classes ::: God, Sanskrit, Goddess, Being, Force,
children :::
branches ::: Mahashakti, Shakti

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object:Shakti
alt:the Divine Shakti
datecreated:2020-08-28
class:God
language class:Sanskrit
class:Goddess
class:Being
class:Force

see also :::

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Letters_On_Yoga
Letters_On_Yoga_I
Letters_On_Yoga_III
Mother_or_The_Divine_Materialism
My_Burning_Heart
old_bookshelf
Questions_And_Answers_1950-1951
Questions_And_Answers_1954
Questions_And_Answers_1955
The_5_Dharma_Types
The_Integral_Yoga
The_Life_Divine
The_Mother_With_Letters_On_The_Mother
The_Synthesis_Of_Yoga

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.02_-_Shakti_and_Personal_Effort
1951-04-26_-_Irrevocable_transformation_-_The_divine_Shakti_-_glad_submission_-_Rejection,_integral_-_Consecration_-_total_self-forgetfulness_-_work
1951-05-07_-_A_Hierarchy_-_Transcendent,_universal,_individual_Divine_-_The_Supreme_Shakti_and_Creation_-_Inadequacy_of_words,_language
1954-07-14_-_The_Divine_and_the_Shakti_-_Personal_effort_-_Speaking_and_thinking_-_Doubt_-_Self-giving,_consecration_and_surrender_-_Mothers_use_of_flowers_-_Ornaments_and_protection
1955-03-30_-_Yoga-shakti_-_Energies_of_the_earth,_higher_and_lower_-_Illness,_curing_by_yogic_means_-_The_true_self_and_the_psychic_-_Solving_difficulties_by_different_methods
1955-06-22_-_Awakening_the_Yoga-shakti_-_The_thousand-petalled_lotus-_Reading,_how_far_a_help_for_yoga_-_Simple_and_complicated_combinations_in_men
1956-04-11_-_Self-creator_-_Manifestation_of_Time_and_Space_-_Brahman-Maya_and_Ishwara-Shakti_-_Personal_and_Impersonal
1956-04-18_-_Ishwara_and_Shakti,_seeing_both_aspects_-_The_Impersonal_and_the_divine_Person_-_Soul,_the_presence_of_the_divine_Person_-_Going_to_other_worlds,_exteriorisation,_dreams_-_Telling_stories_to_oneself
2.02_-_Brahman,_Purusha,_Ishwara_-_Maya,_Prakriti,_Shakti
4.16_-_The_Divine_Shakti
4.17_-_The_Action_of_the_Divine_Shakti
4.18_-_Faith_and_shakti
4.4.1.05_-_Ascent_and_Descent_of_the_Kundalini_Shakti

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.05_-_The_Synthesis_of_the_Systems
0.07_-_Letters_to_a_Sadhak
01.01_-_A_Yoga_of_the_Art_of_Life
01.04_-_Sri_Aurobindos_Gita
0.11_-_Letters_to_a_Sadhak
0_1954-08-25_-_what_is_this_personality?_and_when_will_she_come?
0_1958-05-30
0_1958-09-16_-_OM_NAMO_BHAGAVATEH
0_1959-06-03
0_1960-11-26
0_1961-07-28
0_1961-08-08
0_1962-02-06
0_1962-06-27
0_1962-06-30
0_1962-07-21
0_1962-07-25
0_1962-08-11
0_1962-09-08
0_1963-04-20
0_1963-05-11
0_1964-11-12
0_1965-07-28
0_1970-04-01
02.06_-_The_Integral_Yoga_and_Other_Yogas
03.01_-_The_Evolution_of_Consciousness
03.01_-_The_New_Year_Initiation
03.09_-_Buddhism_and_Hinduism
05.07_-_The_Observer_and_the_Observed
05.11_-_The_Soul_of_a_Nation
05.12_-_The_Soul_and_its_Journey
06.05_-_The_Story_of_Creation
10.02_-_Beyond_Vedanta
10.03_-_Life_in_and_Through_Death
1.01_-_Adam_Kadmon_and_the_Evolution
1.01_-_The_Four_Aids
1.01_-_The_Unexpected
1.01_-_Two_Powers_Alone
1.02.2.1_-_Brahman__Oneness_of_God_and_the_World
1.02.3.1_-_The_Lord
1.02.3.2_-_Knowledge_and_Ignorance
1.02.4.1_-_The_Worlds_-_Surya
1.02_-_Self-Consecration
1.02_-_Shakti_and_Personal_Effort
1.02_-_The_Recovery
1.03_-_Concerning_the_Archetypes,_with_Special_Reference_to_the_Anima_Concept
1.03_-_Meeting_the_Master_-_Meeting_with_others
1.03_-_Self-Surrender_in_Works_-_The_Way_of_The_Gita
1.03_-_The_House_Of_The_Lord
1.03_-_YIBHOOTI_PADA
1.04_-_KAI_VALYA_PADA
1.04_-_Money
1.04_-_Relationship_with_the_Divine
1.04_-_The_Divine_Mother_-_This_Is_She
1.04_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda
1.04_-_The_Sacrifice_the_Triune_Path_and_the_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice
1.04_-_The_Silent_Mind
1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being
1.05_-_The_True_Doer_of_Works
1.05_-_Yoga_and_Hypnotism
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.06_-_The_Four_Powers_of_the_Mother
1.06_-_The_Greatness_of_the_Individual
1.078_-_Kumbhaka_and_Concentration_of_Mind
1.07_-_Bridge_across_the_Afterlife
1.07_-_The_Farther_Reaches_of_Human_Nature
1.08_-_Sri_Aurobindos_Descent_into_Death
1.08_-_The_Supreme_Will
1.096_-_Powers_that_Accrue_in_the_Practice
1.097_-_Sublimation_of_Object-Consciousness
1.09_-_Equality_and_the_Annihilation_of_Ego
1.09_-_Saraswati_and_Her_Consorts
1.09_-_The_Pure_Existent
1.1.01_-_The_Divine_and_Its_Aspects
1.1.02_-_Sachchidananda
1.1.04_-_The_Self_or_Atman
11.06_-_The_Mounting_Fire
1.10_-_Conscious_Force
1.10_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.10_-_The_Three_Modes_of_Nature
1.11_-_The_Kalki_Avatar
1.11_-_The_Master_of_the_Work
1.11_-_Works_and_Sacrifice
1.1.2_-_Commentary
1.12_-_The_Divine_Work
1.13_-_Conclusion_-_He_is_here
1.13_-_The_Supermind_and_the_Yoga_of_Works
1.14_-_The_Principle_of_Divine_Works
1.15_-_The_Supramental_Consciousness
1.15_-_The_Supreme_Truth-Consciousness
1.18_-_The_Divine_Worker
1.19_-_Life
1.2.02_-_Qualities_Needed_for_Sadhana
1.2.04_-_Sincerity
1.2.07_-_Surrender
1.2.10_-_Opening
1.2.11_-_Patience_and_Perseverance
1.3.01_-_Peace__The_Basis_of_the_Sadhana
1.3.04_-_Peace
1.3.2.01_-_I._The_Entire_Purpose_of_Yoga
1.4.02_-_The_Divine_Force
17.11_-_A_Prayer
1951-04-21_-_Sri_Aurobindos_letter_on_conditions_for_doing_yoga_-_Aspiration,_tapasya,_surrender_-_The_lower_vital_-_old_habits_-_obsession_-_Sri_Aurobindo_on_choice_and_the_double_life_-_The_old_fiasco_-_inner_realisation_and_outer_change
1951-04-26_-_Irrevocable_transformation_-_The_divine_Shakti_-_glad_submission_-_Rejection,_integral_-_Consecration_-_total_self-forgetfulness_-_work
1951-05-05_-_Needs_and_desires_-_Discernment_-_sincerity_and_true_perception_-_Mantra_and_its_effects_-_Object_in_action-_to_serve_-_relying_only_on_the_Divine
1951-05-07_-_A_Hierarchy_-_Transcendent,_universal,_individual_Divine_-_The_Supreme_Shakti_and_Creation_-_Inadequacy_of_words,_language
1954-07-14_-_The_Divine_and_the_Shakti_-_Personal_effort_-_Speaking_and_thinking_-_Doubt_-_Self-giving,_consecration_and_surrender_-_Mothers_use_of_flowers_-_Ornaments_and_protection
1954-07-21_-_Mistakes_-_Success_-_Asuras_-_Mental_arrogance_-_Difficulty_turned_into_opportunity_-_Mothers_use_of_flowers_-_Conversion_of_men_governed_by_adverse_forces
1954-08-11_-_Division_and_creation_-_The_gods_and_human_formations_-_People_carry_their_desires_around_them
1954-08-18_-_Mahalakshmi_-_Maheshwari_-_Mahasaraswati_-_Determinism_and_freedom_-_Suffering_and_knowledge_-_Aspects_of_the_Mother
1954-11-10_-_Inner_experience,_the_basis_of_action_-_Keeping_open_to_the_Force_-_Faith_through_aspiration_-_The_Mothers_symbol_-_The_mind_and_vital_seize_experience_-_Degrees_of_sincerity_-Becoming_conscious_of_the_Divine_Force
1955-03-30_-_Yoga-shakti_-_Energies_of_the_earth,_higher_and_lower_-_Illness,_curing_by_yogic_means_-_The_true_self_and_the_psychic_-_Solving_difficulties_by_different_methods
1955-06-22_-_Awakening_the_Yoga-shakti_-_The_thousand-petalled_lotus-_Reading,_how_far_a_help_for_yoga_-_Simple_and_complicated_combinations_in_men
1955-11-16_-_The_significance_of_numbers_-_Numbers,_astrology,_true_knowledge_-_Divines_Love_flowers_for_Kali_puja_-_Desire,_aspiration_and_progress_-_Determining_ones_approach_to_the_Divine_-_Liberation_is_obtained_through_austerities_-_...
1956-04-11_-_Self-creator_-_Manifestation_of_Time_and_Space_-_Brahman-Maya_and_Ishwara-Shakti_-_Personal_and_Impersonal
1956-04-18_-_Ishwara_and_Shakti,_seeing_both_aspects_-_The_Impersonal_and_the_divine_Person_-_Soul,_the_presence_of_the_divine_Person_-_Going_to_other_worlds,_exteriorisation,_dreams_-_Telling_stories_to_oneself
1956-05-16_-_Needs_of_the_body,_not_true_in_themselves_-_Spiritual_and_supramental_law_-_Aestheticised_Paganism_-_Morality,_checks_true_spiritual_effort_-_Effect_of_supramental_descent_-_Half-lights_and_false_lights
1956-05-30_-_Forms_as_symbols_of_the_Force_behind_-_Art_as_expression_of_contact_with_the_Divine_-_Supramental_psychological_perfection_-_Division_of_works_-_The_Ashram,_idle_stupidities
1956-11-07_-_Thoughts_created_by_forces_of_universal_-_Mind_Our_own_thought_hardly_exists_-_Idea,_origin_higher_than_mind_-_The_Synthesis_of_Yoga,_effect_of_reading
1956-11-14_-_Conquering_the_desire_to_appear_good_-_Self-control_and_control_of_the_life_around_-_Power_of_mastery_-_Be_a_great_yogi_to_be_a_good_teacher_-_Organisation_of_the_Ashram_school_-_Elementary_discipline_of_regularity
1.lla_-_Word,_Thought,_Kula_and_Akula_cease_to_be_there!
1.srm_-_The_Necklet_of_Nine_Gems
20.01_-_Charyapada_-_Old_Bengali_Mystic_Poems
2.01_-_Mandala_One
2.01_-_On_Books
2.01_-_The_Object_of_Knowledge
2.01_-_The_Two_Natures
2.01_-_The_Yoga_and_Its_Objects
2.02_-_Brahman,_Purusha,_Ishwara_-_Maya,_Prakriti,_Shakti
2.02_-_Meeting_With_the_Goddess
2.02_-_On_Letters
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English
2.02_-_The_Synthesis_of_Devotion_and_Knowledge
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.03_-_The_Supreme_Divine
2.05_-_Apotheosis
2.07_-_The_Upanishad_in_Aphorism
2.08_-_God_in_Power_of_Becoming
2.09_-_On_Sadhana
2.09_-_The_Release_from_the_Ego
2.1.01_-_The_Central_Process_of_the_Sadhana
2.1.02_-_Classification_of_the_Parts_of_the_Being
2.1.02_-_Nature_The_World-Manifestation
2.1.03_-_Man_and_Superman
2.1.1_-_The_Nature_of_the_Vital
2.12_-_On_Miracles
2.12_-_The_Origin_of_the_Ignorance
2.1.2_-_The_Vital_and_Other_Levels_of_Being
2.1.3_-_Wrong_Movements_of_the_Vital
2.1.4_-_The_Lower_Vital_Being
2.14_-_The_Origin_and_Remedy_of_Falsehood,_Error,_Wrong_and_Evil
2.15_-_On_the_Gods_and_Asuras
2.15_-_Reality_and_the_Integral_Knowledge
2.17_-_December_1938
2.17_-_The_Progress_to_Knowledge_-_God,_Man_and_Nature
2.17_-_The_Soul_and_Nature
2.18_-_January_1939
2.19_-_Feb-May_1939
2.2.01_-_Work_and_Yoga
2.2.02_-_Consciousness_and_the_Inconscient
2.2.03_-_The_Divine_Force_in_Work
2.21_-_Towards_the_Supreme_Secret
2.22_-_1941-1943
2.22_-_The_Supreme_Secret
2.23_-_The_Conditions_of_Attainment_to_the_Gnosis
2.24_-_Gnosis_and_Ananda
2.24_-_The_Message_of_the_Gita
2.25_-_List_of_Topics_in_Each_Talk
2.25_-_The_Triple_Transformation
2.26_-_The_Ascent_towards_Supermind
2.28_-_Rajayoga
2.3.01_-_Aspiration_and_Surrender_to_the_Mother
2.3.02_-_Mantra_and_Japa
2.3.02_-_The_Supermind_or_Supramental
2.3.03_-_Integral_Yoga
2.3.04_-_The_Mother's_Force
2.3.05_-_Sadhana_through_Work_for_the_Mother
2.3.07_-_The_Mother_in_Visions,_Dreams_and_Experiences
29.05_-_The_Bride_of_Brahman
29.06_-_There_is_also_another,_similar_or_parallel_story_in_the_Veda_about_the_God_Agni,_about_the_disappearance_of_this
3.00.2_-_Introduction
30.09_-_Lines_of_Tantra_(Charyapada)
3.02_-_King_and_Queen
3.08_-_The_Mystery_of_Love
3.09_-_The_Return_of_the_Soul
31.01_-_The_Heart_of_Bengal
3.1.02_-_Spiritual_Evolution_and_the_Supramental
31.02_-_The_Mother-_Worship_of_the_Bengalis
31.05_-_Vivekananda
3.2.05_-_The_Yoga_of_the_Bhagavad_Gita
3.2.06_-_The_Adwaita_of_Shankaracharya
3.2.07_-_Tantra
3.2.09_-_The_Teachings_of_Some_Modern_Indian_Yogis
3.2.2_-_Sleep
3.2.4_-_Sex
33.03_-_Muraripukur_-_I
33.05_-_Muraripukur_-_II
3.3.1_-_Illness_and_Health
34.06_-_Hymn_to_Sindhu
34.07_-_The_Bride_of_Brahman
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus
36.07_-_An_Introduction_To_The_Vedas
37.03_-_Satyakama_And_Upakoshala
3.7.1.05_-_The_Significance_of_Rebirth
3.7.2.04_-_The_Higher_Lines_of_Karma
38.01_-_Asceticism_and_Renunciation
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
40.01_-_November_24,_1926
4.01_-_The_Principle_of_the_Integral_Yoga
4.03_-_The_Psychology_of_Self-Perfection
4.04_-_Conclusion
4.07_-_Purification-Intelligence_and_Will
4.08_-_The_Liberation_of_the_Spirit
4.09_-_REGINA
4.1.01_-_The_Intellect_and_Yoga
4.10_-_The_Elements_of_Perfection
4.1.1.05_-_The_Central_Process_of_the_Yoga
4.13_-_The_Action_of_Equality
4.14_-_The_Power_of_the_Instruments
4.15_-_Soul-Force_and_the_Fourfold_Personality
4.16_-_The_Divine_Shakti
4.17_-_The_Action_of_the_Divine_Shakti
4.18_-_Faith_and_shakti
4.19_-_The_Nature_of_the_supermind
4.20_-_The_Intuitive_Mind
4.2.4.05_-_Agni
4.24_-_The_supramental_Sense
4.25_-_Towards_the_supramental_Time_Vision
4.26_-_The_Supramental_Time_Consciousness
4.3.1_-_The_Hostile_Forces_and_the_Difficulties_of_Yoga
4.3.2.09_-_Overmind_Experiences_and_the_Supermind
4.3.4_-_Accidents,_Possession,_Madness
4.4.1.05_-_Ascent_and_Descent_of_the_Kundalini_Shakti
4.4.1.07_-_Experiences_of_Ascent_and_Descent
4.4.2.05_-_Ascent_and_the_Psychic_Being
4.4.4.02_-_Peace,_Calm,_Quiet_as_a_Basis_for_the_Descent
4.4.4.05_-_The_Descent_of_Force_or_Power
4.4.6.01_-_Sensations_in_the_Inner_Centres
5.03_-_ADAM_AS_THE_FIRST_ADEPT
5.03_-_The_Divine_Body
5.1.01_-_Terminology
5.1.02_-_The_Gods
5.4.01_-_Notes_on_Root-Sounds
6.02_-_STAGES_OF_THE_CONJUNCTION
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
Conversations_with_Sri_Aurobindo
Guru_Granth_Sahib_first_part
Liber_71_-_The_Voice_of_the_Silence_-_The_Two_Paths_-_The_Seven_Portals
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the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Riddle_of_this_World
Verses_of_Vemana

PRIMARY CLASS

Being
Force
God
Goddess
SIMILAR TITLES
Mahashakti
Shakti

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

Shakti: A Sanskrit word, meaning power, strength, might, of feminine gender; in Tantric (see Tantra) literature the female generative power of energy in the universe, worshipped by the religious as the wife of some deity or other, e.g., as Durga, wife of Shiva. (See Shaktism.) In occult terminology, Shakti or Sakti is the crown of the astral light (q.v.).

