, deliberatedeliberate, absolute, conscious); thats rare. And that, he said, is what is described as hostile beings. But all the rest is a sort of illusion of the consciousness, consciousnesses that interfere with one another (Mother intertwines the fingers of her two hands in a to and fro movement), but without a precise discernment between the different consciousnesses, which are like this (same gesture), intermingled, each going in and out of the other.
(silence)
So the result has been to see the immensity of the problem to be solved, of the path to be followed, and of the transformation to be worked out. When you look at it from the purely psychological standpoint, its relatively easy and swift, but when you come down to this (Mother touches her body), to the outer form and so-called matter, oh, its a whole world! Each lesson its as if you were given lessons, and its so interesting! Lessons with all the consequences and explanations. You spend one day or two days like that over a tiny little discovery. And you see that after that, after that day or those hours of work, there is a change in the body consciousness: the light is there, its changedchanged, the reactions are not the same. But (Mother gestures to express a world of toil).
And the Presence the Presence becomes more and more intimate, more and more concrete, and at such times at times (Mother makes a gesture like a swelling) its so concrete as to be as if absolute. Then (gesture of being covered again) another state of consciousness comes and everything has to begin all over again.
0 1967-09-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have made discoveries these last few days. I have discovered that in past lives (I dont know which ones), my psychic was several times in a tortured body. And it comes back for (how should I put it?) a collective action in the world, on the earth, so that the possibility of the thing may disappear. Its a rather interesting work.
But I noticed it because I said to myself, But why is my attention constantly turned to that? Then I looked carefully and saw that the psychic had been in a tortured body several times, long ago at the time of the Inquisition, but also in political cases (much more recently, probably). Real tortures, you know, those inventions in which men are worse than monstersno animal is more monstrous than human consciousness like that. And it came back with the law, the principle of the thing, of the distortion of consciousness, and once I had understood, I looked at myself (I was wondering, Why? Why is my attention turned to that?), I then looked and I saw. And I started doing the needful so that it may no longer exist in the creationsome things will not exist any longer.
But nothing in the creation that belongs to the mineral world, the plant world, or the animal world, need disappear. There were those monstrous animals: they disappeared materially, but not not the principle of the creation. Its since man came with the mindwhen the mind was twisted, deformed by the adverse forces. That is really ugly.
0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But that division, that separated part came about when they burned him. Until then, I had kept him whole, and would have made him pass into the psychic as I do with everyone, peacefully, smoothly, without difficulty. But brrt! (same gesture of bursting) Its a frightful shock, you know! They put the fire in the mouth first. Its Oh, the way men behave with each other I have SEEN all that, I have SEEN it. Its such a frightful, frightful thing!
And to think that It has happened not once or twice but hundreds of times that people who loved someone (they loved their father or brother, or their mother), as soon as that person is dead, if they see him in a dream or vision, they get terribly frightened and want to chase him away! Why? If I ask them why, its such a spontaneous movement in them that they cant answer me. They cant, they find it so natural that they are surprised I should ask the question.
0 1967-10-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont feel. I have no contact I have a contact with everybody, but I mean theres no special affinity: the psychic appears to be completely asleep. Its vital and intellectual. The psychic is asleep, or absent, in the background, not moving.
Her difficulties must be mostly of a mental order.
--
You know, an ardent faith, a psychic aspiration, a fervour, a self-giving, instead of being forever turned in on oneself, turned in on oneself. A self-giving, thats what is needed to save the world!
(silence)
Mental faith isnt enough, psychic fervour is necessaryself-giving, self-abnegation.
The body itself is learning that every time it thinks of itself, theres a small catastrophenot catastrophe, but I mean on the bodys scale: a cellular catastrophe every time there is even a slight turning in on itself. It must forget itself completely, forget itself, and most importantly, it must not try to find support, comfort, understanding, help or anything of the sort (horizontal gesture all around)only there (gesture with palms open upward and the two hands forming a kind of upside down triangle): the only support is the Divine. The only support. The only help, the only responsibility. All the rest. There isnt one thing coming from or towards a human being that isnt mixed; and the moment its mixed, it means conflict.
0 1967-10-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, in the psychological makeup, there are all those old things that come from human atavism: you must be reasonable, prudent, perspicacious you must take precautions, be provident, oh! The whole fabric of ordinary human equilibrium. Its so sordid. And its like that, the whole mentalization of the cells is like that, full of that, and not only in your own way of being, according to your own experience, but in the way of being of your parents, grandparents, the people around, and oh!
***
0 1967-11-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sweet Mother, in the Bulletin you said, psychic memories are unforgettable moments of life when the consciousness is intense, luminous, strong, active, powerful, and sometimes also turning points in your life which gave it a new orientation. But never will you be able to describe the dress you wore or the gentleman with whom you spoke or the neighbours or the kind of field you were in. (Questions and Answers of May 6, 1953) And regarding the memory of small details, you said, Its perfectly silly.
But then how is it that one fairly often reads in newspapers the story of little children who remember their past life?
Thats not a psychic memory. They always confuse things so dreadfully!
Its not psychic, its when the vital, through some special circumstance, goes from one body to another, then it still remembers. Thats generally when it comes back in the same family, or in neighbours.
Is that all he writes?
--
The memories you are referring to, those mentioned in the newspapers, are the memories of the vital being, when exceptionally it has come out of a body in order to enter another. That happens, though not frequently. The memories I am referring to are those of the psychic being, and one is conscious of them only when one is in conscious relationship with ones psychic being. There is no contradiction between the two things.
***
0 1967-12-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the state Ive just described is possible in the bodys cells and in the corporeal consciousness, also in the psychic consciousness; but vitally and mentally, even if you understand, it seems like an almost impossible realization because of a fixity, a fixity in the form: the form of thoughts and the form of sensations. Mentally it could only be expressed as an acceptance of all thoughts, all formulae, raising them up towards something thats no longer a thought, no longer a mentally formulated thing, but a light, a conscious light that organises and unifies. But if you take them all on the same plane You can accept everything, but everything as one viewpointone among innumerable viewpoints on something that cannot be expressed in words, because as soon as you put words on it, it becomes a formula, and the formula takes the power away. But physically, in the bodys cells, its very, very clearly perceptible and is lived quite spontaneously: you receive only from on high, and you spread it.
***
0 1967-12-08, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The only somewhat new thing is that the body is beginning to be a bit restless at its decay. Before, it was completely indifferent, it didnt give it a thought; it knew it was going on, but Now, its beginning to be troublesome. So perhaps its a sign, I dont know? Its beginning to be troublesomenot psychologically, but like this: when it receives the Command to do something and there is, not exactly an incapacity, but a limitation to the possibility, that starts it is unhappy. So I wondered
Then at night its the same thing, it says, Why such a so long period of diminishing consciousness?
0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a kind of adaptation of the Communist system, but not in a spirit of levelling: according to everyones capacity, his position (not a psychological or intellectual one), his INNER position.
In democracies and with the Communists, theres a levelling down: everyone is pulled down to the same level.
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you understand, when Y. supposedly had typhoid (which she never hadit was part of the high drama, it was the illness of transformation), she wanted to go to the Vellore hospital with M. So she wrote me a letter asking for everything to be arranged and for them to be in the same room. And in her letter she literally wrote, For me M. is God. So the poor chap, he finds it somewhat a heavy load! (Mother laughs) And he fell ill! Oh, its better to laugh. Ultimately, these things sink into ridicule. As for me, I simply do this (gesture of bringing the Light). Well see. I tell you, the first result is that this poor M. is ill: he had a pain in his back; his fever is over but hes left without a spine! And the funniest part is that when things go wrong, its to me that they write (laughing), me who belong to an outdated past! So he asked for my advice: should he do this, should he do that? I must confess I treated myself to the satisfaction of answering him (through Y.) that his illness was mostly psychological and I didnt see how the doctor could help him! Since then, silence.
But still, its sad for the kid.
--
It is an error too to imagine that, although the physical sexual action is to be abandoned, yet some inward reproduction of it is part of the transformation of the sex-centre. The action of the animal sex-energy in Nature is a device for a particular purpose in the economy of the material creation in the Ignorance. But the vital excitement that accompanies it makes the most favourable opportunity and vibration in the atmosphere for the inrush of those very vital forces and beings whose whole business is to prevent the descent of the supramental Light. The pleasure attached to it is a degradation and not a true form of the divine Ananda. The true divine Ananda in the physical has a different quality and movement and substance; self-existent in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine. You have spoken of Divine Love; but Divine Love, when it touches the physical, does not awaken the gross lower vital propensities; indulgence of them would only repel it and make it withdraw again to the heights from which it is already difficult enough to draw it down into the coarseness of the material creation which it alone can transform. Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error.8
Sri Aurobindo
0 1968-02-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That happened the last few nights: it suddenly remembered the time (some twenty years ago, for instance) when those experiences were experiences of the vital, the mind, the psychic being and above. It was the way of being there (gesture above), but the body was left out: it was in a different way, in its own way. But now, its the body: the same experiences, the very same, come back to it like that, and with a certitude and solidity in their base that are incomparable!
There are still, in a subconscious background, bad habitsall the bad habits: defeatism, doubt, pessimism, all that (its a way of being of that region), but it has gone underground, and when it does come through (more out of habit than out of bad will), when it in English I would say bubbles out, it gets such a slap!
0 1968-03-16, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it the material equivalent of a psychological experience one has in which the perception of evil completely disappears in the perception of an absolute Goodeven in evil?
Yes, thats it. We might say that instead of being just a mental conception, its a concrete realization of the fact.
0 1968-04-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a letter from Monsignor R., a friend of P.L. He is a billionaire, and its P. L., in fact, who manages this Monsignors billions. He wrote to J. [P.L.s friend], saying this [Satprem reads a letter in which Msgr. R. asks J. to give P.L. urgent help by receiving him in her Pondicherry home and looking after him, as the case is very serious and P.L. is going through a psychological crisis and must break out of his milieu, etc.].
Hed better come.
0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It all came so spontaneously and naturally that I felt as if it was THERE. Now that youve read it back to me (laughing), I realize its not there! But it came so spontaneously: I sat there, reading those four notes, and it came one after another. Especially Abhijits, this completely objective, or anyway completely detached vision of the phenomenon: Circulation stops As if you were looking at a small instrument or tool (Mother gestures as if fingering a small object), and you remarked, Oh, its stopped now thats why it no longer works. Like that. In other words, none of those uncertainties or anxieties or aspirations. All that was emotions, sentiments, psychological phenomenait was all completely absent. A very simple little contraption (same fingering gesture) which you look at as you would a machine, and the machine stops because it no longer goes like that. There. And as a result, this body was completely detached from all human anguishfrom everything: not only from anguish, but from the habit, the whole human formation about deathit was all gone. As if I were all the way up above, like that, and looking all the way downhup! it went away.
Its what we might express as perfect detachment from the phenomenon.
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know, but if you say, a disequilibrium between various functionings, then it seems to be purely physical. I feel something is missing to say that its a disequilibrium in the psyCHOLOGICAL being or functioning?
(long silence)
--
What you say here gives an impression that an illness has purely physical causes. So it might be necessary to add somewhere the word consciousness or psychological. You say, Its always a disequilibrium in the being, a disequilibrium between various functionings, a disequilibrium between forces. It gives an impression of being something purely material.
There are no such things as purely material forces.
0 1968-07-17, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have tears in my eyes: a commotion of immense joy has shot through my whole being when I read your letter, and Mothers words which you repeat for me. I cannot find words to describe my psychological state I let you guess it. I feel so small, so insignificant before the horizons you make me glimpse. All this incites me to serious work, to the abdication of the little personality so as to be worthy of HER. These feelings in my soul are very different from all my previous religious experiences.
(Mother nods her head in approval)
0 1968-07-20, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In other words, that experience one generally has in the higher mind, in the psychic, is now the bodysits the body in its cellular constitution that has it. It had that experience this morning: That alone was permanent, That which, through innumerable changes, remains (immutable, unshakeable gesture with the edge of the hand).
It was such a concrete experienceso concrete for the body that it wondered how it still remained in a form?
0 1968-09-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have told you many times, and couldnt repeat it too often, that we are not made of a piece. Within ourselves we have lots of states of being, and each state of being has its own life. All that is gathered together in a single body, as long as you have one, and acts through a single body; thats what gives you the sense of a single person, a single being. But there are many of them, and there are in particular concentrations on different planes: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, a mental being, a psychic being, and many others with all possible intermediaries. So when you leave your body, all those beings will scatter. Its only if you are a very advanced yogi and have been capable of unifying your being around the divine center that those beings remain linked together. If you havent been able to unify yourself, then at the time of death, all that will scatter: every being will go back to its own region. With the vital being, for example, your various desires will separate and each of them will go and chase its realization quite independently, because there will no longer be a physical being to hold them together. While if you have united your consciousness to the psychic consciousness, when you die you will remain conscious of your psychic being, and the psychic being will return to the psychic world which is a world of bliss, joy, peace, tranquillity, and growing knowledge. But if you have lived in your vital and all its impulses, each impulse will try to realize itself here and there. For instance, for the miser who was concentrated on his money, when he dies the part of his vital that was concerned with his money will hook on there and will keep watching over the money so no one takes it. People wont see him, but he is there nonetheless, and very unhappy if something happens to his dear money. Now, if you live exclusively in your physical consciousness (which is difficult, because, after all, you have thoughts and feelings), if you live exclusively in your physical, when the physical being disappears, you disappear along with it, its over. There is a spirit of the form: your form has a spirit that lives on for seven days after your death. The doctors have declared you dead, but the spirit of your form is alive, and not only alive but conscious in most cases. It lasts for seven to eight days, and after that, it too dissolves I am not talking about yogis, I am talking about ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, its quite different; for them the world is different. I am talking about ordinary people living an ordinary life; for them its like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to center it on a part of your being which is immortal; otherwise it will evaporate like a flame into thin air. And happily so, because if it were otherwise, there might be gods or kinds of superior men who would create hells and heavens as they do in their material imagination, inside which they would shut you up. (Question:) It is said that there is a god of death. Is it true? Yes. As for me, I call him a genius of death. I know him very well. And its an extraordinary organization. You cant imagine how organized it is! I think there are many of those genii of death, hundreds of them. I met at least two of them. One I met in France, the other in Japan, and they were very different. Which leads me to believe that depending on the mental culture, the education, the countries and beliefs, there must be different genii. But there are genii for all manifestations of Nature: there are genii of fire, genii of air, water, rain, wind; and there are genii of death. Any one genius of death is entitled to a certain number of dead every day. Its truly a fantastic organization. Its a sort of alliance between the vital forces and the forces of Nature. If, for example, he decided, Here is the number of people I am entitled to, say four or five, or six, or one or two (it varies from day to day), if he decided so many people would die, hell go straight and set himself up near the person whos going to die. But if you (not the person) happen to be conscious, if you see the genius going to the person but do not want him or her to die, then, if you have a certain occult power, you can tell him, No, I forbid you to take this person. Thats something which happened, not once but several times, in Japan and here. It wasnt the same genius. Which makes me say there must be many of them. If you can tell him, I forbid you to take this person and have the power to send him away, theres nothing he can do but go away; but he wont give up his due and will go elsewhere there will be a death elsewhere. (Question:) Some people, when they are about to die, are aware of it. Why dont they tell the genius to go away? Two things are needed. First, nothing in your being, no part of your being, should wish to die. That doesnt often happen. You always have, somewhere in you, a defeatist: something tired or disgusted, which has had enough, something lazy or which doesnt want to fight and says, Ah, well, let it be over, so much the better. Thats enoughyoure dead. But its a fact: if nothing, absolutely nothing in you consents to die, you will not die. For someone to die, there is always a second, if a hundredth part of a second, when he consents. If there isnt that second of consent, he will not die. But who is certain he doesnt have within himself, somewhere, a tiny bit of a defeatist which just yields and says, Oh well? Hence the need to unify oneself. Whatever the path we may follow, the subject we may study, we always reach the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine center; that way he becomes a real individual, master of himself and of his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of the forces, which toss him about like a cork in a stream. He goes where he doesnt want to, is made to do what he doesnt want to, and finally he gets lost in a hole without any way to stop himself doing so. But if you are consciously organized, unified around the divine center, governed and led by it, you are the master of your destiny. Its worth trying. At any rate, I find its better to be the master rather than the slave. The feeling of being pulled by strings and being made to do things you may or may not want to do is a rather unpleasant sensation. Its quite irksome. Well, I dont know, I, for one, found it quite irksome even when I was a small child. When I was five, I began finding it wholly intolerable, and I sought a way for it to be otherwisewithout anyone being able to tell me anything. Because I knew no one capable of helping me, and I didnt have the luck you havesomeone who can tell you, Here is what you must do. There was no one to tell me. I had to find it all by myself. I found it. I began at the age of five. And you, its a long time since you were five?
Well cut out the end.
0 1968-09-11, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For me, only one thing has happened. A very interesting fact that I noted. I forget the occasion and how it took place, but it was the day before yesterday, and the fact I noted was the presence of the psychic being that the psychic being hasnt gone at all. I said [on August 28], The vital and the mind have gone, but the psychic being hasnt.
I think it was in relation to someone I saw (I dont remember), and I noticed that a very great power was there; and the PHYSICAL being, the body, was conscious of the presence of the psychic being, which was constantly there, behind. It hasnt gone. Conscious.
It was a day when someone had come (I forget who), and the whole Force which was there before concentrated on that personit was the same thing: the Force, the Presence, with the same Pressure on the person. And then, it was the psychic being which said, But I havent gone, Ive remained here! With its full consciousness, you understand. Its the intermediaries [i.e., the mind and the vital] that have gone.
Its difficult to explain. There is the impression of a lacka lack from the active point of view, the point of view of everyday action.
--
Here, we could put it like this: any action (occult action, I mean) seems to be at least as strong at a distance as in the presencein certain cases, stronger. Any need of activity (there already wasnt much of it previously) has considerably lessened. And there is a sort of difference in the outward relationship, it has changed. These last few days I have observed (and its obviously the psychic consciousness that observes; when I say I, its not thats what struck meits not the body: its the psychic consciousness), and for example, the habit of keeping my eyes closed has increased, and it doesnt hamper the psychic being in any way. It goes on with its action, its relationship.
It may be (I am not saying anything because theres nothing very nothing definite, at any rate), there may be a new relationship or new intermediary being built between the psychic being and the material, the physical. It seems to be something now developing.
Well see.
But the Force that expresses itself, does it express itself directly or through the psychic beingthis descending Force?
The psychic being is perfectly transparent, it doesnt cause any change.
It must depend on the case, yes, on the kind of action: on people, circumstances. Because the psychic being doesnt in any way alter either the quality or the nature or the action of the Force. Its like something absolutely transparent.
It varies rather according to the cases in which the Force wants to apply itself: cases, people, circumstances. When the action is general, it seems to be direct. But I am not absolutely sure. And the presence of the psychic being makes itself felt only in the case of certain people.
It strikes me as a kind of beacona beacon projecting the Lightand at the same time, a sort of receiving set that receives the vibrations. Its very, very accuratevery accurateas regards the quality of the vibrations of everything around it. Oh, its become far more accurate than before. A slight movement here, there, or there, or a waveall that is perceived very clearly, very clearly, with a consciousness which is highly receptive and at the same time without any reactions. There are no reactions, its like an extremely delicate (that is, sensitive) receiving set, but without any reaction. No reaction. Things come into a vast, immense, luminous movement.
--
I remember that during those classes, on certain days I knew it was the psychic that spoke, and on other days it was only the mind. And that day, I remember, the psychic presence was very strong.
Its interesting.
0 1968-09-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, those who are fully conscious of their psychic cannot possibly deceive themselves, because if they refer their problem to the psychic, they can find the divine answer there. But even for those who are in contact with their psychic, the answer doesnt have the same character as the mental answer, which is precise, categorical, absolute, and imposes itself the psychic answer is more a TENDENCY than an assertion. Its something that can still have different interpretations in the mind.
Which brings me back to my experience of yesterday. After looking at the problem, I reached the conclusion that its impossible to reproach a human being who does the best he can according to his consciousness, because how can he go beyond his own consciousness? Thats precisely the error most people make: they judge someone else according to their own consciousness, but the other person doesnt have their consciousness! Therefore they cant judge (I am only talking about people of goodwill, of course). To the vision of a more complete or higher consciousness, someone else is in error, but to the person himself, hes doing as best as he can what he thinks he has to do.
--
You understand, the psychic beings direct contact with the bodily substance, without intermediary, gives the sensation (is it sensation? I dont know; its neither sensation nor perception), its a sort of felt vision and that vision is very precise, very preciseof the value of the vibrations in comparison with a higher vibration which is (this is as much as I can say) more directly expressive of the supreme Vibration.
Its difficult to express, but the body is now living an experience it had never had, like going from an imprecision to a precision, from a sort of fluidity to its not something concrete, but from something fluidfluid and impreciseto something precise. Any event (any small event that happens to the body) is an occasion for a new perception. Previously, everything was fluid and imprecise; now its beginning to grow more precisemore precise, more accurate. But it loses a little of its fluidity.
0 1968-09-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The near totality of humanity is conscious ONLY of the physical being. Through education, the number of people conscious of their vital and mind goes on increasing. As for the human beings conscious of their psychic being, their number is relatively minimal.
Theyre a bit theyre very ignorant, these children.
--
The psychic being?
The physical being.
--
For it to be active, that state of consciousness must be sufficiently material, that is to say, in the most material part of the psychic. Its a field of consciousness that belongs to the psychic world. But it must be in the psychic TURNED TOWARDS MATTER. And not just a thought: it must be a spontaneous way of being.
It can be expressed in different ways. Its a terrestrial manifestation of divine Love in its form of it has something to do with benevolenceits not benevolence, but a way of existing, feeling, seeing, acting, which is a sort of (words are stupid), a psychic benevolence, which is an expression of divine Oneness (Mother shakes her head at the inadequacy of words). The mental transcription takes all the truth out of it.
Its something I feel but cannot describe; something exceedingly powerful in the sense that even materially, quite materially (physically, materially), if someone comes to kill you, he cant. He comes and approaches you, but then he cant do it. There have been examples.
But I FEEL it. The origin of it is psychic, but it can concretize and create a certain kind of vibration. Well, if in ones consciousness one lives in that, theres absolutely no magic that can act. I feel it, because from time to time it comes, and at such times everything is clear. And it acts especially here (gesture around the head).
Benevolence (laughing) is the ridiculous human distortion of that. Its a very, very peculiar vibration. What we might call one of the ways of being of divine Love. And it can become a very material vibration.
0 1968-11-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its quite extraordinary. And this Msgr. Z will also be in it. P.L.s letter goes on: You may remember that I had been told about a promotion at the Vatican; that promotion, announced while I was in Pondicherry, gave rise to the basest intrigues, so that the nomination was stopped. And paradoxically, I have been given its duties without the title. They have decided to test me, and to do so for a period of at least four years. The struggle for power in this milieu is frightening. But I see all that from such a distance! I have the sensation that its all about someone else, not me, and that embarrasses those around me, for I do not react to injustice. (And what injustice!If they knew how indifferent I am to this little world.) There is the sad panorama. You will now realize why the Samadhis peace and sweetness are so dear to me and intimate to my soul. At times I feel like a feather blown here or there by the wind, and my whole effort is anchored in the light Sweet Mother has put into my psyche. Right from the first moment of the day my tenderness rises towards her, and then I see that what I do is not important, but the MANNER is.
(long silence)
0 1968-11-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I think its this: her psychic being had become conscious, and her whole mind didnt want to emerge from its conception. I saw that. I saw it: when I held her hand like this, she would have the impression that she was going to be COMPELLED to change her conception, and she didnt want to. So she would get up abruptly and go.
She was an indomitable being, Bharatidi.
--
Yes, thats it. The psychic being went away peacefully, the mind scattered. Yes, because it was her, but it was I cant say a person (theres no person), but it was inside. It was inside, it wasnt like something outside (thats general). And insistent.
Yes, thats it, she scattered herself.
--
Yes, in everyone: it has united. Thats what she did, mentally she didnt want to continue to exist INDIVIDUALLY. With the psychic, you cant play jokes of that sortit went away. But she didnt concern herself very much with her psychicit was the belief she didnt want to believe in, of course! But mentally she dispersed herself (thats not very difficult).
But it should make a difference in the consciousness of the person into whom shes come?
--
She had a very strong mind, very strong. Perhaps a small embryo of psychic being. But it was a whole mental organization.
(long silence)
--
Her psychic has gone to rest.
(silence)
0 1968-12-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, the body has this experience of being completely disorganized, of having a cold, a pain here, a pain there and when its in a certain attitude (we may call it an attitude, I dont know), at any rate in a certain state of consciousness: vanished! All that no longer exists, theres not a tracetheres no cold anymore, no pain anymore, nothing anymore, its all gone! Though its ready to come back. And not only gone (which would be a psychological phenomenon), but the CIRCUMSTANCES of people and things around CHANGE! They become different: in one case, everything is like thatstubborn, twisted and in the other
(long silence)
0 1968-12-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And as regards the quality of vision, there was quite a curious story. K.s mother had come here with a married daughter who had just lost her son (a young man who died suddenly). They came here, she was quite unhappy, and when she came to see me, I saw her son in her own atmosphere. I told her, Your son is with you. If you have the true attitude, you can come into contact with him and feel his presence there. She left from here, went to see X, and as they always do, asked him what he knew about her son. X told her authoritatively, Your son has gone into a shepherd. So naturally, shes lost all confidence in me, because I dont tell her things with a dogmatic authority, while he spoke like that, with assurance; so she felt sure he was right! There may be a small part of her son that went into a shepherd (!), I have no idea; as for me, what I saw was the psychic part. But shes lost all confidence, shes never come to see me again. So thats troublesome. It proves hes quite shut inside himself and inside his own conception.
Never mind..
--
And then You know that from every side Ive been trying to get Sri Aurobindo published [in France], in particular The Human Cycle. At last I got a letter from a certain J. B., who writes: For a long time now, a publisher (F.) has been asking me to create a collection in his publishing house. I thought of a few books, mostly foreign ones, grouped around a title such as Towards the spiritual mutation and focused on the present researches, individual and clumsy, often dangerous, but sincere and undertaken in a spirit quite different from that of the former generation, the spirit of a certain youth I am in contact with. The idea is to show these young people that their attempts and aspirations are legitimate, even if they have discovered them through drugs, since in many cases drugs alone have been able to unmoor them from the Cartesian rationalist bedrock, to put before them experiences that, at least, are positive, and to offer them directions and models. In other words, the aspect of amateurism and exoticism found in Z [another publisher] would be replaced here by a practical and technical side, wide open to all spiritual researches, whatever they may be, to all duly controlled meta psychical experiments, serious psychedelic experiments (I have T. Leary in mind, for instance), new theologies Naturally, there would be room, a major place, for the Oriental endeavor. In sum, it would involve all researches and attempts to crack open that sort of corset within which the Western mind has been going in circles for such a long time. That does not in the least rule out, on the contrary, certain scientific worksof pure sciencein which, out of intrinsic necessity, this Cartesianism has already been singularly shaken. Of course, all that would make for quite an ill-assorted backdrop for Sri Aurobindos thought, a backdrop you will regard as unworthy of it. The planned Collection might be called Spiritual Adventures.
We can try.
0 1968-12-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All that still seems to be in a limited field, but I am not sure its not far more general. All the time (almost all the time), there seems to be an intervention of the psychic, as if the psychic made the body remember (I dont know how to put it), made the body remember its universality, and as if it werent only for itself that the body is expressing movements of consciousness the movements of the higher Consciousness that it expresses: the effect is general.
Well know that. Well know all that later, in
0 1969-01-01, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, thats it. Oh, it has an extraordinary power on the vital atmosphere. I have seen it since I was quite small I noticed it before knowing anything outwardly, before anyone explained it to me. And I saw it LEFT TO ITSELF, that is to say, without the intervention of all ideas and all that. Strange. And invincible (how should I put it?), it cannot be affected in any way: it doesnt receive from outside, it receives only from the psychic consciousness, or directly from the supreme Consciousness.
And now its going about here and there! (Mother laughs)
0 1969-01-04, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It interested me because it was entirely new. And so concrete! Concrete like this (Mother touches the arms of her chair), like what the physical consciousness usually regards as others, as concrete as that. Which means it didnt come through some inner being, through the psychic being: it came DIRECTLY onto the body.
