the Divine Principle

0 1967-01-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its inside, its What could we call it? (laughing) the Divine Principle of duplicity!
Not very reassuring, this flower.

04.02 - A Chapter of Human Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Greek Mind, as I said, is the bridge thrown across the gulf existing between the spiritual, the occult, the intuitive and the sensuous, the physical, the material. Since the arrival of the Hellenes a highway has been built up, a metalled macada-mised road connecting these two levels of human experience and there is possible now a free and open communication from the one to the other. We need not speak any more of God and the gods and the Divine Principles indirectly through symbols and similes, but in mental terms which are closer to our normal understanding and we can also utilise the form of our intellection and reasoning to represent and capture something of what lies beyond intellect and reason.
In India we have an echo of the transition, rather perhaps, she held up the type of the transition required. For here the evolution seems to have been more gradual and the steps are more clearly visible leading one to the other. India maintained an unbroken continuity in the cyclic change of the human consciousness. She was coeval with Egypt and Chaldea, Sumeria and Babylon: she communed with them perhaps in similar and parallel terms. And yet she changed or evolved and knew to express herself in other terms in other times. She had talked in mystic terms with the mystics and later on she talked in rational terms with rationalists. And today we see signs of her parleying with the Scientists in scientific terms. That is how India still lives, while Egypt and Chaldea have gone the way of Atlantis and Gondwanaland. For something is enshrined there which is eternal, something living and dynamic which is pressing forward to manifest and embody itself, some supreme truth and reality of the future which she is fostering within her to deliver to nature and humanitya new humanity with a new nature.

09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Therefore the best means is, when love comes in any form whatsoever, to try to pierce through its external appearance, to find out the Divine Principle that is behind and that is the cause of its existence. Naturally it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is the most effective. In other words, instead of ceasing to love, because you love in the wrong way, you must cease to love in the wrong way and try to love in the right way. For example, the love between human creatures, in all its forms, the love of the parents for their children, of the children for their parents, the love between brothers, between lovers, all are tainted with ignorance and egoism and every other fault that is the common human fault. So, instead of ceasing altogether to love, which is besides very difficult, as it will simply dry up the heart and therefore serve no purpose, you must learn to love with devotion and self-giving and self-abnegation, you are to fight not against love itself but against its deformities. All forms of appropriation, the sense of possession, jealousy, all other feelings that accompany and support these root feelings are to be rejected. Instead you must not seek to possess, dominate, impose your will or caprice or desire, must not be eager to take and receive, but to give. Do not demand a return from the other, but be satisfied with your own love; do not seek your interest, your personal pleasure, the fulfilment of your own desire but rest content with your love and affection, do not ask for a response, but remain happy with loving only, nothing more.
If you have done that, you have taken a big step, and then through that attitude, little by little you may progress more into the feeling itself, and you will find one day that love is not a personal thing, love is a divine universal feeling that manifests through you as well as it can, but it is in its essence a divine thing.

1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Vayu, who, representing the Divine Principle in the Life-energy, Prana, extends himself in Matter and vivifies its forms. Here, it signifies the divine Life-power that presides in all forms of cosmic activity.
6 Apas, as it is accentuated in the version of the White Yajurveda, can mean only

1.02 - The Principle of Fire, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Bible we read: Fiat Lux There shall be light. The origin of the light, of course, is to be sought in the fire. Each element and therefore that of fire, too, has two polarities, i.e., the active and the passive one, which means positive (+) and negative (-). Plus will always signify the constructive, the creative, the productive sources whereas minus stands for all that is destructive or dissecting. There are always two basic qualities, which must be clearly distinguished in each element. Religions have always imputed the good to the active and the evil to the passive side. But fundamentally spoken, there are no such things as good or bad; they are nothing but human conceptions. In the Universe there is neither good nor evil, because everything has been created according to immutable rules, wherein the Divine Principle is reflected and only by knowing these rules, shall we be able to come near to the Divinity.
As mentioned before, the fiery principle owns the expansion, which I shall call electrical fluid for the sake of better comprehension. This definition does not just point to the roughly material electricity in spite of its having a certain analogy to it.