Shakti, containing the world and pervading it as well as trans- cending it, manifesting all cosmic aspects. But what is most important for us is that it manifests as a transcending Light,

Shakti etc. ::: see sakti etc.

Shakti —in Vedic lore the bride of Shiva.

Shakti is the prototype of the Shekinah (ft'.).

Shaktism, Saktism: The philosophy, supported by liturgy and ritual of various degrees of purity, of the believers in the Tantra (q.v.). It explains Brahma as absolute spirit which, on becoming Shiva and Shakti, the male and female principles, produces through maya (q.v.) from itself as the One in a series of 36 tattvas (q.v.) the Many, a process which at the end of the world is made to retrogress and again progress periodically. -- K.F.L.

Shaktism: The name of one of the three great divisions of modern Hinduism (the other two being Shaivism and Vishnuism); the Shaktas worship Shakti—rather than Shiva and Vishnu—and regard it as the embodiment of the power that supports all that lives and which upholds the universe; Shakti is portrayed as the female aspect of the Ultimate Principle, and deified as the wife of Shiva.

shakti, chandibhavah, sraddha, iti shaktichatusthayam) ::: virya, sakti,Can.d.ibhava and sraddha: these constitute the sakti catus.t.aya.

shakti, etc. ::: see sakti, etc. shakti

SHAKTI. ::: Force, energy; the divine or cosmic energy.

shaktipat&

shakti &


TERMS ANYWHERE

achintya shakti. ::: inscrutable power; ineffable force

adhara-siddhi ::: the perfection of the mental-vital-physical system, adhara-siddhi consisting of the siddhi of the first four catus.t.ayas, so that the adhara "becomes a perfect instrument for the Purushottama, the Purusha and Shakti to carry on their Lila".

adya mahasakti (adya mahashakti) ::: the original cosmic Power adya (mahasakti), the universal sakti on the highest plane of the eternal manifestation. adya ady a par parasakti

adya parasakti (parameswara-âdyâ parâshakti) ::: the supreme Lord one with his original supreme Power; the "biune" duality of isvara-sakti on the highest plane of existence. paramesvara-paramesvari

adya sakti (Adya Shakti) ::: original Power; the supreme divine Consciousness and Power above the worlds; the Transcendental Mother.

adya-sakti (adyashakti; adya-shakti) ::: the original Power (sakti), adya-sakti both transcendent (adya parasakti) and universal (adya mahasakti).

Agama: (Skr.) One of a number of Indian treatises composed since the 1st cent. A.D. which are outside the Vedic (q.v.) tradition, but are regarded authoritative by the followers of Vishnuism, Shivaism, and Shaktism. Amid mythology, epic and ritualistic matter they contain much that is philosophical. -- K.F.L.

agananashakti ::: infinite variations of energy.

Agni sakti (Agni Shakti) ::: the force of fire.

akali-sakti (Mahakali-shakti) ::: the Mahakali aspect of the divine sakti as it manifests in the human temperament.Mah Mahakali

akasa-sakti (akasha-shakti) ::: the power of the akasa (to resist the akasa-sakti tapas).

All-ruler who by his Shakti, i.e. conscious power, manifests him- self in time and governs the oniveise.

All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme ; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her wor^. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious notion in you and through you.

Amal: “This strikes me as a reference by Sri Aurobindo to himself and the Mother. The Mother may not have arrived in Pondicherry when this line was written but Sri Aurobindo must have known that the Divine Shakti incarnate was needed to be on earth for the fullness of his work.”

anandadharan.asakti (anandadharanashakti) ::: the power to sustain anandadharanasakti ananda of any intensity ananda

Aniruddha-sakti (Aniruddha-shakti) ::: Mahasarasvati as the sakti or . 18 devi expressing the Aniruddha aspect of the fourfold isvara.

apana-sakti (utthapana-shakti; utthapana shakti) ::: the force of utthapana, based on a combination of the siddhis of the body, especially laghima and mahima..V

arogyasakti (arogyashakti; arogya-shakti; arogya shakti) ::: the force arogyasakti of health maintaining arogya and repelling tendencies or attacks of roga.

asakti (adya parashakti) ::: the original supreme Power (par sakti), the transcendent sakti who "stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme".

asakti (ashakti) ::: incapacity; lack of sakti. asakti asam asamahita ahita as asanta-manusa

ashakti ::: see asakti.

atmasakti [Atmashakti] ::: Self Power.

Atmashakti ::: see atmasakti

atmaslagha ::: self-pride, self-confidence, knowledge of one's own might; with purification it becomes the divine Self within rejoicing in the Shakti of God as it pours itself out through the human adhara.

"Aware of the Divine as the Master of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his Shakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her rule of light and power within us.” The Life Divine

“Aware of the Divine as the Master of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his Shakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her rule of light and power within us.” The Life Divine

Bharatasakti (Bharata Shakti) ::: [the sakti of India].

bhas.asakti (bhashashakti) ::: linguistic faculty; the power of underbhasasakti standing languages, especially by intuition, inspiration and other means proper to vijñana.

brahman-sakti (Brahman-Shakti) ::: substance-force. [see brahman and sakti]

Brahman. The Shakti or Power of the Eternal becomes then a power of illusion only and the world becomes incomprehensible, a mystery of cosmic madness, an eternal delirium of the Eternal.

brahmasakti (brahmashakti) ::: the soul-power of knowledge which brahmasakti reveals itself in the brahman.a.

brahmasakti (Brahmashakti) ::: [the soul-power of the brahmana].

Shakti: A Sanskrit word, meaning power, strength, might, of feminine gender; in Tantric (see Tantra) literature the female generative power of energy in the universe, worshipped by the religious as the wife of some deity or other, e.g., as Durga, wife of Shiva. (See Shaktism.) In occult terminology, Shakti or Sakti is the crown of the astral light (q.v.).

Shakti, containing the world and pervading it as well as trans- cending it, manifesting all cosmic aspects. But what is most important for us is that it manifests as a transcending Light,

Shakti etc. ::: see sakti etc.

Shakti —in Vedic lore the bride of Shiva.

(Shakti) is every^vhere. The perfect dynamism is there in the

Shakti is the prototype of the Shekinah (ft'.).

Shaktism, Saktism: The philosophy, supported by liturgy and ritual of various degrees of purity, of the believers in the Tantra (q.v.). It explains Brahma as absolute spirit which, on becoming Shiva and Shakti, the male and female principles, produces through maya (q.v.) from itself as the One in a series of 36 tattvas (q.v.) the Many, a process which at the end of the world is made to retrogress and again progress periodically. -- K.F.L.

Shaktism: The name of one of the three great divisions of modern Hinduism (the other two being Shaivism and Vishnuism); the Shaktas worship Shakti—rather than Shiva and Vishnu—and regard it as the embodiment of the power that supports all that lives and which upholds the universe; Shakti is portrayed as the female aspect of the Ultimate Principle, and deified as the wife of Shiva.

buddhisakti (buddhishakti) ::: the power, capacity and right state of buddhisakti activity of the thinking mind, one of the four kinds of sakti forming the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya. 40

buddhisaktih. (vishuddhata, prakasha, vichitrabodha, jnanadharanasamarthyam iti buddhishaktih) ::: purity, clarity, variety of understanding, capacity to hold all knowledge: these constitute the power of the thinking mind.

But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to con- centrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or impulse, the sure indi- cation of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you wfil realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works ; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be

"By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above — as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements — it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter — if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga

“By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above—as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action of Force. The Force I speak of is a Force for illumination, transformation, purification, all that has to be done in the yoga, for removal of hostile forces and the wrong movements—it is also of course for external work, whether great or small in appearance does not matter—if that is part of the Divine Will. I do not mean any personal force egoistic or rajasic.” Letters on Yoga

“By Force I mean not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above—as peace comes from above and wideness also, so does this Force (Shakti). Nothing, not even thinking or meditating can be done without some action

caitanyakendra (chaitanyakendra) ::: centre of consciousness; the "true centre" which "is a luminous formulation of the one Consciousness and a pure channel and instrument of the one Existence", supporting "the individual manifestation and action of the universal Force" and revealing "the true Person in us, the central eternal being, an everlasting being of the Supreme, a power and portion of the transcendent Shakti".

cakra-sakti (chakra-shakti) ::: strength of the cakra or cakras, recakra-sakti ferring especially to the kamacakra, but possibly including the nabhicakra

catus.t.aya (shakti chatusthaya; shakti-chatusthaya) ::: the second catus.t.aya, the quaternary of power, consisting of virya, sakti, daivi prakr.ti (or devibhava or Can.d.ibhava), and sraddha. sakti jiva sakti

chakra ::: Chakra A centre of energy located in the subtle body where the subtle nerve channels converge like the spokes of a wheel; six major chakras lie within the central channel. When awakened, Kundalini shakti flows upward from the base of the spine through these six centres to the seventh chakra, the sahasrara (the thousand-petalled spiritual energy centre at the crown of the head).

chit shakti. ::: power of consciousness or intelligence

Chittashakti ::: see cittasakti

cit-sakti (Chit Shakti) ::: consciousness-force, conscious force; the divine Energy; the Mother.

cit-sakti (chit-shakti; chitshakti) ::: consciousness-force, same as citcit-sakti tapas; "the Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence" who "is the universal creatrix".

cittasakti (Chittashakti) ::: [the full power (and perfection) of the citta]. ::: cittasaktih [nominative]

cittasakti (chittashakti) ::: the power, capacity and right state of activcittasakti ity of the emotional being, one of the four kinds of sakti forming the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya.

cittasaktih. (snigdhata, tejahslagha, kalyanasraddha, premasamarthyam, iti chittashaktih) ::: richness of feeling, assertion of psychic force, faith in the universal good, capacity for unbounded love: these constitute the power of the emotional being.

compatible with the shakti of Shiva. The expres¬

::: "Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.” Letters on Yoga

“Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.” Letters on Yoga

dehasakti (dehashakti; deha-shakti) ::: the power, capacity and right dehasakti state of activity of the physical being, one of the four kinds of sakti forming the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya.

dehasakti (Dehashakti) ::: [the full power (and perfection) of the body]. ::: dehasaktih [nominative]

dehashakti) ::: the sense of a greatness of sustaining force, assertion of .. strength, lightness, the capacity to hold all workings of energy: these constitute the power of the body.

demand and the full dedication of all you possess and receive and all your power of acquisition to the Divine Shakti and her work are the signs of this freedom. Any perturbation of mind with regard to money and its use, any claim, any grudging is a sure index of some imperfection or bondage.

devihasya (devihasya; devi-hasya; devi hasya; devihasyam) ::: laughter devihasya of the Goddess, "the laughter of the Shakti doing luminously the work of the Divine and taking his Ananda in all the worlds"; a union of the .. four kinds of hasya proper to the four aspects of devibhava.

dharan.asakti (dharanashakti) ::: the "faculty of holding"; the body"s "power to hold whatever force is brought into it by the spirit and to contain its action without spilling and wasting it or itself getting cracked"; same as dharan.asamarthya. dh dharanasamarthya

dharanashakti ::: see dharan.asakti. dh dharane aran.e asamarthya

Divine, the divine Shakti.

Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jlva in the lower nature.

divya shakti. ::: divine energy or power

FA1.5EH00D. An extreme result of Avidyd. It is created by an Asuric power which inicrv'cnes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in know- ledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or ROLwl Mdyd puts forward its o\vn perverted consciousness as a true knowledge and its wilful dis- tortions or reversals of the Truth as the verily of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. When- ever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of

falsehood ::: “It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, …” Letters on Yoga

  "Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

“Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power.” The Synthesis of Yoga

". . . Force is inherent in Existence. Shiva and Kali, Brahman and Shakti are one and not two who are separable. Force inherent in existence may be at rest or it may be in motion, but when it is at rest, it exists none the less and is not abolished, diminished or in any way essentially altered.” The Life Divine

“… Force is inherent in Existence. Shiva and Kali, Brahman and Shakti are one and not two who are separable. Force inherent in existence may be at rest or it may be in motion, but when it is at rest, it exists none the less and is not abolished, diminished or in any way essentially altered.” The Life Divine

"Force is the essential Shakti; Energy is the working drive of the Force, its active dynamism; Power is the capacity born of the Force; . . . .” Letters on Yoga

“Force is the essential Shakti; Energy is the working drive of the Force, its active dynamism; Power is the capacity born of the Force; …” Letters on Yoga

goddess ::: “The faith in the divine Shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit’s omnipotence.” The Life Divine

Guiding Unv of experience ::: The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human conscious~ ness to the Divine Consciousness ; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control ; it is that surrender and that control which bring tbs guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is so absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind fonnaljons and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the bands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine^tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within. That is the inner light we must Uberate ; for the light of thb inmost soul is our one sure illumioation so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-

hladini sakti (Hladini Shakti) ::: [delight-giving power].

If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you.

If difficulties occur, they raise not mental doubts or an inert acquiescence, but the firm belief that, with sincere consecration, the Divine Shakti will remove the difllcultics and with this belief a greater turning to her and dependence on her for that purpose.



In proportion as the surrender and self-consecration progress the sadhaka becomes conscious of the Divine Shakti doing the sadhana, pouring into him more and more of herself, founding in him the freedom and perfection of the Divine Nature. The more this conscious process replaces his own effort, the more rapid and true becomes his progress. But it cannot completely replace the necessity of personal effort until the surrender and consecration arc pure and complete from top to bottom.

INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.

Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.

Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.

Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.

Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.

In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.

There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.

Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.

Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.

Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.

The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.

Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.

Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.

Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.

Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.

Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.

Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.

By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.

The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.

Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.

The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.

Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.

Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.

Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.

The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.

This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.

Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.

Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.

The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.

Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.

It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.

If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.

(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.

(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.

Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.

It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.

Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.


In these activities is expressed the conscious Will or Shakti of the Spirit moved to manifest its being in infinite ways, a Will or

In yoga one uses the lance wiU and compels the vital to sub- mit itself to lapasi-a so that It may become calm, strong, obe- dient— or else calls down the calm from above obliging the vital to renounce desire and become quiet and receptive. The vital is a good instrument but a bad master- If you allow it to follow its likes and dislikes, its fancies, its desires, its bad habits, it becomes your master and peace and happiness are no longer possible. It becomes not your instrument or the instrument of the Divine Shakti, but of any force of the Ignorance or even any hostile force that is able to seize and use it.

isvara-sakti (Ishwara-Shakti) ::: the dual principle of the Lord [isvara] and his executive Power [sakti].

isvara-sakti (ishwara-shakti) ::: "the dynamic Duality" of isvara and isvara-sakti sakti, which in "the superconscient truth of the Self-Existence . . . are fused and implied in each other, one and indistinguishable, but in the spiritual-pragmatic truth of the dynamism of the universe, they emerge and become active . . . as a dual principle".isvara

isvari sakti (Ishwari Shakti) ::: Divine Conscious Force and World Mother.

