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05.14_-_The_Sanctity_of_the_Individual

1.01_-_The_Human_Aspiration

1.032_-_Our_Concept_of_God

1.053_-_A_Very_Important_Sadhana

1.2.01_-_The_Call_and_the_Capacity

2.01_-_Isha_Upanishad__All_that_is_world_in_the_Universe

2.01_-_The_Yoga_and_Its_Objects

2.09_-_On_Sadhana

2.1.7.07_-_On_the_Verse_and_Structure_of_the_Poem

2.25_-_List_of_Topics_in_Each_Talk

2.25_-_The_Higher_and_the_Lower_Knowledge

31.04_-_Sri_Ramakrishna

r1912_07_13

r1912_07_14

r1914_03_22

Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)

Talks_100-125

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realisation of God

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TERMS ANYWHERE

"For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is. We cannot, then, bid her the right to condemn with the religionist as perverse and presumptuous or with the rationalist as a disease or hallucination any intention she may evince or effort she may make to go beyond. If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth.” The Life Divine

“For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is. We cannot, then, bid her the right to condemn with the religionist as perverse and presumptuous or with the rationalist as a disease or hallucination any intention she may evince or effort she may make to go beyond. If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth.” The Life Divine

Integral Yoga ::: a union (yoga) in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence; this yoga implies not only the realisation of God but the entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work.

This Yoga implies not only the realisation of God, but an entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 540

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   5 Sri Aurobindo

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   5 Sri Aurobindo

1:Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, [T5],

2:If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.01,

3:The means of realisation is to be found in an integral Yoga, a union in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence; this yoga implies not only the realisation of God but the entire conseceration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of the divine work.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,

4:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,

5:What are these operations? They are not mere psychological self-analysis and self-observation. Such analysis, such observation are, like the process of right thought, of immense value and practically indispensable. They may even, if rightly pursued, lead to a right thought of considerable power and effectivity. Like intellectual discrimination by the process of meditative thought they will have an effect of purification; they will lead to self-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of the disorders of the soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the understanding. Self-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the knowledge of the real Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis is a great and effective introduction.We can look into the inward of ourselves more easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because there, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form and secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other than their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may reflect or a powerful concentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even before it is realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult. (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its becoming and follow the process by which it draws back into self-being. Therefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the experience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in its pure being.    The status of knowledge, then, which Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception or clear discrimination of the truth, nor is it an enlightened psychological experience of the modes of our being. It is a "realisation", in the full sense of the word; it is the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self, the transcendent and universal Divine, and it is the subsequent impossibility of viewing the modes of being except in the light of that Self and in their true aspect as its flux of becoming under the psychical and physical conditions of our world-existence. This realisation consists of three successive movements, internal vision, complete internal experience and identity.    This internal vision, dr.s.t.i, the power so highly valued by the ancient sages, the power which made a man a Rishi or Kavi and no longer a mere thinker, is a sort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to it-to the soul and not merely to the intellect-as do things seen to the physical eye. In the physical world there are always two forms of knowledge, the direct and the indirect, pratyaks.a, of that which is present to the eyes, and paroks.a, of that which is remote from and beyond our vision. When the object is beyond our vision, we are necessarily obliged to arrive at an idea of it by inference, imagination, analogy, by hearing the descriptions of others who have seen it or by studying pictorial or other representations of it if these are available. By putting together all these aids we can indeed arrive at a more or less adequate idea or suggestive image of the object, but we do not realise the thing itself; it is not yet to us the grasped reality, but only our conceptual representation of a reality. But once we have seen it with the eyes,-for no other sense is adequate,-we possess, we realise; it is there secure in our satisfied being, part of ourselves in knowledge. Precisely the same rule holds good of psychical things and of he Self. We may hear clear and luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other available means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration;3 but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity.    (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the 2 In one respect, however, it is easier, because in external things we are not so much hampered by the sense of the limited ego as in ourselves; one obstacle to the realisation of God is therefore removed.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:With the attraction for lust and lucre working the other way, how many long for the realisation of God? ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:With the attraction for lust and lucre working the other way, how many long for the realisation of God? ~ Swami Vivekananda,