1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The Akasha-principle of the astral sphere determines also the re-incarnation into the physical world of a human being living in the astral world. The astral material of light, usually called astral light, is the most divine emanation in the astral world. To initiates who see the Divine Principle of the astral world this lightprinciple appears as bright as the light of the burning sun or as the sun itself, provided they were in the physical world able to behold Divine Providence in the Light without having their deity transformed into a particular shape. The individual religion of a person has its due place in the astral world insomuch as he has attributed a certain shape and name to his deity according to his religious views in the physical world. Atheists feel no necessity for a God even in the astral world and are therefore not able to form an idea of the deity there. Nevertheless, they long for something higher, much like a thirsty man longs for water. People who have believed in several religions or deities during their existance on earth will find chaotic conditions. They will have a difficult time there, if they are not able to make up their minds to follow a certain form. However, during their course of development in the astral world their conception of God will be clarified so that finally they will believe in the deity which was really best for them. This conception of God then usually determines the place of their re-incarnation.
A magician having explored during his lifetime, the astral sphere of the zone girdling the earth will know from his own experience, how the powers and beings of the astral sphere operate and what they do, but he may also learn it from those beings with which he is working magically.

1.19 - The Practice of Magical Evocation, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Finally you put round your head your magus-band or put on the magic headgear with a feeling of true relationship to God, and that not you as a magician, but that God is actually carrying through the whole operation. You must unite yourself with the Divine Principle inside you in such a way that you have the feeling that you are the deity itself. Having done all this, you are able to go a further step in your operation. You light the magic lamp, which, in our case, must fill the room with a lightgreen light. Set the magic lamp in a place round which you will be able to draw the magic circle or hang it up in the centre of the room. This does not mean that the lamp must be exactly in the centre of the room though it would have the advantage that the whole room gets an equal light. Your next task will be the setting up and impregnation of the magic mirror, if you like, of two magic mirrors. In this example instructions are given for the use of two mirrors. One mirror is to bring about the materialization of Hagiel in the physical world, the other is to keep off unwanted influences. Being conscious of the fact that not you, but the deity is carrying out the procedure, you create, by the help of the imagination, a great sea of light in a wonderful emerald colour, which, also by imagination, you accumulate from the whole universe into the mirror in a manner that the whole surface of the mirror is taken up by this colour. The power of illumination of the condensed green light must be so strong as to illuminate completely the room in which you work. At that moment you must have the imaginative impression that this accumulated light is actually a power matrix, a fluid, which can almost be seen by the physical eye. In any case you must have the permanent impression that you are moving about in the room in an oscillation of green light. This is the way to prepare, magically, the room for the being to be evoked, and in a room like this there will be no more obstacles for the being and it will feel the atmosphere of its own sphere. Already at the moment you accumulate the light you concentrate on the idea that the purpose of this accumulation is to condense the evoked spirit being in a manner that you can see it with your physical eyes and hear it with your physical ears. The stronger your imagination, belief, will and conviction, the better condensed and truer Hagiel will appear to you. When impregnating the room, do not forget to include that you wish the accumulated planetary light-power to remain in the mirror and in the room until you dissolve it again by force of your imagination.
Similar examples are given in "Initiation into Hermetics" in the chapter dealing with room-impregnation and here you find the evidence that all the exercises and magic operations of that first work have their special purpose. You will also see that when carrying out further magical operations you will not be able to do without any of these practices. If you have not actively gone through the exercises of the first book you are unable to get into conscious contact with any spirit being outside you, or of materialising such a being.