It is here, when this foundation has been secured, that the practice of Asana and Pranayama come in and can then bear their perfect fruits. By itself the control of the mind and moral being only puts our normal consciousness into the right preliminary condition; it cannot bring about that evolution or manifestation of the higher psychic being which is necessary for the greater aims of Yoga. In order to bring about this manifestation the present nodus of the vital and physical body with the mental being has to be loosened and the way made clear for the ascent through the greater psychic being to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Pranayama. Asana is used by the Rajayoga only in its easiest and most natural position, that naturally taken by the body when seated and gathered together, but with the back and head strictly erect and in a straight line, so that there may be no deflection of the spinal cord. The object of the latter rule is obviously connected with the theory of the six chakras and the circulation of the vital energy between the muladhara and the brahmarandhra. The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears the nervous system; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will according to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being; it gives us control of all the five habitual operations of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality are possible to the normal life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings into the waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Purusha on each of the ascending planes. Coupled with the use of the mantra it brings the divine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadhi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method. Rajayogic concentration is divided into four stages; it commences with the drawing both of the mind and senses from outward things, proceeds to the holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of all other ideas and mental activities, then to the prolonged absorption of the mind in this object, finally, to the complete ingoing of the consciousness by which it is lost to all outward mental activity in the oneness of Samadhi. The real object of this mental discipline is to draw away the mind from the outward and the mental world into union with the divine Being. Th
   refore in the first three stages use has to be made of some mental means or support by which the mind, accustomed to run about from object to object, shall fix on one alone, and that one must be something which represents the idea of the Divine. It is usually a name or a form or a mantra by which the thought can be fixed in the sole knowledge or adoration of the Lord. By this concentration on the idea the mind enters from the idea into its reality, into which it sinks silent, absorbed, unified. This is the traditional method. There are, however, others which are equally of a Rajayogic character, since they use the mental and psychical being as key. Some of them are directed rather to the quiescence of the mind than to its immediate absorption, as the discipline by which the mind is simply watched and allowed to exhaust its habit of vagrant thought in a purposeless running from which it feels all sanction, purpose and interest withdrawn, and that, more strenuous and rapidly effective, by which all outward-going thought is excluded and the mind forced to sink into itself where in its absolute quietude it can only
   reflect the pure Being or pass away into its superconscient existence. The method differs, the object and the result are the same. Here, it might be supposed, the whole action and aim of Rajayoga must end. For its action is the stilling of the waves of consciousness, its manifold activities, cittavrtti, first, through a habitual replacing of the turbid rajasic activities by the quiet and luminous sattwic, then, by the stilling of all activities; and its object is to enter into silent communion of soul and unity with the Divine. As a matter of fact we find that the system of Rajayoga includes other objects,—such as the practice and use of occult powers,—some of which seem to be unconnected with and even inconsistent with its main purpose. These powers or siddhis are indeed frequently condemned as dangers and distractions which draw away the Yogin from his sole legitimate aim of divine union. On the way, th
   refore, it would naturally seem as if they ought to be avoided; and once the goal is reached, it would seem that they are then frivolous and superfluous. But Rajayoga is a psychic science and it includes the attainment of all the higher states of consciousness and their powers by which the mental being rises towards the superconscient as well as its ultimate and supreme possibility of union with the Highest. Moreover, the Yogin, while in the body, is not always mentally inactive and sunk in Samadhi, and an account of the powers and states which are possible to him on the higher planes of his being is necessary to the completeness of the science. These powers and experiences belong, first, to the vital and mental planes above this physical in which we live, and are natural to the soul in the subtle body; as the dependence on the physical body decreases, these abnormal activities become possible and even manifest themselves without being sought for. They can be acquired and fixed by processes which the science gives, and their use then becomes subject to the will; or they can be allowed to develop of themselves and used only when they come, or when the Divine within moves us to use them; or else, even though thus naturally developing and acting, they may be rejected in a single-minded devotion to the one supreme goal of the Yoga. Secondly, there are fuller, greater powers belonging to the supramental planes which are the very powers of the Divine in his spiritual and supramentally ideative being. These cannot be acquired at all securely or integrally by personal effort, but can only come from above, or else can become natural to the man if and when he ascends beyond mind and lives in the spiritual being, power, consciousness and ideation. They then become, not abnormal and laboriously acquired siddhis, but simply the very nature and method of his action, if he still continues to be active in the world-existence.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 539-40-41-42


jiva-sakti (jiva-shakti) ::: the soul (jiva) that has merged its active injiva-sakti dividuality in the working of the universal sakti, but is aware of its personal existence as the individual purus.a "enabling by his participation the divine Shakti to do in him the works and the will of the Ishwara" and "enjoying all the relations with him [the isvara] which are created by her workings".

jiva (shakti jiva) ::: the soul (jiva) in the state in which it "has become an individualised form and action of the divine Shakti" or else "disappears into and becomes one with the Shakti" so that "there is then only the play of the Shakti with the Ishwara". sakti marga sakti

jnana-sakti (Jnana Shakti) ::: power of knowledge.

kālī ::: black, dark colored; epithet of the goddess Durga (invincible one), wife of Shiva (the destroyer), goddess of destruction, the power (shakti) with which Shiva acts.

Kali: Hindu goddess of time, wife of Shakti or Shiva, said to be the Mother, creator of all things. The personification of cosmic force.

KALI. ::: The Divine Shakti ; the Dark Face of the Universal

:::   "Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity. . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

“Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity….” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

kriya-sakti (Kriya Shakti) ::: power of process and action.

kriyasakti (kriyashakti) ::: power of action.

ksatrasakti (Kshatrashakti) ::: [the (soul-)power of the ksatriya].

ks.atrasakti (kshatrashakti) ::: the soul-power of will and strength ksatrasakti which reveals itself in the ks.atriya.

Kshatrashakti ::: see ksatrasakti

KUNDALINI. ::: There is a Yoga-Shakti lying coiled or asleep in the inner body, not active. When one does yoga, this force uncoils itself and rises upward to meet the Divine Consciousness and Force that are waiting above us. When this happens, when

Madhav: “This is another key idea in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, that Nature, what is called Prakriti in Indian philosophy, is not different, not alien to the Purusha. Nature is not foreign to the soul, to God. It is a conscious front of God. Scratch Nature, look behind the exterior of Nature and you will find God. The apparent difference, distinction between Nature and God is only a superficial appearance. Nature is really a power of God. It is devatma shakti, the self-power of God—svagunair nigudham lost in its qualitative workings. She is not separate; conscious, not something unconscious. Nature is aware that it is only a front of God behind.” The Book of the Divine Mother

mahapranasakti (Mahaprana Shakti) ::: [Cosmic life-force].

mahasakti (mahashakti) ::: the cosmic sakti of the isvara, "the univermahasakti sal Mother", who "works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made".. .Mahasarasvati

mahasakti (Mahashakti) ::: [the great sakti], the universal Mother.

mahashakti. ::: great power; divine creative energy

mahashakti ::: see mahasakti.

Mahashakti she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces.

MAHESHWARI ::: goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination; ~ TSOY, 4.18 - Faith and shakti

mah, premah, dasyalipsa atmasamarpanam iti shudrashaktih) ::: desire, love, the urge towards service, self-giving: these express the sūdra soul-power.

Mantra: A Sanskrit term meaning an incantation consisting of a sacred formula, usually a quotation from the Vedas. The word has come, especially in occult usage, to mean a spell or charm. In Shaktism and elsewhere, the holy syllables to which, as manifestations of the eternal word or sound, great mystic significance and power is ascribed.

Mantra: (Skr.) Pious thought couched in repeated prayerful utterances, for meditation or charm. Also the poetic portion of the Veda (q.v.). In Shaktism (q.v.) and elsewhere the holy syllables to which as manifestations of the eternal word or sound (cf. iabda, vac, aksara) is ascribed great mystic significance and power. -- K.F.L.

marga (shakti marga) ::: the path of yoga whose foundation is sakti.

maya-sakti (maya-shakti) ::: force of maya. maya-sakti

Mind and the Divine Sakti ::: Be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that arc beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and com- plexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehen- sion ; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth.

mleccha sakti (Mlechchha Shakti) ::: [a mleccha Energy].

mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many-sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Supreme and far above all she creates.” The Mother ::: "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.

"That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her [the Mother"s] most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life.” *The Mother

:   "The Mother comes in order to bring down the Supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.” *Letters on the Mother

  "When one does sadhana, the inner consciousness begins to open and one is able to go inside and have all kinds of experiences there. As the sadhana progresses, one begins to live more and more in this inner being and the outer becomes more and more superficial. At first the inner consciousness seems to be the dream and the outer the waking reality. Afterwards the inner consciousness becomes the reality and the outer is felt by many as a dream or delusion, or else as something superficial and external. The inner consciousness begins to be a place of deep peace, light, happiness, love, closeness to the Divine or the presence of the Divine, the Mother.” Letters on Yoga :::   **mighty Mother, World-Mother, World-Mother"s.**


Mother, The ::: ...the Mother is One but she comes before us with differing aspects, many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe. The whom who we adore as the Mother is the Divine Consciousness Force that dominates all existence, one and yet so many sided that to follow her movement is impossible even for the quickest mind and for the freeest and most vast intelligence. The Mother is the Conciousness and Force of the Supreme and far above all she creates. But something of her ways can be seen and felt through her embodiments and the more seizable because more defined and limited temperament and action of the godess forms in who she consents to be manifest to her creatures. ::: There are three ways of being of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of Oneness with the Consciousness Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original Supreme shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal the cosmic Mahashakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the Divine Nature....
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 111


mother, universal ::: Sri Aurobindo: "What people mean by the formless svarûpa of the Mother, — they means usually her universal aspect. It is when she is experienced as a universal Existence and Power spread through the universe in which and by which all live. When one feels that Presence one begins to feel a universal peace, light, power, bliss without limits — that is her svarûpa.” *The Mother

   "The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist.” The Mother


One cannot become altogether this at once, but if one aspires at all times and calls in always the aid of the Divine Shakti \vith a true heart and straightforward will, one grows more and more into this consciousness.

Our surrender must be to the Divine Being through the Divine Mother: for it is towards or into the supreme Nature that our ascension has to take place and it can only be done by the supramental Shakti taking up our mentality and transforming it into her supramentality.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 372


parameshwara shakti. ::: the power of the supreme Lord

parashakti (Parashakti) ::: the supreme power.

parashakti. ::: supreme power

Philosophic speculations, heavily shrouded by "pre-logical" and symbolic language, started with the poetic, ritualistic Vedas (q.v.), luxuriating in polytheism and polyanthropoism, was then fostered by the Brahman caste in treatises called Aranyakas (q.v.) and Brahmanas (q.v.) and strongly promoted by members of the ruling caste who instituted philosophic congresses in which peripatetic teachers and women participated, and of which we know through the Upanishads (q.v.). Later, the main bulk of Indian Philosophy articulated itself organically into systems forming the nucleus for such famous schools as the Mimamsa and Vedanta, Sankhya and Yoga, Nyaya and Vaisesika, and those of Buddhism and Jainism (all of which see). Numerous other philosophic and quasi philosophic systems are found in the epic literature and elsewhere (cf., e.g., Shaktism, Shivaism, Trika, Vishnuism), or remain to be discovered. Much needs to be translated by competent philosophers.

power ::: “Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument.” Letters on Yoga

power ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument.” *Letters on Yoga

Prakriti ::: What is meant by Prakriti or Nature is the outer or executive side of the Shakti or Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. This outer side appears here to be mechanical, a play of the forces, Gunas, etc. Behind it is the living Consciousness and Force of the Divine, the divine Shakti. The Prakriti itself is divided into the lower and higher,—the lower is the Prakriti of the Ignorance, the Prakriti of mind, life and Matter separated in consciousness from the Divine; the higher is the Divine Prakriti of Sachchidananda with its manifesting power of supermind, always aware of the Divine and free from Ignorance and its consequences. Man so long as he is in the ignorance is subject to the lower Prakriti, but by spiritual evolution he becomes aware of the higher Nature and seeks to come into contact with it. He can ascend into it and it can descend into him—such an ascent and descent can transform the lower nature of mind, life and Matter.
   Ref: SABCL Vol. 22-23-24, Page: 287


PRAKRTI. ::: Prakrti is only the executive or working force; the Pow'er behind the Prakrti is Shakti. It b the Chit-Shakti in manifestation ::: that is the spiritual consciousness.

pranasakti (Prana Shakti) ::: 1. [life-energy]. ::: 2. [the full power (and perfection) of the life-force]. ::: pranasaktih [nominative]

pran.asakti (pranashakti; prana-shakti) ::: life-force, "a pervading vital pranasakti force other than the physical energy", which one can come to feel "concretely with a mental sense, see its courses and movements, and direct and act upon it immediately by the will"; pran.a as a universal force "which in various forms sustains or drives material energy in all physical things"; the power, capacity and right state of activity of the sūks.ma pran.a or vital being, one of the four kinds of sakti forming the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya.

puissance ::: “Aware of the Divine as the Master of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his Shakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her rule of light and power within us.” The Life Divine

(purnata, prasannata, samata, bhogasamarthyam, iti pranashaktih) ::: fullness, clearness, equality, capacity for enjoyment: these constitute the power of the life-force. purna p

purus.a-prakr.ti (purusha-prakriti; purusha prakriti) ::: "the great dupurusa-prakrti ality, Soul-Nature" which "in aspect separate, is inseparable", the dualism of purus.a, "a witness recipient observing experiencing Consciousness which does not appear to act but for which all these activities inside and outside us seem to be undertaken and continue" and prakr.ti,"an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation". On the lower planes of existence, purus.a-prakr.ti differs from isvara-sakti in that "Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other", but at "a certain spiritual and supramental level", this dual power becomes "perfectly Two-in-one, the Master Soul with the Conscious Force within it, and its potentiality disowns all barriers and breaks through every limit"; in the perception of the world, the darsana of purus.a-prakr.ti in all things and beings rises to the vision of Kr.s.n.akali.

rogasakti (rogashakti) ::: the force of disease, seen as an immaterial agent of disorder attacking the body from outside.

rudrasakti(Rudrashakti) ::: [power of Rudra].

sakti (atma shakti) ::: "a high idea of the power that is in one"s self", an attribute of the ks.atriya, equivalent to atmaslagha.

sakti (Shakti) ::: Energy, Force, Strength, Will, Power; the self-existent, self-cognitive, self-effective Power of the Lord which expresses itself in the workings of prakrti. ::: saktih [nominative]

sakti-catustayam (Shakti-Chatushtaya) ::: [the catustaya of power].

sakti (daihiki shakti) ::: bodily force; same as dehasakti. 48

sakti (daihik shakti) ::: same as daihiki sakti.

sakti (drashta shakti) ::: sakti illumined by dr.s.t.i.. t.a sakti

sakti (para shakti; parâshakti) ::: higher Power; the supreme sakti of paramesvara, "the transcendent Mother" of whom the mahasakti on each plane is "the cosmic Soul and Personality" (same as adya parasakti).

saktiprayoga (shaktiprayoga; shakti-prayoga; shakti prayoga) ::: apsaktiprayoga plication of spiritual force by means of the siddhis of power

saktiriti (shaktiriti) ::: sakti (the power of the instruments) consists of. . . .

sakti (rudrashakti; rudra shakti) ::: vehement force; the soulpower or element of virya that expresses the personality of the fourfold ..isvara as Rudra2 or Balarama.

sakti (sadhana shakti) ::: the Power that directs the yoga. ssadhana

Sakti, Saktism: See: Shakti, Shaktism.

sakti (sasraddha shakti) ::: force applied with faith in the result.

sakti (shakti) ::: force, power; capacity; the supreme Power, the "Consakti scious Force which forms and moves the worlds", the goddess (devi) who is "the self-existent, self-cognitive Power of the Lord" (isvara, deva, purus.a), expressing herself in the workings of prakr.ti; any of the various aspects of this Power, particularly Mahesvari, Mahakali,Mahalaks.mi or Mahasarasvati, each corresponding to an aspect of the fourfold isvara and manifesting in an element of devibhava or daivi prakr.ti; the soul-power which reveals itself in each element of the fourfold personality (brahmasakti, ks.atrasakti, vaisyasakti and sūdrasakti); "the right condition of the powers of the intelligence, heart, vital mind and body", the second member of the sakti catus.t.aya; the sakti catus.t.aya as a whole; spiritual force acting through the siddhis of power. sakti catustaya sakti

Sakti: (Skr.) Strength, might, of feminine gender, the word designates in Tantric (see Tantra) literature the female generative power of energy in the universe, worshipped by the religious as the wife of some deity or other, e.g., as Durga, wife of Shiva. See Shaktism. -- K.F.L.

sakti (swarvati shakti) ::: sakti full of the light of svar; spiritual force working on the plane of luminous intelligence.

sakti (vijnana shakti) ::: the sakti acting on the plane of vijñana.

Serpent ::: Symbol of energy, especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest centre, niufd- dhSra. Serpent with the hood over the head generally indicates future siddlii. Opening of the hood indicates the victorious or successful activity of the Energy indicated by the snake.

Shaivism (Shivaism, Sivaism): One of the three great divisions of modern Hinduism (the other two being Vishnuism and Shaktism); the Shaivas identify Shiva—rather than Brahma and Vishnu —with the Supreme Being, and are exclusively devoted to his worship, regarding him as the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe.

shakta &

shakti, chandibhavah, sraddha, iti shaktichatusthayam) ::: virya, sakti,Can.d.ibhava and sraddha: these constitute the sakti catus.t.aya.

shakti, etc. ::: see sakti, etc. shakti

SHAKTI. ::: Force, energy; the divine or cosmic energy.

shaktipat&

shakti &

Sincerity ::: One cannot become altogether this at once, but if one aspires at all times and calls in the aid of the Divine Shakti with a true heart and a straightforward will, one grows more and more into the true consciousness.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 131


Siva-sakti (Shivashakti) ::: [the Power of Siva].

Śivasakti (Shivashakti) ::: the soul-power or element of virya that expresses the personality of the fourfold isvara as Śiva or Mahavira.

Spiritualisation and transformation ::: Spiritual experiences can fix themselves in the inner consciousness and alter it, transform it, if you like ; one can realise the Divine everywhere, the Self in qU and all in the Self, the universal Shakti doing all things ; one can feel merged in the Cosmic Self or full of ecstatic bhakti or Ananda. But one may and usually does still go on in the outer parts of Nature thinking with the intellect or at best the intuitive mind, willing with a menial will, feeling joy and sorrow on the vital surface, undergoing physical oHIictions and suffering from the struggle of life in the body with death and disease.

Sri Aurobindo: "Aware of the Divine as the Master of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his Shakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her rule of light and power within us.” The Life Divine

Sri Aurobindo: "Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle which it embodies.” The Renaissance in India

*Sri Aurobindo: "It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the yogic sense, . . . .” Letters on Yoga

Sri Aurobindo: "The faith in the divine Shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit"s omnipotence.” The Life Divine

Sri Aurobindo: "The Truth-being is the Hara-Gauri (the biune body of the Lord and his Spouse, Ishwara and Shakti, the right half male, the left half female) of the Indian iconological symbol; it is the double Power masculine-feminine born from and supported by the supreme Shakti of the Supreme.” The Synthesis of Yoga

sūdrasakti (shudrashakti) ::: the soul-power of service which reveals sudrasakti .. itself in the sūdra.

sudrasakti (Shudrashakti) ::: [the soul-power of the sudra]. ::: sudrasaktih [nominative]

sudrasvabhavasakti (Shudraswabhavashakti) ::: [the natural power of the sudra].