2:The Upanishads told 5,000 years ago that the realisation of God could never be had through the senses. ~ Swami Vivekananda from Jnana Yoga,

3:Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, [T5],

4:If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.01,

5:Mysticism is the realisation of God, of the Universal Self. It is attained either as a realisation of God outside the Mystic, or within himself. In the first case, it is usually reached from within a religion, by exceptionally intense love and devotion, accompanied by purity of life, for only "the pure in heart shall see God". ~ Annie Besant in Annie Besant Quotes ISBN-13: 978-1535078498 (2016),

6:The means of realisation is to be found in an integral Yoga, a union in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence; this yoga implies not only the realisation of God but the entire conseceration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of the divine work.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,

7:they are acting all the while in the spirit of rajasic ahaṅkara, persuade themselves that God is working through them and they have no part in the action. This is because they are satisfied with the mere intellectual assent to the idea without waiting for the whole system and life to be full of it. A continual remembrance of God in others and renunciation of individual eagerness (spr.ha) are needed and a careful watching of our inner activities until God by the full light of self-knowledge, jñanadı̄pena bhasvata, dispels all further chance of self-delusion. The danger of tamogun.a is twofold, first, when the Purusha thinks, identifying himself with the tamas in him, "I am weak, sinful, miserable, ignorant, good-for-nothing, inferior to this man and inferior to that man, adhama, what will God do through me?" - as if God were limited by the temporary capacities or incapacities of his instruments and it were not true that he can make the dumb to talk and the lame to cross the hills, mūkaṁ karoti vacalaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim, - and again when the sadhak tastes the relief, the tremendous relief of a negative santi and, feeling himself delivered from all troubles and in possession of peace, turns away from life and action and becomes attached to the peace and ease of inaction. Remember always that you too are Brahman and the divine Shakti is working in you; reach out always to the realisation of God's omnipotence and his delight in the Lila. He bids Arjuna work lokasaṅgraharthaya, for keeping the world together, for he does not wish the world to sink back into Prakriti, but insists on your acting as he acts, "These worlds would be overpowered by tamas and sink into Prakriti if I did not do actions." To be attached to inaction is to give up our action not to God but to our tamasic ahaṅkara. The danger of the sattvagun.a is when the sadhak becomes attached to any one-sided conclusion of his reason, to some particular kriya or movement of the sadhana, to the joy of any particular siddhi of the yoga, perhaps the sense of purity or the possession of some particular power or the Ananda of the contact with God or the sense of freedom and hungers after it, becomes attached to that only and would have nothing else. Remember that the yoga is not for yourself; for these things, though they are part of the siddhi, are not the object of the siddhi, for you have decided at the beginning to make no claim upon God but take what he gives you freely and, as for the Ananda, the selfless soul will even forego the joy of God's presence, ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga,

8:What are these operations? They are not mere psychological self-analysis and self-observation. Such analysis, such observation are, like the process of right thought, of immense value and practically indispensable. They may even, if rightly pursued, lead to a right thought of considerable power and effectivity. Like intellectual discrimination by the process of meditative thought they will have an effect of purification; they will lead to self-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of the disorders of the soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the understanding. Self-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the knowledge of the real Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis is a great and effective introduction.We can look into the inward of ourselves more easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because there, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form and secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other than their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may reflect or a powerful concentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even before it is realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult. (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its becoming and follow the process by which it draws back into self-being. Therefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the experience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in its pure being.    The status of knowledge, then, which Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception or clear discrimination of the truth, nor is it an enlightened psychological experience of the modes of our being. It is a "realisation", in the full sense of the word; it is the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self, the transcendent and universal Divine, and it is the subsequent impossibility of viewing the modes of being except in the light of that Self and in their true aspect as its flux of becoming under the psychical and physical conditions of our world-existence. This realisation consists of three successive movements, internal vision, complete internal experience and identity.    This internal vision, dr.s.t.i, the power so highly valued by the ancient sages, the power which made a man a Rishi or Kavi and no longer a mere thinker, is a sort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to it-to the soul and not merely to the intellect-as do things seen to the physical eye. In the physical world there are always two forms of knowledge, the direct and the indirect, pratyaks.a, of that which is present to the eyes, and paroks.a, of that which is remote from and beyond our vision. When the object is beyond our vision, we are necessarily obliged to arrive at an idea of it by inference, imagination, analogy, by hearing the descriptions of others who have seen it or by studying pictorial or other representations of it if these are available. By putting together all these aids we can indeed arrive at a more or less adequate idea or suggestive image of the object, but we do not realise the thing itself; it is not yet to us the grasped reality, but only our conceptual representation of a reality. But once we have seen it with the eyes,-for no other sense is adequate,-we possess, we realise; it is there secure in our satisfied being, part of ourselves in knowledge. Precisely the same rule holds good of psychical things and of he Self. We may hear clear and luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other available means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration;3 but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity.    (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the 2 In one respect, however, it is easier, because in external things we are not so much hampered by the sense of the limited ego as in ourselves; one obstacle to the realisation of God is therefore removed.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,