1.23 - The Double Soul in Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9:In the view of old philosophies pleasure and pain are inseparable like intellectual truth and falsehood and power and incapacity and birth and death; therefore the only possible escape from them would be a total indifference, a blank response to the excitations of the world-self. But a subtler psychological knowledge shows us that this view which is based on the surface facts of existence only, does not really exhaust the possibilities of the problem. It is possible by bringing the real soul to the surface to replace the egoistic standards of pleasure and pain by an equal, an all-embracing personal-impersonal delight. The lover of Nature does this when he takes joy in all the things of Nature universally without admitting repulsion or fear or mere liking and disliking, perceiving beauty in that which seems to others mean and insignificant, bare and savage, terrible and repellent. The artist and the poet do it when they seek the rasa of the universal from the aesthetic emotion or from the physical line or from the mental form of beauty or from the inner sense and power alike of that from which the ordinary man turns away and of that to which he is attached by a sense of pleasure. The seeker of knowledge, the God-lover who finds the object of his love everywhere, the spiritual man, the intellectual, the sensuous, the aesthetic all do this in their own fashion and must do it if they would find embracingly the Knowledge, the Beauty, the Joy or the Divinity which they seek. It is only in the parts where the little ego is usually too strong for us, it is only in our emotional or physical joy and suffering, our pleasure and pain of life, before which the desire-soul in us is utterly weak and cowardly, that the application of the Divine Principle becomes supremely difficult and seems to many impossible or even monstrous and repellent. Here the ignorance of the ego shrinks from the principle of impersonality which it yet applies without too much difficulty in Science, in Art and even in a certain kind of imperfect spiritual living because there the rule of impersonality does not attack those desires cherished by the surface soul and those values of desire fixed by the surface mind in which our outward life is most vitally interested. In the freer and higher movements there is demanded of us only a limited and specialised equality and impersonality proper to a particular field of consciousness and activity while the egoistic basis of our practical life remains to us; in the lower movements the whole foundation of our life has to be changed in order to make room for impersonality, and this the desire-soul finds impossible.
10:The true soul secret in us - subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, - this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine. Not the unborn Self or Atman, for the Self even in presiding over the existence of the individual is aware always of its universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, caitya purus.a, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience. These other person-powers in man, these beings of his being, are also veiled in their true entity, but they put forward temporary personalities which compose our outer individuality and whose combined superficial action and appearance of status we call ourselves: this inmost entity also, taking form in us as the psychic Person, puts forward a psychic personality which changes, grows, develops from life to life; for this is the traveller between birth and death and between death and birth, our nature parts are only its manifold and changing vesture. The psychic being can at first exercise only a concealed and partial and indirect action through the mind, the life and the body, since it is these parts of Nature that have to be developed as its instruments of self-expression, and it is long confined by their evolution. Missioned to lead man in the Ignorance towards the light of the Divine Consciousness, it takes the essence of all experience in the Ignorance to form a nucleus of soul-growth in the nature; the rest it turns into material for the future growth of the instruments which it has to use until they are ready to be a luminous instrumentation of the Divine. It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature. It is the psychic personality in us that flowers as the saint, the sage, the seer; when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty, Love and Bliss, the divine heights and largenesses, and opens us to the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality, oneness. On the contrary, where the psychic personality is weak, crude or ill-developed, the finer parts and movements in us are lacking or poor in character and power, even though the mind may be forceful and brilliant, the heart of vital emotions hard and strong and masterful, the life-force dominant and successful, the bodily existence rich and fortunate and an apparent lord and victor. It is then the outer desire-soul, the pseudo-psychic entity, that reigns and we mistake its misinterpretations of psychic suggestion and aspiration, its ideas and ideals, its desires and yearnings for true soul-stuff and wealth of spiritual experience.7 If the secret psychic Person can come forward into the front and, replacing the desire-soul, govern overtly and entirely and not only partially and from behind the veil this outer nature of mind, life and body, then these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence.

1915 11 26p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience you have described is Vedic in the real sense, though not one which would easily be recognised by the modern systems of Yoga which call themselves Vedic. It is the union of the "Earth" of the Veda and Purana with the Divine Principle, an earth which is said to be above our earth, that is to say, the physical being and consciousness of which the world and the body are only images. But the modern Yogas hardly recognise the possibility of a material union with the Divine
***

1951-03-05 - Disasters- the forces of Nature - Story of the charity Bazar - Liberation and law - Dealing with the mind and vital- methods, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To fit the universe into the size of the human mind, this is precisely what everybody does. And not only do they judge the universe, but they judge the Divine Principles which have made it and they imagine they are able to know something.
Does liberty mean freedom from all attachment?

1956-05-02 - Threefold union - Manifestation of the Supramental - Profiting from the Divine - Recognition of the Supramental Force - Ascent, descent, manifestation, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is the Divine Principle.
(Silence)