Supramental Power or Shakti which can manifest direct its world of Light and Truth in which all is luminously based on the har- mony and unity of the One, not disturbed by a veil of Ignorance or any disguise.

Surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 110


Surrender ::: There must be a total and sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.The surrender must be total and seize all the parts of the being. It is not enough that the psychics should respond and the higher mental accept or even the inner vital submit and the inner physical consciousness feel the influence. There must be inno part of the being, even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or
   refuses.If part of the being surrenders, but another part reserves itself, follows its own way or makes its own conditions, then each time that that happens, you are yourself pushing the divine Grace away from you.If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you.If you open yourself on one side or in one part to the Truth and on another side are constantly opening the gates to hostile forces, it is vain to expect that the divine Grace will abide with you. You must keep the temple clean if you wish to install there the living Presence.If each time the Power intervenes and brings in the Truth, you turn your back on it and call in again the falsehood that has been expelled, it is not the divine Grace that you must blame for failing you, but the falsity of your own will and the imperfection of your own surrender.If you call for the Truth and yet something in you chooses what is false, ignorant and undivine or even simply is unwilling to reject it altogether, then always you will be open to attack and the Grace will recede from you. Detect first what is false or obscure in you and persistently reject it, then alone can you rightly call for the divine Power to transform you.Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness, surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in the house consecrated to the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral th
   refore the rejection of all that withstands it.The Mother


svabhavasakti (swabhavashakti) ::: force of the essential nature. svabhavasakti

svasakti (swashakti; swaçakti) ::: "self-power"; one"s own power or svasakti capacity; the power of the divine sakti manifested in oneself.

swashakti ::: see svasakti...

Tantra: (Skr.) One of a large number of treatises reflecting non-indogermanic Hindu and Mongolian influence, composed in the form of diaogues between Shiva (q.v.) and Durga (see Sakti) on problems of ritual, magic, philosophy, and other branches of knowledge. The Tantras, outside the main current of Vedic (q.v.) thinking yet sharing many of the deepest speculations, stress cult and teach the supremacy of the female principle as power or sakti (see Shaktism). -- K.F.L.

Tantras the Kundalini Shakti. But it is also above us, above our head as the Divine Force — not there coiled up, involved, asleep, but awake, sclent, potent, extended and wide ; it is there waiting for manifestation and to this force we have to open ourselves — ■ to the power of the Mother.

tapas-sakti (tapas-shakti) ::: force of working of the siddhis of power. tapas-sakti

"The Devi is the Divine Shakti — the Consciousness and Power of the Divine, the Mother and Energy of the worlds. All powers are hers. Sometimes Devi-power may mean the power of the universal World-Force; but this is only one side of the Shakti.” Letters on Yoga

“The Devi is the Divine Shakti—the Consciousness and Power of the Divine, the Mother and Energy of the worlds. All powers are hers. Sometimes Devi-power may mean the power of the universal World-Force; but this is only one side of the Shakti.” Letters on Yoga

"The force at work in us must be the manifest divine Shakti, the supreme or the universal Force unveiled in the liberated individual being, . . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga

“The force at work in us must be the manifest divine Shakti, the supreme or the universal Force unveiled in the liberated individual being, . . .” The Synthesis of Yoga

"The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

“The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

::: "The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga

“The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga

“The Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies which she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the universe, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing substance; on the other, by the reascending current of the same energies she leads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its evolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there or here put on its divine character.” The Synthesis of Yoga

The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or
   reference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments. The Self that is quiescent, at rest, vacant of things and happenings is a support and background to existence, a silent channel or a hypostasis of something Supreme: it is not itself the one entirely real existence, not itself the Supreme. The Eternal, the Supreme is the Lord and the all-originating Spirit. Superior to all activities and not bound by any of them, it is the source, sanction, material, efficient power, master of all activities. All activities proceed from this supreme Self and are determined by it; all are its operations, processes of its own conscious force and not of something alien to Self, some power other than the Spirit. In these activities is expressed the conscious Will or Shakti of the Spirit moved to manifest its being in infinite ways, a Will or Power not ignorant but at one with its own self-knowledge and its knowledge of all that it is put out to express. And of this Power a secret spiritual will and soul-faith in us, the dominant hidden force of our nature, is the individual instrument, more nearly in communication with the Supreme, a surer guide and enlightener, could we once get at it and hold it, because profounder and more intimately near to the Identical and Absolute than the surface activities of our thought powers. To know that will in ourselves and in the universe and follow it to its divine finalities, whatever these may be, must surely be the highest way and truest culmination for knowledge as for works, for the seeker in life and for the seeker in Yoga.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 289-90


  "The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

“The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.” The Synthesis of Yoga

::: "The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.” The Life Divine*

“The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.” The Life Divine

The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 338-339


“The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist.”“The Mother

  "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe.” The Mother

“The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe.” The Mother

“The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine.

The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears- theaiervous system ; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will nccarding to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being ; it gives us control of all the five habitual opera- tions of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality arc possible (o the norma! life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings Into (he waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Furusba on each of the as^nding planes. Cbupled with (be use of the mantra it brings the ^vine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadbi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method.

"The serpent is the symbol of energy — especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest (physical) centre, Muladhara, and when it rises it goes up through the spine and joins the higher consciousness above.” Letters on Yoga

“The serpent is the symbol of energy—especially of the Kundalini Shakti which is the divine Force coiled up in the lowest (physical) centre, Muladhara, and when it rises it goes up through the spine and joins the higher consciousness above.” Letters on Yoga

"The serpent with the six hoods is the Kundalini Shakti, the divine power asleep in the lowest physical centre which, awakened in the yoga, ascends in light through the opening centres to meet the Divine in the highest centre and so connect the manifest and the unmanifested, joining spirit and Matter.” Letters on Yoga*

“The serpent with the six hoods is the Kundalini Shakti, the divine power asleep in the lowest physical centre which, awakened in the yoga, ascends in light through the opening centres to meet the Divine in the highest centre and so connect the manifest and the unmanifested, joining spirit and Matter.” Letters on Yoga

“The Truth-being is the Hara-Gauri (the biune body of the Lord and his Spouse, Ishwara and Shakti, the right half male, the left half female) of the Indian iconological symbol; it is the double Power masculine-feminine born from and supported by the supreme Shakti of the Supreme.” The Synthesis of Yoga

"The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake, — therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti, — in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra. When by Pranayama the division between the upper and lower prana currents in the body is dissolved, this Kundalini is struck and awakened, it uncoils itself and begins to rise upward like a fiery serpent breaking open each lotus as it ascends until the Shakti meets the Purusha in the brahmarandhra in a deep samadhi of union.” The Synthesis of Yoga

“The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake,—therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti,—in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra. When by Pranayama the division between the upper and lower prana currents in the body is dissolved, this Kundalini is struck and awakened, it uncoils itself and begins to rise upward like a fiery serpent breaking open each lotus as it ascends until the Shakti meets the Purusha in the brahmarandhra in a deep samadhi of union.” The Synthesis of Yoga

.. this being we are is or can be whatever it has the faith and will to be – for faith is only will aiming at a higher truth – and cease to set limits to our possibility… - Sri Aurobindo ::: .Falsehood ::: Falsehood, on the other hand, is not this Avidya, but an extreme result of it. It is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and th
   refore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the Yogic sense, mithya, moha.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 103


This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her—the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities.” Letters on Yoga

transcendent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence — and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal — of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth — a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

"The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three powers overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation; this is the first of the Trinities. In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental terms and none of them can be neglected if we would have the experience of the whole Truth of existence. Out of the individual we wake into a vaster freer cosmic consciousness; but out of the universal too with its complex of forms and powers we must emerge by a still greater self-exceeding into a consciousness without limits that is founded on the Absolute.” The Synthesis of Yoga

"We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge.” The Life Divine

The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her — the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities.” Letters on Yoga
**Transcendent"s.**


Truth and the whole heart of whose method is surrender to the divine Shakti, and yet to go on claiming this sO'CalJed freedom, which is no more than a subjection to certain ignorant cosmic forces, is to indulge in a blind contradiction and to claim the right to lead a double life.

upasana (shakti upasana) ::: worship of the divine sakti.

vaisyasakti (vaishyashakti) ::: the "soul-power of mutuality" which vaisyasakti reveals itself in the vaisya. vaisyasvabh vaisyasvabhava

vaisya-sakti (Vaishyashakti) ::: [the soul-power of the vaisya]. ::: vaisyasaktih [nominative]

vaisyasvabhavasakti (Vaishyaswabhavashakti) ::: [the natural power of the vaisya].

vak-sakti (Vak-Shakti) ::: [the power (sakti) of Speech; the Word].

vepathu ::: trembling, regarded as "the sign of the pranashakti at work improving an unfit adhara".

vichara shakti. ::: power of enquiry

Vishnuism: One of the three great divisions in modern Hinduism (the other two are Shaivism and Shaktism); its followers identify Vishnu—rather than Brahma and Shiva—with the Supreme Being, and are exclusively devoted to his worship, regarding him as the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the universe.

visnusakti (Vishnushakti) ::: [the power of Visnu].

Vis.n.usakti (Vishnushakti) ::: the soul-power or element of virya Visnusakti that expresses the personality of the fourfold isvara as Vis.n.u or Pradyumna.

vyayah, kaushalam, bhogalipsa, iti vaishyashaktih) ::: giving, spending, skill, the urge towards enjoyment: these express the vaisya soul-power.

Will, there are many tangfed knots that have to be loosened and cannot be cut abruptly asunder. The Asura and Rakshasa hold this evolving earthly nature and have to be met and conquered on their own terms in their own long-conquered fief and pro- vince ; the human in us has to be led and prepared to transcend its limits and is too weak and obscure to be lifted up suddenly to a form far beyond it. The Divine Consciousness and Force are there and do at each moment the thing that is needed in the conditions of the labour, take always the step that fs decreed and shape In the midst of imperfection the perfection that is to come. But only when the supermiod has descended in you can she deal directly as the supramental Shakti with supramental natures. If you follow your mind, it will not recognise the hiother even when she is manifest before you. Follow your soul and not your mind, your soul that answers to the Truth, not your mind that leaps at appearances ; trust the Divine Power and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of Divine Nature.

world-Mother ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies which she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the universe, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing substance; on the other, by the reascending current of the same energies she leads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its evolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there or here put on its divine character.” The Synthesis of Yoga

yogasakti (Yogashakti) ::: yoga-force, spiritual force.

yoga shakti. ::: cosmic energy

Yogashakti ::: see yogasakti

Yoni ::: A representation of the passive and receptive energy of manifestation and usually representing those aspects of the deity, Shakti. Contrast with Lingam.



QUOTES [85 / 85 - 325 / 325]


KEYS (10k)

   74 Sri Aurobindo
   2 The Mother
   2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   1 Tom Butler-Bowdon
   1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   1 Sri Aurobindo
   1 Shakti Gawain
   1 Swami Vivekananda
   1 Sri Ramakrishna
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NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

  185 Shakti Gawain
   77 Sri Aurobindo
   6 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   5 Devdutt Pattanaik
   4 Narendra Modi
   3 Sally Kempton
   3 Sadhguru
   3 Frederick Lenz
   2 The Mother
   2 Swami Abhayananda
   2 Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
   2 Julia Cameron
   2 Emma Mildon
   2 Deb Caletti

1:The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf. ~ Shakti Gawain,
2:The enemy of faith is doubt. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
3:man carries the seed of the divine life in himself ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
4:To the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
5:Prakriti has to reveal itself as shakti of the Purusha. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection,
6:Outward circumstances are only a cover for the real workings of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
7:Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, "Is India Civilised?" - I,
8:Energy is shakti (power, divine force). Therefore, all are resolved into Siva (God) and shakti, i.e. Self and mind. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
9:Absolute consciousness is in its nature absolute power; the nature of Chit is Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of the Ignorance,
10:To lose personality is necessary if we are to gain universality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
11:What is magic to our finite reason is the logic of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
12:It is through the Cosmic Shakti that the Divine creates. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: Sachchidananda, Existence, Consciousness-Force and Bliss,
13:Our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
14:To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
15:Consciousness has no standing-place if there is none who is conscious. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
16:Force is inherent in Existence. Shiva and Kali, Brahman and Shakti are one and not two who are separable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Conscious Force,
17:The intellect and life and emotion always grasp too much at things, fasten on premature certitudes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
18:The Divine holds our hand through all and if he seems to let us fall, it is only to raise us higher. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
19:Shiva and Shakti, the absolute and power, are both necessary for creation. With dry clay no potter can make a vessel -- Water is necessary. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
20:The perfect faith is an assent of the whole being to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
21:When the sun of the gnosis has risen, doubt itself will pass away because its cause and utility have ended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
22:A free power of self-variation must be natural to a consciousness that is infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
23:A present incapacity, however heavy may seem its pressure, is only a trial of faith and a temporary difficulty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
24:Perversion comes by a conversion into lower forms—by transmission through the ego and the gunas. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Action of the Divine Shakti,
25:Time observation and Time movement are relative, but Time itself is real and eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
26:We have no power of our own in any separately individual sense, but only a personal formulation of the one Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Shakti,
27:What is being done here is a preparation for a work—a work which will be founded on Yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Work and Yoga,
28:The circumstances that provoke our first entry into the path are not the real index of the thing that is at work in us. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
29:All consciousness implies power, Shakti; where there is infinite consciousness of being, there is infinite power of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love,
30:The ego is in fact driven by the mechanism of Nature of which it is a part and the ego-will is not and cannot be a free will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Shakti,
31:All forces are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
32:I see clear as daylight that there is the one Brahman in all, in them and me—one Shakti dwells in all. The only difference is of manifestation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, (C.W. VII. 246),
33:This is the power of Mahalakshmi and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of the embodied beings.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
34:The witness silence of the Spirit is there in the very grain of all the voices and workings of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
35:Even a blind and ignorant faith is a better possession than the sceptical doubt which turns its back on our spiritual possibilities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
36:The Jiva cannot really become master except in proportion as he arrives at oneness with the Divine who is his supreme Self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Action of the Divine Shakti,
37:Faith is necessary throughout and at every step because it is a needed assent of the soul and without this assent there can be no progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
38:The mystery of things is the true truth of things; the intellectual presentation is only truth in representation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
39:The faith of the heart and the life mind, like that of the intelligence, must be capable of a constant correction, enlarging and transformation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
40:The Divine is formless and nameless, but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible names and shapes of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
41:The very first lesson in this Yoga is to face life and its trials with a quiet mind, a firm courage and an entire reliance on the Divine Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Patience and Perseverance,
42:There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit's omnipotence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
43: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],
44:It is the one Infinite that appears to us as the many finite: the creation adds nothing to the Infinite; it remains after creation what it was before. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
45:The Divine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by laws and processes because they are the expression of the truth of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
46:Shakti, Force, pouring through the universe supports its boundless activities, the frail and tremulous life of the rose no less than the flaming motions of sun and star. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The National Value of Art,
47:The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
48:Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things and in the end bring his strength as a worthy offering to the altar of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
49:If a person realises his position and stays in his own self, things that are to happen will happen. Things that are not to happen will not happen. The shakti that is in the world, is only one. All these troubles arise if we think that we are separate from that shakti. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
50:The human intellect is too much afraid of error precisely because it is too much attached to a premature sense of certitude and a too hasty eagerness for positive finality in what it seems to seize of knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
51:The finite is a frontal aspect and a self-determination of the Infinite; no finite can exist in itself and by itself, it exists by the Infinite and because it is of one essence with the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
52:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
53:Nothing changes yet all changes, all her workings and creations would in this play collapse into disintegration and chaos; there would be nothing to hold her disparate movements and creations together. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
54:That which Is, is only one.

Some call it Shakti, some Shiva, some Vishnu, some Jesus and some Allah.

People give it whatever names they like.

What does it matter if the names they give are different?