What is it? Yes, it may be that. The bodys feeling since that took place has been a sort of certitude; a certitude as if now it no longer were in an anxiety or uncertainty to know. What will it be? What will this Supramental PHYSICALLY be like? the body used to wonder. What will it be like physically? Now, it no longer thinks about it, its happy.
--
A collection of "spiritual adventures" (in the plural) in which Sri Aurobindo might have found a place amidst drugs and psychedelia.
The famous cole Polytechnique in Paris.
0 1969-01-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Since it came, Ive been seeing peoples eyes more clearlyin the past too, I used to see their eyes, but it was their psychological state, while now I see the expression of the eyes, and its so interesting!
Mother sometimes uses "he" to designate this consciousness.
0 1969-02-01, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The psychic consciousness that has identified with the small part of the physical is what comes out of this small physical person. Insofar as that consciousness has fashioned ones life, it remembers what it has fashioned, and the memory is closely linked with the psychic consciousness in the past events: whenever the psychic consciousness did not participate in the events, no memory is retained. Its only the psychic consciousness that can continue.
Its not the mind that retains the memories, thats quite wrong.
0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was a rather interesting study, which was made under the auspices of this new consciousness, and so in quite a general way, and very clearly, very clearly And with the sense of a GREAT power. This Consciousness contains a GREAT power. Especially a psychological power, that is, an immunity to any reaction from outside. Thats interesting. All anxiety, fear, desire, covetousness, all that was a whole world which I had always deliberately kept at arms length because it didnt interest me, but from this new angle some work can be done.
(long silence)
--
Thats why in the past it was taught that all that happens is the effect of the Divines Will. The way it was put was limited (its always the same thing: the way things are put causes a restriction or a coloration, or its shown from a particular angle the thing loses its essential truth), but I am sure it was said for its psychological effect. The danger of this teaching is that people slump down and dont budge anymore, they stop doing anythingno more effort of progress, no more effort to do some good work, they remain like that: I dont have to do anything anymore, its God who does everything! Thats why it cant be put in that way. But it does have an advantage, that of leaving you absolutely peaceful. And I insist a lot on people having this peace, this tranquil peaceits COMPLETELY indispensable. I saw (with the help of this Consciousness, in fact), I saw the force of power acting; and when the instrument (that is, the individual or the group) is wholly peaceful and trusting, like that, vitally and mentally still, the force goes through without being distortednothing distorts itand acts with its full power. As soon as there is a human consciousness (either a mental or a vital one, or both) which is agitated, or questions, or has preferences, or thinks it knows very well, or it makes a sort of whirl and the Force loses three-fourths of its power!
So we have to use one means or another (people dont understand, they always half understand); as for me, I spend my time telling them, Be in peace, be in peace. But of course, they might also become inert, like that. Theres no knowing what to do.
0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I understood. I understood to what extent it was a gracetruly a wonderful graceto have taken away my mind and vital. Naturally, it could be done only because the psychic was in full possession of the body, otherwise (Mother laughs, showing that otherwise she would have disconnected from her body). Which means the process isnt to be recommended: it was quite radical. But it was wonderful. And I found something in Savitri something in the fifth Canto (I translated it yesterday and kept it to show you). Here:
(Mother takes a roll of sheets and reads:)
0 1969-04-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Michelia champaka, cream yellow ("Supramentalized psychological Perfection").
***
0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are two things. Death, it doesnt at all understand what we mean by that, the importance we attach to it but not at all. And then, money, to this consciousness, is buffoonery: this system of money, the invention of this system, which prevents you from doing anything unless you pull out a banknote, to it, really its buffoonery. Strange, I suddenly realize that the psychic being (dominating gesture behind) the psychic being is almost like a witness, its a witness to the whole evolution of things, and it KNOWS (it understands the deeper reasons, it knows how things are). Its in the body that this Consciousness is so active, and so, every time the body goes on with the little habits from the time when there was a mind and a vital, really it feels it as buffoonery. And the attitude with regard to money is like Death, food and money: this Consciousness feels those are the three awesome things in human life, that human life revolves around those three thingseating, (laughing) dying, and having money and to it, the three are they are passing inventions which derive from a wholly transitory state that doesnt correspond to anything very deep or very permanent. Thats its attitude. And then, it teaches the body to be otherwise.
It tolerates food, provided it doesnt take up too big a place and isnt too cumbersome or too important; it says, Very well, thats the way youre built, too bad for you, youve got to eat. (Mother laughs)
And then, death Just yesterday (yesterday afternoon), I had an example. An accident took place, have you heard about it?1 Theyre really wondering how it happened. As for me, I INSTANTLY saw that there was in the girl a psychic will (which she wasnt conscious of: she only felt an unease), but there was a psychic will to die (why? I dont know, I havent yet seen why). That was clear. And how everything was arranged to favor that, its almost miraculous (you dont talk about it because people will say youre going mad if you call such a misfortune miraculous). But habitually, all those who go into the swimming pool have to put their name down when they go out (thats the rule). Yesterday, the man who kept the register had asked to go to Madras at 6, so he wasnt there and no ones name was noted down, and so they didnt know Things like that. She went to see the groups captain and told her, I am tired, I dont feel well, I want to go; the captain said, Yes, yes, you can go. (Of course, it was foolish not to check that she had left; the captain was busy and just thought, All right, shes leaving.) The girl was then at the shallow end of the poolimpossible to get drowned there, unless you do it quite deliberately (they found her at the other end). But the pool was full of peoplenobody saw anything. You see, everything was arranged just to force her to die.2 Every precaution is in place, and not one worked. And as soon as they told me the news of the accident, as soon as I was told, I immediately looked, and I saw, in the place of her psychic, a peaceful will, like this (Mother stretches out her two arms in an immutable gesture). They were working hard: they worked for hours; first they took all the water out (they know how to do that), they drained the body of the water, then started workingtractions and all that to try to make her brea the againthey worked for hours (they were ready to work the whole night), they did all they could. And the psychic was like this (same gesture), that is, immutable, determined. But she didnt know [that she was going to die]: it came through her vital to reach her, and she felt quite ill at ease, she said, Oh, I want to go out. So they told her, Yes, thats right, you should go. And because she had said that, naturally no one was worried when they didnt see her (no one had put their names down, so they couldnt check); its only when they found her clothes She had been under water for over an hour.
This Consciousness was so conscious of the movement in everyone, of every reaction, it was extraordinary! And its this Consciousness that saw this, that showed me this: a psychic like this (same immutable gesture), like an irrevocable decision. And for this Consciousness, you understand, its like someone who decides to move to a new house, or to a new room, or even to change clothes. Why do you make so much, so much fuss about that?
I havent said any of this, because I havent said anything to anyone.
--
Last year, you remember, there was a boy who drowned at Gingee:3 that was with P. [the groups captain]; and this little one, it was with B., Rs sister [also a captain]. So I looked: outwardly, they are vitally very strong and very egocentric, which would be the external, material reason that allows the accident to take place that is, no intuition of others needs or state: no contact, theyre like this (gesture closed in on oneself), but with an inner solidity on which, the psychic was leaning, for both of them [the two captains].
The other one too [the boy who drowned in the pond] wanted to go, but in his case it was very interesting: I saw Sri Aurobindo come and fetch him under water, and Sri Aurobindo said, He will be born in the family (he came back in a child), he will come back in the first child to be born in the family. And this girl, I dont know yet what will happen, but her psychic being WANTED to go (for some reason or other).4
(silence)
--
For this Consciousness, apart from a few individuals, human beings are weak. They are weak beings. Highly speculative, imaginative, very highly active in the mind, oh, tremendously active; that gives it a sense of oh-oh, what agitation! But like that, from the psychophysical standpoint, weak.
Since it began, Ive told you several times about this sense of a FORCE, an absolutely unusual force (I am not the only one: all those who are in contact with this Consciousness say they feel a force an extraordinary force). And its this Consciousness. But it has a different character: its a force that sees things differently, wholly differently.
So then, for instance, these two I mentioned [P. and his sister, the two captains], from a human standpoint, you would say theyre really insensitiveits because theyre insensitive and too egocentric that the accident took place. In other words, a reproach. In this light, Oh, these are good instruments, one can lean on them5 (solid gesture), they wont sag, theyre strong enough for one to lean on them. And all that is shown to the body, which is really beginning (laughing) to know things no body had ever learned beforeever. And to see life quite differently It feels (laughing) you know, it feels stupid, that is, consciously its in one way, and then out of atavism, out of construction, its tied down in the other way. So it feels very silly, very silly. But the Consciousness held it (with yesterdays event), it HELD it in its Consciousness like that, present, until it had really understood everything in detail, and once it had really understood, poff! the thing was gone, finished. So it understands that when something is held like that, it means theres something to understand, it has a lesson to learn, and when the lesson has been learned, when it has understood, seen clearlyonce it has seen clearly and its all simple and very clear thats it, poff! its gone, finished (gesture showing the Consciousness letting go of the body), as though the thing were quite taken away That was taking place at night, while I am not disturbed (the night hours are the only ones when I am not disturbed every minute; I can carry on with my work untroubled), and then I saw. And that night was so peaceful, but with such peace! Its ten rungs above the ordinary material peace, completely You know, the peace of a psychic will so powerful (Mother stretches her arms in a sovereign gesture), so tranquil that all our emotions, our reactions, all that absolutely looks like childishness. But the body understands very well (since this Consciousness came it has begun to understand lots of things), it understands that all that [emotions, reactions] was a necessary path to prepare receptive instruments.
Its really interesting.
--
There was one thing. This little one, theyre going to cremate her now. So they came to me with a tray of flowers to show me the flowers they were going to place on her body And there [with the tray], there was something of the little onea psychic embryo; it was there, and it made a slight movement suddenly, a movement of such a deep tenderness. She was like this (gesture in front of Mother, with the tray of flowers), I took a rose, and it was as though I gave it to her in her hand; I gave it and said, Here, its for you. And all that, all those vibrations, it was all luminous, lovely, and she (the conscious part in her) was so per-fect-ly happy!
How can you tell that to the parents? They would say, Youre crazy
But thats the FACT, the plain fact: I saw Champaklal come with the tray of flowers, and it [the psychic embryo] was floating above, like that; so when I saw her, I took a rose and there was something SO lovely, SO luminous, like that (a very small thing, not a great force or anything), but so lovely, so luminous, so happy, with such a sense of repose.
And how many times it must happen like that!
--
This body was accustomed to having experiences under the psychics influence, in its adoration for the Supreme Conscious Truthin adoration. Its whole joy was there, it was fully satisfied. But since that time, it has had experienceswhich the other parts of the being had IN THEIR OWN WAY, but now this way this physical way is so concrete! So concrete and tangible. The body can say, I have SEEN the Supreme Consciousness, like people in the past who said, I have seen God.This body doesnt believe in God it believes in something much better than God! (laughter)
There. Is that all? Do you have anything to ask?
0 1969-05-21, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Most people the vast majority of peoplego into a sort of assimilative sleep: all the experiences they had in their lives, all they learned, the consciousness seems to ruminate over that. In the beginning (Thon knew a lot of things I dont know how he came to know them, but I verified them and found them to be correct), in the beginning, the span of time between two lives is very long, and its a sort of assimilative sleep in which the consequences of what one has learned develop inwardly. Then, as the psychic being is formed and as one grows more conscious, rebirths take place more and more closely, until the time when rebirth becomes the result of a choice: at a precise place, for a specific length of time. And then, depending on what the psychic being wants to do, depending on the action it has to do, the new birth may be near or distant. There, we have all possible differences. But in the formative stage, thats how it is: very distant rebirths. So then, Ive often wondered You see, Thon says there is a psychic STATE in which those beings rest (its true, there is such a place, I know it), but many people, especially at the beginning of their evolution, are quite tied down to the earth; I have seen quite a few people in trees, for instance. Very often I saw them in trees; often, while following someone [with the inner vision], I saw him enter into a tree; and often, while looking at a tree, I saw someone in it. I saw others who were oh, people clinging to a place they were interested in: for instance, I saw a man who was interested in nothing but his money, which he had hidden somewhere, and as soon as he left his body, he went there, settled there, and refused to budge from there! Incidentally (laughing), it had a curious result: it led people to discover the place! You see, it caused movements of forces, and some people felt it and thought, Oh, there must be something here.
There was a time when I concerned myself with that a good deal, and I made a good number of discoveries (following Thons indications); later on, it no longer interested me. And now, quite lately, I have been reviewing all kinds of things, all kinds of things.
But Pavitras case, I really believe its exceptional. Its the first time it has happened to mewith nobody, nobody else before. I told you, when Sri Aurobindo left, for hours he passed on to me the whole supramental force and consciousness he had concentrated in his body. It was immediately after he left. I felt he had called me; I stood there, near his bed, looking at him, and I saw it, you understand: he passed on to me the force, the whole supramental force he had concentrated in his body, and I felt him everywhere enter like that, with a friction. It lasted for hours. But thats quite an exceptional case, as I told you. But what took place with Pavitra is really its really Its not the same thing: he simply came out of his body deliberately (and not his psychic being: it was as material as he could), and I felt him, felt it enter and enter everywhere, all over my body And now, if I look within, I cant say I see a form, but its not completely fused. And for certain thingscertain things that have to do with people, or the School2theres a very clear personal reaction. And then, those photos I think thats quite exceptional.
I felt something in the brain. You know that since Sri Aurobindo gave me mental silence, it has been absolutely still; it never started up again as before, and the consciousness has been there (gesture above Mother), working from there. But then after Pavitra came here, something (gesture to the forehead) impelled me to ask (I asked whats here, within), Could I get the mathematical knowledge you had? I asked him that. And his answer was, Of course, it would be easy if you set this in motion again! But that I dont want to do. Anyway
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And she also told me that animal psychology can lead us to the knowledge of the supermans psychology.
Good.
0 1969-07-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I do it, but as it is, its a certain part of my mind, with a bit of psychic, that has to do it.
Ah!
0 1969-07-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes. But whats most, most extraordinary is this change of consciousness of the BODY! You understand, its as if it were reliving they are things that have remained in the consciousness because the psychic being took parttheyre very clear, very precise; the rest has been erased (its been like that for a long time). Well, those things were recorded by the psychic being, and the body had an impression, you understand, an impression of its own; now the psychic consciousness is the same, it sees things in the same way, but the physical impression is completely different! Which means its the PHYSICAL consciousness that has changed. These last few days it has become very, VERY clear. It began on Wednesdayfrom Wednesday to today: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday Its quite recent.
(Laughing) A dangerous person!
0 1969-07-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Asram is not a religious association. Those who are here come from all religions and some are of no religion. There is no creed or set of dogmas, no governing religious body; there are only the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and certain psychological practices of concentration and meditation, etc., for the enlarging of the consciousness, receptivity to the Truth, mastery over the desires, the discovery of the divine self and consciousness concealed within each human being, a higher evolution of the nature.8
Sri Aurobindo
--
As you say, it is the failure of the right attitude that comes in the way of passing through ordeals to a change of nature. The pressure is becoming greater now for this change of character even more than for decisive Yoga experience for if the experience comes, it fails to be decisive because of the want of the requisite change of nature. The mind, for instance, gets the experience of the One in all, but the vital cannot follow, because it is dominated by ego-reaction and ego-motive or the habits of the outer nature keep up a way of thinking, feeling, acting, living which is quite out of harmony with the experience. Or the psychic and part of the mind and emotional being feel frequently the closeness of the Mother, but the rest of the nature is unoffered and goes its own way prolonging the division from her nearness, creating distance. It is because the Sadhaks have never even tried to have the Yogic attitude in all things, they have been contented with the common ideas, common view of things, common motives of life, only varied by inner experiences and transferred to the framework of the Asram instead of that of the world outside. It is not enough and there is great need that this should change.9
Sri Aurobindo
0 1969-09-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, I realized that there ALREADY was an atom of consciousness therea consciousness that was to become the psychic being. Thats what made her so peaceful and so self-assured. And that was to evolve into mans consciousness. Thats what was really interesting.
It was much, much bigger than a bear as we know them, but because of that [the peaceful air], all the others were around like that, they came from every side and stared with wide admiring eyes! It was really amusing.
0 1969-09-06, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive had one more example today Its a woman who was murdered; I immediately took care of her psychic, it went away there. But a part of her vital stayed on, and she stayed on with them [the family]. I thought they would be happythey were scared! Its a curious thing. So I said, Oh, its very simple (laughing), Ill take her with me, like that. You know, I have a crowd around meits not cumbersome in the least.
I dont understand. What is it? I dont understand, because even when I was small and knew nothing (I didnt even know it really existed), I was never afraid of invisible things. Why? Someone without a body is less cumbersome than someone with a bodysomeone with a body takes up room, needs room; someone whos not alive doesnt take up any room, he may be there without hampering in the least. So is it only the appearance people love the body? Strange.
0 1969-11-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a disease. They call it a disease of the nerves: all the nerves are sensitized and suffer terribly. When I first had it, I could no longer eat, no longer sleep, no longer move, no longer And that was because2 I had done something mad: I went back to France after leaving my psychic being here; so it seized me as soon as I was far enough from the atmosphere; as soon as I entered the Mediterranean, it began. And it was very serious.
Now and then, there were attacks like that, but when I came back here, Sri Aurobindo drove it away com-plete-ly (that was long ago). Its only last Friday that it came, and yesterday I hope it wont recur.
0 1969-11-15, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Things can be said in a psychological way, as in The Adventure of Consciousness, psychological and reasoned, or else they can be said in a more poetic form, that is, in the form of a novel or a play or a poem I dont know.
Poem? Have you ever written poems?
0 1969-12-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Formerly, they were the bodys masters, so thats what was needed: they had to go away It was through them that the psychic and all the rest used to worknow, thats over: its direct. But then, the bodys possibilities are multiplying againintensifying, multiplying.
Now, I am all the time (I dont know, at least ten times a day) asked questions, and the answer comes instantly, like this (gesture of descent), with an ease I never had before. All it takes is a few seconds of attention, and it comes. And the answers are much bolder something that touches an inner truth and isnt bothered by external reactions. The words are much bolder than before, much clearer Sometimes, when I write them, I say to myself that it would be amusing if you could see themmost of the time its quite personal things, but the form is interesting.
0 1969-12-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, this decentralization stems from innumerable causes, but they are causes we might call psychological. And the cells contained in the body, or composing the body, are held in form by a centralization of the consciousness in them, and as long as that power of concentration is there, the body cannot die. Its only when the power of concentration disappears that the cells scatter. And then one dies. Then the body dies.
The sequel was like this.
0 1969-12-20, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do you know what it is? Its the divine psychological perfection. So someone asked me, Whats divine psychological perfection?A smile in any circumstance
Good . You know that I went to the Madras airport yesterday to bring my mother here. Every time, I really feel as if I had entered a world I dont know another world. Another world. Really, Ive never had in my life that impression to such a point, as if entering a nonhuman world, I dont know what world that islike a dream world, a world devoid of existence, false, empty.
0 1969-12-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had it in France, because when I went away from here, I left my psychic being here, so that was the result . Its something its an influence that cuts off, that must cut off the body from its contact with the Divine, probably Its under study, you understand. I wasnt saying anything about it because its still under study But the first time it happened was rather long ago, more than a month ago;3 the last time was yesterdaythree times it has happened. Three absolutely, absolutely different people: different in character, in occupation, in everything, in relationship too.
It will yield the secret of something. (Laughing) I am studying it.
0 1969-12-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, logically, or psychologically rather, its an error to build around first, and the center afterwards.
Of course!
0 1970-01-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there are many kinds of elsewheres. Those of drugs are uncertain and fraught with danger, and above all dependent on outer meansan experience ought to be obtainable at will and anywhere, in the marketplace as in the solitude of our room, or else it is not an experience but an anomaly or slavery. Those of psychoanalysis are limited, for the moment, to a few dimly lit caves, and above all lack that lever of consciousness which enables us to move about at will, as our own masters and not as helpless witnesses or sickly victims. Those of religion are more illumined, but they too depend on a god or a dogma, and above all confine us within one type of experience, for one can be a prisoner of other worlds as much as of this oneeven more so.
Yes, yes.
--
Then we may discover that our splendid twentieth century was still the Stone Age of psychology, that with all our science we had not yet entered the true science of living, the mastery of the world and of ourselves, and that there open up before us horizons of perfection and harmony and beauty compared to which our superb discoveries are like the roughcasts of an apprentice.
Its very good, very good its magnificent. That really has a dynamic force.
0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres something very interesting on a psychological level: its that material needs decrease in proportion to the spiritual growth. Not (as Sri Aurobindo said), not through asceticism, but because the focus of attention and concentration of the being moves to a different domain. The purely material being, quite conceivably, finds only material things pleasing; with all those who live in the emotive being and the outer mind, the interest of the being is turned to for instance, things of beauty, as with those who want to live surrounded by beautiful things, who want to use nice things. Now that appears to be the human summit, but its quite what we might call a central region (gesture hardly above ground level), its not at all a higher region. But the way the world is organized, people without aesthetic needs go back to a very primitive lifewhich is wrong. We need a place where life where the very setting of life would be, not an individual thing, but a beauty that would be like the surroundings natural to a certain degree of development.
Now, as things are organized, to be surrounded by beautiful things you need to be rich, and thats a source of imbalance, because wealth usually goes with quite an average degree of consciousness, even mediocre at times. So theres everywhere an imbalance and a disorder. We would need a place of beautya place of beauty in which people can live only if they have reached a certain degree of consciousness. And let it not be decided by other people, but quite spontaneously and naturally. So how to do that?
0 1970-03-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That experience I had it in 1912 (1912 or 13, I dont remember), in Paris. I was in Paris. Once, I had an anxiety about someone who was to travel to Paris and arrive at a certain time; time was passing and passing, and the person didnt arrive. Then, at one point, I had a sort of anguish, I wondered what had happened. And that anguish suddenly You see, I was already conscious of my psychic being (I had been for a long time), and that anguish suddenly became extraordinarily intense, and it made (bursting gesture) like fireworksa marvel! So I understand what he means by a fierce form of delight. But it was purely psychological, it wasnt physical. 1912 or 13.
But physically, the bodys whole experience now is that it only has to to give itself unreservedly, to abandon itself totally to the divine Presence, and the pain, any pain at all, disappears.
--
psychological or inner things, even sensations (sensations about events, not about the body), have a fluidity, theyre quite different in character. Things of the body have a sort of (what shall I call it?) maybe a concrete stability or fixity, I dont know. For example, if you have a pain somewhere (say in the heart or lungs or some pain), it corresponds to something within, something that happened, a disorder, and the pain (when you are in a tranquil state) corresponds to what we might call the situation of the cells, so when the pain disappears it means the cells are back in placeit doesnt mean that the disorder is continuing but you no longer feel it, thats not it. So its not the sensation you have that changes, its the material FACT that has changed. And that I find much more marvelous: the contact with the true Force puts things back in order.
Yet, usually with physical things, one feels it takes a little time to
--
But there is one thing. In what he wrote, in what he told me, Sri Aurobindo seemed to take as a sign of the transformation the constant presence of Ananda [bliss]. And that was one of the things I told him about: the being manifesting in this body, and consequently the body (because even from a very young age, the body had tried to surrender to the inner being, not to remain independent), in the body itself, there had never been either the feeling or the need, or even the intent of living in Ananda. Since it was very small, the body was built with I might put it like this: the will to do what had to be doneto be what it had to be and to do it. When it was very small, the object of the surrender was not known, but the minute it knew it, for it that was very definitive. You understand, the first contact (as I said) was the divine Presence in the psychic being, and so, the minute it became a facta patent fact, there was no arguing, the experience was perfectly conclusivefrom that minute, the body had only one idea left (not even one idea, one will), to be what THAT wanted it to be. Now, for it, its beyond any possible discussion: its like this (gesture hands open), simply attentive and anxious to do what the Divine wants it to do, and it tries more and more not to feel any difference. Thats beginningits not yet there everywhere. In many parts of the body, there is only ONE thing left: there is not the Thing that wants and the thing that obeys, its no longer like thatonly ONE Vibration. Its beginning. But it doesnt expect it to result in a sense of delight or Ananda or In fact, its quite indifferent to that. It was born and formed quite indifferent.
I said that to Sri Aurobindo. (Laughing) He looked at me and said, There arent two people like you on earth! (Mother laughs) Because, he says, people may overcome the need to be happy (not be happy, that doesnt mean anything), anyway the need of satisfaction, of Ananda, but for it to be spontaneous! Like that, effortless.
0 1970-04-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, yes! (Mother laughs) Oh, yes. And all things other than the purely material, all psychological, moral things, all that seems so childish! Oh, what fuss you make about nothing! Wait till you know how it is THERE (Mother points to the body). Thats all.
Yes (laughing), I think thats the great adventure!
0 1970-04-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Quite possible. But its Never, never have I lived so totally in the subtle physical, fully conscious, WITHOUT SLEEPING (I was lying on my bed), and it lasted for two hours. Things were as real, as precise as they are here. And the same will: its not another will, its the same; its the divine Will through the psychic working in this body. So it acts there or here without difference. In other words, whether I am in this subtle physical or in the material physical, its the same will, the same psychic will that acts the SAME, exactly in the same way. Which means that I dont know what the difference is. Theres a difference its thin, you dont feel its something thick or heavy: its thin. That union between the two, between the subtle physical and the material physical, is taking place all the timeday and night and day and night. The work is You might almost say that there is an attempt to substitute one for the other.
And, you know, the faces, expressions, gestures, movements, wordsas precise, as precise as they are here. It seems to be a response because I asked (it was yesterday, I think, sometime yesterday; in fact when I sit like that, as I was with you the other day, the two worlds are fused [Mother holds the fingers of her right hand between those of her left hand], you cant feel the difference), I asked Sri Aurobindo whether things are as precise and exact; so he told me yes, he answered yes, but said I had to experience it. And I had that experience last night, quite unexpectedly. It was around three in the morning (between two and three).
--
But it gives indications (more and more often, day after day, experience after experience), indications of the extent to which the intervention of this Will (which we call divine Will) through the psychic (or even direct, it depends on the case), to what extent its all-powerful. And it exclusively depends on This Will is always active for perfect Harmonyyes, perfect Harmony as we can conceive it. There also, in this conception, there is the knowledge that that too will progress, that once that harmony is manifested, then the work will begin for another perfection, which for the moment eludes us. That, too, knows.
More and more, theres a sort of not exactly fusion [between the subtle physical and the material physical], but how should I put it? For everything to hold together, this way of being of the material consciousness continues (the material, physical consciousness), but in it a permeation takes place (it really is a permeation), which doesnt drive away the other, but at length, it will probably transform it. It doesnt drive it [the material consciousness] away, but its there and it dominatesat times it doesnt dominate, its the other one that does; and so, depending on the case it changes external circumstances (its hard to explain).
0 1970-05-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it was my BODY that had it, not the psychic being or the higher beings (there, those things have been quite familiar for a long time), but the BODY, the very body, THIS, this, this.
That gave it such a peace!
0 1970-05-13, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But does it depend on the psychic or on an aspiration in the body?
My own impression (its an impression more than a certainty) is that there is a more subtle part (thats where Sri Aurobindo is [Mother raises her right hand slightly]), a part that depends on the above, that is to say, the higher consciousness and the psychic; then there is a part that tries to take form in the body (gesture of connection between the two or of descent of the one into the other), that is, a way of being of the cells that would be the beginning of a new body, but thats when it happens, its a bizarre sensation. A bizarre sensation. The very body feels as if its dying something, it doesnt know what it is. And its rather hard to bear. Its only a state of intense faith that enables you to bear it. As if the one were being changed into the other. As if what is were trying to change into something else. But thats its hard to bear. You really have to be in a state of intense faith to go through the thing; it expresses itself as something resembling something wholly new, so it resembles a discomfort.
Its almost a constant state now for my body. Only at very rare moments does it suddenly Aah! (gesture filled with wonder). When those moments come, its wonderful. But theyre very rare. Sometimes a day goes by without even one. That state [of discomfort] used to be more frequent during the day, but now its beginning to happen at night. Last night, a good part of the night I spent like that, and then I was able to be in peace only because my whole body was (gesture of surrender) saying to the Lord, Your Will, Lord, Your Will, Your Will. Like that.
0 1970-05-20, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, thats it! In fact, the body has enough commonsense to It KNOWS its not illit knows very well its not an illness, that its in fact an attempt at transformation, it knows that very well. And from a psychological standpoint, thats important and its a great help, but there are all those centuries of habit.