1956-09-19 - Power, predominant quality of vital being - The Divine, the psychic being, the Supermind - How to come out of the physical consciousness - Look life in the face - Ordinary love and Divine love, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind is the element or the Divine Principle which is now going to come into play in the universe. He calls it the Supermind because it comes after the mind, that is to say, it is a new manifestation of the supreme divine Principle. And it is related to the psychic as the Divine was related to the psychic, that is to say, the psychic is the home, the temple, the vehicle, everything that must outwardly manifest the Divine. But it is divine only in its essence not in its integrality. It is a mode of outer manifestation of the Divine, outer pared with the Divine, that is, terrestrial.
Is that all? Nothing else?
--
Therefore, the best way when love comes, in whatever form it may be, is to try and pierce through its outer appearance and find the Divine Principle which is behind and which gives it existence. Naturally, it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is more effective. That is to say, instead of ceasing to love because one loves wrongly, one must cease to love wrongly and want to love well.
For instance, love between human beings, in all its forms, the love of parents for children, of children for parents, of brothers and sisters, of friends and lovers, is all tainted with ignorance, selfishness and all the other defects which are mans ordinary drawbacks; so instead of completely ceasing to lovewhich, besides, is very difficult as Sri Aurobindo says, which would simply dry up the heart and serve no endone must learn how to love better: to love with devotion, with self-giving, self-abnegation, and to struggle, not against love itself, but against its distorted forms: against all forms of monopolising, of attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, and all the feelings which accompany these main movements. Not to want to possess, to dominate; and not to want to impose ones will, ones whims, ones desires; not to want to take, to receive, but to give; not to insist on the others response, but be content with ones own love; not to seek ones personal interest and joy and the fulfilment of ones personal desire, but to be satisfied with the giving of ones love and affection; and not to ask for any response. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more.

2.01 - The Two Natures, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If we dwell in the phenomenal nature only and see things only by the notions it impresses on us, we shall not get at the real truth of our active existence. The real truth is this spiritual power, this divine force of being, this essential quality of the spirit in things or rather of the spirit in which things are and from which they draw all their potencies and the seeds of their movements. Get at that truth, power, quality and we shall get at the real law of our becoming and the Divine Principle of our living, its source and sanction in the Knowledge and not only its process in the
Ignorance.

2.03 - The Purified Understanding, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the first place we have seen that intellectual thought is in itself inadequate and is not the highest thinking; the highest is that which comes through the intuitive mind and from the supramental faculty. So long as we are dominated by the intellectual habit and by the lower workings, the intuitive mind can only send its messages to us subconsciously and subject to a distortion more or less entire before it reaches the conscious mind; or if it works consciously, then only with an inadequate rarity and a great imperfection in its functioning. In order to streng then the higher knowledge-faculty in us we have to effect the same separation between the intuitive and intellectual elements of our thought as we have already effected between the understanding and the sense-mind; and this is no easy task, for not only do our intuitions come to us incrusted in the intellectual action, but there are a great number of mental workings which masquerade and ape the appearances of the higher faculty. The remedy is to train first the intellect to recognise the true intuilion, to distinguish it from the false and then to accustom it, when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to attach no final value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the Divine Principle and wait in as complete a silence as it can comm and for the light from above. In this way it is possible to transmute a great part of our intellectual thinking into the luminous truth-conscious vision, -- the ideal would be a complete transition, -- or at least to increase greatly the frequency, purity and conscious force of the ideal knowledge working behind the intellect. The latter must learn to be subject and passive to the ideal faculty.
But for the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gita in one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace.

2.08 - The Release from the Heart and the Mind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Desire is at once the motive of our actions, our lever of accomplishment and the bane of our existence. If our sense-mind, emotional mind, thought-mind could act free from the intrusions and importations of the life-energy, if that energy could be made to obey their right action instead of imposing its own yoke on our existence, all human problems would move harmoniously to their right solution. The proper function of the life-energy is to do what it is bidden by the Divine Principle in us, to reach to and enjoy what is given to it by that indwelling Divine and not to desire at all. The proper function of the sense-mind is to lie open passively, luminously to the contacts of Life and transmit their sensations and the rasa or right taste and principle of delight in them to the higher function; but interfered with by the attractions and repulsions, the acceptances and refusals, the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, the capacities and incapacities of the life-energy in the body it is, to begin with, limited in its scope and, secondly, forced in these limits to associate itself with all these discords of the life in Matter. It becomes an instrument for pleasure and pain instead of for delight of existence.
Similarly the emotional mind compelled to take note of all these discords and subject itself to their emotional reactions becomes a hurtling field of joy and grief, love and hatred, wrath, fear, struggle, aspiration, disgust, likes, dislikes, indifferences, content, discontent, hopes, disappointments, gratitude, revenge and all the stupendous play of passion which is the drama of life in the world. This chaos we call our soul. But the real soul, the real psychic entity which for the most part we see little of and only a small minority in mankind has developed, is an instrument of pure love, joy and the luminous reaching out to fusion and unity with God and our fellow-creatures. This psychic entity is covered up by the play of the mentalised Prana or desire-mind which we mistake for the soul; the emotional mind is unable to mirror the real soul in us, the Divine in our hearts, and is obliged instead to mirror the desire-mind.