That which Is, is only One. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramana Jyoti Souvenir, 1969,
55:In its fundamental truth the original status of Time behind all its variations is nothing else than the eternity of the Eternal, just as the fundamental truth of Space, the original sense of its reality, is the infinity of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
56:The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her - the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga,
57:If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
58:In reality, thought is only a scout and pioneer; it can guide but not command or effectuate. The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
59:Purusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha. The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Soul and Nature,
60:There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the crash of great downfalls, and the turmoil of swift and violent revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock.... ~ Sri Aurobindo, in a statement of 16 April 1907, as published in India's Rebirth : A Selection from Sri Aurobindo's Writings, Talks and Speeches 3rd Edition (2000)
61:Please explain to me what is meant by the Divine Mother.
The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine - which is the Mother of all things.
24 June 1933

You have written in The Mother that the Mother is the consciousness and force of the Ishwara, but here my experience is that the Ishwara is the consciousness and force of the Supreme Mother. Could you please make it clear to me?
The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine - or, it may be said, she is the Divine in its consciousness-force. The Ishwara as Lord of the Cosmos does come out of the Mother who takes her place beside him as the cosmic Shakti - the cosmic Ishwara is one aspect of the Divine. The experience therefore is correct so far as it goes.
16 November 1934 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, The Mother, the Divine and the Lower Nature, The Consciousness and Force of the Divine,
62:But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be no more happy condition than this union and dependence; for this step carries you back beyond the border-line from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, into its deep peace and its intense Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 12,
63:The Lord sees in his omniscience the thing that has to be done. This seeing is his Will, it is a form of creative Power, and that which he sees the all-conscious Mother, one with him, takes into her dynamic self and embodies, and executive Nature-Force carries it out as the mechanism of their omnipotent omniscience.
   But this vision of what is to be and therefore of what is to be done arises out of the very being, pours directly out of the consciousness and delight of existence of the Lord, spontaneously, like light from the Sun. It is not our mortal attempt to see, our difficult arrival at truth of action and motive or just demand of Nature. When the individual soul is entirely at one in its being and knowledge with the Lord and directly in touch with the original Shakti, the transcendent Mother, the supreme Will can then arise in us too in the high divine manner as a thing that must be and is achieved by the spontaneous action of Nature. There is then no desire, no responsibility, no reaction; all takes place in the peace, calm, light, power of the supporting and enveloping and inhabiting Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218,
64:Ishwara-Shakti is not quite the same as Purusha-Prakriti; for Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other. Ishwara is Purusha who contains Prakriti and rules by the power of the Shakti within him. Shakti is Prakriti ensouled by Purusha and acts by the will of the Ishwara which is her own will and whose presence in her movement she carries always with her. The Purusha-Prakriti realisation is of the first utility to the seeker on the Way of Works; for it is the separation of the conscient being and the Energy and the subjection of the being to the mechanism of the Energy that are the efficient cause of our ignorance and imperfection; by this realisation the being can liberate himself from the mechanical action of the nature and become free and arrive at a first spiritual control over the nature. Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216,
65:The Transcendent Mother and the Higher Hemisphere
   "At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power."1 The Transcendent Mother thus stands above the Ananda plane.There are then four steps of the Divine Shakti:
   (1) The Transcendent Mahashakti who stands above the Ananda plane and who bears the Supreme Divine in her eternal consciousness.
   (2) The Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of SatChit-Ananda where all beings live and move in an ineffable completeness.
   (3) The Supramental Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Supermind.
   (4) The Cosmic Mahashakti immanent in the lower hemisphere.
   Yes; that is all right. One speaks often however of all above the lower hemisphere as part of the transcendence. This is because the Supermind and Ananda are not manifested in our universe at present, but are planes above it. For us the higher hemisphere is pr [para], the Supreme Transcendence is prA(pr [paratpara]. The Sanskrit terms are here clearer than the English.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Three Aspects of the Mother, 52,
66:The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and to nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother-Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine. In this Yoga, therefore, there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others; any such relation or interchange immediately ties down the soul to the lower consciousness and its lower nature, prevents the true and full union with the Divine and hampers both the ascent to the supramental Truth consciousness and the descent of the supramental Ishwari Shakti. Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation or a sexual enjoyment, even if kept free from any outward act; therefore these things are absolutely forbidden in the sadhana. It goes without saying that any physical act of the kind is not allowed, but also any subtler form is ruled out. It is only after becoming one with the supramental Divine that we can find our true spiritual relations with others in the Divine; in that higher unity this kind of gross lower vital movement can have no place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV,
67:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother, - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother, Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,
68:These are the conditions of our effort and they point to an ideal which can be expressed in these or in equivalent formulae. To live in God and not in the ego; to move, vastly founded, not in the little egoistic consciousness, but in the consciousness of the All-Soul and the Transcendent. To be perfectly equal in all happenings and to all beings, and to see and feel them as one with oneself and one with the Divine; to feel all in oneself and all in God; to feel God in all, oneself in all. To act in God and not in the ego. And here, first, not to choose action by reference to personal needs and standards, but in obedience to the dictates of the living highest Truth above us. Next, as soon as we are sufficiently founded in the spiritual consciousness, not to act any longer by our separate will or movement, but more and more to allow action to happen and develop under the impulsion and guidance of a divine Will that surpasses us. And last, the supreme result, to be exalted into an identity in knowledge, force, consciousness, act, joy of existence with the Divine Shakti; to feel a dynamic movement not dominated by mortal desire and vital instinct and impulse and illusive mental free-will, but luminously conceived and evolved in an immortal self-delight and an infinite self-knowledge. For this is the action that comes by a conscious subjection and merging of the natural man into the divine Self and eternal Spirit; it is the Spirit that for ever transcends and guides this world-Nature.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [101],
69:Instruction about Sadhana to a disciple:
   Disciple: What is the nature of realisation in this yoga?
   Sri Aurobindo: In this yoga we want to bring down the Truth-consciousness into the whole being - no part being left out. This can be done by the Higher Power itself. What you have to do is to open yourself to it.
   Disciple: As the Higher Power is there why does it not work in all men - consciously?
   Sri Aurobindo: Because man, at present, is shut up in his mental being, his vital nature and physical consciousness and their limitations. You have to open yourself. By an opening I mean an aspiration in the heart for the coming down of the Power that is above, and a will in the Mind, or above the Mind, open to it.
   The first thing this working of the Higher Power does is to establish Shanti - peace - in all the parts of the being and an opening above. This peace is not mere mental Shanti, it is full of power and, whatever action takes place in it, Samata, equality, is its basis and the Shanti and Samata are never disturbed. What comes from Above is peace, power and joy. It also brings about changes in various parts of our nature so that they can bear the pressure of the Higher Power.
   Knowledge also progressively develops showing all in our being that is to be thrown out and what is to be retained. In fact, knowledge and guidance both come and you have constantly to consent to the guidance. The progress may be more in one direction than in another. But it is the Higher Power that works. The rest is a matter of experience and the movement of the Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, RECORDED BY A B PURANI (28-09-1923),
70:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,
71:In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature.
   In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
   The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
   an aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing - the mind's will, the heart's seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature;
   rejection of the movements of the lower nature - rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
   surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
72:This inner Guide is often veiled at first by the very intensity of our personal effort and by the ego's preoccupation with itself and its aims. As we gain in clarity and the turmoil of egoistic effort gives place to a calmer self-knowledge, we recognise the source of the growing light within us. We recognise it retrospectively as we realise how all our obscure and conflicting movements have been determined towards an end that we only now begin to perceive, how even before our entrance into the path of the Yoga the evolution of our life has been designedly led towards its turning point. For now we begin to understand the sense of our struggles and efforts, successes and failures. At last we are able to seize the meaning of our ordeals and sufferings and can appreciate the help that was given us by all that hurt and resisted and the utility of our very falls and stumblings. We recognise this divine leading afterwards, not retrospectively but immediately, in the moulding of our thoughts by a transcendent Seer, of our will and actions by an all-embracing Power, of our emotional life by an all-attracting and all-assimilating Bliss and Love. We recognise it too in a more personal relation that from the first touched us or at the last seizes us; we feel the eternal presence of a supreme Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher. We recognise it in the essence of our being as that develops into likeness and oneness with a greater and wider existence; for we perceive that this miraculous development is not the result of our own efforts; an eternal Perfection is moulding us into its own image. One who is the Lord or Ishwara of the Yogic philosophies, the Guide in the conscious being ( caitya guru or antaryamin ), the Absolute of the thinker, the Unknowable of the Agnostic, the universal Force of the materialist, the supreme Soul and the supreme Shakti, the One who is differently named and imaged by the religions, is the Master of our Yoga.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 62 [T1],
73:... The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed - for there is no absolute rule for all, - but if the peace has not come first, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.

   The result of the concentration is not usually immediate - though to some there comes a swift and sudden outflowering; but with most there is a time longer or shorter of adaptation or preparation, especially if the nature has not been prepared already to some extent by aspiration and tapasya. ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
74:the spiritual force behind adoration :::
   All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life, 159,
75:
   Sweet Mother, here it is written: "There is a Yoga-Shakti lying coiled or asleep..." How can it be awakened?
I think it awakens quite naturally the moment one takes the resolution to do the yoga. If the resolution is sincere and one has an aspiration, it wakes up by itself.

   In fact, it is perhaps its awakening which gives the aspiration to do yoga.

   It is possible that it is a result of the Grace... or after some conversation or reading, something that has suddenly given you the idea and aspiration to know what yoga is and to practise it. Sometimes just a simple conversation with someone is enough or a passage one reads from a book; well, it awakens this Yoga-Shakti and it is this which makes you do your yoga.

   One is not aware of it at first - except that something has changed in our life, a new decision is taken, a turning.

   What is it, this Yoga-Shakti, Sweet Mother?

   It is the energy of progress. It is the energy which makes you do the yoga, precisely, makes you progress - consciously. It is a conscious energy.

   In fact, the Yoga-Shakti is the power to do yoga.

   Sweet Mother, isn't it more difficult to draw the divine forces from below?

   I think it is absolutely useless.

   Some people think that there are more reserves of energy - I have heard this very often: a great reserve of energy - in the earth, and that if they draw this energy into themselves they will be able to do things; but it is always mixed.

   The divine Presence is everywhere, that's well understood. And in fact, there is neither above nor below. What is called above and below, I think that is rather the expression of a degree of consciousness or a degree of materiality; there is the more unconscious and the less unconscious, there is what is subconscious and what is superconscious, and so we say above and below for the facility of speech.

   But in fact, the idea is to draw from the energies of the earth which, when you are standing up, are under your feet, that is, below in relation to you. But these energies are always mixed, and mostly they are terribly dark.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955,
76:The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit.
2:In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, 2.01 - The Object of Knowledge,
77:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138,
78:reading :::
   Self-Help Reading List:
   James Allen As a Man Thinketh (1904)
   Marcus Aurelius Meditations (2nd Century)
   The Bhagavad-Gita
   The Bible
   Robert Bly Iron John (1990)
   Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy (6thC)
   Alain de Botton How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997)
   William Bridges Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980)
   David Brooks The Road to Character (2015)
   Brené Brown Daring Greatly (2012)
   David D Burns The New Mood Therapy (1980)
   Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers) The Power of Myth (1988)
   Richard Carlson Don't Sweat The Small Stuff (1997)
   Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)
   Deepak Chopra The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (1994)
   Clayton Christensen How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012)
   Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (1988)
   Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
   Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1991)
   The Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler The Art of Happiness (1999)
   The Dhammapada (Buddha's teachings)
   Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit (2011)
   Wayne Dyer Real Magic (1992)
   Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance (1841)
   Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run With The Wolves (1996)
   Viktor Frankl Man's Search For Meaning (1959)
   Benjamin Franklin Autobiography (1790)
   Shakti Gawain Creative Visualization (1982)
   Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence (1995)
   John Gray Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (1992)
   Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life (1984)
   James Hillman The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996)
   Susan Jeffers Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway (1987)
   Richard Koch The 80/20 Principle (1998)
   Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014)
   Ellen Langer Mindfulness: Choice and Control in Everyday Life (1989)
   Lao-Tzu Tao-te Ching (The Way of Power)
   Maxwell Maltz Psycho-Cybernetics (1960)
   Abraham Maslow Motivation and Personality (1954)
   Thomas Moore Care of the Soul (1992)
   Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963)
   Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking (1952)
   M Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled (1990)
   Anthony Robbins Awaken The Giant Within (1991)
   Florence Scovell-Shinn The Game of Life and How To Play It (1923)
   Martin Seligman Learned Optimism (1991)
   Samuel Smiles Self-Help (1859)
   Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man (1955)
   Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)
   Marianne Williamson A Return To Love (1993)
   ~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help,
79: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,
80:The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna. But the executive or mechanical prakriti is of the threefold Guna, Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas, and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical nature into the type of these three gunas. And in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, caturvyuha , a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things. The ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold type of active human personality and nature, built out of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Sudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament, soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual shakti in which they find their culmination and unity beyond all modes. For the crude external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Sudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive shakti within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life. But they are more or less present in an men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 4:15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality,
81:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
   But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
   The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
82:How can one awaken his Yoga-shakti?

It depends on this: when one thinks that it is the most important thing in his life. That's all.

Some people sit in meditation, concentrate on the base of the vertebral column and want it very much to awake, but that's not enough. It is when truly it becomes the most important thing in one's life, when all the rest seems to have lost all taste, all interest, all importance, when one feels within that one is born for this, that one is here upon earth for this, and that it is the only thing that truly counts, then that's enough.

One can concentrate on the different centres; but sometimes one concentrates for so long, with so much effort, and has no result. And then one day something shakes you, you feel that you are going to lose your footing, you have to cling on to something; then you cling within yourself to the idea of union with the Divine, the idea of the divine Presence, the idea of the transformation of the consciousness, and you aspire, you want, you try to organise your feelings, movements, impulses around this. And it comes.

Some people have recommended all kinds of methods; probably these were methods which had succeeded in their case; but to tell the truth, one must find one's own method, it is only after having done the thing that one knows how it should be done, not before.

If one knows it beforehand, one makes a mental construction and risks greatly living in his mental construction, which is an illusion; because when the mind builds certain conditions and then they are realised, there are many chances of there being mostly pure mental construction which is not the experience itself but its image. So for all these truly spiritual experiences I think it is wiser to have them before knowing them. If one knows them, one imitates them, one doesn't have them, one imagines oneself having them; whereas if one knows nothing - how things are and how they ought to happen, what should happen and how it will come about - if one knows nothing about all this, then by keeping very still and making a kind of inner sorting out within one's being, one can suddenly have the experience, and then later knows what one has had. It is over, and one knows how it has to be done when one has done it - afterwards. Like that it is sure.