   8 Integral Yoga
   2 Yoga


   10 Sri Aurobindo
   2 Swami Krishnananda
   2 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   2 A B Purani


   3 Record of Yoga
   2 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo

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

1.01 - The Human Aspiration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   4:We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a farther step in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only a form and a veil of higher states which are beyond Mind. In that case, the unconquerable impulse of man towards God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality presents itself in its right place in the chain as simply the imperative impulse by which Nature is seeking to evolve beyond Mind, and appears to be as natural, true and just as the impulse towards Life which she has planted in certain forms of Matter or the impulse towards Mind which she has planted in certain forms of Life. As there, so here, the impulse exists more or less obscurely in her different vessels with an ever-ascending series in the power of its will-to-be; as there, so here, it is gradually evolving and bound fully to evolve the necessary organs and faculties. As the impulse towards Mind ranges from the more sensitive reactions of Life in the metal and the plant up to its full organisation in man, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God? For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is. We cannot, then, bid her pause at a given stage of her evolution, nor have we the right to condemn with the religionist as perverse and presumptuous or with the rationalist as a disease or hallucination any intention she may evince or effort she may make to go beyond. If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth.   5:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place.

1.032 - Our Concept of God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   As the realisation of God is the goal of life, and it is towards this purpose that we are putting forth all our efforts in every way, the absorption of the mind in the concept of God may be regarded as the highest of duties. The greatest duty is the occupation of the mind with that object for which purpose it exists and functions, and all other duties may be contri butory to the fulfilment of this central duty. It is difficult to conceive God and, therefore, it is difficult to express our love for Him in an unconditional manner. As we have been observing, our religious traditions and performances have mostly been conditional. They have been some sort of an activity, like any other activity in a factory or a shop, though it is not true that religion is such a kind of temporal engagement. The religious spirit is what is important, and it is this that should animate the religious formalism and ritua.   vara praidhnt v (I.23), is a sutra of Sage Patanjali. One of the methods of controlling the mind is surrender to God. According to many, it is perhaps the principal method of controlling the mind. This is a most positive approach, of the many that can be thought of. When our mind is absorbed in love for something 'absorbed' is the word, completely occupied with the thought of a particular thing there is no chance for the mind to think of anything else. The modifications of the mind, the vrittis in respect of objects, should cease spontaneously when they are all focused in the direction of love of God. There is no need for any struggle in the form of breathing exercises or any type of hardship in the control of the mind or its vrittis, if it is absorbed in a love which is all-consuming.