(Mother goes into a meditation)
0 1970-07-01, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had an experience which I found interesting, because it was the first time. It was yesterday or the day before (I forget), R. was here, just in front of me, kneeling, and I saw her psychic being towering above by this much (gesture about eight inches), taller. Its the first time. Her physical being was short, and the psychic being was tall, like this. And it was a sexless being: neither man nor woman. So I said to myself (it may be always that way, I dont know, but at that time I noticed it very clearly), I said to myself, But the psychic being is the one that will materialize and become the supramental being!
I saw it, it was like that. There were distinctive features, but not very pronounced, and it was clearly a being that was neither male nor female, that had features of both combined. And it was taller than her, it exceeded her on every side by about this much (gesture extending beyond the physical being by about eight inches). She was here, and it was like this (gesture). Its color was this color that, if it became very material, would be Aurovilles color [orange]. It was softer, as if behind a veil, it wasnt absolutely precise, but it was this color. And there was hair, but it was something else.
--
But I found it very interesting, because that being seemed to tell me, Youre wondering what the supramental being will behere it is! Here it is, this is it. And it was there. It was her psychic being.
Then one understands. One understands: the psychic being will materialize and it gives a continuity to evolution.
This creation gives you a clear impression that nothing is arbitrary, that there is a sort of divine logic behind, which isnt like our human logic, but highly superior to our logic (but it exists), and that logic was fully satisfied when I saw that.
--
So then, I understood why the mind and the vital were sent away from this body, and the psychic being was left (naturally, it was the psychic being that governed all movements earlier, so it was nothing new, but there were no more difficulties: all the complications coming from the vital and the mind, which add their imprints, their tendencies, it was all gone). So I understood: Ah, thats it, its this psychic being that is to become the supramental being.
I had never bothered to know what it looked like. But when I saw that, I understood. And I see it, I still see it, I have kept the memory. Its hair almost looked red, strangely (it wasnt like red hair, but it looked like it). And its expression! Such a fine expression, gently ironical oh, extraordinary, extraordinary!
--
And the psychic is precisely what lives on. So if it materialized, it means doing away with death. But doing away whats done away with is only whats not according to the Truth, thats what goes awayall thats incapable of being transformed in the image of the psychic, of being part of the psychic.
Thats really interesting.
0 1970-07-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I wondered if we couldnt add to the Notes what you said last time about this psychic being that will become the supramental being?
What do you say?
--
I mean about the effect [on people]. I am afraid everyone will suddenly have a psychic being! (general laughter)
Oh, Mother, youre priceless!
--
Just before, you spoke of the psychic, but I cant speak of the psychic, I cant speak of material or vital things, because as soon as I stop for a second, that Consciousness is there, solid
Yes, yes.
--
When I had that experience of the psychic [with R.], I said to myself, But where is my psychic? Its constantly active, mingled with everything, its what speaks; when people ask questions, I answer through it. But I dont have the sensation of its presence.
I think thats when the identification is made: its no longer a separate being, you understand.
--
No! I think thats when the identification with the physical consciousness is made. Because with me its always been like that: the minute there was union, it was over, there was no psychic being and the rest. What lived was the psychic.
Yet I dont feel Ive reached that point. Though to tell the truth, I dont know where Ive reached. Because as soon as I stop a little, its there, powerful, solid, and
0 1970-07-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother takes another flower) This is a psychological Perfection. Its to find that [the power of truth in the subconscient].
Were preparing a book about flowers. There will be color photos of flowers, their significance, and a comment by me! They make me write a comment on every flower. So Im having fun! It will be interesting.
0 1970-09-02, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The psychic may have it may have attended, you understand, without intervening, and it may remember, possibly.
Its anyway. Its still a The result isnt certain, thats all I can say.
0 1970-09-16, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Mother, about three weeks ago, when you were still fully in that experience, you told me, I dont know whether I will remember, but perhaps the psychic will, because it attended. And you said, Its something prodigious and almost idiotic, so simple is it.
(Mother nods silence)
0 1970-10-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo writes about the perfection of the lower mind, the psychic prana
Whats that?
--
Where does this psychic prana come from? Is it part of the psychic as the word is understood in Indias psychological language?
Yes, at that time Sri Aurobindo used the phrase psychic prana, but its not at all the psychic, the soul; I think its the primary vital substance. He asks also:
Is there some relationship between this psychic prana and the constitution of the psyche of Western psychologists?
All those things, I dont know. Its philosophy in English, I would say wordy. Those are psychological words that I dont know at all.
Yes, of course! In any case, it has no relationship with the psychic, the soul as we understand it.
Theres no use in people asking me this sort of things, I am not at all interested.
0 1970-10-21, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A. isnt much of a psychologist. Its better to wait and be sure. Ah, I am listening.
Do I still read you? Arent you tired?
0 1970-10-31, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Question:) X asked me if in the course of rebirths a woman can become a man, and a man a woman. He thought of certain feminine traits in him that could be explained thus. I would also like to know if there is in the psychic being itself something like sex?
(Answer:) Not sex exactly, but what might be called the masculine and feminine principle. It is a difficult question [whether sex is altered in rebirth]. There are certain lines the reincarnation follows and so far as my experience goes and general experience goes, one follows usually a single line. But the alteration of sex cannot be declared impossible. There may be some who do alternate. The presence of feminine traits in a male does not necessarily indicate a past feminine birththey may come in the general play of forces and their formations. There are besides qualities common to both sexes. Also a fragment of the psychological personality may have been associated with a birth not ones own. One can say of a certain person of the past, that was not myself, but a fragment of my psychological personality was present in him. Rebirth is a complex affair and not so simple in its mechanism as in the popular idea.
11 January 1936
--
The psychic, thats true, has masculine and feminine tendencies, but its not man or woman: the psychic is sexless.
And as he says, its quite a complex affair; there are all possibilities. Theres nothing one can declare to be impossible.
--
Because the mind isnt there, its In reality, its the psychic understanding of things.
Oh, its interesting.
0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, you have completely confused the psychic and the spiritual. The psychic, the soul, the Fire within, Agni, does not belong to the mental bubble or to any bubble: it is the Divine in matter. It is that little Fire which opens the door to the great solar Fire of the New Consciousness. It is the instrument of the yoga of the superman (when I speak of turning on the psychic switch, I am there taking the word in the vulgar and ridiculous sense of people seeking visionary and occult experiencesnot in the true sense). Others in every age have had the experience of the psychic, of the inner Fire, but aside from the Rishis, no one used it to transform matter; the religions have made a purely devotional and mystical thing out of it. As for the spiritual, that includes all the planes of consciousness above the ordinary mind. It is the path of ascent. And that is where I repeatedly and emphatically, and from experience, say that those great Experiences, which have to be turned into spiritual summits, are part of the mental bubble (including the overmind): they are the rarefied summits on which the being thins out into a marvelous whiteness, immense, royal, without a ripple of trouble, in an eternal peacewhich can last for millenniums without its changing the world one iota, by definition. But the spiritual is not the supramental, and when one touches the supramental, it seems to be almost a whole other Spirit, it is so compact, warm, powerful, present, embodied and radiantly solid in broad daylight. That is the Radiance which Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to bring down on earththey said over and over that their yoga was new, new, newand it is through the simple little fire inside us that we can enter into direct contact with That, without sitting in the lotus position or leaving life. When one touches That, the spiritual heights seem pale. That is all I have to say. So we do not at all need to be superyogis to have this contact, and those who have found Nirvana, or what have you, have not advanced one inch toward That, because the clue to That is not up there at all or outside, but in your own small capacity of flame.
So if instead of splitting hairs, you set out boldly on the road, afire, you would perhaps discover that we are indeed at the Hour of God and that a single spark of sincere effort, at ones own level, opens doors which have been closed for millenniums.
--
One could say that it is far more difficult to go from the mental to the supramental life than to go from a certain psychic emotion in life something that is like a reflection, a luminous emanation of the divine Presence in matterto the supramental consciousness; it is much easier to go from that into the supramental consciousness than to go from the highest intellectual speculation to any supramental vibration. Perhaps it is the word that misleads us! Perhaps it is because we call it supramental that we expect to reach it through a higher intellectual mental activity. But the reality is quite different. With this very high and pure and lofty intellectual activity, one seems to go towards a kind of cold, powerless abstraction, an icy light that is surely very remote from life and still further away from the experience of the supramental reality.
The new substances that is spreading and acting in the world contains a warmth, a power, a joy so intense that all intellectual activity seems cold and dry beside it. And that is why the less one talks about these things, the better it is. A single instant, a single impulse of deep and true love, a single minute of deep communion with the divine Grace brings you much closer to the goal than all possible explanations.
--
Its as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of goldas if our entire spiritual life here were a silvery vibration, not cold but simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure lightpure and intense but in the other, in the supramental world, there is a richness and a power that makes all the difference. This whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present consciousness, which seems so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to the splendor of the new world.
I can explain the phenomenon like this: successive reversals will bring about such an EVER-NEW richness of creation from stage to stage, that it will make whatever came before seem very poor in comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life appears very poor when compared to this new reversal of consciousness.
0 1971-05-12, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But already quite some time ago I saw China invading India, even South India. And thats the worst of catastrophes the Chinese dont have a psychic being. The Chinese have a lunar origin and they dont have a psychic being (there are exceptions, but I mean in general), and so one can expect ANYTHING from themevery possible horror. Ive seen themall, everywhere horrible!
Ive seen the Chinese in this room.
--
You see, there are limits to the horrors men can commit because, in spite of everything, there is a psychic being behind that curbs them but the Chinese dont have one.
And they are VERY intelligent.
0 1971-06-12, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for sadhana, it is not that you have no capacity, but what has happened to many has happened to you the physical consciousness has risen up and veiled the psychic which was about to come forward. It has risen up with the insistence on the value of its own small ignorant ideas and feelings and refusing to let them go. When the psychic comes forward, all larger and more enlightened movements replace them. But usually before that happens, these things rise up and control the consciousness for a while. This state need not be a permanent condition and if one sees clearly and rejects them consciously, then it can be got over quickly but even if it lasts a long period, it can in the end be overcome and that is happening to many now. Naturally, the physical consciousness persuades the mind that it is everlasting and cannot be got over; but that is not true.
May 21, 1937
0 1971-07-10, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience in the body is very interesting. All so-called moral, intellectual, psychological suffering, in other words, the suffering of the consciousness that is not purely material, seems childish to the body. Yesterday, it had (what shall I say? I dont know how to explain it). It doesnt feel things in relation to itself, it feels things (silence) IN others, but with a general consciousness, not a personal one; and it has such a horror of physical suffering, that is to say illnesses, accidents, that it wondered why, why the world exists like that.1 It then understood why some people dont want to have a body anymore (that always seemed absurd before), it understood why. It was such an intense experience! It had an aspiration, something like a prayer, but its not a prayer: May the world change! May the world change. It HAS to changeor else disappear. The idea of disappearing had not come before, it seemed it used to think that the world was moving towards a harmonious perfection; but, you see, its long the length of time is terrible! There was an aspiration of incredible intensity for the transformation. Everything looks so dreadful because because the transformation must, MUST take place. That anyone can be satisfied with a world like this is impossibleits impossible to a physical consciousness that is conscious of the Divine. Its impossible, it absolutely has to change. And that was so vivid I was gripped by it all night and all day, even while seeing people, with such an intensity: it must change, it must change.
The being, the inner consciousness can say and be conscious that that suffering is unreal, but the physical consciousness cantit cant, it HAS to change. Its not a matter of merging with a consciousness, leaving this physical consciousness to disappear: it has to change, it has to change. I cant put it into words, I cant say it.
0 1971-07-21, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I see (as through a veil or as if it were very far away) a Power, an EXTRAORDINARY Power! But we are such imbeciles we dont even accept it. I know, Ive had some experiences these past few days. I have this vision in which the psychic consciousness sees that through this instrument, through this (but thisMo ther pinches the skin of her handshas nothing to do with it except being the link between things as they are and the things that are to be), well, through this, A GREAT NUMBER of miracles are being done; and they are so extraordinary (lately) that it occurred to no one that they were miracles! One simply doesnt know. Its not a miracle as we conceive of itan extraordinary miracle. But then they dont have any means of understanding.
(silence)
0 1971-09-15, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He was conscious. The child was conscious. Perhaps it was his psychic being which has left?1 A total trust, you know (same wide-eyed gesture), like that.
Oh, but its peculiar, because he was blond when he was small [in Mothers vision], and when he got big, his hair turned darker I noticed that. He was about about ten, maybe.
--
It means he would have a two-year old psychic being (you see, they dont have age per se, only in terms of development). And he grew up at your contact.2 Its interesting.
(long silence)
--
Yes. Did his psychic being leave him? Maybe.
Its quite possible. I once saw him cut in half.
--
He [the psychic being] seemed to be completely independent. And when he came I saw him comehe was there beside you, he put his handhis little handon your shoulder, and he looked at you like this (same wide-eyed gesture), and then slowly he grew and grew to about eight or ten years of age and then stopped. It is not a fully formed psychic being. Perhaps it has left him. Perhaps he left it.
(silence)
Do you mean he has to go through another life to find his psychic being again?
Oh, certainly.
But once the psychic being has left someone, it doesnt come back anymore?
Oh, yes, it can come back, but there must be a conversion.
--
That the psychic came to you is a very good signits a very good sign, even for him. Because ordinarily, when the psychic being goes away like that, it goes back to the psychic world and rests until the next life. But he has remained conscious and came to you. Thats exceptional.
(silence)
--
But you cant say its your brother, because the psychic being has been formed in other livesit had ENTERED your brother.
Yes, of course.
0 1971-10-16, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
>To the ideal Initiatrix (thats you, the initiatrix) as an expression of admiration and gratitude. The respectful homage of the author, who would be most happy to receive, written in her hand, some advice concerning the psycho-mental technique whose practice would give mastery and control over the neurophysiological functions with a view to diminishing and conquering the sensation of pain and physico-nervous suffering.
Oh! Oh! Its curious, its just the experiences I am having now. Thats rather strange. I just wanted to tell you about that today.
--
The psycho-mental technique whose practice would give to the brain center of the psychological faculties mastery and control over the brain center of the neurophysiological functions, with a view to diminishing and conquering the sensation of pain and physico-nervous suffering.
(after a silence)
0 1971-10-20, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because I know this very well, I am content to work still on the spiritual and psychic plane, preparing there the ideas and forces, which may afterwards at the right moment and under the right conditions precipitate themselves into the vital and material field, and I have been careful not to make any public pronouncement as that might prejudice my possibilities of future action. What that will be will depend on developments. The present trend of politics may end in abortive unrest, but it may also stumble with the aid of external circumstances into some kind of simulacrum of self-government. In either case the whole real work will remain to be done. I wish to keep myself free for it in either case.
Aurobindo
0 1971-12-04, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If India is in danger, Pondicherry cannot be expected to remain outside the danger zone. It will share the fate of the rest of the country. The protection I can give is not unconditional. It is idle to hope that in spite of anything and everything, the protection will be there over all. My protection is there if conditions are fulfilled. It goes without saying that any sympathy or support for the Nazis (or for any ally of theirs) automatically cuts across the circle of protection. Apart from this obvious and external factor, there are more fundamental psychological conditions which demand fulfillment. The Divine can give protection only to those who are whole-heartedly faithful to the Divine, who live truly in the spirit of sadhana and keep their consciousness and preoccupation fixed upon the Divine and the service of the Divine. Desire, for example, insistence on ones likes and conveniences, all movements of hypocrisy and insincerity and falsehood, are great obstacles standing in the way of the Divines protection. If you seek to impose your will upon the Divine, it is as if you were calling for a bomb to fall upon you. I do not say that things are bound to happen in this way; but they are very likely to happen, if people do not become conscious and strictly vigilant and act in the true spirit of a spiritual seeker. If the psychological atmosphere remains the same as that of the outside world, there can be no wall of security against the dark Forces that are working out in it the ordeal of danger, suffering and destruction entering here.
The Mother
0 1971-12-13, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Communications from the psychic do not come in a mental form. They are not ideas or reasonings. They have their own character quite distinct from the mind, something like a feeling with a self-contained meaning and influence.
By its very nature, the psychic is calm, quiet and luminous, understanding and generous, wide and progressive, it is forever striving for understanding and progress.
The mind describes and explains.
The psychic sees and understands.
***
0 1971-12-18, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In my case, I dont know, the work was done for me I did nothing. Thats how it was done, very radically. It could be done because I was VERY conscious of my psychic (the psychic being which was formed through all the lives), I was very conscious of it, and it remained; it remained and enabled me to deal with people without its making any difference, thanks to that psychic presence. Thats why there were very few apparent changes. So I can speak only of what I know, and Ill say this: the psychic has to remain very much in comm and of the whole being the whole bodily beingguiding the life, then the mind has time to be transformed. Mine was simply sent away.
You see, the transformation of the bodily mind was indispensable because thats the only one I had left, you follow? Very few people would accept that. (Laughing) In my case, it was done without asking my opinion! The work was very easy.
--
But we truly have to. What made things easy is that the psychic consciousness was completely in the forefront and ruling the life, so it just went on quietly without being concerned with the rest.
Its like sight and hearing, Ive noticed that its not a physical deterioration: its simply that I understand and hear people only when they think clearly what they say. And I see only what is what expresses the inner life, otherwise things are hazy or veiled. Its not that my eyes dont see, its something, its something elseeverything is new.
0 1971-12-25, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
More and more I am convinced that we have a way of receiving things and reacting to them that CREATES difficulties I am more and more convinced of it. Because, for example, I have rather unpleasant physical and material experiences about food. You know that for a very long time now I have completely stopped being hungry (I eat only to be reasonable, because one must eat, otherwise), and I have some small difficulty in swallowing, or breathing (ridiculous things), but everything changes depending on whether you pay attention to them or not, depending on an attitude like this (gesture of being focused on oneself) in which you watch yourself living, or an attitude in which youre (vast gesture) in things, in movement, in life; and a third attitude in which you pay attention only to the Divine. If you succeed in being like that all the time, there are no difficultiesand yet things are the same. Thats the experience: the thing in itself is as it is, but it is our reaction to it that differs. The experience is more and more conclusive. You see, there are three categories: our attitude with respect to things, the things in themselves (those two always give you trouble), and there is a third category in which everything, but everything is in regard to the Divine, in the Consciousness of the Divineall is marvelous, all is easy! And I am speaking of material things, of the material, physical life (for psychological things, weve known it for long), I mean material things like little discomforts of the body, or reactions, feeling pain or not, circumstances going wrong, not being able to swallow your dinner the most banal things you dont pay attention to when youre young and strong and in good health (you dont pay any attention to them, and its like that for everyone), but when you live in the consciousness of your body and what happens to it and its ways of receiving things that come and so onoh, its misery! When you live in the consciousness of others, of what they want, what they need, their relationship with youits misery! But if you live in the Divine Presence and its the Divine who does everything, sees everything, is everything its Peaceits Peace, time has no duration, everything is easy and. Not that you feel joy or feel its not so its the Divine who is there. And its the ONLY solution. Thats where the world is going: the Consciousness of the Divine the Divine who does, the Divine who is, the Divine. So then, the same IDENTICAL circumstance (I am not speaking of different circumstances), the same IDENTICAL circumstance (its my experience these last few days, so concrete, you know, so concrete); day before yesterday I was sick as a dog, and yesterday circumstances were the same, my body was in the same state, all was the same and yet all was peaceful.
I am thoroughly convinced of that.
0 1972-01-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That experience is more and more constant. Its become very. Sometimes its for one thing, sometimes for another (the practical things of life like eating, walking, etc.). It has become very intense. But at the same time, theres the knowledge (Mother raises her forefinger): Now is the time to win the Victory. Which comes from the psychic, from above. Hold on hold on, now is the time to win the Victory.
Quite interesting really.
0 1972-02-02, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This [radical change] could be accomplished because I was very conscious of my psychic it remained and enabled me to deal with people, with no differencethanks to that psychic presence.
It is the psychic that deals with people. It was ALWAYS the psychic that dealt with people, and it continues. This [radical change] didnt make any difference.
(then another sentence)
0 1972-02-05, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The psychic being knows this definitely. Thus, by uniting with our psychic being, we can know it, too. But the first condition is not to be the slave of personal desires and mistake them for the truth of ones being.
February 4
0 1972-02-08, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the beginnings of humanity, the ego was the unifying element. It is around the ego that the various states of being were formed. But now that a superhumanity is about to be born, the ego must disappear and leave place for the psychic being which has slowly developed through divine agency to manifest the Divine in man.
The Divine manifests in man under the psychic influence, and that is how the coming of superhumanity is prepared.
The psychic being is immortal, so through it immortality can manifest on earth.
Hence, the important thing now is to find ones psychic being, unite with it, and allow it to replace the ego, which will be forced either to convert itself or disappear.
***
0 1972-02-09, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The complete unification of the whole being around the psychic center is the essential condition to realize a perfect sincerity.1
I have noticed that people are insincere simply because one part of their being says one thing and another part says something else. Thats what causes insincerity. It came very clearly: a vision, you know, an inner vision. So I tried to put it down on paper; I dont know if its clear.
--
But thats when youre not unified, mon petit. Its been a-l-w-a-y-s like this for me (Mother draws a straight line in front of her) for years and years. It comes from here, the psychic consciousness, and its CONSTANT.
Recently, for a few moments, I had the experience [of the nonunified consciousness]; I hadnt known that in years-many years, at least thirty years.2 From the moment the psychic being became the master and ruler of the being, it was OVERit is over and now its like this (same straight gesture). That is the sure sign. Constantly like that, constantly the same. And all the time: What You will, what You will. Not a You up there, at the back of beyond, whom one doesnt know; He is everywhere, He is in everything, He is constantly there, He is in the very being and one clings to that. Its the only solution.
Do you think that note makes sense?
--
But that means the psychic consciousness must penetrate the PHYSICAL consciousness.
Yes.
--
The psychic consciousness must penetrate the ordinary physical consciousness.
Yes.
--
The psychic consciousness has always been there, controlling and guiding the being. All the impressions, everything was referred to it, like this (gesture of placing something before a spotlight), so it would give the true direction. And the physical, for its part, is sort of constantly attentive to the Divine Command.
And that was constant, constanteven BEFORE coming here. It was so when I arrived here (long, long ago). And it has remained unchanged. Only recently did I have the experience [of the nonunified consciousness], for a few hours one night, two or three hoursit was horrible, really, it seemed like hell. It was to make me touch, to make me grasp the condition people live in. Imagine when the psychic is no longer there.
But its in the BODYin the body: the body is listening, listening, constantly listening (gesture above or within)listening. But [the Divine Command] is not expressed in words, it comes as a will asserting itself (a straight and imperturbable descending gesture).
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(In an interview in a Swedish magazine, Malraux had said, For the last fifty years, psychology has been reinstating the demons in man. Such is the real result of psychoanalysis. Faced as we are with the most frightening threat humanity has ever known, I believe that the task of the next century will be to reinstate the gods in man.)
August 2, 1955
0 1972-04-13, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My help is there for all those who need itits the ego that prevents people from receiving it. Does V. understand the difference between the ego and the psychic being? Ego is the obstruction. Ego was necessary to shape humanity, but we are now preparing the way for a superhumanity, a supra-humanity. The job of the ego is overit did its job well, now it must disappear. And it is the psychic being, the Divines representative in man, that will stay on and pass into the next species. So we must learn to gather all our being around the psychic. Those who wish to pass to the supra-humanity must get rid of the ego and concentrate themselves around the psychic being.
But does he know the difference between the ego and the psychic? Because the ego is very artfula rogue!
***
0 1972-04-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But what happened the day before yesterday is that, in the middle of the night, the heart passed from the old government of Nature to the divine government, so at one point there was it was difficult. But accompanied by a strange sensation, a sort of feeling that the closest thing is the psychic consciousness. It has been governing the being for a long, long time thats why the mind and the vital could be removed, because the psychic being had taken up the reins long, long ago.
As a matter of fact, I wanted to tell you (I dont know if I did2): the first time I went to Tlemcen (I dont remember when exactly),the first day I arrived at Tlemcen, Thon came to meet me and said (I didnt understand then, but now I do!), he said, You are now alone with me, arent you afraid? And I replied (I was absolutely conscious and calm). I remember we were walking in his huge estate, we were walking up towards the house, and I told him (Mother raises her index finger), My psychic being governs me I am afraid of nothing. Well (Thon started as if he had been burned).
I acquired that psychic consciousness just before leaving for Tlemcen. And it grew stronger there.
I dont know if this has been noted down somewhere.
--
It struck me, I never forgot it. All at once, my psychic being was there: I am conscious of my psychic being, it protects me, I fear nothing. Those may not have been the exact words, I dont know, but that was the general reply.
(long silence)
--
A few days earlier, apropos a biographical datum, Satprem had asked Mother in exactly which year she had experienced the full government by the psychic being. Mother had replied: in 1907, at Tlemcen. Mother's first visit to Tlemcen actually took place in July 1906.
See Agenda II, February 4, 1961.
0 1972-08-12, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, oh yes! Its when you are awake that you must try to reach your psychic consciousness.
When you are in contact with your psychic consciousness, theres no more sadness.
(silence)
0 1973-02-08, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To broaden and enlighten your consciousness, naturally. But how to do that? How do you broaden and enlighten your consciousness? If each one of you could find his psychic being and unite with it, all problems would be solved.
The psychic being is the Divines representative in the human being. Its true, you know: the Divine isnt something far-off and out of reach; the Divine is within you, but you arent fully conscious of it. You have rather so far it is acting more as an influence than a Presence. It must become a conscious Presence, so at each moment you can ask yourselves how how the Divine sees.
Thats how it is: first, how the Divine sees; then, how the Divine Wills then, how the Divine does. It has nothing to do with going off to inaccessible regions: its RIGHT HERE. Although, for the moment, all the old habits and the general unconsciousness have put a sort of lid on it, which prevents us from seeing and feeling. We must we must lift that, lift it off.
--
To be conscious of your psychic being, you must be able to have felt the fourth dimension, felt it once, otherwise you cannot know what it is. Oh, Lord!
Its been seventy years since Ive known what the fourth dimension ismore than seventy years.
--
All no! They are not all the same age, even when they are the same physical age. Some children are primitive. One should. You see, if you yourself were fully conscious of your psychic being, you would know which children are psychically developed. Some children have only an embryonic psychic the age of the psychic varies enormously. Normally, it takes several lives for the psychic to become completely formed, and its the psychic that passes from one body to another; thats why we arent conscious of our past livesbecause we arent conscious of our psychic being. But sometimes, at some MOMENT the psychic being participated in a particular event, it became conscious; and that creates a memory. Sometimes you may find you have a partial recollection of something, the fleeting memory of a circumstance or event or thought, or even of an action. Its because the psychic was conscious of it.
(silence)
0 1973-04-14, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Studies have revealed that over-sedation is not always necessary to benefit such psychotic symptoms as agitation, delusions, hallucinations or delirium. SIQUIL greatly simplifies home management of emotionally deranged patients, many of whom might otherwise previously have been hospitalized. These patients adopt a more realistic behavior, become less of a burden to their families and are more easily approached for training purposes and eventual rehabilitation. SIQUIL is especially indicated in the treatment of severe acute and chronic mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, mania, depression, delirium, senile psychoses and psychoses caused by organic brain disease.
So, that body whose cellular consciousness had been prepared, refined, trained by decades of yoga.
02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is another point which requires clarification. As a reason for his nervousness and flight he alleges that greater people who preceded him had attempted the work, but evidently failed in the attempt; so how can he, a younger novice, dare to go the same way? Putting the imagery back to its psychological bearing, one play explain that the predecessors refer to the deities of the physical, vital and mental consciousness who ruled the earth before the emergence of the psychic or soul consciousness. It is precisely because of the failure or insufficiency of these anteriorin the evolutionary movementand inferior gods that Agni's service is being requisitioned. Mythologically also a parallelism is found in the Greek legends where it is said that the Olympian godsZeus and his companywere a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, the Titans. Titans were the Asuras and Rakshasas who reigned upon earth before the advent of the mentalsattwichuman being, Manu, as referred here.