2.15 - On the Gods and Asuras, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Then comes the world of the Gods, below the Supermind and behind the manifestation. The Gods of the Hindu culture Shiva, Vishnu, etc. are names and representations in the mind, but they point to the Gods who represent the Divine Principles governing the manifestation of the universe. There is a hierarchy of these beings.
Below this is the manifested universe. The purpose of this manifestation is to go back to the Ananda.

2.24 - Gnosis and Ananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Upanishad tells us that after the knowledge-self above the mental is possessed and all the lower selves have been drawn up into it, there is another and the last step of all still left to us -- though one might ask, is it eternally the last or only the last practically conceivable or at all necessary for us now? -- to take up our gnostic existence into the Bliss-Self and there complete the spiritual self-discovery of the divine Infinite. Ananda, a supreme Bliss eternal, far other and higher in its character than the highest human joy or pleasure is the essential and original nature of the spirit. In Ananda our spirit will find its true self, in Ananda its essential consciousness, in Ananda the absolute power of its existence. The embodied soul's entry into the highest absolute, unlimited, unconditional bliss of the spirit is the infinite liberation and the infinite perfection. It is true that something of this bliss can be enjoyed by reflection, by a qualified descent even on the lower planes where the Purusha plays with his modified and qualified Nature. There can be the experience of a spiritual and boundless Ananda on the plane of matter, on the plane of life, on the plane of mind as well as on the gnostic truth-plane of knowledge and above it. And the Yogin who enters into these lesser realisations, may find them so complete and compelling that he will imagine there is nothing greater, nothing beyond it. For each of the Divine Principles contains in itself the whole potentiality of all the other six notes of our being; each plane of Nature can have its own perfection of these notes under its own conditions. But the integral perfection can come only by a mounting ascent of the lowest into the highest and an incessant descent of the highest into the lowest till all becomes one at once solid block and plastic sea-stuff of the Truth infinite and eternal.
The very physical consciousness in man, the annamaya purusa, can without this supreme ascent and integral descent yet reflect and enter into the self of Sachchidananda. It can do it either by a reflection of the Soul in physical Nature, its bliss, power and infinity secret but still present here, or by losing its separate sense of substance and existence in the Self within or without it. The result is a glorified sleep of the physical mind in which the physical being forgets itself in a kind of conscious Nirvana or else moves about like a thing inert in the hands of Nature jadavat, like a leaf in the wind, or otherwise a state of pure happy and free irresponsibility of action, balavat, a divine childhood. But this comes without the higher glories of knowledge and delight which belong to the same status upon a more exalted level. It is an inert realisation of Sachchidananda in which there is neither any mastery of the prakriti by the Purusha nor any sublimation of Nature into her own supreme power, the infinite glories of the Para shakti. Yet these two, this mastery and this sublimation, are the two gates of perfection, the splendid doors into the supreme Eternal.

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
soul achieving Truth merges itself in the Divine Principle of Love
poured out into the offering to God of human life, Mitro na

4.02 - The Integral Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The object of our synthetic Yoga must, in this respect too as in its other parts, be more integral and comprehensive, embrace all these elements or these tendencies of a larger impulse of self-perfection and harmonise them or rather unify, and in order to do that successfully it must seize on a truth which is wider than the ordinary religious and higher than the mundane principle. All life is a secret Yoga, an obscure growth of Nature towards the discovery and fulfilment of the Divine Principle hidden in her which becomes progressively less obscure, more self-conscient and luminous, more self-possessed in the human being by the opening of all his instruments of knowledge, will, action, life to the Spirit within him and in the world. Mind, life, body, all the forms of our nature are the means of this growth, but they find their last perfection only by opening out to something beyond them, first, because they are not the whole of what man is, secondly, because that other something which he is, is the key of his completeness and brings a light which discovers to him the whole high and large reality of his being.
Mind is fulfilled by a greater knowledge of which it is only a half-light, life discovers its meaning in a greater power and will of which it is the outward and as yet obscure functioning, body finds its last use as an instrument of a power of being of which it is a physical support and material starting-point. They have all themselves first to be developed and find out their ordinary possibilities; all our normal life is a trying of these possibilities and an opportunity for this preparatory and tentative self-training. But life cannot find its perfect self-fulfilment till it opens to that greater reality of being of which by this development of a richer power and a more sensitive use and capacity it becomes a well-prepared field Of working.