1.053 - A Very Important Sadhana, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga   The goal of life in every stage of its manifestation is the vision of God, the experience of God, the realisation of God that God is the Supreme Doer and the Supreme Existence. This is the principle that is driven into the mind again and again by the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana or such similar texts. If a continued or sustained study of such scriptures is practised, it is purifying. It is a tapas by itself, and it is a study of the nature of ones own Self, ultimately. The word sva is used here to designate this process of study svadhyaya. Also, we are told in one sutra of Patanjali, tad drau svarpe avasthnam (I.3), that the seer finds himself in his own nature when the vrittis or the various psychoses of the mind are inhibited. The purpose of every sadhana is only this much: to bring the mind back to its original source.   The variety of detail that is provided to the mind in the scriptures has an intention not to pamper or cajole the mind, but to treat the mind of its illness of distraction and attachment to external objects. The aim is highly spiritual. Sometimes it is held that japa of a mantra also is a part of svadhyaya. That is a more concentrated form of it, requiring greater willpower. It is not easy to do japa. We may study a book like the Srimad Bhagavata with an amount of concentration, but japa is a more difficult process because there we do not have variety. It is a single point at which the mind is made to move, with a single thought almost, with a single epithet or attribute to contemplate upon. It is almost like meditation, and is a higher step than the study of scriptures. Adepts in yoga often tell us that the chanting of a mantra like pranava is tantamount to svadhyaya.

1.2.01 - The Call and the Capacity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   This Yoga implies not only the realisation of God, but an entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work. This means an inner discipline far more exacting and difficult than mere ethical and physical austerities. One must not enter on this path, far vaster and more arduous than most ways of Yoga, unless one is sure of the psychic call and of one's readiness to go through to the end.   By readiness I did not mean capacity but willingness. If there is the will within to face all difficulties and go through, no matter how long it takes, then the path can be taken.

2.01 - Isha Upanishad All that is world in the Universe, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen   to the realisation of God. There is the intellectual state of soul   which reaches God through knowledge; this naturally attaches

2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   It is only India that can discover the harmony, because it is only by a change - not a mere readjustment - of man's present nature that it can be developed, and such a change is not possible except by yoga. The nature of man and of things is at present a discord, a harmony that has got out of tune. The whole heart and action and mind of man must be changed, but from within, not from without, not by political and social institutions, not even by creeds and philosophies, but by realisation of God in ourselves and the world and a remoulding of life by that realisation. This can only be effected by Purnayoga, a yoga not devoted to a particular purpose, even though that purpose be Mukti or   Ananda, but to the fulfilment of the divine humanity in ourselves and others. For this purpose the practices of Hatha and Raja   --   The third stage comes out of the second, by full realisation of God, or of itself by the grace of God. Not only will the   Purusha stand apart and be trigun.atta, beyond the three gun.as, but the Prakriti, though using the gun.as, will be free from their bondage. Sattwa, as we know it, will disappear into pure prakasa and jyotih., and the nature will live in a pure, free and infinite self-existing illumination. Tamas, as we know it, will disappear into pure sama or santi, and the nature will take its firm stand on an infinite and ineffable rest and peace. Rajas, as we know it, will disappear into pure tapas, and the nature will flow in

2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    Disciple: You said yesterday that realisation of God is not sufficient to change human nature.    Disciple: The question arose from a conversation which we had about the Christian mystics. They have an idea that once they realise the Divine Consciousness there is nothing else to be done. They also maintain that after that all the work a man does is not his but Gods.   --    When I said that mere realisation of God is not sufficient I meant that such a realisation is not sufficient to bring about a permanent change of consciousness. It needs the working of the dynamic Power of God to change human nature.    Disciple: It so happens in their case because even the first glimpse of the Divine Consciousness is so overpowering, that it is too much for them! They are satisfied with the experience.

2.1.7.07 - On the Verse and Structure of the Poem, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   I am not quite sure of the sections (titles) yet the fourth section is obviously a continuation of the Ascent to Godhead it is the realisation of Godhead with which it will ascend after that the Unknowable Brahman, then the Purushottama and finally the Mother.   19 May 1937

2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen    | 02-10-26 | Forms of government; Divine work; realisation of God and change of nature; Jiva and central being; faith |    | Chapter 10 | On Vedic Interpretation |