One may obviously make use of his imagination, imagine the Kundalini and try to pull it upwards. But one can also tell himself tales like this. I have had so many instances of people who described their experiences to me exactly as they are described in books, knowing all the words and putting down all the details, and then I asked them just a little question like that, casually: that if they had had the experience they should have known or felt a certain thing, and as this was not in the books, they could not answer.~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 211-212,
83:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],
84:If this is the truth of works, the first thing the sadhaka has to do is to recoil from the egoistic forms of activity and get rid of the sense of an "I" that acts. He has to see and feel that everything happens in him by the plastic conscious or subconscious or sometimes superconscious automatism of his mental and bodily instruments moved by the forces of spiritual, mental, vital and physical Nature. There is a personality on his surface that chooses and wills, submits and struggles, tries to make good in Nature or prevail over Nature, but this personality is itself a construction of Nature and so dominated, driven, determined by her that it cannot be free. It is a formation or expression of the Self in her, - it is a self of Nature rather than a self of Self, his natural and processive, not his spiritual and permanent being, a temporary constructed personality, not the true immortal Person. It is that Person that he must become. He must succeed in being inwardly quiescent, detach himself as the observer from the outer active personality and learn the play of the cosmic forces in him by standing back from all blinding absorption in its turns and movements. Thus calm, detached, a student of himself and a witness of his nature, he realises that he is the individual soul who observes the works of Nature, accepts tranquilly her results and sanctions or withholds his sanction from the impulse to her acts. At present this soul or Purusha is little more than an acquiescent spectator, influencing perhaps the action and development of the being by the pressure of its veiled consciousness, but for the most part delegating its powers or a fragment of them to the outer personality, - in fact to Nature, for this outer self is not lord but subject to her, anı̄sa; but, once unveiled, it can make its sanction or refusal effective, become the master of the action, dictate sovereignly a change of Nature. Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha's assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails, - slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. Above and around him is the Shakti, the universal Mother and from her he can get all his inmost soul needs and wills if only he has a true knowledge of her ways and a true surrender to the divine Will in her. Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power. The rest of our progress depends on our knowledge of the ways in which the Lord of works manifests his Will in the world and in us and executes them through the transcendent and universal Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216,
85:It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 183,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Problems are messages. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
2:I am a radiant being, filled with light and love. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
3:You create your opportunities by asking for them. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
4:The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
5:When you see beauty anywhere, it’s a reflection of yourself. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
6:The Universe will pay you to be yourself and do what you really love. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
7:Each of us comes into this life with lessons to learn and gifts to give. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
8:I am convinced that life in a physical body is meant to be an ecstatic experience. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
9:Imaging what you want as if it already exists opens the door to letting it happen. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
10:Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically, if we are willing to listen. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
11:Poverty on both a personal and worldwide level is supported by our collective belief in scarcity. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
12:Anything in life that we don’t accept will simply make trouble for us until we make peace with it. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
13:My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates the space for intimacy with another. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
14:Your intuition will most likely push you gently towards some appropriate risks and trying new things. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
15:Change happens not by trying to make yourself change, but by becoming conscious of what’s not working. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
16:As human beings we have vulnerabilities. We also have power, but we can’t just be powerful all the time. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
17:Learning to trust your intuition is an art form, and like all other art forms, it takes practice to perfect. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
18:A deadness occurs in relationships when people are no longer willing to tell each other how they really feel.   ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
19:We have to get good at being with ourselves before we can hope to be good at being in relationships with others. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
20:Ambition is an idol, on whose wings great minds are carried only to extreme; to be sublimely great or to be nothing. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
21:As long as we focus on the outside, there will always be that empty, hungry, lost place inside that needs to be filled. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
22:As we begin to love and appreciate ourselves as we are, our channels and we access the infinite vitality of life force. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
23:Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual sadness. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
24:All our relationships, especially the deep ones, stir up the deepest issues for us that we need to confront and work with ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
25:A painful time in our life is what I call a healing crisis. We are letting go of something old and opening to something new. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
26:Everything in the universe wants to be loved and accepted. Our personal work is to find the love and acceptance within ourselves. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
27:This, or something better, now manifests for me in totally satisfying and harmonious ways, for the highest good of all concerned. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
28:We live in a culture that doesn’t acknowledge or validate human intuition and doesn’t encourage us to rely on our intuitive wisdom. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
29:In order to heal themselves, people must recognize, first, that they have an inner guidance deep within and, second, that they can trust it. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
30:We always attract into our lives whatever we think about most, believe most strongly, expect on the deepest level, and imagine most vividly. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
31:Much of the Western world emphasizes rationality and reason, but overlooks or ignores the enormous value of intuition and instinctive wisdom. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
32:When I’m trusting and being myself as fully as possible, everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
33:Very seldom do we receive support for trusting ourselves, listening to our own sense of inner truth, and expressing ourselves in a direct and honest way. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
34:What I am actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
35:B rahman is Shakti; Shakti is Brahman. They are not two. These are only two aspects, male and female, of the same Reality-Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove
36:When we consistently suppress and distrust our intuitive knowingness, looking instead for authority, validation, and approval from others, we give our personal power away. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
37:The key point to understand is that prosperity is an internal experience, not an external state, and it is an experience that is not tied to having a certain amount of money. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
38:Each of us has all the wisdom and knowledge we ever need right within us. It is available to us through the intuitive mind, which is our connection with universal intelligence. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
39:When we finally give up the struggle to find fulfillment "out there," we have nowhere to go but within. It is at this moment of total surrender that a new light begins to dawn. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
40:Prana is an element of energy. Energy is a manifestation of a certain principle which in Indian cosmology they call shakti, or spiritual power. Don't worry about the words too much. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
41:We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own and other’s people’s models, learn to be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
42:Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart truly desires must come to you. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
43:Most of us are in touch with our intuition whether we know it or not, but we’re usually in the habit of doubting or contradicting it so automatically that we don’t even know it has spoken. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
44:We have to understand in a deep way that having what we truly want in life contributes to the general state of human happiness and supports others in creating more happiness for themselves ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
45:The most powerful thing you can do to change the world is to change your own beliefs about the nature of life, people, and reality to something more positive... and begin to act accordingly. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
46:My viewing our relationships with friends, family, and co-workers as mirrors, as teachers – we see that they are reflecting back to us exactly what we most need to learn. friends, family, and co- ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
47:The most successful people are often very intuitive. Consciously or unconsciously, they follow their gut feelings. Following intuition puts us in the flow - a very alive, productive, and desirable state.      ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
48:We each have an infinite supply of love and happiness within us. We have been accustomed to thinking that we have to get something from outside of us in order to be happy, but in truth it works the other way. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
49:Following our inner guidance may feel risky and frightening at first, because we are no longer playing it safe, doing what we &
50:We don’t have in our culture a healthy understanding and respect for the value of Being, which is simply being present in the moment, not trying to go somewhere, not trying to accomplish anything but, just present. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
51:Eventually I lost interest in trying to control my life, to make things happen in a way that I thought I wanted them to be. I began to practice surrendering to the universe and finding out what "it" wanted me to do. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
52:Your intuition will tell you where you need to go; it will connect you with people you should meet; it will guide you toward work that is meaningful for you - work that brings you joy, work that feels right for you. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
53:Since money is energy, our financial affairs tend to reflect how our life energy is moving. When your creative energy is flowing freely, often your finances are as well. If your energy is blocked, your money does too. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
54:We avoid the things that we’re afraid of because we think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
55:Spirit is the essence of consciousness, the energy of the universe that creates all things. Each one of us is a part of that spirit - a divine entity. So the spirit is the higher self, the eternal being that lives within us. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
56:Our relationship to money reflects how we feel about our power to affect the world. Since money is a mirror of our consciousness, the more comfortable we are with being powerful, the more money we are likely to create in our lives. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
57:The body is our primary feedback mechanism which can show us what is and isn't working about our ways of thinking, expressing, and living. As we live our truth more fully and freely, our body grows healthier, stronger, and more beautiful. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
58:When you have strong intention to create something - that is, you deeply desire it, you completely believe that you can do it, and you are totally willing to have it - it is likely to manifest in your life in one way or another. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
59:Every creative genius has been a channel. Every masterwork has been created through the channeling process. Great works are not created by the personality alone. They arise from a deep inspiration on the universal level, and are then expressed and brought into form through the individual personality. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
60:I am lovable. I am kind and loving, and I have a great deal to share with others. I am talented, intelligent, and creative. I am attractive. I deserve the very best in life. I have a lot to offer and everyone recognizes it. I love the world and the world loves me. I am willing to be happy and successful. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
61:Whatever our individual troubles and challenges may be, it’s important to pause every now and then to appreciate all that we have, on every level. We need to literally &
62:The people we are in relationship with are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs, and simultaneously we are mirrors, reflecting their beliefs. .. relationship is one of the most powerful tools for growth... . If we look honestly at our relationships, we can see so much about how we have created them. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
63:There is a universal, intelligent, life force that exists within everyone and everything. It resides within each one of use as a deep wisdom, an inner knowing. We can access this wonderful source of knowledge and wisdom through our intuition, an inner sense that tells us what feels right and true for us at any given moment.  ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
64:Kali is none other than He whom you call Brahman. Kali is the primal Shakti. When it is inactive, we call It Brahman. But when It has the function of creating, preserving or destroying, we call That Shakti or Kali. He whom you call Brahman, She whom I call Kali, are Do more different from each other than fire and its power of burning. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove
65:Consciousness is an ever-unfolding, deepening, and expanding process with no end point. We are infinite and complex beings, and our human journey involves not just a spiritual awakening, but the development of all levels of our being - spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical - and the integration of all these aspects into a healthy and balanced daily life. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
66:Notice what happens when you doubt, suppress, or act contrary to your feelings. You will observe decreased energy, powerless or helpless feelings, and physical or emotional pain. Now notice what happens when you follow your intuitive feelings. Usually the result is increased energy and power and a sense of natural flow. When you're at one with yourself, the world feels peaceful, exciting, and magical. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
67:We have to create strength where it did not exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new men with new hearts, to be born again. We need a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth. These, having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
68:If you are feeling tired or ill, rest. Your body will always want rest and ease if it's sick. When you become quiet, ask your body what you need to do in order to heal yourself. Your body may tell you to change certain habits, eat more wholesome food, express some feelings, quit your job, see a doctor, or it may have some other message for you, but there is always an answer available to you. The key is to ask and then listen honestly for a response. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
69:India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
70:When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive neither creating nor preserving nor destroying-, I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active-creating, preserving, destroying-, I call Him Shakti or Maya or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and the Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. Iit is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove
71:Do Opposites Repel or Attract? The people in our lives who make us uncomfortable, who annoy us, who we feel judgmental or even combative toward, reflect parts of ourselves that we reject - usually aspects of our disowned selves, the shadow side of our personality. If you are a gentle, soft-spoken person, you may be very irritated by a person who seems loud and pushy. Or if you are a direct, outspoken person you may feel uncomfortable with those who hold back and seem overly timid. The fact is that in both cases you are mirroring each other's disowned energies. The quiet person is being shown their undeveloped assertive side, and the aggressive person is being shown their undeveloped reflective side. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Problems are messages. ~ Shakti Gawain,
2:I was looking for what the meaning of life was. ~ Shakti Gawain,
3:What we create within is mirrored outside of us. ~ Shakti Gawain,
4:you create your opportunities by asking for them ~ Shakti Gawain,
5:You create your opportunities by asking for them. ~ Shakti Gawain,
6:Assertiveness is not what you do, it's who you are! ~ Shakti Gawain,
7:May you be blessed with everything your heart desires. ~ Shakti Gawain,
8:I believe we are all geniuses-each in our own unique way. ~ Shakti Gawain,
9:People who really want to be in a relationship are IN one. ~ Shakti Gawain,
10:Every moment presents a new opportunity and a new decision. ~ Shakti Gawain,
11:The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf. ~ Shakti Gawain,
12:When you see beauty anywhere, it's a reflection of yourself. ~ Shakti Gawain,
13:The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf. ~ Shakti Gawain,
14:As I learn to love myself, I recieve the love I desire from others. ~ Shakti Gawain,
15:In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
16:Only when Shiva is united with Shakti does he have the power to create - ~ Soundarya,
17:The universe will pay you to be yourself and do what you really love. ~ Shakti Gawain,
18:The enemy of faith is doubt. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
19:No scoundrel is so stupid as to not find a reason for his vile conduct. ~ Shakti Gawain,
20:Shiva and his Shakti belong to each other and they always have. He ~ Anuja Chandramouli,
21:My true relationship is with myself - all others are simply mirrors of it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
22:The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf. SHAKTI GAWAIN ~ Julia Cameron,
23:An affirmation is a strong, positive statement that something is already so. ~ Shakti Gawain,
24:We all have within us a deep wisdom, but sometimes we don't know we have it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
25:Every one of us comes into this life with lessons to learn and gifts to give. ~ Shakti Gawain,
26:While prosperity is in some ways related to money, it is not caused by money. ~ Shakti Gawain,
27:The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be. ~ Shakti Gawain,
28:I am convinced that life in a physical body is meant to be an ecstatic experience ~ Shakti Gawain,
29:Imagining what you want as if it already exists opens the door to letting it happen. ~ Shakti Gawain,
30:Our Matru Shakti is our pride. Women empowerment is very crucial to our development. ~ Narendra Modi,
31:Let's not forget that in India the symbol of strength is a woman; the goddess Shakti. ~ Indira Gandhi,
32:We are attracted to people who express the qualities we deny or repress in ourselves. ~ Shakti Gawain,
33:Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically,
if we are willing to listen. ~ Shakti Gawain,
34:Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful ~ Shakti Gawain,
35:You can love other people only to the degree that you've come to love and accept yourself ~ Shakti Gawain,
36:If we look honestly at our relationships, we can see so much about how we have created them ~ Shakti Gawain,
37:Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically, if we are willing to listen to them. ~ Shakti Gawain,
38:man carries the seed of the divine life in himself ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
39:To the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
40:The multiple differences of this world are a sportive play of Chit-Shakti, the one Whole. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
41:The union of feminine and masculine energies within the individual is the basis of all creation. ~ Shakti Gawain,
42:Poverty on both a personal and worldwide level is supported by our collective belief in scarcity. ~ Shakti Gawain,
43:Anything in life that we don't accept will simply make trouble for us until we make peace with it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
44:My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates the space for intimacy with another. ~ Shakti Gawain,
45:The more willing you are to surrender to the energy within you, the more power can flow through you. ~ Shakti Gawain,
46:Change happens not by trying to make yourself change, but by becoming conscious of what's not working. ~ Shakti Gawain,
47:As human beings we have vulnerabilities. We also have power, but we can't just be powerful all the time. ~ Shakti Gawain,
48:If I could identify one core problem about the world, it's that we've been taught to distrust ourselves. ~ Shakti Gawain,
49:Learning to trust our intuition is an art form, and like all other art forms, it takes practice to perfect. ~ Shakti Gawain,
50:The clearer and stronger your intention, the more quickly and easily your creative visualization will work. ~ Shakti Gawain,
51:Your intuition will most likely push you gently toward taking some appropriate risks and trying new things. ~ Shakti Gawain,
52:A deadness occurs in relationships when people are no longer willing to tell each other how they really feel. ~ Shakti Gawain,
53:For success in life you need yukti (skill) and shakti (strength), Bhakti (Devotion ) and Mukti (Freedom). ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
54:We have to get good at being with ourselves before we can hope to be good at being in relationships with others. ~ Shakti Gawain,
55:Shakti always said we should have a guy we wanted to keep shaving our legs for. I knew what she meant."
pg. 129 ~ Deb Caletti,
56:I'm especially interested in relationships since that is a part of life that causes enormous pain for many people. ~ Shakti Gawain,
57:Prakriti has to reveal itself as shakti of the Purusha. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology of Self-Perfection,
58:When you truly give up trying to be whole through others, you end up receiving what you always wanted from others. ~ Shakti Gawain,
59:Ambition is an idol, on whose wings great minds are carried only to extreme; to be sublimely great or to be nothing. ~ Shakti Gawain,
60:Outward circumstances are only a cover for the real workings of the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
61:If you constantly think of illness, you eventually become ill; if you believe yourself to be beautiful, you become so. ~ Shakti Gawain,
62:As long as we focus on the outside, there will always be that empty, hungry, lost place inside that needs to be filled. ~ Shakti Gawain,
63:Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual sadness. ~ Shakti Gawain,
64:When you're following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves. ~ Shakti Gawain,
65:Energy is shakti (power, divine force). Therefore, all are resolved into Siva (God) and shakti, i.e. Self and mind. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
66:Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness. ~ Shakti Gawain,
67:All our relationships, especially the deep ones, stir up the deepest issues for us that we need to confront and work with. ~ Shakti Gawain,
68:Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, “Is India Civilised?” - I,
69:Mind and intuition are at opposite ends of the same continuum and our goal is to strike a healthy balance between the two. ~ Shakti Gawain,
70:Close no options, of course,” Shakti instructed her. “We can always return. We are on neither side, and on both, of course. ~ R A Salvatore,
71:A painful time in our life is what I call a healing crisis. We are letting go of something old and opening to something new. ~ Shakti Gawain,
72:As we begin to love and appreciate ourselves as we are, our channels open and we access the infinite vitality of life force. ~ Shakti Gawain,