4.10 - The Elements of Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All the gnostic evolution opens up into the Divine Principle of Ananda, which is the foundation of the fullness of spiritual being, consciousness and bliss of Sachchidananda or eternal Brahman. Possessed at first by reflection in the mental experience, it will be possessed afterwards with a greater fullness and directness in the massed and luminous consciousness, cidghana, which comes by the gnosis. The Siddha or perfected soul will live in union with the Purushottama in this Brahmic consciousness, he will be conscious in the Brahman that is the All, sarvam brahma, in the Brahman infinite in being and infinite in quality, anantam jnanam brahma, in Brahman as self-existent consciousness and universal knowledge, jnanam brahma, in Brahman as the selfexistent bliss and its universal delight of being, anandam brahma. He will experience all the universe as the manifestation of the One, all quality and action as the play of his universal and infinite energy, all knowledge and conscious experience as the outflowing of that consciousness, and all in the terms of that one Ananda. His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will be changed to him in that unity and revealed in the secret of its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be one with That which is the origin and continent and inhabitant and spirit and constituting power of all existence. This will be the highest reach of self-perfection.
author class:Sri Aurobindo

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
this we reply: "We deny the anthropomorphic god of the Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle
in nature. We combat Protestants and Roman Catholics on a number of dogmatic theological beliefs of

ENNEAD 02.09 - Against the Gnostics; or, That the Creator and the World are Not Evil., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
3. Thus the Soul, ever being illuminated, in turn herself illuminates lower things that subsist only through her, like plants that feed on dew, and which participate in life, each according to its capacity. Likewise a fire heats the objects that surround it, each in proportion to its nature. Now if such is the effect604 of fire whose power is limited, while intelligible beings exert unlimited powers, how would it be possible for these beings to exist without causing anything to participate in their nature? Each of them must therefore communicate some degree of its perfection to other beings. The Good would no longer be the good, Intelligence would no longer be intelligence, the Soul would no longer be soul, if, beneath that which possesses the first degree of life, there was not some other thing which possessed the second degree of life, and which subsisted only so long as subsists He who occupies the first rank. It is therefore unavoidable that all things (inferior to the First) must always exist in mutual dependence, and that they be begotten, because they derive their existence from some other source. They were not begotten at a definite moment. When we affirm that they are begotten, we should say, they were begotten, or, they shall be begotten. Nor will they be destroyed, unless they are composed of elements in which they could be dissolved. Those that are indissoluble will not perish. It may be objected that they could be resolved into matter. But why should matter also not be liable to be destroyed? If it were granted that matter was liable to destruction, there was no necessity for its existence.293 It may be further objected that the existence of matter necessarily results from the existence of other principles. In this case, this necessity still subsists. If matter is to be considered as isolated (from the intelligible world), then the Divine Principles also, instead of being present everywhere,294 will, as it were, be walled up in a limited place.295 But if the latter be impossible, then must matter be illuminated (by the intelligible world).
605

ENNEAD 06.04 - The One Identical Essence is Everywhere Entirely Present., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
15. But how did the body approach the universal Soul? As this body had an aptitude for participation in the Soul, it received that for which it was fit; now it was disposed to receive a particular soul; that is why it did not receive the universal Soul. Although the latter be present with this body, she does not become entirely suitable to it; that is why plants and the non-human souls likewise possess only so much of the universal Soul, as they were able to receive from her. Likewise, when a voice challenges notice, so some (persons) grasp only the sound, others grasp also the signification. As soon as the animal has been begotten, it possesses within itself the presence of a soul derived from the universal (Being), and by which it remains united with this (Being) because then it possesses a body that is neither empty nor inanimate. This body was not before in an inanimate place, and (when it was begotten), it only further reapproximated itself to the soul by its aptitude (to receive life); it became not only a body, but also a living body; thanks to the neighborhood to the soul, it received a trace (of the soul); and by that I do not mean a part of the soul, but a kind of heat or light which emanated from the soul, and which, in the body, begat desires, pleasures, and pains. The body of the thus begotten animal was, therefore, not a body foreign (to life). The Soul, that had issued from the Divine Principle, remained tranquil according to her own nature, and was subsisting in herself, when that part, which was troubled by her own weakness, and was spontaneously fluctuating around when assailed by impulsions from without, first complained audibly by herself, and then in that part of the animal which is common to the soul and body, and communicated her disturbance to the entire living being. Thus when a deliberative assembly calmly examines some question,310 a confused mob, driven by hunger or excited by some passion, may come to spread trouble and disorder in the whole assembly. As long as such people keep quiet, the voice of the wise man may be heard by them; and as a result the crowd retains orderliness, its worse part remaining subordinate; otherwise the worst part dominates, while the better part remains silent, because the trouble hinders the crowd from listening to reason. Thus does evil come to reign in a city and in an assembly. Likewise evil reigns in him who allows himself to be dominated by this disorderly crowd of fears, desires and passions that he bears within his breast; and that will last until he reduce that crowd to obedience, until he become again the man he formerly was (before descending here below), and until he regulate his life (according to the better Man); what he then will grant to the body will be granted as to something foreign. As to him who lives now in one manner, and now in another, he is a man of mingled good and evil.
THIS DOCTRINE EXPLAINS THE MYTHS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS.

Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The divine soul God lodged in the head, to raise us, like plants which are not of earthly origin, to our kindred; for the head is nearest to heaven. He who is intent upon the gratification of his desires and cherishes the mortal soul, has all his ideas mortal, and is himself mortal in the truest sense. But he who seeks after knowledge and exercises the divine part of himself in godly and immortal thoughts, attains to truth and immortality, as far as is possible to man, and also to happiness, while he is training up within him the Divine Principle and indwelling power of order. There is only one way in which one person can benefit another; and that is by assigning to him his proper nurture and motion. To the motions of the soul answer the motions of the universe, and by the study of these the individual is restored to his original nature.
Thus we have finished the discussion of the universe, which, according to our original intention, has now been brought down to the creation of man. Completeness seems to require that something should be briefly said about other animals: first of women, who are probably degenerate and cowardly men. And when they degenerated, the gods implanted in men the desire of union with them, creating in man one animate substance and in woman another in the following manner:The outlet for liquids they connected with the living principle of the spinal marrow, which the man has the desire to emit into the fruitful womb of the woman; this is like a fertile field in which the seed is quickened and matured, and at last brought to light. When this desire is unsatisfied the man is over-mastered by the power of the generative organs, and the woman is subjected to disorders from the obstruction of the passages of the breath, until the two meet and pluck the fruit of the tree.
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And we should consider that God gave the sovereign part of the human soul to be the divinity of each one, being that part which, as we say, dwells at the top of the body, and inasmuch as we are a plant not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth, raises us from earth to our kindred who are in heaven. And in this we say truly; for the divine power suspended the head and root of us from that place where the generation of the soul first began, and thus made the whole body upright. When a man is always occupied with the cravings of desire and ambition, and is eagerly striving to satisfy them, all his thoughts must be mortal, and, as far as it is possible altogether to become such, he must be mortal every whit, because he has cherished his mortal part. But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine, if he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal; and since he is ever cherishing the divine power, and has the divinity within him in perfect order, he will be perfectly happy. Now there is only one way of taking care of things, and this is to give to each the food and motion which are natural to it. And the motions which are naturally akin to the Divine Principle within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe. These each man should follow, and correct the courses of the head which were corrupted at our birth, and by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, should assimilate the thinking being to the thought, renewing his original nature, and having assimilated them should attain to that perfect life which the gods have set before mankind, both for the present and the future.
Thus our original design of discoursing about the universe down to the creation of man is nearly completed. A brief mention may be made of the generation of other animals, so far as the subject admits of brevity; in this manner our argument will best attain a due proportion. On the subject of animals, then, the following remarks may be offered. Of the men who came into the world, those who were cowards or led unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second generation. And this was the reason why at that time the gods created in us the desire of sexual intercourse, contriving in man one animated substance, and in woman another, which they formed respectively in the following manner. The outlet for drink by which liquids pass through the lung under the kidneys and into the bladder, which receives and then by the pressure of the air emits them, was so fashioned by them as to penetrate also into the body of the marrow, which passes from the head along the neck and through the back, and which in the preceding discourse we have named the seed. And the seed having life, and becoming endowed with respiration, produces in that part in which it respires a lively desire of emission, and thus creates in us the love of procreation. Wherefore also in men the organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease, until at length the desire and love of the man and the woman, bringing them together and as it were plucking the fruit from the tree, sow in the womb, as in a field, animals unseen by reason of their smallness and without form; these again are separated and matured within; they are then finally brought out into the light, and thus the generation of animals is completed.

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