2.25 - The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Nevertheless, Yoga does not either in its path or in its attainment exclude and throw away the forms of the lower knowledge, except when it takes the shape of an extreme asceticism or a mysticism altogether intolerant of this other divine mystery of the world-existence. It separates itself from them by the intensity, largeness and height of its objective and the specialisation of its methods to suit its aim; but it not only starts from them, but for a certain part of the way carries them with it and uses them as auxiliaries. Thus it is evident how largely ethical thought and practice, -- not so much external as internal conduct, -- enter into the preparatory method of Yoga, into its aim at purity. Again the whole method of Yoga is psychological; it might almost be termed the consummate practice of a perfect psychological knowledge. The data of philosophy are the supports from which it begins in the realisation of God through the principles of his being; only it carries the intelligent understanding which is all philosophy gives, into an intensity which carries it beyond thought into vision and beyond understanding into realisation and possession; what philosophy leaves abstract and remote, it brings into a living nearness and spiritual concreteness. The aesthetic and emotional mind and aesthetic forms are used by Yoga as a support for concentration even in the Yoga of Knowledge and are, sublimated, the whole means of the Yoga of love and delight, as life and action, sublimated, are the whole means of the Yoga of works. Contemplation of God in Nature, contemplation and service of God in man and in the life of man and of the world in its past, present and future, are equally elements of which the Yoga of Knowledge can make use to complete the realisation of God in all things. Only, all is directed to the one aim, directed towards God, filled with the idea of the divine, infinite, universal existence so that the outward-going, sensuous, pragmatical preoccupation of the lower knowledge with phenomena and forms is replaced by the one divine preoccupation. After attainment the same character remains. The Yogin continues to know and see God in the finite and be a channel of God-consciousness and God-action in the world; therefore the knowledge of the world and the enlarging and uplifting of all that appertains to life comes within his scope. Only, in all he sees God, sees the supreme reality, and his motive of work is to help mankind towards the knowledge of God and the possession of the supreme reality. He sees God through the data of science. God through the conclusions of philosophy. God through the forms of Beauty and the forms of Good, God in all the activities of life. God in the past of the world and its effects, in the present and its tendencies, in the future and its great progression. Into any or all of these he can bring his illumined vision and his liberated power of the spirit. The lower knowledge has been the step from which he has risen to the higher; the higher illumines for him the lower and makes it part of itself, even if only its lower fringe and most external radiation.   author class:Sri Aurobindo

31.04 - Sri Ramakrishna, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga    Sri Ramakrishna, at the very outset, proved in his own life the conquest of the inner over the outer, of Consciousness over Matter, of the spiritual over the mundane. And then he sought to impress that high truth on the life-plane of humanity. He sowed the seed of a new future creation. That is why he is the confluence of two epochs. The past ceases and the new future is ushered in him. He seems to have assimilated the essence of all the different spiritual practices of the past and discarded as husk and skin all the non-essentials which vary according to the variations of time and place and person. He brought forward and revived for the future the real truth, the quintessence of spirituality, which means also the supreme felicity. The fundamental nature of the spiritual perfection of Sri Ramakrishna consists in the realisation of God in his Absoluteness. He exemplified, philosophically speaking, the unity and synthesis of the Self and Nature, existence and power, the immutable and its dynamis. He used to say that the Eternal and its manifestation .always go together. The Transcendent is inherent in the manifest; again, the manifest is inherent in the Transcendent. Ascend to the Eternal through the stages of the manifestation and come down from the Eternal into its manifestation - its creation which should not be looked upon as an illusion but only as a form of the Eternal. Therefore Sri Ramakrishna was the worshipper of the Divine Power, the child of the Mother. The Mother herself is the Power of the Brahman.    The dynamic Vedanta of Vivekananda, its application in life, is based on this foundation. Spirituality and life are not two separate things - spirituality should be established and made to flower and bloom in life itself. This great truth always inspired Vivekananda in all his activities. Before the advent of Sri Ramakrishna the word "religion" or "spirituality" used to convey an otherworldly pursuit to the aspirant and to the public as well. Wherever there was some real spiritual practice, the aim and the impulse naturally tended to illustrate the dictum that Brahman alone is the truth and the world an illusion. Sri Ramakrishna shook to its roots the then prevailing conception of illusionism when he made the great Vedantin Totapuri give up the negative path, "Brahman is not this, not this", and accept all this too as Brahman. He further showed Totapuri the glory of the Mother of the universe. Vivekananda seized upon this fundamental realisation of Sri Ramakrishna to turn the tide of religion. His endeavour was to bring down religion or spirituality on the surface of the earth, into normal society and into the ordinary ways of life-activities. Sri Ramakrishna was a genuine Sannyasin at heart but he had never appeared in the garb of a Sannyasin. Vivekananda in spite of his hoisting up the banner of a Sannyasin was a mighty worker in his heart and conduct. He was a worker, but inwardly in communion with the spirit. No doubt, Sri Ramakrishna laid great stress on Samadhi, trance, for the achievement of the unalloyed, pure spiritual truth, but he never accepted the Nirvikalpa Samadhi as the sole self-sufficing goal for all or even for the many. He did not want, personally, to melt away as a salt-doll in the ocean. Like Ramprasad he would rather not become a lump of sugar but taste it instead. The aim of his dynamic personality was to purify and transform the egoistic 'I' into the real I, and take part in the play of the Divine Mother in her creation.