73:To whatever degree you listen and follow your intuition, you become a creative channel for the higher power of the universe. ~ Shakti Gawain,
74:We can learn to move into the unknown with the confidence that we have a guiding force within us that is showing us the way. ~ Shakti Gawain,
75:One law of energy is this: energy of a certain quality or vibration tends to attract energy of a similar quality and vibration. ~ Shakti Gawain,
76:This or something better now manifests for me in totally satisfying and harmonious ways, for the highest good of all concerned. ~ Shakti Gawain,
77:When you're riding a bike you're more connected to the outdoors and to other people than you are when you are stuck in your car. ~ Shakti Gawain,
78:Everything in the universe wants to be loved and accepted. Our personal work is to find the love and acceptance within ourselves. ~ Shakti Gawain,
79:We live in a culture that doesn't acknowledge or validate human intuition and doesn't encourage us to rely on our intuitive wisdom. ~ Shakti Gawain,
80:Absolute consciousness is in its nature absolute power; the nature of Chit is Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin of the Ignorance,
81:To lose personality is necessary if we are to gain universality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
82:What is magic to our finite reason is the logic of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
83:It is through the Cosmic Shakti that the Divine creates. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: Sachchidananda, Existence, Consciousness-Force and Bliss,
84:Devi energy (shakti) is there within all of us. Devi is not somewhere else, not in some other world. It is within us - Devi Shakti ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
85:Our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
86:This, or something better,
now manifests for me
in totally satisfying and harmonious ways,
for the highest good of all concerned. ~ Shakti Gawain,
87:To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
88:Adi Shakti, Namo Namah; Sarab Shakti, Namo Namah; Prithum Bhagvati, Namo Namah; Kundalini Mata Shakti; Mata Shakti, Namo Namah,’ said Gangasagar ~ Anonymous,
89:Consciousness has no standing-place if there is none who is conscious. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
90:Force is inherent in Existence. Shiva and Kali, Brahman and Shakti are one and not two who are separable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Conscious Force,
91:In order to heal themselves, people must recognize, first, that they have an inner guidance deep within and, second, that they can trust it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
92:The more we learn to operate in the world based on trust in our intuition, the stronger our channel will be and the more money we will have. ~ Shakti Gawain,
93:We always attract into our lives whatever we think about most, believe most strongly, expect on the deepest level, and imagine most vividly. ~ Shakti Gawain,
94:When I wrote Living in the Light, I wanted to share about how I live my own life and to encourage people to tap into their own inner wisdom. ~ Shakti Gawain,
95:Much of the Western world emphasizes rationality and reason, but overlooks or ignores the enormous value of intuition and instinctive wisdom. ~ Shakti Gawain,
96:Notice what happens when you follow your intuitive feelings. The result is usually increased energy and power, and a sense of things flowing. ~ Shakti Gawain,
97:The intellect and life and emotion always grasp too much at things, fasten on premature certitudes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
98:Our primary relationship is really with ourselves. Our relationships with other people constantly reflect exactly where we are in the process. ~ Shakti Gawain,
99:The Divine holds our hand through all and if he seems to let us fall, it is only to raise us higher. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
100:When I'm trusting and being myself as fully as possible, everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously. ~ Shakti Gawain,
101:And when Prohibition came along, Dr. Sharpe’s Shakti Tonic took off like a rocket, mostly due to its hefty eighteen percent alcohol content. ~ Donald O Donovan,
102:Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness. SHAKTI GAWAIN Blocked ~ Julia Cameron,
103:We always attract into our lives whatever we think about most, believe in most strongly, expect on the deepest level, and imagine most vividly. ~ Shakti Gawain,
104:The perfect faith is an assent of the whole being to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
105:Whatever our individual troubles and challenges may be, it's important to pause every now and then to appreciate all that we have, on every level. ~ Shakti Gawain,
106:I see clear as daylight that there is the one Brahman in all, in them and me—one Shakti dwells in all. The only difference is of manifestation. ~ Swami Vivekananda,
107:Susan, you are a brilliant and interesting person. I like you very much. John, you are so warm and loving. People really appreciate that about you. ~ Shakti Gawain,
108:Shi-va is the centripetal force that holds existence together; Shakti is the centrifugal force that gives rise to the explosive diversity of existence. In ~ Sadhguru,
109:The people we are in relationships with are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs, and simultaneously we are mirrors, reflecting their beliefs. ~ Shakti Gawain,
110:When the sun of the gnosis has risen, doubt itself will pass away because its cause and utility have ended. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
111:As you learn to be true to yourself, you will find that you attract people, work, and other circumstances that reflect your evolution and development. ~ Shakti Gawain,
112:A free power of self-variation must be natural to a consciousness that is infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
113:A present incapacity, however heavy may seem its pressure, is only a trial of faith and a temporary difficulty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
114:Perversion comes by a conversion into lower forms—by transmission through the ego and the gunas. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Action of the Divine Shakti,
115:Time observation and Time movement are relative, but Time itself is real and eternal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
116:What I am actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly. ~ Shakti Gawain,
117:My inner guidance is there for me to call on anytime I need or want extra clarity, wisdom, knowledge, support, creative inspiration, love, or companionship. ~ Shakti Gawain,
118:Spiritual healing occurs as we begin to consciously reconnect with our essential being - the wise, loving, powerful, creative entity that we are at our core. ~ Shakti Gawain,
119:Very seldom do we receive any support for trusting ourselves, listening to our own sense of inner truth, and expressing ourselves in a direct and honest way. ~ Shakti Gawain,
120:We have no power of our own in any separately individual sense, but only a personal formulation of the one Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Shakti,
121:What is being done here is a preparation for a work—a work which will be founded on Yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Work and Yoga,
122:The circumstances that provoke our first entry into the path are not the real index of the thing that is at work in us. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
123:By learning to contact, listen to, and act on our intuition, we can directly connect to the higher power of the universe and allow it to become our guiding force. ~ Shakti Gawain,
124:Your intuition is not the same thing as your mind. In fact, intuition is really the opposite of your mind - and you need to use BOTH in living your day-to-day life. ~ Shakti Gawain,
125:All consciousness implies power, Shakti; where there is infinite consciousness of being, there is infinite power of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Mystery of Love,
126:The ego is in fact driven by the mechanism of Nature of which it is a part and the ego-will is not and cannot be a free will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Shakti,
127:All forces are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
128:By viewing our relationships with friends, family, and co-workers as mirrors, as teachers - we see that they are reflecting back to us exactly what we most need to learn. ~ Shakti Gawain,
129:This is the power of Mahalakshmi and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of the embodied beings.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
130:When we consistently suppress and distrust our intuitive knowingness, looking instead for authority, validation, and approval from others, we give our personal power away. ~ Shakti Gawain,
131:The witness silence of the Spirit is there in the very grain of all the voices and workings of Nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
132:Even a blind and ignorant faith is a better possession than the sceptical doubt which turns its back on our spiritual possibilities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
133:The key point to understand is that prosperity is an internal experience, not an external state, and it is an experience that is not tied to having a certain amount of money. ~ Shakti Gawain,
134:Individually and collectively, we are shifting from a position of fear into surrender and trust of the intuitive. The power of the feminine energy is on the rise in our world. ~ Shakti Gawain,
135:When we finally give up the struggle to find fulfillment "out there," we have nowhere to go but within. It is at this moment of total surrender that a new light begins to dawn. ~ Shakti Gawain,
136:Each one of us has all the wisdom and knowledge we ever need right within us. It is available to us through our intuitive mind, which is our connection with universal intelligence. ~ Shakti Gawain,
137:The Jiva cannot really become master except in proportion as he arrives at oneness with the Divine who is his supreme Self. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Action of the Divine Shakti,
138:Faith is necessary throughout and at every step because it is a needed assent of the soul and without this assent there can be no progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
139:Listening to your internal guidance system will lead to a rich, fulfilled, happy life. That's been my experience... and millions of folks can attest to it in their own lives as well. ~ Shakti Gawain,
140:Prana is an element of energy. Energy is a manifestation of a certain principle which in Indian cosmology they call shakti, or spiritual power. Don't worry about the words too much. ~ Frederick Lenz,
141:Shiva becomes the destroyer, acquiring strength and inspiration from his consort Shakti, who is both Gauri, radiant goddess of eroticism, and Kali, dark goddess of extermination. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
142:We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or other people's models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open. ~ Shakti Gawain,
143:The mystery of things is the true truth of things; the intellectual presentation is only truth in representation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
144:We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own and other's people's models, learn to be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open. ~ Shakti Gawain,
145:Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart truly desires must come to you. ~ Shakti Gawain,
146:The faith of the heart and the life mind, like that of the intelligence, must be capable of a constant correction, enlarging and transformation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
147:Most of us are in touch with our intuition whether we know it or not, but we're usually in the habit of doubting or contradicting it so automatically that we don't even know it has spoken ~ Shakti Gawain,
148:There are chakras in the hands; you've seen me use those quite frequently when I meditate. I project the shakti, the kundalini, through the chakras in the hands to people I meditate with. ~ Frederick Lenz,
149:The process of change does not occur on superficial levels, through mere 'positive thinking.' It involves exploring, discovering, and changing our deepest, most basic attitudes toward life. ~ Shakti Gawain,
150:We have to understand in a deep way that having what we truly want in life contributes to the general state of human happiness and supports others in creating more happiness for themselves. ~ Shakti Gawain,
151:We shouldn't ignore any guidance that comes from the mind - we should listen to our minds AND balance mental messages with intuitive messages. We need both to navigate our way through life. ~ Shakti Gawain,
152:What is more of a symbol of eternal growth and change than the Goddess? The eternal spiral of creation. Coiled like a serpent, our Shakti energy sits, waiting to be awakened within all of us. ~ Emma Mildon,
153:The most powerful thing you can do to change the world is to change your own beliefs about the nature of life, people, and reality to something more positive... and begin to act accordingly. ~ Shakti Gawain,
154:Force is the essential Shakti; Energy is the working drive of the Force, its active dynamism; Power is the capacity born of the Force; Strength is energy consolidated and stored in the Adhar. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
155:Freedom and relationship are polar opposites - they both exist on the same continuum. You DO want a relationship - and you DO want freedom - what you really want is BALANCE, you want wholeness. ~ Shakti Gawain,
156:The Divine is formless and nameless, but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible names and shapes of being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
157:Shiva and Shakti are indistinguishable. They are one. They are the universe. Shiva isn't masculine. Shakti isn't feminine. At the core of their mutual penetration the supreme consciousness opens. ~ Daniel Odier,
158:The very first lesson in this Yoga is to face life and its trials with a quiet mind, a firm courage and an entire reliance on the Divine Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Patience and Perseverance,
159:Personal healing on all levels - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual comes when we get in touch with our disowned energies.... Through integrating all aspects of ourselves, we become whole. ~ Shakti Gawain,
160:Through lovingly embracing the full range of our experience- human and divine- we can heal the split that existed between the spirit and the form, in ourselves individually and in the whole world. ~ Shakti Gawain,
161:Kundalini is the life force. It is given different names. They call it prana. They divide it into different segments, the apana and the samana; sometimes it's called shakti. Nice names, it is energy. ~ Frederick Lenz,
162:There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit’s omnipotence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
163:Lakshmi massages Vishnu’s feet. Is this male domination? Kali stands on Shiva’s chest. Is this female domination? Shiva is half a woman. Is this gender equality? Why then is Shakti never half a man? ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
164:we see interesting parallels between the cultural manifestations of the divine feminine as the Shekinah and as the goddess Hekate in the Chaldean Oracles and the all-encompassing Indian goddess Shakti.  ~ Sorita d Este,
165:The most successful people are often very intuitive. Consciously or unconsciously, they follow their gut feelings. Following intuition puts us in the flow - a very alive, productive, and desirable state. ~ Shakti Gawain,
166: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],
167:Following our inner guidance may feel risky and frightening at first, because we are no longer playing it safe, doing what we 'should' do, pleasing others, following rules, or deferring to outside authority. ~ Shakti Gawain,
168:While no amount of financial wealth can guarantee an experience of prosperity, it is possible to experience prosperity at almost any level of income, except when we are unable to meet our basic physical needs. ~ Shakti Gawain,
169:It isn't necessary to be perfect to be a channel for the universe. You just have to be real- be yourself. The more real, honest, and spontaneous you are, the more freely the creative force can flow through you. ~ Shakti Gawain,
170:Trusting your intuition means tuning in as deeply as you can to the energy you feel, following that energy moment to moment, trusting that it will lead you where you want to go and bring you everything you desire. ~ Shakti Gawain,
171:At every level of consciousness, the masculine and the feminine, Shiva and Shakti, steadiness and dynamism, awareness and bliss, stability and transformation, being and becoming, complete and complement each other. ~ Sally Kempton,
172:We don't have in our culture a healthy understanding and respect for the value of Being, which is simply being present in the moment, not trying to go somewhere, not trying to accomplish anything but, just present. ~ Shakti Gawain,
173:Eventually I lost interest in trying to control my life, to make things happen in a way that I thought I wanted them to be. I began to practice surrendering to the universe and finding out what "it" wanted me to do. ~ Shakti Gawain,
174:Your intuition will tell you where you need to go; it will connect you with people you should meet; it will guide you toward work that is meaningful for you - work that brings you joy, work that feels right for you. ~ Shakti Gawain,
175:Since money is energy, our financial affairs tend to reflect how our life energy is moving. When your creative energy is flowing freely, often your finances are as well. If your energy is blocked, your money does too. ~ Shakti Gawain,
176:People with little money seldom realize that people who have a lot of money are also frightened. ... If security is based on having money, it doesn't matter whether you have a little or a lot, you're going to be afraid. ~ Shakti Gawain,
177:It is the one Infinite that appears to us as the many finite: the creation adds nothing to the Infinite; it remains after creation what it was before. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
178:The Divine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by laws and processes because they are the expression of the truth of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
179:Shakti, Force, pouring through the universe supports its boundless activities, the frail and tremulous life of the rose no less than the flaming motions of sun and star. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, The National Value of Art,
180:We avoid the things that we're afraid of because we think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover. ~ Shakti Gawain,
181:Spirit is the essence of consciousness, the energy of the universe that creates all things. Each one of us is a part of that spirit - a divine entity. So the spirit is the higher self, the eternal being that lives within us. ~ Shakti Gawain,
182:The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
183:The word shakti means “power.” Shakti, the innate power in reality, has five “faces.” It manifests as the power to be conscious, the power to feel ecstasy, the power of will or desire, the power to know, and the power to act. ~ Sally Kempton,
184:Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. — Matthew 7: 7, 8 ~ Shakti Gawain,
185:Our life is a reflection of what we believe we deserve. As we deepen our acceptance of and open ourselves to the Infinite love of the universe, a new power flows through us, releasing us from the bondage of our old way of life. ~ Shakti Gawain,
186:True healing comes from owning and accepting all of life's energies within ourselves....When they are allowed to be expressed, they take their places as important facets of our nature. There is no split between 'good' and 'bad.' ~ Shakti Gawain,
187:Our relationship to money reflects how we feel about our power to affect the world. Since money is a mirror of our consciousness, the more comfortable we are with being powerful, the more money we are likely to create in our lives. ~ Shakti Gawain,
188:Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things and in the end bring his strength as a worthy offering to the altar of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
189:The body is our primary feedback mechanism which can show us what is and isn't working about our ways of thinking, expressing, and living. As we live our truth more fully and freely, our body grows healthier, stronger, and more beautiful. ~ Shakti Gawain,
190:There is no separation between us and God-we are divine expressions of the creative principle...there can be no real lack or scarcity; there is nothing we have to try to achieve or attract; we contain the potential for everything within us. ~ Shakti Gawain,
191:One of the reasons there may be a trend toward moving out of the cities, again, it may be conscious or it may be unconscious, but it is a desire to connect more with nature. And with the natural rhythms. We [people] need that! We've been missing it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
192:All of us as human beings are connected by one energy and consciousness. So we all affect each other and everything that's happening in the world affects us individually. And what we're each doing as an individual affects what's going on in the world. ~ Shakti Gawain,
193:We may overcompensate for our feelings of powerlessness by attempting to control and manipulate other people and our environment. Or we may eventually burst forth with uncontrolled rage that is highly exaggerated and distorted by its long suppression. ~ Shakti Gawain,
194:I believe that everybody needs to tell their story - to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be understood. We all want that, deep down inside - and writing a book is a great way to make sense of your own experience and to share it with others. ~ Shakti Gawain,
195:The human intellect is too much afraid of error precisely because it is too much attached to a premature sense of certitude and a too hasty eagerness for positive finality in what it seems to seize of knowledge. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Faith and Shakti,
196:The truth about this earth is that it is an infinitely good, beautiful, nourishing place to be. The only “evil” comes from a lack of understanding of this truth. Evil (ignorance) is like a shadow — it has no real substance of its own; it is simply a lack of light. ~ Shakti Gawain,
197:The finite is a frontal aspect and a self-determination of the Infinite; no finite can exist in itself and by itself, it exists by the Infinite and because it is of one essence with the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
198:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
199:The seven things that make up the rainbow of India's development are India's strong and deep rooted family system, Agriculture-Animal development, India's Matru Shakti (women power), Natural Resources (Jal, Jameen, Jungle), Youth power, Vibrant Democracy and Knowledge. ~ Narendra Modi,
200:Indiana was such a devout disciple of Shakti that she had once considered taking her name until her father, Blake Jackson, managed to convince her that a Hindu goddess's name was not appropriate for a tall, voluptuous blond American with the looks of an inflatable doll. ~ Isabel Allende,
201:Nothing changes yet all changes, all her workings and creations would in this play collapse into disintegration and chaos; there would be nothing to hold her disparate movements and creations together. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
202:If a person realises his position and stays in his own self, things that are to happen will happen. Things that are not to happen will not happen. The shakti that is in the world, is only one. All these troubles arise if we think that we are separate from that shakti. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
203:We, as spiritual beings, created the physical world as a place to learn. It's our school, our playground, our artist's studio. I beleive that we're here to master the process of creation - to learn how to consciously channel the creative energy of spirit into physical form. ~ Shakti Gawain,
204:When we create something, we always create it first in a thought form. If we are basically positive in attitude, expecting and envisioning pleasure, satisfaction and happiness, we will attract and create people, situations, and events which conform to our positive expectations. ~ Shakti Gawain,
205:Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. The kundalini shakti - the supreme energy of the divine - will take you there. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
206:Everything that happens to us can be looked at as a gift. Although it's quite difficult when you're in the middle of a hard struggle with something, it's hard to see it as a gift, but in retrospect, we can almost always look back and say, "Oh, I see why I had to go through that." ~ Shakti Gawain,
207:Most of us have considerable prosperity in our lives. Often, we are so busy pursuing our unmet desires that we are unable to enjoy all that we already have. Allowing ourselves to really appreciate the prosperity we have created is a big step toward opening to even greater fulfillment. ~ Shakti Gawain,
208:I do not consider myself by any means an expert on the art of creative visualization. I am a student of the subject, and the more I study and use creative visualization myself, the more I discover how vast and deep its potential is…truly it is as infinite, creative as your own imagination. ~ Shakti Gawain,
209:Not being in touch with your vulnerability and not learning to own it and accept it and be comfortable with it leaves you in a position where you're liable to look at and judge other people for being vulnerable because they're reflecting that part of yourself that you're not comfortable with. ~ Shakti Gawain,
210:I think in the Western world we have gotten overly identified with doing, and we've kind of forgotten about the art of being. And we don't see value in it; we think that if you're not doing something all of the time, being very active and producing something, then you're sort of wasting your time. ~ Shakti Gawain,
211:That which Is, is only one.