Now, here I give you the original text in translation:
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
At the very outset when and where the Many has come out into manifestation in the Onehere also it must be remembered that we are using a temporal figure in respect of an extra-temporal factthere and then is formed a characteristic range of reality which is a perfect equation of the one and the many: that is to say, the one in becoming many still remains the same immaculate one in and through the many, and likewise the many in spite of its manifoldnessand because of the special quality of the manifoldnessstill continues to be the one in the uttermost degree. It is the world of fundamental realities. Sri Aurobindo names it the Supermind or Gnosis. It is something higher than but distantly akin to Plato's world of Ideas or Noumena (ideai, nooumena) or to what Plotinus calls the first divine emanation (nous). These archetypal realities are realities of the Spirit, Idea-forces, truth-energies, the root consciousness-forms, ta cit, in Vedic terminology. They are seed-truths, the original mother-truths in the Divine Consciousness. They comprise the fundamental essential many aspects and formulations of an infinite Infinity. At this stage these do not come into clash or conflict, for here each contains all and the All contains each one in absolute unity and essential identity. Each individual formation is united with and partakes of the nature of the one supreme Reality. Although difference is born here, separation is not yet come. Variety is there, but not discord, individuality is there, not egoism. This is the first step of Descent, the earliest one-not, we must remind ourselves again, historically but psychologically and logically the descent of the Transcendent into the Cosmic as the vast and varied Supermindcitra praketo ajania vibhw of the Absolute into the relational manifestation as Vidysakti (Gnosis).
The next steps, farther down or away, arrive when the drive towards differentiation and multiplication gathers momentum becomes accentuated, and separation and isolation increase in degree and emphasis. The lines of individuation fall more and more apart from each other, tending to form closed circles, each confining more and more exclusively to itself, stressing its own particular and special value and function, in contradistinction to or even against other lines. Thus the descent or fall from the Supermind leads, in the first instance, to the creation or appearance of the Overmind. It is the level of consciousness where the perfect balance of the One and the Many is disturbed and the emphasis begins to be laid on the many. The source of incompatibility between the two just starts here as if Many is notOne and One is not Many. It is the beginning of Ignorance, Avidya, Maya. Still in the higher hemisphere of the Overmind, the sense of unity is yet maintained, although there is no longer the sense of absolute identity of the two; they are experienced as complementaries, both form a harmony, a harmony as of different and distinct but conjoint notes. The Many has come forward, yet the unity is also there supporting it-the unity is an immanent godhead, controlling the patent reality of the Many. It is in the lower hemisphere of the Overmind that unity is thrown into the background half-submerged, flickering, and the principle of multiplicity comes forward with all insistence. Division and rivalry are the characteristic marks of its organisation. Yet the unity does not disappear altogether, only it remains very much inactive, like a sleeping partner. It is not directly perceived and envisaged, not immediately felt but is evoked as reminiscence. The Supermind, then, is the first crystallisation of the Infinite into individual centres, in the Overmind these centres at the outset become more exclusively individualised and then jealously self-centred.
--
Here also in the vital three ranges can be distinguished the lower becoming more and more turbid and turbulent and fierce or more and more self-centred and selfish. These levels can best be seen by their impact on our vital being and formations there. The first, the highest one, the meeting or confluence of the Mind and the Vital is the Heart, the centre of emotion, the knot of the external or instrumental vehicle, of the frontal consciousness, behind which is born and hides the true individualised consciousness, the psyche. The mid-region is the Higher Vital consisting of larger (egoistic) dynamisms, such as high ambition, great enterprise, heroic courage, capacity for work, adventure, masterfulness, also such movements as sweeping violences, mighty hungers, and intense arrogances. The physical seat of this movement is, as perhaps the Tantras would say, the domain ranging between the heart and the navel. Lower down ranges the Lower Vital which consists of small desires, petty hankerings, blind cravingsall urges and impulses that are more or less linked up with the body and move to gross physical satisfactions.
But always the Consciousness is driving towards a yet greater disintegration and fragmentation, obscuration and condensation of self-oblivion. The last step in the process of transmutation or involution is Matter where consciousness has wiped itself out or buried itself within so completely and thoroughly that it has become in its outward form totally dark, dense, hard, pulverised into mutually exclusive grains. The supreme luminous Will of Consciousness in its gradual descent and self obliteration finally ends in a rigid process of mere mechanised drive.
--
Now this imprisoned consciousness in Matter forces Matter to be conscious again when driven on the upward gradient. This tension creates a fire, as it were, in the heart of Matter, a mighty combustion and whorl in the core of things, of which the blazing sun is an image and a symbol. All this pressure and heat and concussion and explosion mean a mighty struggle in Matter to give birth to that which is within. Consciousness that is latent must be made patent; it must reveal itself in Matter and through Matter, making Matter its vehicle and embodiment. This is the mystery of the birth of Life, the first sprouting of consciousness in Matter. Life is half-awakened consciousness, consciousness yet in a dream state. Its earliest and most rudimentary manifestation is embodied in the plant or vegetable world. The submerged consciousness strives to come still further up, to express itself to a greater degree and in a clearer mode, to become more free and plastic in its movements; hence the appearance of the animal as the next higher formulation. Here consciousness delivers itself as a psyche, a rudimentary one, no doubt, a being of feeling and sensation, and elementary mentality playing in a field of vitalised Matter. Even then it is not satisfied with itself, it asks for a still more free and clear articulation: it is not satisfied, for it has not yet found its own level. Hence after the animal, arrives man with a full-fledged Mind, with intelligence and self-consciousness and capacity for self-determination.
Thus we see that evolution, the unfolding of consciousness follows exactly the line of its involution, only the other way round: the mounting consciousness re-ascends step by step the same gradient, retraces the same path along which it had descended. The descending steps are broadly speaking (I) Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, (2) Supermind and its secondary form Overmind, (3) Mind(i) mind proper and (ii) the intermediary psyche, (4) Life, (5) Matter. The ascending consciousness starting from Matter rises into Life, passes on through Life and psyche into Mind, driving towards the Supermind and Sachchidananda. At the present stage of evolution, consciousness has arrived at the higher levels of Mind; it is now striving to cross it altogether and enter the Overmind and the Supermind. It will not rest content until it arrives at the organisation in and through the Supermind: for that is the drive and purpose of Nature in the next cycle of evolution.
Physical Science speaks of irreversibility and entropy in Nature's process. That is to say, it is stated that Nature is rushing down and running down: she is falling irrevocably from a higher to an ever lower potential of energy. The machine that Nature is, is driven by energy made available by a break-up of parts and particles constituting its substance. This katabolic process cannot be stopped or retraced; it can end only when the break-up ceases at dead equilibrium. You cannot lead the river up the channel to its source, it moves inevitably, unceasingly towards the sea in which it exhausts itself and finds its last repose andextinction. But whatever physical Science may say, the science of the spirit declares emphatically that Nature's process is reversible, that a growing entropy can be checked and countermanded: in other words, Nature's downward current resulting in a continual loss of energy and a break-up of substance is not the only process of her activity. This aspect is more than counterbalanced by another one of upward drive and building up, of re-energisation and re-integration. Indeed, evolution, as we have explained it, is nothing but such a process of synthesis and new creation.
Evolution, which means the return movement of consciousness, consists, in its apparent and outward aspect, of two processes, or rather two parallel lines in a single process. First, there is the line of sublimation, that is to say, the lower purifies and modifies itself into the higher; the denser, the obscurer, the baser mode of consciousness is led into and becomes the finer, the clearer, the nobler mode. Thus it is that Matter rises into Life, Life into psyche and Mind, Mind into Overmind and Supermind. Now this sublimation is not simply a process of refinement or elimination, something in the nature of our old Indian nivtti or pratyhra, or what Plotinus called epistrophe (a turning back, withdrawal or reabsorption): it includes and is attended by the process of integration also. That is to say, as the lower rises into the higher, the lower does not cease to exist thereby, it exists but lifted up into the higher, infused and modified by the higher. Thus when Matter yields Life, Matter is not destroyed: it means Life has appeared in Matter and exists in and through Matter and Matter thereby has attained a new mode and constitution, for it is no longer merely a bundle of chemical or mechanical reactions, it is instinct with life, it has become organic matter. Even so, when Lire arrives at Mind, it is not dissolved into Mind but both Life and Matter are taken up by the mental stuff, life becomes dynamic sentience and Matter is transformed into the grey substance of the brain. Matter thus has passed through a first transformation in Life and a second transformation in Mind; it awaits other transformations on other levels beyond Mind. Likewise, Life has passed through a first transformation in Mind and there are stages in this transformation. In the plant, Life is in its original pristine mode; in the animal, it has become sentient and centralised round a rudimentary desire-soul; in man, life-force is taken up by the higher mind and intelligence giving birth to idealism and ambition, dynamisms of a forward-looking purposive will.
We have, till now, spoken of the evolution of consciousness as a movement of ascension, consisting of a double process of sublimation and integration. But ascension itself is only one line of a yet another larger double process. For along with the visible movement of ascent, there is a hidden movement of descent. The ascent represents the pressure from below, the force of buoyancy exerted by the involved and secreted consciousness. But the mere drive from below is not sufficient all by itself to bring out or establish the higher status. The higher status itself has to descend in order to be manifest. The urge from below is an aspiration, a yearning to move ever upward and forward; but the precise goal, the status to be arrived at is not given there. The more or less vague and groping surge from below is canalised, if assumes a definite figure and shape, assumes a local habitation and a name when the higher descends at the crucial moment, takes the lower at its peak-tide and fixes upon it its own norm and form. We have said that all the levels of consciousness have been createdloosened outby a first Descent; but in the line of the first Descent the only level that stands in front at the outset is Matter all the other levels are created no doubt but remain invisible in the background, behind the gross veil of Matter. Each status stands confined, as it were, to its own region and bides its time when each will be summoned to concretise itself in Matter. Thus Life was already there on the plane of Life even when it did not manifest itself in Matter, when mere Matter, dead Matter was the only apparent reality on the material plane. When Matter was stirred and churned sufficiently so as to reach a certain tension and saturation, when it was raised to a certain degree of maturity, as it were, then Life appeared: Life appeared, not because that was the inevitable and unavoidable result of the churning, but because Life descended from its own level to the level of Matter and took Matter up in its embrace. The churning, the development in Matter was only the occasion, the condition precedent. For, however much one may shake or churn Matter, whatever change one may create in it by a shuffling and reshuffling of its elements, one can never produce Life by that alone. A new and unforeseen factor makes its appearance, precisely because it comes from elsewhere. It is true all the planes are imbedded, submerged, involved in the complex of Matter; but, in point of fact, all planes are involved in every other plane. The appearance or manifestation of a new plane is certainly prepared, made ready to the last the last but onedegree by the urge of the inner, the latent mode of consciousness that is to be; still the actualisation, the bursting forth happens only when the thing that has to manifest itself descends, the actual form and pattern can be imprinted and established by that alone. Thus, again, when Life attains a certain level of growth and maturity, a certain tension and orientationa definite vector, so to say, in the mathematical languagewhen it has, for example, sufficiently organised itself as a vehicle of the psychic element of consciousness, then it buds forth into Mind, but only when the Mind has descended upon it and into it. As in the previous stage, here also Life cannot produce Mind, cannot develop into Mind by any amount of mechanical or chemical operations within itself, by any amount of permutation and combination or commutation and culture of its constituent elements, unless it is seized on by Mind itself. After the Mind, the next higher grade of consciousness shall come by the same method and process, viz. first by an uplifting of the mental consciousnessa certain widening and deepening and katharsis of the mental consciousness and then by a descent, gradual or sudden, of the level or levels that lie above it.
This, then, is the nature of creation and its process. First, there is an Involution, a gradual foreshorteninga disintegration and concretisation, an exclusive concentration and self-oblivion of consciousness by which the various levels of diminishing consciousness are brought forth from the plenary light of the one supreme Spirit, all the levels down to the complete eclipse in the unconsciousness of the multiple and disintegrate Matter. Next, there is an Evolution, that is to say, embodiment in Matter of all these successive states, appearing one by one from the down most to the topmost; Matter incarnates, all other states contri bute to the incarnation and uphold it, the higher always transforming the lower in a new degree of consciousness.
--
In man something else or something more happens. For man is not merely an individual, he is also a personality. He is the outcome of a twofold growth and revelation. He has outgrown the vital and climbed into Mind, and he has dived into the Heart and touched his inner soul, his true psychic centre. It is this soul that is the source of his personality.
The formulation or revelation of the psyche marks another line of what we have been describing as the Descent of Consciousness. The phenomenon of individualisation has at its back the phenomenon of the growth of the psyche. It is originally a spark or nucleus of consciousness thrown into Matter that starts growing and organising itself behind the veil, in and through the movements and activities of the apparent vehicle consisting of the triple nexus of Body (Matter) and Life and Mind. The extreme root of the psychic growth extends perhaps right into the body, consciousness of Matter, but its real physical basis and tenement is found only with the growth and formation of the physical heart. And yet the psychic individuality behind the animal organisation is very rudimentary. All that can be said is that it is there, in potentia, it exists, it is simple being: it has not started becoming. This is man's speciality: in him the psychic begins to be dynamic; to be organised and to organise, it is a psychic personality that he possesses. Now this flowering of the psychic personality is due to an especial Descent, the descent of a Person from another level of consciousness. That Person (or Superperson) is the jvatman, the Individual Self, the central being of each individual formation. The Jivas are centres of multiplicity thrown up in the bosom of the infinite Consciousness: it is the supreme Consciousness eddying in unit formations to serve as the basis for the play of manifestation. They are not within the frame of manifestation (as the typal formations in the Supermind are), they are above or beyond or beside it and stand there eternally and invariably in and as part and parcel of the one supreme RealitySachchidananda. But the Jivatman from its own status casts its projection, representation, delegated formulationemanation, in the phraseology of the neo-Platonistsinto the manifestation of the triple complex of mind, life and body, that is to say, into the human vehicle, and thus stands behind as the psychic personality or the soul. This soul, we have seen, is a developing, organising focus of consciousness growing from below and comes to its own in the human being: or we can put it the other way, that is to say, when it comes to its own, then the human being appears. And it has come to its own precisely by a descent of its own self from above, in the same manner as with the other descents already described. Now, this coming to its own means that it begins henceforth to exercise its royal power, its natural and inherent divine right, viz, of consciously and directly controlling and organising its terrestrial kingdom which is the body and life and mind. The exercise of conscious directive will, supported and illumined by a self-consciousness, I that occurs with the advent of the Mind is a function of the I Purusha, the self-conscious being, in the Mind; but this self-conscious being has been able to come up, manifest itself and be active, because of pressure of the underlying psychic personality that has formed here.
Thus we have three characteristics of the human personality accruing from the psychic consciousness that supports and inspires it:(1) self-consciousness: an animal acts, feels and even knows, but man knows that he acts, knows that he feels, knows even that he knows. This phenomenon of consciousness turning round upon itself is the hallmark of the human being; (2) a conscious will holding together and harmonising, fashioning and integrating the whole external nature evolved till now; (3) a purposive drive, a deliberate and voluntary orientation towards a higher and ever higher status of individualisation and personalisation,not only a horizontal movement seeking to embrace and organise the normal, the already attained level of consciousness, but also a vertical movement seeking to raise the level, attain altogether a new poise of higher organisation.
These characters, it is true, are not clear and pronounced, do not lie in front, at the beginning of the human personality. The normal human person has his psyche very much behind; but it is still there as antarymin, as the secret Inner Controller. And whatever the vagaries of the outer instruments or their slavery to the mode of Ignorance, in and through all that, it is this Inner Guide that holds the reins and drives upward in the end.
Thus naturally there appear gradations of the human personality; as the consciousness in the human being rises higher and higher, the psychic centre organises a higher and higher a richer, wider, deeper personality. The first great conversion, the first turning of the human personality to a new mode of life and living, that is to say, living even externally according to the inner truth and reality, the first attempt at a conscious harmonisation of the psychic consciousness with its surface agents and vehicles is what is known as spiritual initiation. This may happen and it does happen even when man lives in his normal mental consciousness. But there is the possibility of growth and evolution and transformation of personality in higher and a higher spiritual degree through the upper reaches of the higher Mind, the varying degrees of the Overmind and finally the Supermind. These are the spheres, the fields, even the continents of the personality, but the stuff, the substance of the personality, the inner nucleus of consciousness-force is formed, first, by the flaming aspiration, the upward drive within the developing and increasing psychic being itself, and secondly, by the descent, to a greater and greater degree, of the original Being from which it emanated. The final coalescence of the fully and integrally developed psychic being with the supreme splendour of its very source, the Jivatman, occurs in the Supermind. When this happens the supramental personality becomes incarnate in the physical body: Matter in the material plane is transformed into a radiant substance made of pure consciousness, the human personality becomes a living form of the Divine. Thus the wheel comes full circle: creation returns to the point from which it started but with an added significance, a new fulfilment.
The mystery of rebirth in the evolution of the human personality is nothing but the mystery of the developing psyche. At first this psyche or soul is truly a being: no bigger than the thumb it is the hardly audible still small voice. The experiences of lifesweet or bitter, happy or unhappy, good or bad, howsoever they may appear to the outward eye and perceptionall the dialectics of a terrestrial existence contri bute to the growth and development of the psychic consciousness. Each span of life means a special degree or mode of growth necessitated by the inner demand and drive of the divine Individual seated within the heart. The whole end in view of this secret soul is to move always towards and be united again with its Oversoul, its original and high archetype in the Divine Consciousness: the entire course of its earthly evolution is chalked out and patterned by the exact need of its growth. Whatever happens in each particular life, all the currents of all the lives converge and coalesce, and serve the psychic consciousness to swell in volume and intensity and be one with the Divine Consciousness. Or, in a different imagery, one can say that the multifarious experiences of various lives are as fuel to the Inner Firethis psychic Agni which is just a spark or a thin tongue at the outset of the human evolutionary course; but with the addition of fuel from life to life this Fire flames up, indeed, becomes ultimately a conflagration that bums and purifies the entire outer vehicle and transforms it into radiant mattera fit receptacle, incarnation of the supernal Light. The mounting Fire (the consciousness-energy secreted in the earth-bound heart of Matter) finally flares up, discloses itself in its full amplitude and calls and attracts into it the incandescent supramental Solar Sphere which is the type and pattern it has to embody and express. This is the marriage of Heaven and Earth, of which the mystics all over the earth in all ages spoke and sangto which the Vedic Rishi refers when he declares:
Dyaur me pit mt pthiv iyam,1
02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The problem in reality, however, is simple enough, if we allow the facts to speak for themselves and do not hesitate to accept the conclusions to which they inevitably lead. After Matter came Life; that is to say, out of Matter came Life, and that can only be because Life was involved in Matter. And if such a conclusion makes of Matter a potentially living thing, we shall have to accept the position. In the same way, Mind that followed Life came out of Life, because Mind was involved in Life; and if that means endowing Life with a secret mentality, well, there is no help for it. And if, as a natural consequence of the two premises we have to admit the existence of some kind of mind or consciousness secreted in Mattera minimal psychic life, according to McDougall that would be but what the Upanishads always declared: Creation -is a vibration of consciousness, and all things and all kinds of existence are only forms and modalities of consciousness.
However, we thus arrive at Mind in following the evolutionary process. Now after Mind there emerges another principle which has been termed Deity. By Deity the emergent evolutionists mean the embodiment of the religious feelingpiety, charity, worship, love of God or of God's creatures. Indeed, saints and prophets are visible deities, embodiments of the Deity in the making. These represent another element in the evolutionary processa new evolute.
02.06 - The Integral Yoga and Other Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have never said that my Yoga was something brand new in all its elements. I have called it the integral Yoga and that means that it takes up the essence and many processes of the old Yogas - its newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method. In the earlier stages which is all I deal with in books like the Riddle or the Lights1 there is nothing in it that distinguishes it from the old Yogas except the aim underlying its comprehensiveness, the spirit in its movements and the ultimate significance it keeps before it - also the scheme of its psychology and its working, but as that was not and could not be developed systematically or schematically in these letters, it has not been grasped by those who are not already acquainted with it by mental familiarity or some amount of practice. The detail or method of the later stages of the Yoga which go into little known or untrodden regions, I have not made public and I do not at present intend to do so.
I know very well also that there have been seemingly allied ideals and anticipations - the perfectibility of the race, certain
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Yoga, one can realise the psychic being as a portion of the
Divine seated in the heart with the Divine supporting it there
- this psychic being takes charge of the sadhana and turns the whole being to the Truth and the Divine, with results in the mind, the vital, the physical consciousness which I need not go into here, - that is a first transformation. We realise it next as the one Self, Brahman, Divine, first above the body, life, mind and not only within the heart supporting them - above and free and unattached as the static Self but also extended in wideness through the world as the silent Self in all and dynamic too as the active Divine Being and Power, Ishwara-Shakti, containing the world and pervading it as well as transcending it, manifesting all cosmic aspects. But, what is most important for us, is that it manifests as a transcending Light, Knowledge,
Power, Purity, Peace, Ananda of which we become aware above and which descends into the being and progressively replaces the ordinary consciousness by its own movements - that is the second transformation. We realise also the consciousness itself as moving upward, ascending through many planes physical, vital, mental, overmental to the supramental and Ananda planes.
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Truth Purusha (supramental) and the Bliss Purusha; it says that one has to draw the physical self up into the vital, the vital into the mental, the mental into the Truth Self, the Truth Self into the Bliss Self and so attain perfection. But in this Yoga we become aware not only of this taking up but of a pouring down of the powers of the higher Self, so that there comes in the possibility of a descent of the Supramental Self and nature to dominate and change our present nature and turn it from nature of Ignorance into nature of Truth-Knowledge (and through the supramental into nature of Ananda) - this is the third or supramental transformation. It does not always go in this order, for with many the spiritual descent begins first in an imperfect way before the psychic is in front and in charge, but the psychic development has to be attained before a perfect and unhampered spiritual descent can take place, and the last or supramental change is impossible so long as the two first have not become full and complete. That's the whole matter, put as briefly as possible.
02.06 - Vansittartism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A son of the soil, an eminent erstwhile collaborator of Hitler, who has paid for his apostasy, offered a compromise solution. He says, Germany, as a matter of fact, is not one but two: there is the Eastern Germany (the Northern and the Eastern portion) and there is the Western Germany (the South and the West) and the two are distinct and differenteven antagonisticin temperament and character and outlook. The Western Germany is the true Germany, the Germany of light and culture, the Germany that produced the great musicians, poets and idealists, Goe the and Heine and Wagner and Beethoven. The other Germany represents the dark shadow. It is Prussia and Prussianised Germany. This Germany originally belonged to the bleak, wild, savage, barbarous East Europe and was never thoroughly reclaimed and its union with the Western half was more political than psychological. So this ex-lieutenant of Hitler proposed to divide and separate the two altogether and form two countries or nations and thus eliminate the evil influence of Prussianism and Junkerism.
The more democratic and liberal elements among the Allies do not also consider that Germany as a whole is smitten with an original sin and is beyond redemption. They say Germany too has men and groups of men who are totally against Hitler and Hitlerism; they may have fallen on evil days, but yet they can be made the nucleus of a new and regenerated Germany.Furthermore, they say if Germany has come to be what she is, considerable portion of the responsibility must be shared by the unprogressive and old-world elements among the Allies themselves who helped or pitied or feared the dark Germany.
Hence it is suggested that for the postwar reconstruction of Germany what is required is the re-education of its people. For, only a psychological change can bring about a durable and radical change. But certain proposals towards this end raise serious misgivings, since they mean iron regimentation under foreign control. Even if such a thing were possible and feasible, it is doubtful if the purpose could be best served in this way. Measures have to be taken, no doubt, to uproot Prussianism and Junkerism and prevent their revival, no false mercy or sympathy should be extended to the enemies of God and man. But this is only a negative step, and cannot be sufficient by itself. A more positive and more important work lies ahead. The re-education of Germany must come from within, if it is to be permanent and effective. What others can do is to help her in this new orientation. As we have said, there are the progressive elements in Germany too, although submerged for the moment. The task of reconstruction will precisely consist in calling up and organising and marshalling these forces that are for the Light. The Allied organisation, it may be noted, itself has grown up in this way. When one remembers how Britain stood alone at one time against the all-sweeping victorious march of the Titan, how slowly and gradually America was persuaded to join hands, at first in a lukewarm way, finally with all its heart and soul and might and main, how a new France is being built up out of a mass of ruins, we can hope that the same process will be adopted in the work that lies ahead even after victory, with regard to Italy and with regard to Germany. In the second case the task is difficult but it has got to be done.
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02.08 - The Basic Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is one unity which cannot be denied to India, because Nature has given it and man cannot withdraw or annul it. It is the geographical, the physical unity. It is so clearly and indelibly marked that it has always been looked upon as a definite unit by all outside its boundaries; one may call in question the cultural unity, if one chooses, one may be sceptic about the spiritual unity, but the unity of the body leaps to the eyes, even as the clear contour of a living organism. As we know, however, an individual human frame may contain many personalities, many Jekylls and Hydes may lodge in the same physical tenement, even so, the physical unity that is India may harbour many and diverse independent elements. Admitting even that, the problem does not end there, it is only the beginning. The problem that is set in such a case is, as has been pointed out by the psychologists, the problem of the integration of personality.
A firm physical unity presupposes, at least posits the possibility of an integral unity. Otherwise the body itself would tend to break up and disintegrate. Such physical cataclysms are not unknown in Nature. However, a geographical unity cannot remain exclusively limited to itself; it brings about other unities by the very pressure, by the capillary action, as it were, of the boundary. The first unity that is called into being is the economic. A Zollverein (Customs Union) has almost always been the starting-point of a national union. Next or along with it comes the political unity. India's political and economic unity has been the great work of the British rule, however that rule might be distasteful to us. It is an illustration of Nature's method of compulsion and violence, when man's voluntary effort fails. India possesses a resounding roll of great names who endeavoured to give her this solid political and economic unity; Bharata, Yudhishthira, Asoka, Chandragupta, Akbar, Shivaji have all contri buted to the evergrowing unification of Indian polity. But still what they realised was not a stable and permanent thing, it was yet fluent and uncertain; it was only the hammerblow, the plastering, as one would say today, from an outside agency that welded, soldered and fixed that unity.
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self
Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In ancient times too there were conscious attempts to build and remould human society. The Rishis were not merely spiritual seers, but creators of the social order also. They saw by their vision the inner truths of things, they found principles and laws, right principles and correct laws which establish peace and stability, on the one hand, no doubt, but on the other hand serve also as the frame for the growth and fulfilment of the individual being. The king with his executive body was there to see that the laws were observed and honoured. The later law-givers (the makers of codes, smritis) had not the direct and large vision of the Rishis, but they tried their best to maintain the laws as they understood them, elaborate them, change or modify wherever possible or needed under given circumstances. In ancient Europe too, it was Plato who envisaged the ideal Republic, a government of philosophers the wise who are not actively engaged in the turmoil of life, but stand aloof and detached and can see more of the game and accordingly legislate all the better. In modern times also the rise of a Feuhrer or a Dictator seems to have been a psychological necessity: the mass consciousness is in sore need of a guide, and as the right guide is not easily available, the way of the false prophet is smooth and wide open. As a protection and antidote against such a calamity, we tried here and there to found and organise a government of all talents.
But again, who are the talents and where are they? For a modern society produces at best clever politicians, but very few great souls if at all, who can inspire, guide and create. Not a system or organization, but such centres of forces, with creative vision and power, it is that that mankind sorely needs at this hour. System and organization come after, they can only be the embodiment of a creative vision.
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This theory of money power, in spite of its factual or practical truth, is not the whole truth. This is, I should say, the very old I Ptolemaic social system, in a new garb, which turns round man as an economic and physicalbeing. The Copernican system would view man chiefly as a psychological centre. A truly rational economic system can be based upon such an inner view of the situation. A merely economic view would take man as nothing more than a wage-earning machine and that will give the society and its government a mechanistic pattern. It will forget this simple truism that a man's worth is not and need not be always commensurate with his wage-earning capacity or even his usefulness as a citizen (in the way the atom-bomb Scientists are proving useful today).
Personal value will mean then not productive value, but creative value, that is to say, the capacity to create values, that means the consideration of the psychological and moral makeup of the individual.
What is the thing in human society which makes it valuable, worthy of humanity, gives it a place of honour and the right to live and continue to live? It is its culture and civilisation, as everyone knows. Greece or Rome, China or India did not attain, at least according to modern conceptions, a high stage in economic evolution: the production and distribution of wealth, the classification and organization of producers and consumers, their relation and functions were, in many respects, what is called primitive. An American of today would laugh at their uncouth simplicity. And yet America has to bow down to those creators of other values that are truly valuable. And the values are the creations of the great poets, artists, philosophers, law-givers; sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement of the "cultured" man by the economic man. In the present age when economic values have been grossly exaggerated holding the entire social fabric in its stifling grip, the culture spirit has been pushed into the background and made subservient to economic and other cruder forces. That was what Julien Benda, the famous French critic and moralist, once stigmatised as "La Trahison des Clercs"; only, the "clercs" did not voluntarily betray, but circumstanced as they were they could do no better. The process reached its climaxperhaps one should say the very nadirin the Nazi experiment and something of it still continues in the Russian dispensation. There the intellectuals or the intelligentsia are totally harnessed to the political machine, their capacities are prostituted in the service of a socio-economic plan. Poets and artists and thinkers are made to be protagonists and propagandists of the new order. It is a significant sign of the times how almost the whole body of scientists the entire Brain Trust of mankind today, one might sayhave been mobilised for the fabrication of the Atom Bomb. Otherwise they cannot subsist, they lose all economic status.