r1912 07 13, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga    Strongly increased intensity of kamananda and much more continuous and pronounced general tendency to that ananda with its concomitants. Sometimes the force that commences is the tivra. Premananda based on realisation of God as every separate existence animate or inanimate re-becomes, suddenly active and strong.    General trikaldrishti but without proper arrangement or nishchaya therefore groping & incorrect in detail is becoming normal. The Shakti has begun to move towards normality of correct detail. Power applied more perseveringly to the bodily siddhi seems to be producing more consistent results. The apana is being dominated, resistance to saundaryam relaxed, urdhwagati tending to recover from its prostration. Three longstanding aishwaryas were fulfilled yesterday & today in public events.

r1912 07 14, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga    realisation of God in all attended by shuddhananda (in the state of bhoga like all the mental anandas) both nirvisesha and savishesha. These anandas (mental bhoga of all kinds & the physical bhogas) seem to be finally established & incapable of overthrow or effective breach by the nirananda. They have an air of being pratisthita. Only the nirvisesha sharirika anandas are intermittent and obstructed. The nirvisesha shuddha & premabhoga are, however, still dependent on the perfect realisation of Sarvavastushu Ishwara.    There is strong tendency to deposit of prithivi & visrishti, & if the apana is dominated by the prana, it is as one who still successfully struggles with his assailant. The same is true of all the physical siddhis that have at all advanced, they are attacking, sometimes prevailing, sometimes in possession, but not yet masters except in the suddhi, bhukti & mukti (the latter most imperfect of the three).

r1914 03 22, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga    Since the entire Oneness can be realised here & it is only by that complete realisation of God in everything in this world that absolute Liberty is possible,for the idea of Him as something separate manifesting here is an error,therefore the final word is that an effort must be made to realise God the Spirit here absolutely, so that nothing else may be seen, felt, smelt, heard, tasted.    See "The Evolutionary Scale", pages 1326-28.Ed.

Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism   774. Prema or ecstatic Love comes not before the realisation of God.   775. 'In the Persian books it is written that within the flesh are the bones, within the bones is the   --   well as Jnana, and the realisation of God, Personal as well as Impersonal. For if a man can manage to   reach Calcutta, can he not succeed in finding his way to the Maidan, the Ochterlony Monument, the   --   Yoga is the same (as of other Yogas), namely, the realisation of God, impersonal or personal or both.   815. In the case of a person endowed with the quality of Sattva (purity of being), action naturally falls   --   magnificent Mantra. True meditation on 'Om' leads to Samadhi and realisation of God. Thus Karmas, or   pious duties of the type of Sandhya, have their ultimate end in God-realisation.   --   908. The realisation of God is of two kinds-one consists in the unification of the Jivatman and the   Paramatman and the other in seeing Him in His personal manifestation. The former is called Jnana, and

Talks 100-125, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction   D.: Why does God permit suffering in the world? Should He not with His omnipotence do away with it at one stroke and ordain the universal realisation of God?   M.: Suffering is the way for realisation of God.   D.: Should He not ordain differently?