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It is one of the great illusionsor perhaps a show plank for propagandato think or say that the so-called poorer classes are the poorest and the most miserable. It is not so in fact. Really poor are those who have a standard of life commensurate with their inner nature and consciousnessof beauty and orderliness and material sufficiency and yet their actual status and function in society do not provide them with the necessary where-withals and resources. No amount of philanthropic sentimentalising can suppress or wipe off the fact that the poor do not feel the pinch of poverty so much as do those who are poor and yet are to live and move as not poor. It all depends upon one's standard. One is truly rich or poor not in proportion- to one's income, but" in accordance with one's needs and the means to meet them. And all do not have the same needs and requirements. This does not mean that the needs of the princes, the aristocrats, the magnates are greater than those of the mere commoner. No, it means that there are people, there is a section of humanity found more or less in all these classes, but mostly in less fortunate classes, whose needs are intrinsically greater and they require preferential treatment. There should be none poor or miserable in society, well and good. But this should not mean that all the economic resources of the society must be requisitioned only to enrichto pamper the poor. For there is a pampering possible in this matter. We know the nouveaux riches, the parvenus and the kind of life they lead with their fair share boldly seized. A levelling, a formal equalisation of the economic status, although it may mean uplift in certain cases, may involve gross injustice to others. The ideal is not equal distribution but rational distribution of wealth, and that distribution should not depend upon any material function, but upon psychological demands. Is this bourgeois economics? Even if it is so, the truth has to be faced and recognised. You can call truth by the name bourgeois and hang it, but it will revive all the same, like the Phoenix out of the ashes.
If it is said that the proletarian the manual laboureris given economic freedom not for the sake of that freedom merely, but for the sake of the cultural opportunity also that he will have in that way. None can demur to this noble and generous ideal, but- what must not be forgotten in that preoccupation is the fact that there exists already a culturally predisposed class in the present society who also require immediate care and nourishment so that they may grow and flourish as they should. In our eagerness to take up the enterprise and adventure of reclaiming deserts and heaths and moorlands, there is a chance of our losing sight of the precious fertile lands, rich in possibilities that we already possess. The economic status has to be improved for all who are adversely placed in the modern system, certainly; but for a real improvement based upon just and true needs, for an adjustment that will make for the highest good of the society, what is first required is to ascertain the psychological status which should alone, at least chiefly, determine the economic status.
In the old Indian social organisation there was at the basis such a psychological pattern and that must have been the reason why the structure lasted through millenniums. It was a hierarchical system but based upon living psychological forces. Each group or section or class in it had inevitably its appropriate function and an assured economic status. The Four Orders the Brahmin (those whose pursuit was knowledgeacquiring and giving knowledge), the Kshattriya (the fighters, whose business it was to give physical protection), the Vaishya (traders and farmers who were in charge of the wealth of the society, its production and distribution) and the Sudra (servants and mere labourers )are a natural division or stratification of the social body based upon the nature and function of its different members. In the original and essential pattern there is no sinister mark of inferiority branded upon what are usually termed as the lower orders, especially the lowest order. If some are considered higher and are honoured and respected as such, it meant simply that the functions and qualities they stand for constitute in some way higher values, it did not mean that the others have no value or are to be spurned or neglected. The brain must be given a higher place than the stomach, although all its support and nourishment come from there. Hierarchy means, in modern terms, that the essential services must pass first, should have certain priorities. And according to the older view-point, the Brahmin, being the emblem and repository of knowledge, was considered as the head of the social body. He is the fount and origin of a culture, the creator of a civilisation; the others protect, nourish and serve, although all are equally necessary for the common welfare.
Fundamentally all human society is built upon this pattern which is psychological and which seems to be Nature's own life-plan. There is always this fourfold stratification or classification of members in any collective human grouping: the Intellectual (taken in the broadest sense) or the Intelligentsia, the Military, the Trader and the Labourer. In the earlier civilisationswhen civilisation was being formedespecially in the East, it ,was the first class that took precedence over the rest and was especially honoured; for it is they who give the tone and temper and frame of life in the society. In later epochs, in the mediaeval age for example, the age of conquerors and conquistadors, and of Digvijaya, man as the warrior, the Kshattriya, the Samurai or the Chivalry was given the place of honour. Next came the age of traders and merchants, and the industrial age with the invention of machines. Today the labourer is rising in his turn to take the prime place.
As we have said, a normally healthy society is a harmonious welding of these four elements. A society becomes diseased when only one member gets inflated and all-powerful at the expense of others or whenever there is an unholy alliance of some against the rest. Priest-craft, the Church militant, Fanaticism (religious or ideological), Inquisition are corruptions that show themselves when the first principle, the principle of Brahminhood, becomes exclusive and brings in arrogance and ignorance. Similarly colonisation and imperialism of the type only too familiar to us are aberrations of the spirit that the second principle embodies the spirit of the Kshattriya. Likewise financial cartels, the industrial magnates, the profiteer, the arriviste are diseased growths in the economic body of a modern society which has forgotten the true Vaishya spirit that seeks to produce wealth in order to share and distribute fairly and equitably. The remedy of these ills society has suffered from is not the introduction of a fourth evil, the tyranny of the Fourth Estate of the proletariate. The Fourth was reduced, it is true, to a state of slavery and serfdom, of untouchability, at its reductio ad absurdum. The cure, we say, is not in blind revolt and an inauguration of the same evil under a new name and form, which means its perpetuation, but in the creation of a new life and soul, that can happen only with the creation of a new head and front Zeus-like that would give birth to the goddess of light and knowledge, inspirer of a true Brahminhood.
02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And both had the vision of a greater Tomorrow for their Motherl and and that was why both regarded her freedom as the basic necessity for the recovery of her greatness. How the inspired songs and speeches of Rabindranath and the flaming utterances of Sri Aurobindo created a psychological revolution almost overnight in the mind and heart of the people during the Swadeshi days forms a glorious chapter in the history of India's freedom movement. Profoundly touched by Sri Aurobindo's soul-stirring lead to the country, Rabindranath wrote a memorable poem, addressing Sri Aurobindo, which is still enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen. Rabindranath himself called on Sri Aurobindo and read out to him his heart's homage. We remember with thrill the majestic opening lines:
Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee!
02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet internationalism is not the one thing needful either. If it means the obliteration of all national values, of all cultural diversity, it will not certainly conduce to the greater enrichment and perfection of humanity. Taken by itself and in its absolute sense, it cannot be a practical success. The fact is being proved every moment these days. Internationalism in the economic sphere, however, seems to have a greater probability and utility than in the merely political sphere. Economics is forcing peoples and nations to live together and move together: it has become the soldering agent in modern times of all the elements the groups and types of the human family that were so long separate from each other, unknown to each other or clashing with each other. But that is good so far as it goes. Powerful as economic forces are, they are not the only deciding or directing agents in human affairs. That is the great flaw in the "International", the Marxian type of internationalism which has been made familiar to us. Man is not a political animal, in spite of Aristotle, nor is he an economic animal, in spite of Marx and Engels. Mere economics, even when working for a greater unity of mankind, tends to work more for uniformity: it reduces man to the position of a machine and a physical or material machine at that. By an irony of fate the human value for which the international proletariate raised its banner of revolt is precisely what suffers in the end. The Beveridge Plan, so much talked of nowadays, made such an appeal, no doubt because of the economic advantages it ensures, but also, by far and large, because it views man as a human being in and against the machine to which he belongs, because it is psychologically a scheme to salvage the manhood of man, so far as is possible, out of a rigidly mechanistic industrial organization.
Humanism
03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is indeed a gradation in the humanistic attitude that rises from grosser and more concrete forms to those that are less and less so. At the lowest rung and the most obvious in form and nature is what is called altruism, or philanthropy, that is to say, doing good to others, some good that is tangible and apparent, that is esteemed and valued by the world generally. In altruism refined and sublimated, when it is no longer a matter chiefly of doing but of feeling, from a more or less physical and material give and take we rise into a vital and psychological sympathy and intercommunion, we have what is humanism proper. Humanism is transfigured into something still higher and finer when from the domain of personal or individual feeling and sympathy we ascend to cosmic feeling, to self-identification with the All, the One that is Many. This is the experience that seems to be behind the Buddhistic compassion, karu
And yet there can be a status even beyond. For beyond the cosmic reality, lies the transcendent reality. It is the Absolute, neti, neti, into which individual and cosmos, all disappear and vanish. In compassion, the cosmic communion, there is a trace and an echo of humanismit is perhaps one of the reasons why Europeans generally are attracted to Buddhism and find it more congenial than Hinduism with its dizzy Vedantic heights; but in the status of the transcendent Selfhood humanism is totally transcended and transmuted, one dwells then in the Bliss that passeth all feeling.
03.02 - The Gradations of Consciousness The Gradation of Planes, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane.
The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now what exactly is this wonderful thing? This power that brings into being the non-being, realises the impossible? Whose is this Call, from where does it come? It is none other than the call of your own inmost being, of your secret self. It is the categorical imperative of the Divine seated within your heart. Indeed, the first dawning of the spiritual life means the coming forward, the unveiling of this inner being. The ignorant and animal life of man persists so long as the inner being remains in the background, away from the dynamic life, so long as man is subject to the needs and impulses of his mind and life and body. True, through the demands and urges of this lower complex, it is always the inner being that gains and has its dictates carried out and is always the secret lord and enjoyer; but that is an indirect effect and it is a phenomenon that takes place behind the veil. The evolution, in other words, of the inner or psychic being proceeds through many and diverse experiencesmental, vital and physical. Its consciousness, on the one hand, grows, that is, enlarges itself, becomes wider and wider, from what was infinitesimal it moves towards infinity, and on the other, streng thens, intensifies itself, comes up from behind and takes its stand in front visibly and dynamically. Man's true individual being starts on its career of evolution as a tiny focus of consciousness totally submerged under the huge surface surge of mind and life and body consciousness. It stores up in itself and assimilates the essence of the various experiences that the mind and life and body bring to it in its unending series of incarnations; as it enriches itself thus, it increases in substance and potency, even like fire that feeds upon fuels. A time comes when the pressure of the developed inner being upon the mind and life and body becomes so great that they begin to lose their aboriginal and unregenerate freedom the freedom of doing as they like; they have now to pause in their unreflecting career, turn round, as it were, and imbibe and acquire the habit of listening to the deeper, the inner voice, and obey the direction, the comm and of the Call. This is the Word inviolate (anhata-vn) of which the sages speak; this is also referred to as the still small voice, for indeed it is scarcely audible at present amidst the din and clamour of the wild surges of the body and life and mind consciousness.
Now, when this call comes clear and distinct, there is no other way for the man than to cut off the old moorings and jump into the shore less unknown. It is the categorical demand of such an overwhelming experience that made the Indian spirant declare:
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The inner soul the psychicvery often undergoes a secret preparation, develops and comes forward but just waits, as it were, behind the thin though opaque screen; and because of that it gives no objective indication of its growth and readiness. We see no patent sign of what is usually known as fitness or aptitude or capacity. Otherwise how to explain the conversion of a profligate and dilettante like Augustine, or of a rebel like Paul, or of scamps like Jagai-Madhai. Often the purest gold hides in the basest ore, the diamond is coal turned, as it were, inside out. This, one would say, is the Divine Grace that blows where it listsmakes of the dumb a prattler, of the lame a mountain-climber. Yet, but what is this Divine Grace and how does it move and act? It does not act on all and sundry, it does not act on all equally. What is the reason? Appearances often belie the reality: a contrary mask is put on, it would appear, deliberately, with a set purpose. The: sense and significance of this mystery? The hard, obscure, obstinate, rebel outer crust may continue long but it is corroded from within and one day, all on a sudden, it crumbles and dissolves and becomes in a new avatar the vehicle and receptacle of the very thing it opposed and denied.
Virtues are not indications of the fire of the inner soul, nor are vices irremediable obstacles to its growth. The inner soul, we have said, feeds upon allit is indeed fire, the omnivorous, sarvabhuk,virtues and vices and everything else and gather strength from everywhere. The mystery of miracles, of a sudden change or reversal or revolution in consciousness and way of life lies in the omnipotency of the psychic being. The psychic being has the power of making the apparently impossible, for this reason that it is a portion of the almighty Divine, it is the supreme Conscious-Power crystallised and canalised in a centre for the sake of manifestation. It is a particle from the Being, a spark of the Consciousness, a ripple from the Delight cast into the fastnesses of Matter and the, material body. Now, it is the irresistible urge of this particle, this spark, this ripple to grow and expand, to become in the end the Vast the Ocean and the Sun and the sphere of Infinityto become that not merely in an essential status but in a dynamic and apparent becoming also. The little soul, originally no bigger than a thumb, goes forward through one life after another enlarging and intensifying itself till it recovers and establishes its parent reality in this material body here below, till it unveils what is latent within itself, what is its own, what is itself,its integral self-fulfilment, the Divine integrality.
Here in his inner being, as part and parcel of the Divine, man is absolutely free, has infinite capacity and unbounded aptitude; for here he is master, not slave of Nature, and it is slavery to Nature, that limits and baulks and stultifies man. So does the Upanishad declare in a magnificent and supreme utterance:
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In the practice of Yoga the fitness or capacity that the inner being thus lends is the only real capacity that a sadhaka possesses; and the natural, spontaneous, self-sufficing initiation deriving from the inner being is the only initiation that is valid and fruitful. Initiation does not mean necessarily an external rite or ceremony, a mantra, an auspicious day or moment: all these things are useless and irrelevant once we take our stand on the au thentic self-competence of the soul. The moment the inner being has taken the decision that this time, in this life, in this very body, it will manifest itself, take possession of the body and life and mind and wait no more, at that moment itself all mantra has been uttered and all initiation taken. The disciple has made the final and definitive offering of his heart to his Guru the psychic Guruand sought refuge in him and the Guru too has definitely accepted him.
Mantra or initiation, in its essence, is nothing else than contacting the inner being. In our Path, at least, there is no other rite or rule, injunction or ceremony. The only thing needed is to awake to the consciousness of the psychic being, to hear its callto live and move and act every moment of our life under the eye of this indwelling Guide, in accordance with its direction and impulsion. Our initiation is not therefore a one-time affair only; but at every moment, at each step, it has to be taken again and again, it must be renewed, revitalised, furthered and streng thened constantly and unceasingly; for it means that at each step and at every moment we have to maintain the contact of our external consciousness with the inner being; at each step and every moment we have to undergo the test of our sincerity and loyalty the test whether we are tending to our inner being, moving in its stream or, on the contrary, walking the way of our external animal nature, whether the movements in the mind and life and body are controlled by their habitual inferior nature or are open to and unified with their hidden divine source. This recurrent and continuous initiation is at the secret basis of all spiritual disciplinein the Integral Yoga this is the one and all-important principle.
Mundaka, Ill. 2. 4
03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The history of the emancipation of the different psychological domains in man is an interesting and instructive study. For the heart and the mind too were not always free and autonomous. An old-world consciousness was ruled or inspired by another faculty the religious sense. It is a sense, a faculty that has its seat neither in the mind nor even in the heart proper. Some would say it is in an inmost or topmost region, the Self, while others would relegate it to something quite the opposite, the lowest and most external strand in the human consciousness, viz., that of unconsciousness or infra-consciousness, ignorance, fear, superstition.
The domination of the religious sense reached its apogee in the Middle Ages when it almost swallowed up and annihilated all other faculties and movements in man. The end of that epoch and the first beginnings of the Modern Age were signalised by the Mind, i.e. the Reason, declaring its independence. This was the Renaissance; and it was then that the seed was sown of modern science and scientism.
03.03 - The Inner Being and the Outer Being, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral 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 and 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.
There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other inward and concealed of which he knows nothing. When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the
03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The perfection of the anatomical and morphological structure in man consists precisely in its wonderful elasticity the 'infinite faculty' or multiple functioning referred to by Shakespeare. This is the very characteristic character of man both with regard to his physical and psychological make-up. The other species are, everyone of them, more or less, a specialised formation; we have there a closed system, a fixed and definite physical mould and pattern of life. A cat or a crow of a million years ago, like 'the immemorial elm' was not very different from its descendant of today; not so with man. I mean, the human frame, in its general build, might have remained the: same from the beginning of time, but the uses to which it has been put, the works that have been demanded of it are multifarious, indeed of infinite variety. Although it is sometimes stated that the human body too has undergone a change (and is still undergoing) from what was once heavy and muscular, tall and stalwart, with a thicker skeletal system, towards something lighter and more delicate. Also an animal, like the plant, because of its rigidity of pattern, remains unchanged, keeping to its own geographical habitat. Change of climate meant for the animal a considerable change, a sea-change, a change of species, practically. But man can easilymuch more easily than an animal or a plantacclimatise himself to all sorts of variable climates. There seems to be a greater resilience in his physical system, even as a physical object. Perhaps it contains a greater variety of component elements and centres of energy which support its versatile action. The human frame, one may say, is like the solar spectrum that contains all the colour vibrations and all the lines characteristic of the different elements. The solar sphere is the high symbol for man.
The story runs (Aitareya Upanishad) that once the gods wished to come down and inhabit an earthly frame. Several animal forms (the cow, the horse) were presented to them one after another, but they were not satisfied, none was considered adequate for their habitation. At last the human frame (with its conscious personality) was offered to them and immediately they declared that that was indeed the perfect form they neededsuktam bateti and they entered into it.
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The spirit, the pure self in man is formless; but his soul the spirit cast into the evolutionary mould in manifestationhas a form: it possesses a personal identity of its own. Each soul or psyche is a contoured consciousness, as it were: it is not a vague indefinite charge of consciousness, but consciousness having magnitude and dimensions. And the physical body is a visible formula, a graph of that magnitude, an imagea faithful image or shadow thrown upon the wall of this cave of earthly life,of a reality above and outside, as Plato conceived the phenomenon. And the human appearance too is an extension or projection of an inner and essential reality which brings out or takes up that configuration when fronting the soul in its evolutionary march through terrestrial life. A mystic poet says:
All dreams of the soul
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The principle of exclusive concentration does not by itself really create the objects of the material world; it creates the perception the illusory perceptionof separativeness, that objects are more or less closed systems, distinct and isolated from one another. The sense of limitation and hence actual limitation, not however real or essential limitationcomes out of the exclusive concentration. This does not mean that the limitation or discreteness of objects is merely psychological (mental), not ontological, as one may say. In Sri Aurobindo's outlook the distinction between psychological and ontological is not trenchant and absolute. For, psychological, according to him, does not mean merely mental but also relating to consciousness; and although mind does not create material objects, consciousness may do soindeed it is the force of the original consciousness, which is the force of being, that has created the physical plane of multiplicity. This creative power is the self-projecting energy of consciousness prajna. It is, in other words, the force of individuation inherent in the play of consciousness. Now, as I have already said, at a certain stage, under certain conditions, through a gradation of stages, this force of individuation originally and intrinsically existing and working in and through unity and integration, is possessed or veiled by or devolves into a force of limitation, meaning separateness and exclusion. What would otherwise be an ensemble, an organism of individualities held together and moving as various forms or lines of force of one and the same reality, is now broken up and becomes a conglomeration of isolated entities. Unity is transformed into multiplicity, solidarity is lost in plurality.
We can, however, make a distinction between limitation and delimitation or individuation. Limitation is a movement of Ignorance: it is the result of exclusive concentration. It creates separateness, forgets the unity. Delimitation, on the contrary, is a movement of knowledge, of pure consciousness dynamic. It creates diversity, multiplicity maintained in unity.
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The psychological atmosphere in India is of a luminous tenuity. Here, it appears, the veil between this world and the other has so thinned away that the two meet and interpenetrate easily and freely; immersed in one, you can at the same time ba the in the other. Owing to the cumulative effect of the sadhana of her saints and sages who appeared in countless number down countless ages, or, perhaps, owing to the grace of a descent into her consciousness, or some immanence there, of the breath and light of a Superior World, India has developed and possesses, already prepared, a magnetic field, a luminous zone of spiritual consciousness; and to enter into it the Indian has only to turn aside, to go round a corner, to take one step forward. However thick and hard the crust of the Ignorance may lie upon the Indian soul, once that soul awakes and is upon the path, it finds itself on a familiar ground; it is in a domain which it has the impression of having frequented often and anon and for long.
But in Europe the division between this world and the other, in the inner consciousness of the people, is more rigorous, a thick wall divides the two and to pass from the one to the other demands a violent break, a total revolution; and even when the Rubicon is crossed, one feels oneself in unfamiliar surroundings, moving in a shadowy world, and with the uncertain and faltering steps of a child.
The average European has a strong basis of the earth-nature in him; he is heavily enclosed in his physical sheath and firmly placed upon the material world. Therefore he keeps a very stable terrestrial equilibrium and is not easily ousted from his earthly footing; his is not a nature easily upset from its poise, or disturbed by the currents and forces that play about him. But the Indian, both physically and psychically, has a more delicate frame and his footing upon earth is less secure. The balance in his consciousness between the different forcesespecially between those of this world and the otheris delicately held; and the adjustment that obtains at a given moment is liable to be disturbed by the least change, either in the inner consciousness, or in the outer conditions.
In other words, when we speak of the spirituality of the Indian people, it is to the disposition of their psychic elements that we refer, to the tone and temper of the soul they possess and to a constant nearness of latent spiritual possibilities, that may at any time materialise, and the consequent possibilities of a spiritual impulse, that may at any time awaken.
Other peoples have other and more concrete virtues to be proud of; but the Indian has his soul as his most characteristic possession.
03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is, indeed, a gradation in the humanistic attitude that rises from grosser and more concrete forms to those that are less and less so. At the lowest rung and the most obvious in form and nature is what is called altruism, or more especially, philanthropy, that is to say, doing good to others, some good j that is tangible and apparent, that is esteemed and valued by the world generally. In an altruism refined and sublimated, when it is no longer a matter primarily of doing but of feeling, when, from a more or less physical and material give and take, we rise into a vital and psychological sympathy and inter communion, we have what is humanism proper. Humanism is transfigured into something still higher and finer when, from the domain of personal or individual feeling" and sympathy, we ascend to cosmic feeling, to self-identification with the All, the One that is Many. This is the experience that seems to be behind the Buddhistic compassion, karu.
And yet there can be a status even beyond. For, beyond the cosmic reality lies the transcendent reality. It is the Absolute, neti, neti, into which individual and cosmos, all disappear and vanish. In compassion, the cosmic communion, there is a trace and an echo of humanismit is perhaps one of the reasons why Europeans generally are attracted to Buddhism and find it more congenial than Hinduism with its dizzy Vedantic heights. But in the status of the transcendent Self-hood, humanism is totally transcended and transmuted; one dwells there in the Bliss that passeth all feeling.
03.06 - Here or Otherwhere, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It can, however, be asked, what then is meant by being in the world? If it means merely sitting quiet, suffering and observing nonchalantly the impacts of the world something in the manner described by Matthew Arnold in his famous lines on the East, well, that stoic way, the way of indifference is a way of being in the world which is not very much unlike not being in the world; for it means simply erecting a wall of separation or isolation within one's consciousness without moving away physically. It is a psychological escapism. But if by living in the world we should mean participating in the movements of the worldnot only being but becoming, not merely standing as a witness but moving out as a doer then the problem becomes different. For the question we have to ask in that case is what happens to our dutieslife in the world being a series of duties, duty to oneself (self-preservation), duty to the family (race-preservation), duty to the country, to humanity and, finally, duty to God (which last belongs properly to the life in Yoga). Now, can all these duties dwell and flourish together? The Christ is categorical on the point. He says, in effect: Leave aside all else and follow Me and look not back. Christ's God seems to be a jealous God who does not tolerate any other god to share in his sovereign exclusiveness. You have to give up, if you wish to gain. They who lose life shall find it and they who stick to life shall as surely lose it.
But is not The Gita's solution somewhat different? Sri Krishna urges Arjuna to be in the very thick of a deadly fight, not a theoretical or abstract combat, but take a hand in the direst man-slaughter, to do the deed (even like Macbeth) but yogically. Yes, The Gita's position seems to be thatto accept all life integrally, to undertake all necessary work (kartavyam karma) and turn them Godward. The Gita seeks to do it in its own way which consists of two major principles: (1) to do the work, whatever it may be, unattachedwithout any desire for the fruit, simply as a thing that has to be done, and (2) to do it as a sacrifice, as an offering to the supreme Master of works.
03.07 - Brahmacharya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The energy that one stores by continence, regular habits and self-discipline increases also in that way. Sometimes special methodskriyaare adopted to help the process, Asana or Pranayama, for example. But an inner and a more psychological procedure is needed, a concentration of will and consciousnessa kind of dhyana, in other wordsin order to be able to take the next step in discipline. For after the storage and increase of energy comes the sublimation of energy, that is to say, the physico-vital energy transmuted into the energy of mental substance, medh. Sublimation means also the increase of brain-power, an enhancement in the degree and quality of its capacity. This has nothing to do with the volume of knowledge enclosed (the mass of information to which we referred before) the growth is with regard to the very stuff of the mind from within, the natural strength of intelligence that can be applied to any field of knowledge with equal success and felicity.
The basis and the immediate aim of education according to the ancient system was to develop this fundamental mental capacity: the brain's power to think clearly, consistently and deeply, to undergo labour without tiring easily and also a general strength and steadiness in the nerves. The transference of nervous energy into brain energy is also a secret of the process of sublimation. It is precisely this aspect of education that has been most neglected in modern times. We give no thought to this fundamental: we leave the brain to develop as it may (or may not), it is made to grow under pressuremore to inflate than to growby forcing into it masses of information. The result at best is that it is sharpened, made acute superficially or is overgrown in a certain portion of it in respect of a narrow and very specialised function, losing thereby a healthy harmony and homogeneity in the total movement. The intellectual's nervous instability is a very common phenomenon among us.
03.07 - The Sunlit Path, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo speaks of the sunlit path in Yoga. It is the path of happy progress where dangers and difficulties, violent ups and downs are reduced to a minimum, if not altogether obviated. In ideal conditions it is as it were a smooth and fair-weather sailing, as much of course as it is humanly possible. What are then these conditions? It is when the sadhaka keeps touch with his inmost being, his psychic consciousness, when this inner Guide and Helmsman is given the charge; for then he will be able to pass sovereignly by all shoals and rocks and storm-racks, through all vicissitudes, gliding onslow or swift as needed Inevitably towards the goal. A doubting mind, an impetuous vital urge, an inert physical consciousness, though they may be there in any strength, cannot disturb or upset the even tenor of the forward march. Even outward circumstances bow down to the pressure of the psychic temperament and bring to it their happy collaboration.
This may not always mean that all is easy and difficulty is simply not, once the psychic is there. It becomes so when the psychic is there fully in front; even otherwise when the inner being is in the background, still sensed and, on the whole, obeyed, although there are battles, hard battles to be fought and won, then even a little of this Consciousness saves from a great fear. For, then, in all circumstances, you will have found a secret joy and cheer and strength that buoy you up and carry you through.
Like the individual, nations too have their sunlit path and the path of the doldrum as well. So long as a nation keeps to the truth of its inner being, follows its natural line of development, remains faithful to its secret godhead, it will have chosen that good part which will bring it divine blessings and fulfilment. But sometimes a nation has the stupidity to deny its self, to run after an ignis fatuus, a mymrga, then grief and sorrow and frustration lie ahead. We are afraid India did take such a wrong step when she refused to see the great purpose behind the present war and tried to avoid contri buting her mite to the evolutionary Force at work. On the other hand Britain in a moment of supreme crisis, that meant literally life or death, not only to herself or to other nations, but to humanity itself, had the good fortune to be led by the right Inspiration, the whole nation rose as one man and swore allegiance to the cause of humanity and the gods. That was how she was saved and that was how she acquired a new merit and a fresh lease of life. Unlike Britain, France bowed down and accepted what should not have been accepted and cut herself adrift from her inner life and truth, the result was five years of hell. Fortunately, the hell in the end proved to be a purgatory, but what a purgatory! For there were souls who were willing to pay the price and did pay it to the full cash and nett. So France has been given the chance again to turn round and take up the thread of her life where it snapped.
03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All art is based upon this peculiar virtue of the mind that naturally and spontaneously transforms or distorts the objective world presented to its purview. The question, then, is only of the degree to which the metamorphosis has been carried. At the one end, there is the art of photography, in which the degree of metamorphosis is at its minimum; at the other, there seems to be no limit, for the mind's capacity to dissolve and recreate the world of sense-perception is infinite and many modern schools of European art have gone even beyond the limit that the "unnatural" Indian art did not consider it necessary to transgress. Now, the classical artist selects a position as close as he can to the photographer, tries to give the mind's view of Nature and creation, as far as possible, in the style and norm of the sense-perceptions. He takes his stand upon these and from there reaches out towards whatever imaginative reconstructions are justified within the bounds laid out by them. The general ground-plan is, almost rigorously, the form given by the physical eye. The art of the East, and even, to a large extent, the art of mediaeval Europe, followed a different line. Here the scheme of the sense-perceptions was rejected, the artist sought to build on other foundations. His procedure was, first, to get a focus within the mind, to discover a psychological standpoint, and from there and in accordance with the subtler laws and conventions of an inner vision create a world that is unique and stands by itself. The aim was always to build from within, at the most, from within outwards, but not from without, not even from without inwards. This inner world has its own laws and they differ from the laws of optics which govern the physical sight; but there is no reason why it should be called unnatural. It is unnatural only in the sense that it does not copy physical Nature; it is quite natural in the 1 sense that it is a faithful reproduction of another, a psychological Nature.
Indian art is pre-eminently and par excellence the art of this inner re-formation and revaluation. It has thrown down completely and clearly the rigid scaffolding of the physical vision. We take here a sudden leap, as it were, into another world, and sometimes the feeling is that everything is reversed; it is not exactly that we feel ourselves standing on our heads, but it is, as if, in the Vedic phrase, the foundations were above and all the rest branched out from them downwards. The artist sees with an eye, and constructs upon a plan that conveys the merest excuse of an actual visible world. There are other schools in the East which have also moved very far away from the naturalistic view; yet they have kept, if not the form, at least, the feeling of actuality in their composition. Thus a Chinese, a Japanese, or a Persian masterpiece cannot be said to be "natural" in the sense in which a Tintoretto, or even a Raphael is natural; yet a sense of naturalness persists, though the appearance is not naturalistic. What Indian art gives is not the feeling of actuality or this sense of naturalness, but a feeling of truth, a sense of realityof the deepest reality.
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European the Far Westernart gives a front-view of reality; Japanese the Far Easternart gives a side-view; Indian art gives a view from above. 1 Or we may say, in psychological terms, that European art embodies experiences of the conscious mind and the external senses, Japanese art gives expression to experiences that one has through the subtler touches of the nerves and the sensibility, and Indian art proceeds through a spiritual consciousness and records experiences of the soul.
The frontal view of reality lays its stress upon the display of the form of things, their contour, their aspect in mass and volume and dimension; and the art, inspired and dominated by it, is more or less a sublimated form of the art of photography. The side-view takes us behind the world of forms, into the world of movement, of rhythm. And behind or above the world of movement, again, there is a world of typal realities, essential form-movements, fundamental modes of consciousness in its universal and transcendent status. It is this that the Indian artist endeavours to envisage and express.
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Apart from the beauty of the mere form, there is behind it and informing it what may be called the beauty of character, the beauty revealed in the expression of psychological movement. It corresponds to the beauty of rhythm in poetry. Considered sthetically, the beauty of character, in so far as it is found in what we have called formal art, is a corollary,an ornamental and secondary theme whose function is to heighten the effect of the beauty of form, or create the atmosphere and environment necessary for its display.
A Chinese or a Japanese piece of artistic creation is more of a study in character than in form; but it is a study in character in a deeper sense than the meaning which the term usually bears to an European mind or when it is used in reference to Europe's art-creations.
03.09 - Sectarianism or Loyalty, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A spiritual interest is nothing if it is not in this way a question that touches life to its core. That means a definite goal and appropriate means to reach that goal, and that again necessarily involves a choice, a process of acceptance and rejection. The goal is also called the ista, the godhead that one seeks, the Divine that is fulfilled in oneself. Being a personality, an individual, one has to choose, one can best follow the line of evolution and growth and fulfilment of that personality and individuality that is the call of the psyche, the direction of the Jiva. In other words, one has to be loyal and faithful to one's nature and being. That is why it is said: Better to perish while fulfilling one's own law of life than to flourish by fulfilling another's law. By being curious about another's Dharmait is this kind of curiosity that led to the original fall of man, according to the Bible that is to say, if one is vitally curious, allows oneself to be influenced and so affected and diverted by what is an outside and foreign force, because not in the line of one's own truth and development, one asks for a mixture and intervention which bring confusion, thwart the growth and fulfilment, as that falsifies the nature.
It is not only bad influences that affect you badly, even good influences do solike medicines that depend upon the particular constitution for their action. In ancient times this was called varasankara or dharmasakara, as for example, when a Kshatriya sought to follow the rule of life of a Brahmin or vice versa. This kind of admixture or msalliance was not favoured, as it was likely to bring about an obscurity in the consciousness and in the end frustration in the spiritual life. That was the original psychological reason why heresy was considered such a dangerous thing in all religions.
It is not sufficient to say that God is one and therefore wherever He is found and however He is found and whoever finds Him one must implicitly accept and obey and follow. God is one indeed: but it is equally true that he is multiple. God is not a point, but a limitless infinity, so that when one does reach Him one arrives at a particular spot, as it were, enters into only one of his many mansions. Likewise, God's manifestation upon earth has been infinitely diverse, his Vibhutis, Avataras, his prophets and viceregents have been of all sorts and kinds. Precisely because God is at once one and infinitely multiple and because human nature also is likewise, if one in essence, infinitely multiple in expression, each one, while seeing and finding the one God, seeks and finds him in and through a particular formulation. That is the original meaning, the genesis and justification of creeds and dogmas. Only, it must be borne in mind, that one can be faithful even to a particular creed and dogma and yet transcend it, live a particular mode of life and yet possess at the back of it and as its support the very sense and consciousness of infinity itself. Where there is this synthetic and transcendent experience dogmatism has no place, nor conflict between creed and creed.
03.10 - Sincerity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first condition of the spiritual life and the last condition as well, is sincerity. One must sincerely want the spiritual life in order to have it. The soul the psychic beingis always sincere: it is made of the very stuff of sincerity, for it is a part, or a spark of the Divine Consciousness itself. When one feels the call, turns one's back to the worldly life, moves towards the life spiritual, one follows then the urge of one's true being, the psychic being: one is then naturally sincere, firmly and spontaneously devoted to the Divine, unequivocally loyal and faithful to the Beloved and the Master.
This central sincerity, however, has to be worked out in actual life. For, one may be true in the spirit, but falseweak, that is to sayin the flesh. The light of the central being usually finds its way first into the mind. One becomes then mentally sincere: in other words, one has the idea, the thought that the Divine is the goal and nothing else can or shall satisfy. With the light in the mind, one sees also in oneself more and more the dark spots, the weaknesses, the obstaclesone becomes conscious of one's feelings, discovers elements that have to be corrected or purged. But this mental sincerity, this recognition in the understanding is not enough: it remains mostly ineffective and barren with regard to life and character. One appears at this stage to lead a double life: one knows and understands, to some extent at least, but one is unable to act up even to that much knowledge and understanding. It is only when the power of sincerity descends still further and assumes a concreter form, when the vital becomes sincere and' is converted, then the urge is there not only to see and understand, but to do and achieve. Without the vital's sincerity, its will to be transformed, one remains at best a witness, one has an inner perception of consciousness of the Divine, but in actual living one lets the old ordinary nature to go its own way. It is the sincerity in the vital,-its win to possess the Divine and the Divine alone, its ardour to collaborate with the Divine the conscious that brings about the crucial, the most dynamic change. Sadhana instead of being a mere mental occupation, an intellectual pursuit, acquires the urgency of living and doing and achieving. Finally, the vital sincerity, when it reaches its climax, calls for the ultimate sinceritysincerity in the body. When the body consciousness becomes sincere then we cannot but be and act as decided and guided by the divine consciousness; we live and move and have our being wholly in the divine manner. Then what the inmost being, the psychic, envisages in the divine light, the body inevitably and automatically executes. There is no gap between the two. The spirit and the fleshsoul and bodyare soldered, fused together in one single compact entity. One starts with the central sincerity in the psychic being and progress of sadhana means the extension of this sincerity gradually to all the outlying parts and levels of the being till, when the body is reached, the whole consciousness becomes, as it were, a massive pyramid of loyalty.
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03.11 - The Language Problem and India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
French expresses better human psychology, while meta-physical realities find a more congenial home in the English language. This is not to say that the English are born meta-physicians and that the French are in the same manner natural psychologists. This is merely to indicate a general trait or possible capacity of the respective languages. The English or the English language can hold no candle to the German race or the German language in the matter of metaphysical abstruseness. German is rigid, ponderous, if recondite. English is more flexible and has been used and can be used with great felicity by the mystic and the metaphysician. The insular English with regard to his language and letters have been more open to external influences; they have benefited by their wide contact with other peoples and races and cultures.
The stamp of mental clarity and neat psychological or introspective analysis in the French language has been its asset and a characteristic capacity from the time of Descartesthrough Malebranche and Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists right down to Bergson. The English are not by nature metaphysicians, in spite of the Metaphysicals: but greatness has been thrust upon them. The strain of Celtic mysticism and contact with Indian spiritual lore have given the language a higher tension, a deeper and longer breath, a greater expressive capacity in that direction.
But French seems to have made ample amends for this deficiency (in the matter of variety of experiences especially in the supra-rational religions) by developing a quality which is peculiar to its turn of psychological curiosity and secular understandinga refined sensibility, a subtle sensitiveness, an alert and vibrant perception that puts it in contact with the inner (even though not so much the higher) almost the hidden and occult movements of life. That is how mysticismla mystiquecomes by a back door as it were into the French language.
It seems natural for the English language to dwell on such heights of spiritual or metaphysical experience as A.E. gives us:
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It may be questioned whether too many languages are not imposed on us in this way and whether it will not mean in the end a Babel and inefficiency. It need not be so and it is not going to be so. We must remember the age we are in, its composite structure, its polyphonic nature. In the ancient and mediaeval ages, the ages of separatism and exclusiveness of clans and tribes and regions, even in the later age of the states and nations, the individual group-consciousness was strong and sedulously fostered. Languages and literature grew and developed more or less independently and with equal vigour, although always through some kind of give and take. But the modern world has been made so inextricably one, ease of communication and free interchange have obliterated the separating boundaries, not only geographical but psychological. The modern consciousness has so developed and is so circumstanced that one can very easily be bi-lingual or even trilingual: indeed one has to be so, speaking and writing with equal felicity not only one's mother tongue but one or more adopted tongues. Modern culture means that.
Naturally I am referring to the educated or cultured stratum of humanity, the lite. This restriction, however, does not vitiate or nullify our position. The major part of humanity is bound and confined to the soil where they are born and brought up. Their needs do not go beyond the assistance of their vernacular. A liberal education, extending even to the masses, may and does include acquaintance with one or two foreign languages, especially in these days, but in fact it turns out to be only a nodding acquaintance, a secondary and marginal acquisition. When Latin was the lingua franca in Europe or Sanskrit in India, it was the lite, the intelligentsia, the Brahmin, the cleric, who were the trustees and guardians of the language. That position has virtually been taken in modern times, as I have said, by English and French.
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We repeat what we have suggested, a national language flowers in one way, an international language flowers in another way. The atmosphere if not the soil, will be, in the new international consciousness, the inner life of mankind. That will become a more and more vivid, living and concrete reality. And minds open to it, soaked in it will find it quite natural to express themselves in a language that embodies that spirit. In this way, even though English might have lost a good deal of its external dominion in India, can still retain psychologically its living reality there, in minds that form as it were the vanguard of a new international age, with just the minimum amount of support needed from external circumstances and these are and may be available. And it would not be surprising, if not only English but French too in a similar way finds her votaries from among the international set in our country.
All this, we repeat again, need not be and will not be at the cost of the national language or languages, rather the contrary.
03.13 - Human Destiny, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The aboriginal types that have survived today are, it has also been pointed out, a growth towards decline and deterioration, owing to a stereotyped functioning and a consequent coarsening and hardening of traits, both psychological and physical, a loss of plasticity, loss of the "early innocence."
The continuance and maintenance of an innocent baby animality in man shown in his physical features has been termed reversion to type or fetalisation. Some declare that for man at least it is a sign of weakness, a possible incapacity to face squarely the blows of life and nature. This is due to culture and refinement that makes one sensitive but weak. There have been races in the past that attained cultural effeminacy the Egyptians for example and could not last, last long enough to withstand the impact of less cultured, less refined, but more vigorous races. The Grco-Roman succeeded the Egyptian, but they too in their turn were overwhelmed by the onslaught of ruder races, the Nordic barbarians, and gave way and perished. And once more, in the modern age, do we not see the repetition of a similar drama? The more cultured, the more refined, the older races seem to have paid heavily for their culture and refinement by being more and more delicate and weak and thus being slowly pushed to the wall by newer races built with heavier and coarser gram.
04.01 - The Divine Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The individual or personal Divine leaves his home of all blissVaikunthaforgets himself and enters into this world of all misery; but this does not mean that he becomes wholly the Man of Misery: he encompasses all misery within himself, penetrates as well into the stuff and substance of all misery, but suffuses all that with the purifying and transforming pressure of his own supreme consciousness. And yet pain and suffering are real, cruelly real, even to the Divine Man. Just as the ordinary human creature suffers and agonises in spite of the divine essence in him, in spite of his other deeper truth and reality, his soul of inalienable bliss, his psychic being, the Divine too suffers in the same way in spite of his divinity. This double line of consciousness, this system of parallels running alongside each other, interacting upon each other (even intersecting each other, when viewed in a frame of infinity) gives the whole secret mechanism of creation, its purpose, its working and its fulfilment. It is nothing else than the gradual replacement or elimination, elevation or sublimation of the elements on one line that are transmuted into those of the other. The Divine enters into the Evil to root out the Evil and plant there or release and fructify the seed of Divinity lying covered over and lost in the depths of dead inconscience.
The Divine descends as an individual person fundamentally to hasten the evolutionary process and to complete it; he takes the human form to raise humanity to divinity. The fact and the nature of the process have been well exemplified in Sri Ramakrishna who, it is said, took up successively different lines of spiritual discipline and by a supreme and sovereign force of concentration achieved realisation in each line in the course of a few days what might take in normal circumstances years or even lives to do. The Divine gathers and concentrates in himself the world-force, the Nature-Energyeven like adynamo and focuses and canalises it to give it its full, integral and absolute effectivity. And mortal pain he accepts, and swallows the poison of ignorant lifeeven like Nilakantha Shivato transmute it into ecstasy and immortality. The Divine Mother sank into the earth-nature of a human body:
04.02 - A Chapter of Human Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The appearance of the Greeks on the stage of human civilisation is a mystery to historians. They are so different from all that preceded them. There does not seem to exist any logical link between them and the races from whom they are supposed to have descended or whose successors they were. The Minoan or Cretan civilisation is said to be cradle of the Greek, but where is the parallel or proportion between the two, judging from whatever relics have been left over from the older, the more ancient one. Indeed that is the term which best describes the situation. Whatever has gone before the Hellenic culture is ancient; they belong to the Old Regime. Egypt is old, Phoenicia is old, the Hebrews are old, all the other races of the old world are old, not merely chronologically, but psychologically. But Hellas is modern. There is a breath in the Ionian atmosphere, a breath of ozone, as it were, which wafts down to us, even into the air of today. Homer and Solon, Socrates and Aristotle, Pythagoras and Plato are still the presiding gods ruling over the human spirit that was born on Olympus and Ida.
Human evolution took a decisive turn with the advent of the Hellenic culture and civilisation. All crises in evolution are a sudden revelation, an unexpected outburst, a saltum, a leap into the unknown. Now, what the Greeks brought in was the Mind, the luminous Reason, the logical faculty that is married to the senses, no doubt, but still suffused with an inner glow of consciousness. It is the faculty mediating between a more direct and immediate perception of things, Intuition and Instinct, on the one hand, and on the other, the perception given by the senses and a power of control over material things. Take Egypt or Israel or Chaldea, what one finds prominent there is the instinctive-intuitive man, spontaneousprime-sautierimaginative, mythopoeic, clairvoyant, clairaudient (although not very clear, in the modern and Greek sense), bringing into this world things of the other world and pushing this world as much as possible into the other, maintaining a kind of direct connection and communion between the two. The Greeks are of another mould. They are a rational people; they do not move and act simply or mainly by instinctive reactions, but even these are filtered in them through a light of the Mind of Intelligence, a logical pattern, a rational disposition of things; through Mind they seek to know Matter and to control it. It is the modern methodology, that of observation and experiment, in other words, the scientific procedure. The Greeks have had their gods, their mythology; but these are modelled somewhat differently: the gods are made more human, too human, as has often been observed. Zeus and Juno (Hera) are infinitely more human than Isis and Osiris or Moloch and Baal or even the Jewish Jehovah. These vital gods have a sombre air about them, solemn and serious, grim and powerful, but they have not the sunshine, the radiance and smile of Apollo (Apollo Belvedere) or Hermes. The Greeks might have, they must have taken up their gods from a more ancient Pantheon, but they have, after the manner of their sculptor Phidias, remoulded them, shaped and polished them, made them more luminous and nearer and closer to earth and men. 1 Was it not said of Socrates that he brought down the gods from heaven upon earth?
04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This growing fineness and efficiency of the tool has served naturally to develop and enrich man's external possession and dominion. But this increasing power and dominion over Nature is not the most important consequence involved; it is only indicative of still greater values, something momentous, something subjective, pregnant with far-reaching possibilities. For the physical change is nothing compared with the psychological change, the change in the consciousness. In taking up his tool to chip a stone man has started hewing out and moulding entire Nature: he has become endowed with the sense of independence and agency. An animal is a part and parcel of Nature, has no life and movement apart from the life and movement of Natureeven like Wordsworth's child of Nature
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
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We propose, however, to reopen the question and enquire if there has not been some kind of radical change or progress in the make-up of human nature and civilisation even within the span of historical times. This reminds us of the remarkable conclusion or discovery made by the much maligned and much adulated psycho-analysts.
Jung speaks of two kinds or grades of thinking: (1) the directed thinking and (2) the wishful thinking; one conscious and objective, the other automatic and subjective. The first is the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world mythopoeic thinking. These two lines of mental movement mark off two definite stages in the cultural history of man. Down to the Middle Ages man's mental life was moved and coloured by his libidodesire soul; it is with the Renascence that he began to free his mind from, the libido and transfer and transform the libido into non-egoistic and realistic thinking. In simpler psychological terms we can say that man's mentality was coloured and modulated by his biological make-up out of which it had emerged; the age of modernism and scientism began with the development of a rigorous rationalism which means a severance and transcendence of the biological antecedent.
In other words, it can be said that the older humanity was intuitive and instinctive, while modern humanity is rationalistic. Now it has been questioned whether this change or reorientation is a sign of progress, whether it has not been at the most a mixed blessing. Many idealists and reformers frankly view the metamorphosis with anxiety. Gerald Heard vehemently declares that the rationalism of the modern age is a narrowing down of the consciousness to a superficial movement, a foreshortening, and a top-heavy specialisation which means stagnation, decay and death. He would rather release the tension in the strangulation of consciousness, even if it means a slight coming down to the anterior level of instinct and intuition, but of more plasticity and less specialisation: it is, he says, only in conditions of suppleness and variability, of life organised yet sufficiently free that the forces of evolution can act fruitfully. It has also been pointed out that homo sapiens is not a direct descendant of homo neanderthalis who was already a far too specialised being, but of a stock anterior to it which was still uncertain, wavering, groping towards a definite emergence.
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This super consciousness is based upon a double movement of sublimation and integration which are precisely the two things basically aimed at by present-day psychology to meet the demands of new facts of consciousness. The rationalisation, specialisation or foreshortening of consciousness, mentioned above, is really an attempt at sublimation of the consciousness, its purification and ascension from baseranimal and vegetalconfines: only, ascension does not mean alienation, it must mean a gathering up of the lower elements also into their higher modes. Integration thus involves a descent, but it has to be pointed out, not merely or exclusively that, as Jung and his school seem to say. Certainly one has to see and recognise the aboriginal, the infra-rational elements imbedded in our nature and consciousness, the roots and foundations that lie buried under the super-structure that Evolution has erected. But that recognition must be accompanied by an upward look and sense: indeed it is healthy and fruitful only on condition that it occurs in a consciousness open to an infiltration of light coming from summits not only of the mind but above the mind. If we go back, it must be with a light that is ahead of us; that is the sense of evolution.
A slumber did my spirit seal, Miscellaneous Poems
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness has a fourfold potential. The first is the normal consciousness, which is predominantly mental; it is the sphere comprising movements of which man is usually and habitually aware. It is what the Upanishad names Jgrat or jgaritasthna and characterises as bahipraja: it is the waking state and has cognition only of external things. In other words, the consciousness here is wholly objectivised, externalisedextrovert: it is also a strongly individualised formation, the consciousness is hedged in, isolated and contoured by a protective ring, as it were, of a characteristically separative personality; it is a surface formation, a web made out of day-to-day sensations and thoughts, perceptions and memories, impressions and associations. It is a system of outward actions and reactions against or in the midst of one's actual environment. The second potential is that of the Inner Consciousness: its characteristic is that the consciousness here is no longer trenchantly separative and individual, narrowly and rigidly egoistic. It feels and sees itself as part of or one with the world consciousness. It looks upon its individuality as only a wave of the universal movement. It is also sometimes called the subliminal consciousness; for it plays below or behind the normal surface range of consciousness. It is made up of the residuary powers of the normal consciousness, the abiding vibrations and stresses that settle down and remain in the background and are not immediately required or utilised for life purposes: also it contacts directly energies and movements that well out of the universal life. The phenomena of clairvoyance and clairaudience, the knowledge of the past and the future and of other worlds and persons and beings, certain more dynamic movements such as distant influence and guidance and controlling without any external means, well known in all yogic disciplines, are various manifestations of the power of this Inner Consciousness. But there is not only an outward and an inner consciousness; there is also a deeper or nether consciousness. This is the great field that has been and is being explored by modern psychologists. It is called the subconscious, sometimes also the unconscious: but really it should be named the inconscient, for it is not altogether devoid of consciousness, but is conscious in its own way the consciousness is involved or lost within itself or lies buried. It comprises those movements and impulsions, inclinations and dispositions that have no rational basis, on the contrary, have an irrational basis; they are not acquired or developed by the individual in his normal course of life experience, they are ingrained, lie imbedded in man's nature and are native to his original biological and physical make-up. As the human embryo recapitulates in the womb the whole history of man's animal evolution, even so the normal man, even the most civilised and apparently the farthest from his ancient moorings and sources, enshrines in his cells, in a miraculously living manner, the memory of vast geological epochs, the great struggles and convulsions through which earth and its inhabitants have passed, the basic urges of the crude life force, its hopes, fears, desires, hungers that constitute the rudimental and aboriginal consciousness, the atavism that links the man of today not only to his primitive ancestry but even to the plant worldeven perhaps to the mineral worldout of which his body cells have issued and evolved. Legends and fairy tales, mythologies and fables are a rationalised pattern and picture of the vibrations and urges that moved the original consciousness. It was a collectivea racial and an aboriginal consciousness. The same lies chromosomic, one can almost say, in the constitution of the individual man of today. This region of the unconscious (or the inconscient) is a veritable field of force: it lies at the root of all surface dynamisms. The surface consciousness, jgrat, is a very small portion of the whole, it is only the tip of the pyramid or an iceberg, the major portion lies submerged beyond our normal view. In reflex movements, in sudden unthinking outbursts, in dreams and day-dreams, this undercurrent is silhouetted and made visible and recognisable. Even otherwise, they exercise a profound influence upon all our conscious movements. This underground consciousness is the repository of the most dark and unenlightened elements that grew and flourished in the slime of man's original habitat. They are small, ugly, violent, anti-social, chaotic forces, their names are cruelty, lust, hunger, blind selfishness. Nowhere else than in this domain can the great Upanishadic truth find its fullest applicationHunger that is Death.
But this is the seamy side of Nature, there is also a sunny side. If there is a nadir, there must be a corresponding zenith. In the Vedic image, if man is born of the Dark Mother, he is also a child of the White Mother (ka and vet). Or again, if Earth is our mother, the Heaven is our fatherdyaur me pit mat pthiv iyam. In other words, consciousness extends not in depth alone, but in height alsoit is vertically extended, infinite both ways. As there is a sub-consciousness or unconsciousness, so also there is at the other end super-consciousness.
Now this superconsciousness is the true origin of creation, although the apparent and objective creation starts with and is based upon Unconsciousness. All norms and archetypes belong to the superconsciousness; for the sake of material creation they are thrown down or cast as seed into the Unconscious and in this process they undergo a change, a deformation and aberration. All the major themes of dream myths and prehistoric legends which the psychologists claim to have found imbedded in man's subconscient consciousness are in fact echoes and mirages of great spiritualsuperconscientrealities reflected here below. The theme of the Hero of the Dual Mother (Dark and Fair), of Creation and Sacrifice, these are, according to Jung, dramatisations of some fundamental movements and urges in the dark subconscient nature. Jung, however, throws a luminous suggestion in characterising the nature of this vast complex. The general sense, Jung says; is that of a movement forward, of a difficult journey, of a pull backward and downward, of yawning abysses that call, of a light that beckons. It is an effort, a travail of what lies imbedded and suppressed to come out into the open, into the normal consciousness and thus release an unhealthy tension, restore a balance in the individual's system. Modern psychology lays great stress upon the integration of personality. Most of the ills that human nature suffers from, they say, are due to this division or schism in it, a suppressed subconsciousness and an expressed consciousness seeking to express a negation of that subconsciousness. Modern psychology teaches that one should dive into the nether regions and face squarely whatever elements are there, help these to follow their natural bent to come up and see the light of the day. Only thus there can be established a unitary movement, an even consistency and an equilibrium throughout the entire consciousness and being.
So far so good. But two things are to be taken note of. First of all, the resolution of the normal conflict in man's consciousness, the integration of his personality, is not wholly practicable within the scope of the present nature and the field of the actual forces at play. That can give only a shadow of the true resolution and integration. A conscious envisaging of the conflicting forces, a calm survey of the submerged or side-tracked libidos in their true nature, a voluntary acceptance, of these dark elements as a part of normal human nature, does not automatically make for their sublimation and purification or transformation. The thing is possible only through another force and on another level, by the intervention and interfusion precisely of the superconsciousness. And here comes the second point to note. For it is this superconsciousness towards which all the strife and struggle of the under-consciousness are turned and directed. The yearning and urge in the subconsciousness to move forward, to escape outside into the light does not refer merely to the march towards normal awareness and consciousness: it has a deeper direction and a higher aimit seeks that of which it is an aberration and a deformation, the very origin and source, the height from which it fell.
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We have spoken of the Inner Consciousness. But there is also, we must now point out, an Inmost Consciousness. As the Superconsciousness is a consciousness-energy in height, the Inmost Consciousness is a consciousness-energy in depth, the deepest depth, beyond or behind the Inner Consciousness. If we wish to put it geometrically, we can say, the vertical section of consciousness represents the line from the superconsciousness to the subconscious or vice versa; the horizontal section represents the normal waking state of consciousness; and there is a transverse section leading from the surface first to the Inner and finally to the Inmost. This inmost consciousness the consciousness most profound and secreted in the cave of the heart, guhhitam gahvaretham,is the consciousness of the soul, the psychic Being, as Sri Aurobindo calls it: it is the immortal in the mortal. It is, as has often been described, the nucleus round which is crystallised and organised the triple nature of man consisting of his mind and life and body, the centre of dynamic energy that secretly vivifies them, gradually purifies and transforms them into higher functions and embodiments of consciousness. As a matter of fact, it is this inmost consciousness that serves as the link, at least as the most powerful link, between the higher and lower forms of consciousness, between the Superconscient and the Subsconscient or Inconscient. It takes up within itself all the elements of consciousness that the past in its evolutionary career from the very lowest and basic levels has acquired and elaborated, and by its inherent pressure and secret gestation delivers what was crude and base and unformed as the purest luminous noble substance of the perfectly organised superconscient reality. Indeed, that is the mystic alchemy which the philosophers experimented in the Middle Ages. In this context, the Inner Consciousness, we may note, serves as a medium through which the action of the Inmost (as well as that of the Uppermost) takes place.
We can picture the whole phenomenon in another way and say in the devotional language of the Mystics that the Inmost Consciousness is the Divine Child, the Superconscient is the Divine Father and the Inferior Consciousness is the Great Mother (Magna Mater): the Inner and the Outer Consciousness are the field of play and the instrument of action as well of this Divine Trinity.
04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The different limbs of an organism are held together and they work together harmoniously. The whole world, as we are finding it today, is indissolubly one. There is an inter relation and interaction that compel them all to stand together or fall together. This is, however, a static unity and harmony, a harmony that is in the being, in essence. For in the outward working there is always a play of discordquarrels and rivalries, competition and conflict, struggle and battle. Indeed this seems to be the rule, the other seems more an ideal than a fact. The unity that is found actually is rather the unity of a locked fight. Within the individual the same thing is there. There is a maladjustment among the organs and limbs, not only physically but also psychologically. But all the same beyond and beside this play of discord there is an inherent and overruling unity and harmony which creates the personality or individuality of the human person. The characteristic of the human person is his forward-looking gazehe has a purpose in life. This is exactly the dynamic element, the something more that is needed for the fulfilment of the organic unity. This element is what we know as the principle of progress which is the psychological name for evolution. In other words, there is in man and in the world not only a static unity and harmony in essence, but a progressive unity and harmony in manifestation. The individual moves towards the health and growth of the body and mind and the spirit. If one life is not sufficient for the purpose, as some seers declare, several lives are at the disposal of the individual to achieve it. In what sense can the same or something similar be said of the collective or group life?
There is the view, an old-world view, of eternal recurrence. That is to say, creation is ever the same; it goes through a cycle of changes, but the cycles repeat ad infinitum. There is no progress, no forward movement towards a more and more perfection. Indeed, the cycle of creation is a closed circle. The idea of progress was very much in vogue at one time. It was born under the auspices of Romantic Idealism; it was fostered and streng thened by youthful, Science in the first enthusiasm of her early discoveries, especially that of the fact of biological evolution. There has, however, been a setback since, when it was found that the original picture of evolution the emergence and growth of species in the course of a few thousand years is far from being true, that evolution means not thousands but millions of years. And when archaeologists discovered that men could build hygienic cities, run democratic states, discuss and argue acutely on recondite problems of life and philosophy, women knew the use of ornaments and jewels of consummate beauty and craftsmanship in epochs when they were expected to be no more than wild denizens of the cave or the forest, the belief in human progress, at least along a steady straight line, was very much shaken.
04.05 - The Freedom and the Force of the Spirit, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The ordinary average man is part and parcel of Nature's movement and his life is almost wholly moulded by circumstances: he has not developed an independent inner being that can react against the universal Nature's current, that is to say, the Nature as it is, as it is actually and dynamically expressed. He is the creature, described graphically in the Gita, as being moved helplessly on the circling wheel of Ignorance.2 But even among the average men there are many who are called men of will, they are not entirely submerged in Nature's current, but endeavour to have their own way even against that current. Their psycho-vital, aided often by their physical consciousness, has an independent formation, being a strong centre of self-driven force, and can impress upon the outer Nature and circumstances its own pattern and disposition. Naturally, all depends upon the degree and character of that consciousness.
But the true secret of the power to control and guide Nature's dispensation lies along a different line, not along the line of the normal activity of the mental and vital and physical consciousness. Body and life and mind belong after all, at least are closely affiliated, to one's environmental consciousness; they are indeed part of the circumstances in which one is born and lives and moves. It is when one bypasses them or passes through them beyond into one's soul, into one's true being and divine personality that one at last crosses mortality and attains immortalitymtyum trtv. . .amtam anute.3
04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
One may note three or four crises, practically rebirths, in India's life history. They correspond roughly with the great racial infiltrations or what is described as such by anthropologists, what others may describe as operations of blood transfusion. There was an original autochthonous people, the early humanity out of the stone age, usually called proto-Dravidians, whose remnants are still found among the older and cruder aboriginal tribes. Then the Dravidian infusion which culminated in the humanity, the Indian humanity, of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Next the Aryan avatar. One usually begins Indian history with the Dravido-Aryan civilisation which is taken as the basic foundation, the general layout of the whole structure. The first shock or blow the edifice received was from the Greeks and then the Huns and Scythians the Tartars something that struck at the most essential element of Indian culture and character. psychologically the new leaven was brought in and injected by Gautama Buddha the un-Vedic Buddha the external invasion and penetration was possible because of this opening already made from within. This injection was necessary as an antidote to the decline and fall that had set in sometime between the passing of Sri Krishna and the advent of Buddha. But traditional India absorbed this new leaven and came out with a renewed and enriched personality. The next major shaking came with the Islamic inundation. This meant or would have meant a great and even catastrophic reversal, but this too in the course of centuries succeeded only in invigorating and enlarging the life and consciousness of eternal India. The last and perhaps the most dangerous assault came from the Europeans, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and finally, most of all, from the British. An absolutely matter-of-fact vitalistic Europe overran and overwhelmed a predominantly otherworldly spirit and almost succeeded in obliterating that spirit and replacing it by a replica of its own life-pattern and Weltanschauung. Even such a blow India could survive, not only so, could utilise it for her own purpose, for the greater fulfilment of her mission in life. She is coming out of that ordeal a towering personality, a godhead for the remoulding of humanity and earth-life.
It may be argued that all nations and peoples are a mixture of various races and foreign strands which are gradually, soldered and unified together in course of time. The British nation, for example, is built upon a base of Celtic blood and culture (the original Briton), to which were added one by one the German (Angles and the Saxon), the Danish, the French. But what is to be noted is that the resultant is at the end some-thing very different from the start something unrecognisable when compared with the original pattern and genius. The resultant seems to be arrived at not by a gradual evolution and continuous transformation but by disparate echelons or , breaks, as it were, in the line. In France also or in Italy the growth and the unification were achieved through violent revolutions, eruptions and irruptions. In the former, a Gaelic and Iberian base and in the latter an Etruscan were all but swept off by the Roman rule which again saw its end at the hand of the Barbarians. The history of Greece offers a typical picture of the destiny of these peoples. Her life-line is sundered completely at three different epochs giving us not one but three different personalities or peoples: at the outset there was the original classical Greece, then the first and milder although sufficiently serious break came with the Roman conquest; the second catastrophic change was wrought by the Goths and Vandals which was stabilised in the Byzantine Empire and the third avatar appeared with the Turkish regime. At the present time, she is acquiring another life and body.
04.07 - Matter Aspires, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But there is another even more interesting aspect of the matter. The attempt of the machine to embody or express something non-mechanical, to leap as high as possible from material objects to psychological values has a special significance for us today and is not all an amusing or crazy affair. It indicates, what we have been always saying, an involved pressure in Matter, a presence, a force of consciousness secreted there that seeks release and growth and expression.
The scientific spirit, that is to say, man's inquiring mind, even when it specifically deals with Matter and material phenomena, cannot be made to confine, to limit itself to that region alone. It always overleaps itself and stretches beyond its habitual and conventional frontiers. The yearning of Matter for Light is an extraordinary phenomenon of Nature: physically speaking, we have reached the equation of the two. But that light is only a first signpost or symbol: it invites Matter towards higher and freer vibration. The old determinism has given place in the heart of Matter to significant eccentricities which seem to release other types of lan. When the brain-mind indulges in fabricating clay images of God, it is not merely a foolish or idle pastime: it indicates a deep ingrained hunger. All this reveals a will or aspiration in Matter, in what is apparently dead and obscure (acit), to move and reach out towards what is living and luminous and supremely living and luminous (cit). Matter finally is to embody and express the Spirit.
05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And that was how Paradise was lost. But the story of Paradise Regained is yet more marvellous. When the Divine Mother, the creative infinite Consciousness found herself parcelled out and scattered (even like the body of Sati borne about by Shiva, in the well-known Indian legend) and lost in unconsciousness, something shot down from the Highest into the lowest, something in response to an appeal, a cry, as it were, from the depth of the utter hopelessness in the heart of Matter and the Inconscient. A dumb last-minute S O S from belowa De profundis clamaviwent forth and the Grace descended: the Supreme himself came down and entered into the scuttled dead particles of earth's dust as a secret core of light and flame, just a spark out of his own conscious substance. The Earth received the Grace and held it in her bosom. Thus she had her soul born in her the psychic being that is to grow and evolve and bring about her redemption, her transmutation into the divine substance.
This is the special privilege accorded to earth, viz., she has a soul, a spark consciousness imbedded in her unconscious substance that came from the highest summit, from the supreme Divine himself. And thus earth became the representative, the personified form of the material universe; she became the mouthpiece of the extended universe, the head and front of creation, so that in and through her the supreme manifestation, the incarnation of the Divine may take place.
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The purpose of man's existence upon earth is the growth of his consciousness. Each human being is a soul, a psyche, a spark from the Spirit sent down into Matter, a ray from the Divine Light descended upon earth and housed in a physical body. The spark, the ray is to attain the amplitude and splendour of its original form in the divine consciousness, to express that plenitude here below. This original, the archetype of each and every individual embodied upon earth is the central being, Jivatman. At the beginning the individual soul in terrestrial evolution is just a tiny particle of consciousness: it evolves, that is to say, grows and increases in stature and potency, through a series of lives upon this earth, each life bringing its quota of experience that serves to tend the flame. When the soul has thus grown and finally reached its optimum, and is in union with its original and archetype in the fullness of self-expression, what next? What is its destiny thereafter, how does it live or move henceforward?
Three courses are open to the perfected and completely developed soul. First, it may remain, contented with its fullness, self-gathered and self-sufficient, dwelling in its own domain the psychic world and enjoying the even, equal, undisturbed felicity and beatitude of union with the Divine. This status may perhaps not be chosen by many or for a long time. The second line that the psyche can adopt is to come down or remain upon earth and take a share in the fulfilment of the Divine Purpose in the world. That purpose is the transformation of the physical, making the material an embodiment of the divine Light and Power and Bliss and Immortality. A third development also may take place; this is not strictly speaking normal, not the logical and inevitable happening in the course of things, nor does it depend wholly upon any personal choice of the psychic being, so to say. It occurs when the force of a higher destiny operates, for a special work and at a special time. It is when the psychic being is contacted with, made to identify itself with, a godhead under a higher dispensation, when, in a word, a divinity descends into a human soul.
The gods are especial powers and executive agents of the one Divine. They move and act in a special way with a special end in view. They are, we may say, highbrow entities: they carry things with a high hand. That is to say, what they have got to do, they seek to do without any consideration or computation of the means, without regard to the pauses and hindrances that naturally attend all terrestrial and human achievements. God said, let there be light, and there was light. That is also the way of the gods. There is here an imperial majesty and grandeur, a sweeping mastery and sovereign indifference,
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Man possesses characters that mark him as an entity sui generis and give him the value that is his. First, toil and suffering and more failures than success have given him the quality of endurance and patience, of humility and quietness. That is the quality of earth-natureearth is always spoken of by the poets and seers as all-bearing and all-forgiving. She never protests under any load put upon her, never rises in revolt, never in a hurry or in worry, she goes on with her appointed labour silently, steadily, calmly, unflinchingly. Human consciousness can take infinite pains, go through the infinite details of execution, through countless repetitions and mazes: patience and perseverance are the very badge and blazon of the tribe. Ribhus, the artisans of immortalitychildren of Mahasaraswatiwere originally men, men who have laboured into godhood. Human nature knows to wait, wait infinitely, as it has all the eternity before it and can afford and is prepared to continue and persist life after life. I do not say that all men can do it and are of this nature; but there is this essential capacity in human nature. The gods, who are usually described as the very embodiment of calmness and firmness, of a serene and concentrated will to achieve, nevertheless suffer ill any delay or hindrance to their work. Man has not perhaps the even tenor, the steadiness of their movement, even though intense and fast flowing; but what man possesses is persistence through ups and downshis path is rugged with rise and fall, as the poet says. The steadiness or the staying power of the gods contains something of the nature of indifference, something hard in its grain, not unlike a crystal or a diamond. But human patience, when it has formed and taken shape, possesses a mellowness, an understanding, a sweet reasonableness and a resilience all its own. And because of its intimacy with the tears of things, because of its long travail and calvary, human consciousness is suffused with a quality that is peculiarly human and humane that of sympathy, compassion, comprehension, the psychic feeling of closeness and oneness. The gods are, after all, egoistic; unless in their supreme supramental status where they are one and identical with the Divine himself; on the lower levels, in their own domains, they are separate, more or less immiscible entities, as it were; greater stress is laid here upon their individual functioning and fulfilment than upon their solidarity. Even if they have not the egoism of the Asuras that sets itself in revolt and antagonism to the Divine, still they have to the fullest extent the sense of a separate mission that each has to fulfil, which none else can fulfil and so each is bound rigidly to its own orbit of activity. There is no mixture in their workingsna me thate, as the Vedas say; the conflict of the later gods, the apple of discord that drove each to establish his hegemony over the rest, as narrated in the mythologies and popular legends, carry the difference to a degree natural to the human level and human modes and reactions. The egoism of the gods may have the gait of aristocracy about it, it has the aloofness and indifference and calm nonchalance that go often with nobility: it has a family likeness to the egoism of an ascetic, of a saintit is sttwic; still it is egoism. It may prove even more difficult to break and dissolve than the violent and ebullient rjasicpride of a vital being. Human failings in this respect are generally more complex and contain all shades and rhythms. And yet that is not the whole or dominant mystery of man's nature. His egoism is thwarted at every stepfrom outside, by, the force of circumstances, the force of counter-egoisms, and from inside, for there is there the thin little voice that always cuts across egoism's play and takes away from it something of its elemental blind momentum. The gods know not of this division in their nature, this schizophrenia, as the malady is termed nowadays, which is the source of the eternal strain of melancholy in human nature of which Matthew Arnold speaks, of the Shelleyan saddest thoughts: Nietzsche need not have gone elsewhere in his quest for the origin and birth of Tragedy. A Socrates discontented, the Christ as the Man of Sorrows, and Amitabha, the soul of pity and compassion are peculiarly human phenomena. They are not merely human weaknesses and failings that are to be brushed aside with a godlike disdain; but they contain and yield a deeper sap of life and out of them a richer fulfilment is being elaborated.
Human understanding, we know, is a tangled skein of light and shademore shade perhaps than lightof knowledge and ignorance, of ignorance straining towards knowledge. And yet this limited and earthly frame that mind is has something to give which even the overmind of the gods does not possess and needs. It is indeed a frame, even though perhaps a steel frame, to hold and fix the pattern of knowledge, that arranges, classifies, consolidates effective ideas, as they are translated into facts and events. It has not the initiative, the creative power of the vision of a god, but it is an indispensable aid, a precious instrument for the canalisation and expression of that vision, for the intimate application of the divine inspiration to physical life and external conduct. If nothing else, it is a sort of blue print which an engineer of life cannot forego if he has to execute his work of building a new life accurately and beautifully and perfectly.
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This is the divine love, love proper to Maheshwari. But there is another love more intimate, close, human the love of Mahalakshmi. This is the love that comes down here upon earth and takes on an earthly quality, a terrestrial vibration. In other words, it has what we call the psychic quality that characterises the human feeling with its peculiar charm and sweetness and intensity and magic. It goes without saying that by human we do not 'mean here the gross human thing which is more animal than human, a matter of the external heart, made up of crude passion and egoistic demand, but that which is the truth of all this deviation and deformation, lying behind in the inner heart. The psychic being is a special creation in and for earth, in and for man, the earthly creature. It is, as we have said, divine Grace imbedded in Matter.
The gods are glorious beings; they are aspects and personalities of the Divine, presiding and ruling over the cosmic laws, each with his own truth and norm and dominion, although, in the higher status, all work together and harmoniously. Even then they do not possess a soul, a psychic core of being. They are forms and powers of consciousness organised round a divine truth, a typal Idea; but they do not have this exquisite presence secretly seated in the heart, which is the privilege of the terrestrial creature.
And the exquisiteness, the special quality of this inner Heart is mostly if not wholly derived from a particular factor of terrestrial evolution. For the journey here is a sacrifice, a passage through pain and suffering, even through frustration and death. The tears that accompany the mortal being in his calvary of an earthly life serve precisely as a holy unction of purification, give a sweet intensity to all his urges in the progressive march to Resurrection. This is the Immanent Divine who has to be worshipped and realised as much as the Transcendent Divine, if man is to fulfil himself wholly and earth justify its existence.
05.03 - Bypaths of Souls Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have put the popular case in figures of popular mentality;almost foolish and childish on the face of it, as it would appear; but if one "tries to answer, one finds it is not easy, children's questions are always so. Let us then try to be wise and face the problem squarely. The whole difficulty comes from the popular, perhaps normal human conception of the soul; it is considered almost something like the physical body (even as Virochana of old did in the Upanishadic days), namely, it has a definite form and figure, even perhaps a definite mass: each is an isolated entity shut out from everyone else by a fixed contour within which each one is housed. In fact, however, it is not so. The soul is an individual, no doubt, it has even a kind of recognisable form, but nothing of the kind by which matter or a material body is characterised. It is an essential form, form of the form, swarpa; it is a basic or typal individuality, the individual seated within the 'individual. The characteristic of material individuality is, as I have said, exclusiveness, where -as the soul individuality is characterised by a comprehensiveness which does not diminish but gives a special mode and movement to that individuality. In the growth of life-forms, we know how a single unit, a cell, divides and subdivides itself and each division grows into a whole, a complete life-form. But the process is not reversible. Developed forms, coming out of a single parent cannot be resolved back into the original unit. Organisms do not combine to form a single unitary organism, although one or more may be taken up and assimilated into another: for this is not combination, but practically the annihilation of one into another. The second law of thermodynamics seems to hold good even in the biological field. On a still higher or deeper level, in the psychological and spiritual realm, such combinations or resolutions are however possible and form a characteristic movement of the occult world.
Let us repeat here what we have often said elsewhere. The creation and development of souls is a twofold process. First, there is the process of growth from below, and secondly there is the process of manifestation or expression from above, the movements of ascent and descent, as spoken of by Sri Aurobindo. The souls start on their evolutionary journey on the material plane as infinitesimal specks of consciousness imbedded in the vast expanse of the Inconscient; but they are parts and parcels of a homogeneous mass: in fact they are not distinguishable from each other at that level. There is as it were a secret vibration of consciousness with which the material infinity all around is shot through. With evolution, that is to say, with the growth and coming forward of the consciousness, there arise sparks, glowing centres here and there, forms shape and isolate themselves in the bosom of the original formless mass; they rise and they subside, others rise, coalesce, separatesome grow, others disappear. These sparks or centres, as they develop or evolve, slowly assume definiteness,of form and function,attain an individuality and finally a personality. Looked at from below there is no counting of these sparks or rudimentary souls; they are innumerable and infinitely variable. It is something like the nebula out of which the galaxies are supposed to be formed. The line of descent, however, presents a different aspect. Looked from above, at the summit there is the infinite supreme Being and Consciousness and Bliss (Sachchidananda) and in it too there cannot be a limit to the number of Jivatmas that are its formulations, like the waves in the bosom of the sea, according to the familiar figure. This is the counterpart of the infinity at the other end, where also the rudimentary souls or potential individualities are infinite. Moving down along the line of descent at a certain stage, under a certain modality of the creative process, certain types or fundamental formations are put forward that give the ground-plan, embody the matrix of the subsequent creation or manifestation. The Four Great Personalities (Chaturvyuha), the Seven Seers, the Fourteen Manus or Human Ancestors point to the truth of a fixed number of archetypes that are the source and origin of emanations forming in the end the texture of earthly lives and existences. The number and scheme depends upon a given purpose in view and is not an eternal constant. The types and archetypes with which we, human beings, are concerned in the present cycle of evolution belong to the supramental and overmental planes of consciousness; they are the beings known familiarly as gods and presiding deities. They too have emanations, each one of them, and these emanations multiply as they come down the scale of manifestation to lower and lower levels, the mental, the vital and the physical, for example. And they enter into human embodiments, the souls evolving and ascending from the lower end; they may even take upon themselves human character and shape.
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Reverting to the original question with which we started, we can say now that the birth of a soul is not like the birth of a living being or organism, that is to say, it does not happen at a given point of time. A soul is truly aja, unborn; it was always there imbedded as the element of secret consciousness in the bosom of the inconscient material Nature. Only it grew out, manifested itself, attaining gradually an individuality and an integrated personality. Neither can it be said that all souls originally, that is to say, at the very beginning of their evolutionary course, were of the same magnitude, equal in all respects. As we know the ultimate material particles the atoms of the different elements or their constituents, protons, etc.have not all the same mass or charge, even so the spiritual elements too have not the same potency or vibration: they are of varying sizes and strengths. The stress of the evolutionary urge in life expressed itself in multiple and varied figures and dispositions, variation being an inherent virtue of the stress. And the development too follows a chequered line: the direction, the tempo, the degree, the manner of the march all differ according to the case, each spark is or tends to be unique and sui generisand even erratic perhapsin its behaviour, like its physical counterpart, the indeterminate and indeterminable material particle. And yet all move towards a heightening, enlarging, deepening of the consciousness rivers flowing and broadening out in their meandering course to the sea: what was unformed, rudimentary, scarcely distinguishable from out of a homogeneous mass, detaches itself gradually, shapes itself into an organised individual entity and finally the fully conscious personality. But, as I have said, the growth does not follow a single one-track straight line: there can be a fusion of souls, the descent and integration of a being or soul from another level of consciousness into a developing soul or psychic element from out of Nature. In this sense then there can be a birth of souls too. The astronomers speak of novae, new stars that suddenly flare out in the sky, as if from nowhereeven though they or their elements were existent before the phenomenon happened. Souls too can come to birth in an analogous way. That is to say, it is due to a special descent of a formed being or consciousness into the human vehicle. The conception of the "twice-born caste" may be remembered in this connection. There is a physical birth and there is a spiritual birth: the latter takes place when the being on the physical plane, yet wholly belonging to evolving Nature, suddenly (it usually happens suddenly) opens and receives into itself a higher principle and becomes a conscious personality.
The soul in Nature grows along a definite line and the descent also of higher principles overarching that soul happens also in the same line connecting it with its archetype in the supreme status. This we may call the major line of development through various avataras one after another: but apart from this there may also be subsidiary formations that are its emanations or are added to it from elsewhere either temporarily or even permanently. The soul can put out derivative or ancillary emanations, parts of its being and consciousness, a mental or vital or even a subtle physical movement or formation which can take a body creating a temporary, a transient personality or enter into another's body and another personality in order to go through a necessary experience and gather an element needed for the growth of its being and consciousness. One can recall here the famous story of Shankaracharya Who entered into the body of a king (just dead, made him alive and lead the life of the king) in order to experience love and enjoyment, things of which, being a Sannyasi, he was innocent. Similarly one can take into one-self such parts and elements from others which he wishes to utilise for his growth and evolution. It is said that a man with low carnal instincts and impulses becomes an animal of that type in his next life. But perhaps it is truer to say that a part only the vital part of animal appetiteenters into or takes shape in an animal: the soul itself, the true or the whole being of the person, once become human, does not revert to animalhood. The animal portion in man that refuses to be taken up and integrated, sublimated into the higher human consciousness has to be satisfied and exhausted, as much as possible, in the animal way.
05.04 - The Immortal Person, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So the individualisation and growth of the soul means a growth and individualisation of the mental being, the vital being and also of the physical being. Normally the purpose of intellectual culture is the growth and individualisation of the mind, the purpose of moral culture is the growth and individualisation of the vital being and the true purpose of physical culture too should be a well-balanced and well-developed physical body, not only in a general sense, but' in a very individualised mode. But all these varieties and modes of culture can be truly individualised and not merely ordered or organised, more or less on the surface, only when they obey and subserve the culture of the soul. The mind, the vital and the physical each has to grow its individuality in the growing individuality of the soul. The soul, otherwise called the psychic being, is man's spiritual being: the growth of the spiritual being means the advent and establishment of the true personality.
There is, of course, a spiritual path that turns the soul away from its instruments and demands that it should concentrate exclusively upon itself, upon its essential essence, upon its transcendent existence; but that is not our path and, according to us, that is only a temporary phase, an intermediate necessity for some persons and at certain stages.
The individualisation of the mind, its organisation as a special formation, as a vehicle of the true light, the light of the psychic consciousness is comparatively easy for a man. Mind is the first member of the lower sphere that is taken up and dealt with by the soul; for it is the highest and the most characteristic element in man and less dense and less subject to the darkness inherent in human nature. The mental individual persists the longest after the dissolution of the body, it survives and may survive very long the disruption of the vital being. This vital being is next in the rung to be taken up, organised and individualised by and around the psychic being. The organisation of the vital being in view of a particular object or aim in ordinary life is common enough: the purpose is limited, the scope restricted. Great men of action have done it and one has to do it more or less to be successful in life. This, however, may be called organisation; it is not individualisation in the true sense, much less personalisation. A limb is individualised, personalised only when it is an instrument and formation of the soul consciousness, the psychic being. And the vital is not easily amenable to such a role. For, it is the dynamic element, the effective power of life and it has acquired a strong nature and a definite function in its earthly relations. Naturally, there is a secret drive and an occult inspiration behind over-riding or guiding all immediate and apparent forces and happenings: in and through these the shape of things to come is being built up. In the meanwhile, however, actually the vital is an executive agent of the lower consciousness: it is an anonymous force of universal nature canalised into a temporary figure that is the normal individual man. The individualisation of the vital being would mean an immortal formulation of an immortal soul as energy consciousness with a specific role for the Divine to play. It maintains its identity, its personality independent of the vicissitudes of the physical body: it continues to function as a divine being, a godhead, to work for mankind and the world. The popular legend has imaged this phenomenon in the mystic figure of an immortal Aswatthama and Vibhishana still wandering in earth's atmosphere.
Finally, it is the turn of the body to become individualised, personalised, that is to say, when it takes up the disposition and configurationof the psychic person and individual. The first stage is that of a subtle body individualised, a radiant form of etherealised elements consisting of the concentrated light particles of the divine consciousness of the psyche. This too is an immortalisation of the personal identity which can be achieved and is achieved by the gnostic man who is to come, who will wholly psychicise and divinise his personality. The second stage is the reorganisation and individualisation of the material sheath itself. The very cells of the body are impregnated with the radiant substance of the supreme spiritual consciousness; they live the life of the spiritual individual, the personal divine embodied in the individual. When the whole process is gone through and the work clone, the individual body, physically too, shares in and attains the immortality of the soul. The body is firm enough to maintain its physical identity and yet plastic enough to change in the manner and to the degree demanded of it at any time.
In the process of making the body personal and divine and immortal, death or what appears as such may be a needed operation. It is no longer an ineluctable destiny forced upon you, but an instrument which you use consciously for a definite purpose. It is a mystic or occult work (kriy:) which we can try to understand by an analogy. The evolution of the ideal or divine man, the assumption of the mortal by the immortal involves a twofold operation: rejection and integration. Rejection means throwing out the elements that belong exclusively to the lower grade and cannot be taken up and incorporated into the higher; while integration means taking up and absorbing utilisable elements of the lower into the higher. This double process goes on on all the levels, on the mental, on the vital, on the subtle physical and even on the physical level. At a certain stage or in a concentrated process of alchemy the process of rejection may demand a mode of reshuffling and redisposition which physically appears like death, but it is inevitably followed or accompanied by the process of integration or recreation.
05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Creation as a movement or expression of consciousness need not be dubbed a metaphysical jargon; it can be assumed as a scientific working hypothesis and seen how it affects our view, meets our problems and difficulties, whether it can give a satisfactory clue to some of the riddles of physical and psychical phenomena. A scientific supposition (or intuition) is held to be true if it can be applied invariably to facts of life and experience and if it can open up to our vision and perception new facts. The trend of scientific discoveries today is towards the positing of a background reality in Nature of which energy (radiant and electrical) is the first and overt form. We discarded ether, only to replace it by field and disposition. We have arrived at a point where the question is whether we cannot take courage" in both hands and declare, as some have already done, that the substratum in Nature is consciousness-energy and on that hypothesis better explain certain movements of Matter and Life and Mind in a global unity. Orthodox and die-hard views will always protest and cry that it is a misalliance, a misjoinder to couple together Matter and Consciousness or even Life and Consciousness. But since the light has touched the higher mind even among a few of the positivist type, the few may very well be the precursor of the order of the day.
After all, only one bold step is needed: to affirm unequivocally what is being suggested and implied and pointed to in a thousand indirect ways. And Science will be transformed. The scientist too, like the famous Saltimbanque (clown) of a French poet, may one day in turning a somersault, suddenly leap up and find himself rolling into the bosom of the stars.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Again, the generalised law of relativity (that is to say, laws governing all motions, even accelerated motion and hot merely uniform motion) that sought to replace the laws of gravitation did away also with the concepts of force and causality: it stated that things moved not because they were pulled or pushed but because they followed the natural curve of space (they describe geodesics, i.e., move in the line of least distance). Space is not a plain surface, smooth and uniform, but full of dimples and hollows, these occurring in the vicinity of masses of matter, the sun, for instance, (although one does not see how or why a mass of matter should roll down the inclined plane of a curved surface without some kind of push and pull the problem is not solved but merely shifted and put off). All this means to say that the pattern of the universe is absolutely geometrical and science in the end resolves itself into geometry: the laws of Nature are nothing but theorems or corollaries deduced and deducible from a few initial postulates. Once again, on this line, of enquiry also the universe is dissolved into abstract and psychological factors.
Apart from the standpoint of theoretical physics developed by Einstein, the more practical aspect as brought out in Wave Mechanics leads us into no less an abstract and theoretical domain. The Newtonian particle-picture, it is true, has been maintained in the first phase of modern physics which specialised in what is called Quantum Mechanics. But waves or particlesalthough the question as to their relative validity and verity still remains opendo not make much difference in the fundamental outlook. For in either view, the individual unit is beyond the ken of the scientist. A wave is not a wave but just the probability of a wave: it is not even a probable wave but a probability wave. Thus the pattern that Wave Mechanics weaves to show the texture of the ultimate reality is nothing more than a calculus of probabilities. By whichever way we proceed we seem to arrive always at the same inevitable conclusion.
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Even Eddington is not so absurd or impossible as it may seem to some. He says, as we have seen, that all so-called laws of Nature can be discovered from within the mind itself, can be deduced logically from psychologically given premises: no empiricial observation or objective experimentation is necessary to arrive at them: they are found a priori in the subject. Now, mystic experience always lays stress on extra-sensory knowledge: it declares that such a knowledge is not only possible, but that this alone is the right and correct knowledge. All thingsmatter and mind and life and allbeing but vibrations of consciousness, even as the colours of a spectrum are vibrations, electro-magnetic waves of different frequency, mystic discipline enables one to enter into that condition in which one's consciousness mingles with all consciousness or with another particular consciousness (Patanjali's term is samyama), and one can have all knowledge that one wishes to have by this inner contact or concentration or identification, one discovers the knowledge within oneself, no external means of sense observation and experimental testing, no empirical inductive process is needed. We do not say that Eddington had in view anything of this kind, but that his attitude points in this direction.
That seems to be the burden, the underlying preoccupation of modern physical science: it has been forced to grope towards some kind of mystic perception; at least, it has been put into a frame of mind, due to the crumbling of the very fundamentals of the past structure, which is less obstructive to other sources and spheres and ways of knowledge. Certainly, we must admit that we have moved very far from Laplace when we hear today a hard-boiled rationalist like De Broglie declare:
05.08 - An Age of Revolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That is how we have been led almost to the threshold of a will, of a life principle, of a consciousness, however rudimentary, imbedded in the heart of Matter. All the facts that are now cropping up, the new discoveries that are being made and which we have to take into cognisance lead inevitably towards such a conclusion. Without such a conclusion a rational co-ordination of all the data of experience is hardly possible. A physical scientist may not feel justified to go beyond the purely physical data, but the implications of even such data, the demand for a fair hypothesis that can harmonise and synthesise them are compelling even a physicist to become a psychologist and a metaphysician.
Looked at from below with the eye of reason and sense observation straining at it, the thing that appears only as a possibility-at best, as a probabilityis revealed to the eyes of vision surveying from above as a selfevident reality, a reality before which the apparent realities posited by sense and reason become subsidiary and auxiliary, far-off echoes. The facts of sense-perception are indeed the branches spread out below while the root of the tree lies above: in other words, the root-reality is consciousness and all that exist are vibrations of that consciousness extended and concretised. This is the truth which modem science, in its farthest advances, would like to admit but dare not.
05.08 - True Charity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not true that when one's wants are met, one always becomes or remains happy; all paupers are not unhappy, nor are the affluent invariably happy. Happiness is a quality that depends upon something else and comes from elsewhere: it is not directly proportional to material well-being. Unhappiness too is a psychological entity and consists in a special vibration of mind and vitality and consequently of the physical beingdue to a warp in the consciousness itself, in the core of the inner personality. The material conditions serve only to manifest it, maintain or aggravate it, but do not create ittruly they are created by it. That is why the spiritual healers always refer to the bliss of the Spirit as the sole remedy for physical ills even, for disease, misery and death. And the unhappy mortals are always called to turn to the Divine alone in their distressbhajasva mm.
True charity consists in laying the healing balm upon the sore that lies hidden behind all external miseries which derive from that source and sustainer. And it is in the sole possession of him alone who has found the bliss of the Spirit and dwells in it always. Such a person does not require external accessories for his work of healing and comforting. He need do nothing apparently; he may even appear to be aloof and indifferent. But his presence itself is a healing power: the patient feels it and wonders at the ease and happiness that come into him as if from nowhere. Many physicians have this kind of healing power; indeed without that, a mere medical man, with his pharmacopoeia, is no physician. It may not be well known and recognised, but it is a fact that a good part of the efficacy of medicines lies in the subtle influence, the vital health, that the doctor puts into his medicine or even directly into the body of his patient. And in the case of a spiritual Bhishak, the power can be raised to the nth degree. The healer need not even be present at all physically near the patient; his influence can act very well from any distance. It is quite natural and inevitable that it should be so. For the healing power is in the spiritual consciousness, the inalienable bliss of one's status in the Spirit. One becomes identified with each and every objectperson or thingin one's own self, in the true being and substance; and the light and happiness that one possesses there inalienably go out in a spontaneous flow to others who are not really others but integral parts and portions of the same self.
This condition is attained, fully and sovereignly, when there is absolute egolessness, when there is no consciousness of a separate person, the dual consciousness of the helper and the helped, the reformer and the reformed, the doctor and the patient. The normal human sense of values is based upon such a division, upon egohood, mamatvam. A philanthropic man helps others through a sense of sympathy giving rise to a sense of duty and obligation. This feeling of pity, of commiseration is dangerous, for it puts you in a frame of mind that tends to make you look down upon, take a superior air towards your object of pity. You become self-conscious, with the consciousness of your inferior self, that you are helping others, doing good to the world, doing something that raises your value: this sense of personal merit is only another name for vanity. Vanity and ambition are the motive powers that lie behind the philanthropical spirit born of sympathy. To denote a shade of meaning different from what is usually conveyed by the word sympathy, modern psychology has I found another wordempathy. Sympathy may be said to be the relation or contact between two egos; it is a link or bridge between two separate and independent entities; empathy, on the other hand, means the entering into the I very being and consciousness of another, becoming that other one; it is identification and identity. This again is what I spiritual consciousness alone can do. Sympathy leads to! philanthropy, empathy is the origin of true charity, the spiritual I compassion of a Buddha or a Christ. Philanthropy is human, I charity (caritas) is divine.
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05.10 - Children and Child Mentality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The child, we can take, comes into the world with a more or less clean slate to record the reactions of life. In the early period he is still nearer his psychic being which is not yet thrown back or covered over by the impacts and impressions of the world. The first conscious contacts with the world are not generally happy for the child. He meets things all around that go against the grain of his still sensitive psychic consciousness. The first quarrel he witnesses between his parents, the first rough behaviour or movement of an elder that shakes his attention, the first lie that he hears uttered by his teacher, act almost as shellshocks to his nerves. And as he grows, lessons like these are showered upon him from all sides and no wonder if his consciousness very soon gets warped and twisted, he too begins his own game in the line he observes and experiences. Only, not being guided or controlled by reason and experience, he overdoes the thing, and because of his age, what in an adult is a matter of course, trivial and insignificant, looms large and ominous in his case. The surroundings in which a child lives and grows form the atmosphere which he breathes in at every moment and if there is poison in it, he inhales and imbibes the poison which becomes part of his substance and nature. A pure environment is needed for a pure life impulse to shape an develop itself.
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05.10 - Knowledge by Identity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In seeking to disvalue the principle of identity as a fundamental element in knowing, Prof. Das brings in to witness on his side the logical copula. Some logicians, of course, assert a parallelism if not identity between the laws of thought and the laws of language, language being conceived as the very imagea photographof thought, but the truth of the matter is that it is and it is not so, as in many other things. However, here when it is stated that the copula disjoining the subject and the predicate is the very pattern of all process of knowledge, one mistakes, we are afraid, a scheme or a formula, for the thing itself, a way of understanding a fact for the fact itself. Such a formula for understanding, however it may be valid for more or less analytical languages, those of later growth, need not and did not have the same propriety in respect of other older languages. We know the evolution of language has been in the direction of more and more disjunction of its component limbs even like the progression of the human mind and intellect. The modern analytical languages with their army of independent prepositions have taken the place of the classical languages which were predominantly inflexional. The Greek and Latin started the independent prepositional forms in the form of a fundamentally inflexional structure. Still further back, in Sanskrit for example, the inflexional form reigns supreme. Prefixes and affixes served the role of prepositions. And if we move further backward, the synthetic movement is so complete that the logical components (the subject, the copula, the predicate) are fused together into one symbol (the Chinese ideogram). We are here nearer to the original nature and pattern of knowledgea single homogeneous movement of apperception. There is no sanctity or absoluteness in the logical disposition of thought structure; the Aristotelian makes it a triplicity, the Indian Nyaya would extend the dissection to five or seven limbs. But whatever the logical presentation, the original psychological movement is a single indivisible lan and the Vedantic fusion of the knower, the knowledge and the known in identity remains the fundamental fact.
Calcutta Review, 1948 August-September.
05.11 - The Soul of a Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A nation is a living personality; it has a soul, even like a human individual. The soul of a nation is also a psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being, a formation out of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it, a power and aspect of Mahashakti. A nation is not merely the sum total of the individuals that compose it, but a collective personality of which the individuals are as it were cells, like the cells of a living and conscious organism. The psychic being or soul of a nation is indeed conscious; it knows its raison d'tre, its life purpose, its destiny, the role it has to play in the divine scheme as the divine instrument. And its will for it has a will, the expression of its consciousness, the Divine's impulse in and through itis inevitable, sooner or later it will fulfil itself. Even like the soul of a man, the nation's soul is behind all the movements that form its external life, supporting, building, guiding its political, economic, social or cultural make-up. The individual can know of and come in contact with the nation's soul in and through his own soul. When one becomes conscious of his psychic being then only one is in a condition to be conscious of the psychic being of the collective person of his nation or the nation with which he has inner affinity.
There are periods in the life cycle of a nation, critical moments, when it is in deadly peril, when its very existence is threatened, attacked by enemy forces either from within or from without. Such was the case when, for example, Britain was invaded by the Spanish Armada or when France was being subjugated by England. Those were very anxious times, but in each instance the soul of the nation came forward and inspired the nation to react and go through the ordeal and survive. Jeanne d'Arc may be considered as the embodiment of France's national soul, as on a still earlier occasion that same soul embodied itself in St. Genevieve. But a nation may fall on much more evil days, namely, when it loses contact with its very soul, goes astray, its life movement taking a wrong curve. A nation can deny its soul, even as an individual may and the result is disaster. Germany is a terrible example of such a tragedy in our own day.
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Like the individual a nation too dies. Ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and Babylon and Chaldea are no more. What I has happened to their souls, it may be asked. Well, what happens to the soul of the individual when the body falls away? The soul returns to the soul-world. Like the individual psyche the collective psyche too goes and retires into the womb of peace and light with all its treasures, its beauty and glory gathered in, like a bird that goes to sleep within its folded : wings. What the Greek culture and civilisation was still continues to exist in its quintessential reality in a world to which one has access if one has the requisite kinship of consciousness and psychic opening. That soul lives in its own domain, with all the glory of its achievement and realisation at their purest; and from there it sheds its lustre, exerts its influence, acts as living leaven in the world's cultural heritage and spiritual growth.
When however the soul withdraws, when a nation in a particular cycle of its soul manifestation has fulfilled its role and mission, the body of the nation falls gradually into decadence. The elements that composed the organic reality, the living consistency of national life disintegrate, lose their energy and cohesive capacity; they die out and are dispersed or persist for a time as a confused mixture of disconnected and mechanically moving cells. But it may happen too that in an apparently dying or dead nation, the soul that retired comes back' again, not in its old form and mode of life for that cannot beEgypt, if it lives again today cannot repeat the ages of the Pharaohs and the Pyramids-but in a new personality, with a fresh life purpose, In such a case what happens is truly a national resurrectiona Lazarus coming back to life at the touch of the Divine.
05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When a man dies, his soul or psychic being, after a time goes to the psychic world and takes rest there till the hour comes to take birth again in another body upon earth. There are then these two periods in the life after death. First, the passage and next the rest. The passage means the gradual shedding of all the other sheaths or envelopes that surround the psychic being and form its earthly frame. With the physical body has to go also the subtle body, then the vital and finally the mental too. The reason why one does not remember the past lives is this that one leaves behind the instrument of memory the brain mindwith one's death. One does not carryover with the psychic being the other parts that constitute the terrestrial life. They are dispersed and dissolved in their respective cosmic spheres. The subtle body gives up its elements to the subtle physical plane, the vital elements are taken up into the vital world and the mental elements go into the mental world,unless the psychic being is highly developed and has organised around itself as its instrument of self-expression any of these elements. In that case, as much of the terrestrial partsnamely, of the subtle body and life and mindas have come into direct contact with the psychic and have allowed themselves to be moved and moulded by its consciousness, will alone persist and share in the immortality of the soul. Normally, the elements of the human vehicle form a loose and unorganised aggregate massed round the psychic centre. When the centre withdraws, they too fall off automatically and are scattered into the universal storehouse of Nature. Only when they have been organised and when they have attained a definite form and character expressing something of the psychic nature, can they maintain their identity, for this identity is part and parcel of the psychic identity.
I have said that the memory of past lives is effaced because of the effacement of the instrument. But there is a higher memory which is the attribute of the psychic consciousness. The psychic being is made of light and knowledge: it knows, rather it sees and can survey the whole curve of its past growth and development. Of course, it may not see or remembervery often it does notall the physical details of things and happenings of an earthly life, the hundred incidents, accidents and contingencies that are not directly linked to its consciousness. But all things that have had its touch and have contri buted to its growth and development and have in their turn received its influenceobjects, persons, happenings or movementsfind themselves harboured in the psychic memory. And thus the only sure way of remembering the past, remembering, that is to say, what is worth remembering, is to go into the psychic being, possess the psychic consciousness. There one has the whole panorama of the soul's odyssey revealed. Any other way leads only to imagination, conjecture and delusion.
II
The passage between death and the arrival at final rest in the psychic world is a most difficult and dangerous ordeal for the human being. He has left the protection of the body and has not yet found the refuge in the psychic: he is obsessed and pulled back by his past the desires, the hungers, the attractions and repulsions, the plans unfulfilled, problematic schemesall haunt him still, things done, things not done crowd around him and fetter his forward march. Not only his own Karma, but the Karma of others too pursues him: all persons with whom he has had relation, who think of him now, pity him, mourn for him, lament his absence, raise so many hurdles and obstacles in his path, oblige him to turn and look back. Again, there are forces and personalities in the intermediate worlds with whom the poor disembodied creature has now to come in contact, and not unoften he feels like one unskinned and all his nerves on edge open helplessly to rough and painful impacts.
Indeed, although it may sound somewhat strange and wonderful, nevertheless it is literally true that the body is the fortress par excellence for the individual being: it is not merely an ugly dirty clothing that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual to go astray and be hurt, unless he is guided and protected by a guardian angel, as Dante has had Virgil as his Maestro. We may note here that the passage of Dante from Hell through Purgatory to Heaven across their various levels is almost an exact image of what happens to a soul after death. The highest Heaven where Dante meets Beatrice may be considered as the psychic world and Beatrice herself the Divine Grace that bathes, illumines and comforts the psychic being.
If one has, however, within oneself an ardent and sincere and un flickering flame, one can go through more or less easily and unscathed; but that is rare. Even when alive, in sleep one goes out often into other worlds and the foreign and unpleasant contacts and experiences he has there are recorded in the brain-mind as nightmares: on such occasions the best way to escape is to rush back into the body, the best place of safety. Many have this experience of rushing headlong into the bodydropping into the body, as it werein order to escape from a threatening danger in sleep and waking up all on a sudden to find to one's relief that all was illusion and hallucination.
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The psychic being is a packet of gathered power, a charged battery, as it were; when it comes down upon earth, it calls round itself elements of mind and vital and even subtle physical needed for the purpose of the particular life experience, and even those that would go to constitute the physical body. The psychic being usually picks up these elements of mind and life and body out of the universal store-house of earth's atmosphere as it needs them, in the same way as it returns them there on the journey back after death. But as I have already said, there are beings who have developed well-formed personalities of mind and life and even of the physical consciousness. These formations are not mere loose accretions, temporary arrangements for a life experience, but are welded, organised, given a more or less permanent shape, as the proper instrument of the psychic being, as its own expression. In such cases, the outer personality too continues to exist as an essential mode or vibration in and with the psychic consciousness itself and when the soul descends upon earth, is in contact with the earth's atmosphere, it projects out of I itself the external personality and formation. This does not I mean certainly that the personality remains something fixed and rigid, but that it has attained an essential fullness of form and yet retains the capacity for further change and growth through further growth of the psychic being in other life experiences.
Now the time and occasion for a particular birth of the soul depends naturally on the inner need of that being. But it must be notedas it is a fact in the occult world that the souls are not so many absolutely separate unrelated autonomous self-sufficient entities, each one coming and going as and when it chooses and likes: on the contrary, the souls form groups or families according to some secret affinity. And when they come down, they do so not unoften in company. A call goes, a bell is rung as it were intimating that the hour is come and they rush down. And it may even happen that in rushing down a psychic being is not too careful or fastidious about the instrument, the vehicle he chooses to inhabit; whatever is handy and nearest and on the whole suitable to his purpose he takes up and goes forward. He takes it all as an adventure and has the joy of battle and the warrior spirit that can taste of victory only when hard fought and won. That is how we meet not unoften a considerable discrepancy between the inner being of a man and his earthly tenement, his soul and his external character and physical nature. There is a meaning in the choice, a significance in the utilisation of unfavourable conditions: there is a method in the madness.
This grouping will appear natural and inevitable when we bear in mind the purpose of creation and the role of the psychic consciousness. For it is not a matter of individual salvation, of the unilateral growth and development and fulfilment of an individual psychic being. The soul is a luminous point in an inconscient universe and its role is to make it conscious, at least a representative portion of it. The psychic being's activity is the means of a new creation, the trans-mutation of the earth-consciousness, the growth and advent of a divine race, the manifestation and embodiment of the Divine and his play upon earth. The souls are the warriors, playmates, the beloved of the Lord. They have to assemble and move together for the interest of the play. They have to be in companies and regiments and battalions, in associations and concert and harmonised formations.
IV
05.15 - Sartrian Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The poise of the ego, the consciousness of the psycho-vital Purusha as envisaged and experienced by Sartre leads to many other not less catastrophic conclusions. Here is something more on Freedom which seems to be almost the corner-stone of his system:
"Freedom is not abeing: it is thebeing of man, that is to say, his not-being". A very cryptic mantra. Let us try to unveil the Shekinah. "Being" means "being" i.e. existing, something persisting, continuing in the same condition, something fixed, a status. Freedom is not a thingof that kind, it is movement: even so, it is not a continuous movement. According to Bergson, the true, the ultimate reality is a continuity of urge (lan vital); according to Sartre, however, in line with the trend of modern scientific knowledge, the reality is an assemblage of discrete units of energy, packets or quanta. So freedom is an urge, a spurt (jaillissement):it acts in a disconnected fashion and it is absolute and unconditional. It is veritably the wind that bloweth where it listeth. It has no purpose, no direction, no relation: for all those attributes or definitions would annul its absoluteness. It does not stop or halt or dwell upon, it bursts forth and passes. It does not exist, that is stay: therefore it is non-being. Man's being then consist of a conglomeration (ensemble)of such freedoms. And that is the whole reality ofman, his very essence. We have said that a heavy sense of responsibility hangs upon the .free Purusha: but it appears the Sartrian Purusha is a divided personality. In spite of the sense of responsibility (or because of it?) he acts irresponsibly; for, acting otherwise would not be freedom. So then this essence, the self-consciousness, self-existence, presence in oneself is not a status, a fixed standing entity: it is not a point, even if geometrical; it is, Sartre describes, the jet from one point to another, for, real point there is none: so it is the emptiness behind all concrete realities that is the true reality, asat brahman, unyamto Sartre that is freedom, freedom absolute and ultimate.
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'Freedom cannot be real freedom unless it is licence : yet society means a curtailment or inhibition or modification of this absolute liberty. This, conflict has never been resolved in Sartre and is fundamental to his ideology, 'the source of his tragic nihilism. That is because the consciousness here lives horizontally, level with the normal, what we described as psycho-vital consciousness. The way out lies in transcendence, in a vertical uplifting of the consciousness and the being.
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05.26 - The Soul in Anguish, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is very interesting to observe how in the modern epoch depths of consciousness are being dug up and laid bare to the common gaze, even like the archaeological finds of great antiquity and of immense value that are springing surprise after surprise upon our present-day civilisation. In our inner explorations too we have often come to strike psychological veins of unusual importance and significance. It is natural to the Yogin to do so; for it is the business of his life. But even thinkers and philosophers who do not ostensibly lead the mystic life are arriving at judgments and conclusions that are not normally warranted or covered by the unaided activities of the human reason. That proves once more that man is not reason alone, that he has other faculties to go by even in the field of ordinary knowledge.
A range of mystics and philosophers or philosopher-mystics from Kierkegaard to Sartre have made much of the sentiment of "anguish". Naturally, it is not the usual feeling of grief or sorrow due to disappointment or frustration that they refer to, nor is it the "repentance" which is a cardinal virtue in the Christian spiritual discipline. Repentance or grief is for something amiss, for some wrong done, for some good not done. It has a definite cause that gives rise to it and determinate conditions that maintain and foster it: and therefore it has also an end, at least the possibility of an ending. It is not eternal and can be mastered and got over: it is of the category of the Sankhyan or Buddhistic dukhatrayabhighata for that matter even the lacrimae rerum(tears inherent in things) of Virgil1 are not eternal.
05.33 - Caesar versus the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In reality, however, to a vision that sees behind and beyond the appearances, spirituality the force of the Spiritis ever dynamic: the spiritual soul, even when it appears passive and inert, is most active not merely in the subtle psychological domain, but also in the material field. To the gross pragmatic eye Ramakrishna, for example, appears as a less dynamic personality, a less strong and heroic, if not positively weaker character than Vivekananda. Well, that is only face-value reading. Vivekananda himself knew and felt and said that he was only one of hundreds of Vivekanandas that his simple and, modest-looking Guru could create if he chose. Even so a Ramdas. Ramdas was not merely a spiritual adviser to Shivaji, concerned chiefly with the inner salvation and development of his disciple, and only secondarily with the gross material activities, the things of Caesar. The two domains are not separate at least in this case: the spiritual here directly and dynamically affects the physical. The spiritual guide is the dynamo the matrixof the power, the power spiritual; he wields and marshals the hidden, the secret forces that are behind the outward forms and movements. And the disciple by his attitude of obeisance and receptivity becomes all the better a channel and instrument for the actual play and fulfilment of that force. A Govind Singh is another instance of spiritual power made dynamic in mundane things. And we always have the classical instance of Rajarshi Janaka.
Only, in the future a yet greater source of spiritual power is destined to be tapped and brought into play, into the plane of happenings, so that the material domain, the pattern of our actual day to day life will put on a different aspect; for a radiant consciousness will have breathed a new life into our very bodily cells.
06.04 - The Conscious Being, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The conscious being in us is truly the psychic being. But it is at present behind and out of the picture. What is normally conscious then is the mind, a part of it which has got the light is illumined. We are conscious through this portion, and even we identify ourselves with it, know and feel it as our self, as I.
The mind, however, has a central consciousness which may be called the Witness Mind, the Purusha in the mind. It stands apart and observes whatever is happening in the mind and in other parts as well; it is in fact the observer of the whole dhra. The other parts are the vital and the physical. The vital too has its own central consciousness, its witness Purusha, which observes all the vital movements and also through its own angle the other parts. Likewise the physical has a Purusha and it too observes through its own consciousness. The mental Purusha says, I see I am thinking, reasoning, etc.; the vital Purusha says, I see I am angry, violent or enjoying, energising, etc.; the physical Purusha says, I see I am acting, walking, running, etc. Now each of these three Purushas, in an ordinary person, stands separately, each is conscious in its own way; they are not clearly conscious of each other; they intermix, but not happily, they are more often than not at cross purposes. Very rarely are they unified and harmonised or bound together as a team for serving a common purpose, a single aim. That union and harmonisation can be done only through the supreme Purusha, the Divine Witness who is the true conscious Being, the one Purusha behind or above all the others, whose light first of all centralises in the psychic being and then through it is canalised into its delegates or emanations on the lower levels, the mind, the vital and the physical.
What is consciousness? It is the inverse of Inconscience. It is the creative essence of the universe: without consciousness there is no creation. Inconscience means non-existence. The supreme Non-manifest becomes conscious of itself, that is, objectifies itself, sees itself created or reflected in multiple centres: that is the origin of all creation. By consciousness all is, by unconsciousness nothing is. Consciousness is light, consciousness is life.
The original consciousness is one and indivisible and at its highest potential. But when it gets devolved and divided, i.e., individualised, it gets at the same time diffracted and minimised, like the reflections in a rough mirror. What we normally understand by consciousness is this diminished degree of it in the individual. But although diminished and diffracted in many forms and modes, the basic consciousness is still the divine consciousness which is there behind and at the origin of all the partial formulations. It is through this core of Divine Presencewhich is nothing else than the psychic that the individual maintains and develops its contact with the Divine, grows into the fullness of the divine consciousness even as an individual and earthly embodiment.
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06.06 - Earth a Symbol, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The psychic being is found on the earth alone, for it is a product of the earth: it is the touch of the Divine upon Matter. The psychic being is a child of the Earth: it is born and grows upon Earth, it is native to nowhere else. Still when it develops sufficiently and becomes an adult individuality, it can go to other physical domains, visit other planets, for example.
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06.07 - Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The reason is very simple. The experience or realisation is not a total one, that is to say, it belongs to a part only of the nature and is not shared by other parts. The sadhak is not of one piece: the whole of his nature is not worked to the same pitch and amplitude, it is not equally responsive everywhere. Thus, when the psychic brings forward an experience and the inner consciousness is full of the light and energy and joy and faith, even then, in the background or by the side, if you are vigilant and observe carefully, you will see that the mind, the external mind, has its reservations or continues to move in its accustomed way. It looks askance at the experience, criticises or doubts; or it tries to understand or explain in its own terms, seize it within its frame of comprehension. Or else, the vital rises up and tries to get hold of the experience and utilise it for its own purposes; it is enjoyed as a tasty food, made to serve the vital's ambition or vanity, some lower ignorant egoistic urge. Or again, the physical, the body consciousness may not at all participate in the experience; it may remain indifferent, listless, lethargic with no impulse or enthusiasm to carry out in practice the experience of the inner consciousness. Any of these drags or cross-currents is sufficient to maim and diminish and even wipe out the experience: and usually all the three are finally there to combine and reinforce each other's effects to do the mischief.
The remedy is to turn back and hold to the spot of light that is there in the consciousness, the clarity or the aspiration that belongs to the inner and higher being. That has to be used as a torch, as a staff to support and guide you in your periods of darkness and vacillation. That beam of burning light should be thrown, in turn, upon those parts in you that besiege with their obscurity and inconscience, doubt and arrogance, the realisation that comes, the progress on the way. It must be done with firmness, vigilance and perseverance. The mixture has to be sorted out, the dross separated, kept on one side and the pure element on the other: the impurities have to be put under the flame-light to melt, burn away and be eliminated. And this means an ardent sincerity, for that is the tinder which keeps the fire blazing.
--- Grep of noun psy
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