Some call it Shakti, some Shiva, some Vishnu, some Jesus and some Allah.

People give it whatever names they like.

What does it matter if the names they give are different?

That which Is, is only One. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramana Jyoti Souvenir, 1969,
212:In the Western world there isn't much value given to the necessity for just being quiet. And just resting, and just being, without a focus or a goal. At least a certain amount in our lives - we don't need to do half and half; it's okay if we're doing a lot of doing, we just need some being mixed in. ~ Shakti Gawain,
213:Practice following your intuition in everyday things, trusting your gut feelings moment by moment and acting on them as best you can. As you learn to trust yourself in smaller matters, you will build power and confidence to take bigger risks and deal with the larger issues in your life successfully. ~ Shakti Gawain,
214:Whatever our individual troubles and challenges may be, it’s important to pause every now and then to appreciate all that we have, on every level. We need to literally 'count our blessings,' give thanks for them, allow ourselves to enjoy them, and relish the experience of prosperity we already have. ~ Shakti Gawain,
215:Every time you have a desire, in a certain sense you have a goal, something you would like to be, do, or have. Some desires are merely passing fancies, but others stay with us and go deeper. Our desires and our goals give us direction and focus. They help point us down our path of action in our life. ~ Shakti Gawain,
216:Every creative genius has been a channel. Every masterwork has been created through the channeling process. Great works are not created by the personality alone. They arise from a deep inspiration on the universal level, and are then expressed and brought into form through the individual personality. ~ Shakti Gawain,
217:I am lovable. I am kind and loving, and I have a great deal to share with others. I am talented, intelligent, and creative. I am attractive.I deserve the very best in life. I have a lot to offer and everyone recognizes it. I love the world and the world loves me. I am willing to be happy and successful. ~ Shakti Gawain,
218:In its fundamental truth the original status of Time behind all its variations is nothing else than the eternity of the Eternal, just as the fundamental truth of Space, the original sense of its reality, is the infinity of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
219:Many times people can access that being stage more fully and more easily if at first you are actually doing something. If you run, or dance, or do something kind of vigorous, and let the energy release, then sometimes it's easier to sit or lie down and then feel at ease and rest and be quiet and move inside. ~ Shakti Gawain,
220:Woman is an incarnation of 'Shakti'- the goddess of power. If she is bestowed with education, Gujarat's strength will double. Let the campaign of 'Kanya Kelavni' be spread in every home. Let the lamp of educating daughters be lit up in every heart. Then only the vision of 'Jay Jay Garvi Gujarat' will be realized. ~ Narendra Modi,
221:Everyone we attract into our life is a mirror for us in certain ways. All of our relationships reflect certain parts of us. We all attract certain people into our life who have developed qualities opposite to the ones we are most identified with. In other words, they mirror our disowned selves, and we mirror theirs. ~ Shakti Gawain,
222:The mind is the enemy of intuition, according to many New Age adherents, but I don't buy that. I look at everything in terms of polarities - two ends of the same continuum. Young/old, male/female, individuality/conformity, work/play, freedom/constraint, right/left, day/night, life/death, rational/emotional, and so on. ~ Shakti Gawain,
223:Evil (ignorance) is like a shadow-- it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it ~ Shakti Gawain,
224:The people we are in relationship with
are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs,
and simultaneously we are mirrors, reflecting their beliefs.
So... relationship is one of the most powerful tools for growth....
If we look honestly at our relationships,
we can see so much about how we have created them. ~ Shakti Gawain,
225:We have been accustomed to thinking that we have to get something from outside us in order to be happy, but in truth it works the other way: we must learn to contact our inner source of happiness and satisfaction and flow it outward to share with others-not because it is virtuous to do so, but because it really feels good. ~ Shakti Gawain,
226:There is a universal, intelligent, life force that exists within everyone and everything. It resides within each one of use as a deep wisdom, an inner knowing. We can access this wonderful source of knowledge and wisdom through our intuition, an inner sense that tells us what feels right and true for us at any given moment. ~ Shakti Gawain,
227:Many of us have had the attitude that life is something that happens to us and that all we can do is make the best of it. It is basically a victim's position, giving power to people and things outside of ourselves. We are beginning to realize that the power rests in us, that we can choose to create our life the way we want it to be. ~ Shakti Gawain,
228:Evil (ignorance) is like a shadow-- it has no real substance of its
own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to
disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or
any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a
shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it ~ Shakti Gawain,
229:The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her - the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga,
230:... my life has been dedicated to my growth and evolution as a conscious being. ... becoming more aware of all that was taking place within me and around me; how my inner world affected my outer world and vice versa. I realized that the more awareness I have, the more choice I have in how I create or respond to the circumstances of my life. ~ Shakti Gawain,
231:That has been my personal relationship with God-a connection with the powerful, loving, wise energy in all of us, in all creation. It is the life force itself. We can all have contact with it each moment in our lives, but it takes commitment and practice. We must be willing to move through all our deepest fears, doubts, and misunderstandings. ~ Shakti Gawain,
232:Work and play can be the same. When you are following your energy and doing what you want to do all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves. Work is no longer what you have to do, and play what you want to do. When you are doing what you love, you may work harder and produce more than ever before, because you are having fun. ~ Shakti Gawain,
233:What is more transformative than the female form? What is more of a symbol of eternal growth and change than the Goddess? The eternal spiral of cre- ation. Coiled like a serpent, our shakti energy sits, waiting to be awakened within all of us. What our bodies and beings were built for. What we were created to do. Change. Create. Create the change. ~ Emma Mildon,
234:We all have within us a deep wisdom, but sometimes we don't know we have it. We live in a culture that doesn't acknowledge or validate human intuition and doesn't encourage us to rely on our intuitive wisdom. Much of the Western world emphasizes rationality and reason, but overlooks or ignores the enormous value of intuition and instinctive wisdom. ~ Shakti Gawain,
235:A deadness occurs in relationships when people are no longer willing to tell each other how they really feel. When people first fall in love they're more willing to do this because they're still getting to know each other and dependency has not yet set in. As soon as it does, though, people often stop sharing their true feelings out of fear of loss. ~ Shakti Gawain,
236:The more we have given to ourselves, the more we have to give to others. When we find that place within ourselves that is giving, we begin to create an outward flow. Giving to others comes not from a sense of sacrifice, self-righteousness, or spirituality, but for the pure pleasure of it, because it's fun. Giving can only come from a full, loving space. ~ Shakti Gawain,
237:Government has only one religion - India first! Government has one holy book - the Constitution. The Government must be immersed in only one Bhakti- Bharat Bhakti! The Government's only strength is Jan Shakti! Government's only ritual is the well being of the 125 crore Indians! The only code of conduct of the Government should be 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas! ~ Narendra Modi,
238:If you’d like to learn more about the power of visualization, check out Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life by Shakti Gawain. We also recommend Healing Visualizations: Creating Health Through Imagery by Gerald Epstein, MD, and The Art of Mental Training - A Guide to Performance Excellence by DC Gonzalez. ~ S J Scott,
239:There are many stories of Ganesha’s birth besides the one in which Shiva beheads Vinayaka. In one story, Ganesha is born when Shiva and Shakti make love taking the form of elephants. In another, Shiva creates a child of his own image for the pleasure of Shakti but since he looks too much like the father, Shakti replaces his head with that of an elephant. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
240:We all have within us a deep sense of what we need, and what is right and true for us. To access this we need to pay attention to our feelings and our intuition. We need to learn to listen deeply to ourselves and to trust what we hear. And we need to risk acting on what we feel to be true. Even if we make mistakes, we must do this in order to learn and grow. ~ Shakti Gawain,
241:Word, Thought, Kula and Akula cease to be there! Neither silence nor yogic postures gain you admission there; Neither Shiva, nor Shakti abide there! Whatever remains is That; this is the Lesson! [bk1sm.gif] -- from The Ascent of Self: A Reinterpretation of the Mystical Poetry of Lalla-Ded, by B. N. Paramoo

~ Lalla, Word, Thought, Kula and Akula cease to be there!
,
242:... consciousness is an ever-unfolding, deepening, and expanding process with no end point. We are infinite and complex beings, and our human journey involves not just a spiritual awakening, but the development of all levels of our being - spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical - and the integration of all these aspects into a healthy and balanced daily life. ~ Shakti Gawain,
243:We are living in a very exciting and powerful time. On the deepest level of consciousness, a radical spiritual transformation is taking place. I believe that on a worldwide level, we are being challenged to let go of our present way of life and create an entirely new one. We are, in fact, in the process of destroying our old world and building a new one in its place. ~ Shakti Gawain,
244:My primary relationship is with myself- all others are mirrors of it. As I learn to love myself, I automatically receive the love and appreciation that I desire from others. If I am commited to myself and to living my truth, I will attract others with equal commitment. My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates the space for intimacy with another. ~ Shakti Gawain,
245:Nature triumphs ultimately. The triumph is impersonal, nonjudgmental. Nature kills everybody, not just the “bad.” To call the goddess “Mother” is to acknowledge only one half of her personality. She is also a “killer.” She is the source of joy and sorrow, of hope and despair, life and death. Nature (prakriti), delusion (maya), energy (shakti)—she is the world we react to. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
246:Receiving and giving are opposite energies that are inextricably linked together in the natural flow of life, like inhaling and exhaling. If one aspect of that cycle doesn't function, the entire cycle ceases to function and the life force cannot move freely. If you can't inhale, you will soon have nothing to exhale, and before long, your body will be unable to continue living. ~ Shakti Gawain,
247:The very actions themselves can be a meditation. For me, walking is certainly a meditation if I walk for awhile. First my mind is busy and I'm thinking about different things and after a while that starts to fall away and I start to become very present in the moment. And that feeling of being present in the moment is being. That's when we know we're connecting with being energy. ~ Shakti Gawain,
248:The disowned parts of ourselves are what get in the way of us having the relationships we long for, the careers we don't know how to create, and the goals we want to achieve. It is by getting in touch with ALL the parts of ourselves - by having a gentle dialogue with all the "selves" we have inside - that we integrate them into a more comfortable, peaceful way of being with ourselves. ~ Shakti Gawain,
249:In many other cultures, and certainly in the Eastern world, there's great value put on being, contemplating, and even withdrawing from the world at certain times or for certain periods of time. But we don't really have that in our culture, so it's difficult for many Westerners to learn how to sit down or lie down and just be quiet without going to sleep. We're just not trained to do it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
250:The all-pervading energy source of existence or Shakti manifests itself as creation. Shakti is the divine mother who gives birth to and nurtures the newborn-whether it is a newborn babies a brand new relationship, a fresh idea, or a magical manifestation. Although Shakti is beyond the boundaries of gender, form or color, we call It Mother because of its mothering and creative qualities. ~ Deepak Chopra,
251:To enjoy your goals, think of them as signposts, pointing you in a certain direction. They give you a focus and help your energy to get moving. The way you go is up to you; you can get very uptight focusing only on getting to your goal or you can relax and enjoy the entire journey, appreciating every unexpected bend and turn of the road, every new opportunity for learning and feeling. ~ Shakti Gawain,
252:Notice what happens when you doubt, suppress, or act contrary to your feelings. You will observe decreased energy, powerless or helpless feelings, and physical or emotional pain. Now notice what happens when you follow your intuitive feelings. Usually the result is increased energy and power and a sense of natural flow. When you're at one with yourself, the world feels peaceful, exciting, and magical. ~ Shakti Gawain,
253:The best way I have found to follow my true desires is to pay attention to my intuitive sense. We all have great wisdom within us, a part of us that knows exactly what we need at every moment. We are born with this intuitive sense, but most of us are quickly taught to distrust and ignore it. We have to relearn something that should come naturally. Fortunately, it's not too difficult; it just takes some practice. ~ Shakti Gawain,
254:It does not always help to analyze and think about problems with your rational mind. Sometimes it is far more effective to turn to your inner self, to ask the universe for help. Simply sit quietly. Take a few deep breaths and focus your awareness within. Ask your wise inner self, either silently or aloud, for guidance or help in understanding the message. As you get a sense of what feels right, act on this feeling. ~ Shakti Gawain,
255:I do believe that one of the major ways that we're out of alignment with our souls is in our disconnect from nature. I feel that we have kind of lost our natural way of being connected to the planet. We need to be rooted on the planet. We experience ourselves as kind of isolated from that, and I actually think that's a great cause of the suffering that many of us are experiencing, whether consciously or unconsciously. ~ Shakti Gawain,
256:So Ayurveda is a bunch of techniques and theories and practices that have been accumulated over many centuries in a way that we think about Ayurveda. But the Ayurvidya is the Shakti that has inspired the development of Ayurveda. It's inspiring the spread of Ayurveda into many other countries. And has to posses an individual before that individual can actually act as a vehicle for healing energy to move into the world. ~ Robert Svoboda,
257:There is a natural rhythm to the active and receptive energies within us. At times our energy is strong and outgoing - it is time to pursue our goals, take risks, get things accomplished. At other times, our energy is quiet and sensitive, and we need to take time to nurture ourselves, relax, and just 'be' for a while. As we trust and follow this rhythm, we attract everything we need and create everything we truly desire. ~ Shakti Gawain,
258:Be willing to take some risks in the areas of work and money. If we do only what we think we should do in order to make money and be secure, we won't listen to the intuitive voice that tells us to try something new, to be more creative, or to move on to the next step on our path. When we listen to our intuition and take some risks, we are not alone. The universe will support us and reward us for taking risks on its behalf! ~ Shakti Gawain,
259:Many of us fear that we are not attractive or desirable enough to attract others. We have believed that we are "not enough." Today let's remind ourselves that we all receive our beauty, energy, and light from the same inexhaustible source. As we acknowledge this and begin to love and appreciate ourselves as we are, our channel opens and we have available to us the infinite vitality, beauty, and magnetism of the life force. ~ Shakti Gawain,
260:Our "life education" has not necessarily taught us a satisfying way to live. We suffer from a vague sense that there must be something more, some deeper meaning. We must return to kindergarten and start to learn a way of life that is contrary to the way we approached things before-a way of life based on trust of our own inner truth. We can rediscover the child-like innocence and wisdom that knows that anything is possible. ~ Shakti Gawain,
261:This morning take a few minutes to reflect on how you give of yourself to the world. Often we get caught up in the frenzy of buying and giving things. Look at the ways you give appreciation, friendship, energy, time, love, and affection, and give of your own special talents and abilities throughout the year. Acknowledge yourself for having enriched the lives of others. Spend some time loving yourself for the giving light that you are. ~ Shakti Gawain,
262:We have to create strength where it did not exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new men with new hearts, to be born again. We need a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom it fills every corner of the personality and overflows to fertilise the earth. These, having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
263:Creative power has to filter through our beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and habits. The more negative and constricted our beliefs and patterns are, the more they block the creative energy. Most people hope that by ignoring negativity, it will go away, but the reverse is actually true. Through recognizing, acknowledging, and experiencing it, the blocked energy can be released. You are then free to replace it with positive beliefs and attitudes. ~ Shakti Gawain,
264:We can sense subtle energy, which is called shakti or prana in Eastern healing traditions, and we absorb this energy into our own bodies. Highly sensitive people don’t typically do that. This capacity allows us to experience the energies around us in extremely deep ways. Since everything is made of subtle energy, including emotions and physical sensations, we energetically internalize the feelings, pain, and various physical sensations of others. ~ Judith Orloff,
265:But something had already been set in motion, and I wonder and wonder how things would have been if I'd just let that moment pass, the one where our eyes met. If I had just taken Shakti's arm and moved off, letting the electrical jolt that passed between us fade off, letting the girl return to his side, letting fate head off in another direction entirely, where he would have kept his eyes fixed on the girl with the purse or on another girl entirely. ~ Deb Caletti,
266:Pandit, you've got it wrong.
There's no creator or creation there,
no gross or fine, no wind or fire,
no sun, moon, earth or water,
no radiant form, no time there,
no word, no flesh, no faith,
no cause and effect, nor any thought
of the Veda. No Hari or Brahma,
no Shiva or Shakti, no pilgrimage
and no rituals. No mother, father
or guru there. Is it two or one?
Kabir says, if you understand now,
you're guru, I'm disciple. ~ Kabir,
267:If you are feeling tired or ill, rest. Your body will always want rest and ease if it's sick. When you become quiet, ask your body what you need to do in order to heal yourself. Your body may tell you to change certain habits, eat more wholesome food, express some feelings, quit your job, see a doctor, or it may have some other message for you, but there is always an answer available to you. The key is to ask and then listen honestly for a response. ~ Shakti Gawain,
268:In our time, the Goddess has come roaring out of her hiding places—for it is also the nature of the feminine to roar—and we are beginning to recognize uniquely feminine kinds of power. We sense that something profoundly important is missing from a world in which the power of the divine feminine is not understood and in which women themselves are out of touch with their own Shakti, the force of feminine strength and the flavors of feminine love. Many ~ Sally Kempton,
269:There is a wise being living inside of you. It is your intuitive self. Focus your awareness into a deep place in your body, a place where your "gut feelings" reside. You can communicate with it by silently talking to it, making requests, or asking questions. Then relax, don't think too hard with your mind, and be open to receiving answers. They are usually very simple and relate to the present moment, not the past or the future, and they feel right. ~ Shakti Gawain,
270:human can also sense another’s hunger and produce food through yagna to satisfy another’s hunger. That is also the distinguishing feature of humanity,’ said Shakti. ‘When tapasya is done without yagna, solitude thrives, no relationships are established and society collapses. You become the destroyer.’ Shiva then said, ‘When yagna is done without tapasya, we exploit other people’s hunger to satisfy our own. Thus a corrupt society comes into being. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
271:The way to a beautiful, strong, healthy body is to start by trusting yourself right now. Let go of the struggle and surrender to your body's needs. Your intuition will tell you what to eat. It may direct you to exercise vigorously, in which case you'll enjoy it, or it may tell you to slow down and rest. It may tell you to stay in bed all day, or it may tell you to get up early. There are no rigid rules. Your body knows perfectly well what's good for it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
272:Our negative thoughts are valuable messages to us about our deeper fears and negative attitudes. These usually are so basic to our thinking and feeling that we don't realize they are beliefs at all. We assume that they are simply "the way life is." We may be consciously affirming and visualizing prosperity, but if our unconscious belief is that we don't deserve it, then we won't create it. Once we become aware of our core negative beliefs, they begin to heal. ~ Shakti Gawain,
273:Beingness, doingness and havingness are like a triangle where each side supports the others. They are not in conflict with each other. They all exist simultaneously. Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: They try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. ~ Shakti Gawain,
274:I think that everything in the world around us is a reflection of what is going on inside of us. So each of us as an individual creates a life - we draw to us certain people and events and circumstances that reflect what's going on inside of us, so we can literally look at our life and see a mirror of our own consciousness. And if that's true on an individual level, it's also true that what's going on in the world in a bigger way is a reflection of the collective consciousness. ~ Shakti Gawain,
275:Healing ourselves on the spiritual level involves developing a strong connection with our soul. We heal ourselves on the mental level as we become aware of our core beliefs, release those that limit us, and open to more supportive ideas and greater understanding. Emotional healing takes place as we learn to accept and experience the full range of our feelings. And we heal ourselves on the physical level when we learn to honor and care for our bodies, and for the physical world around us. ~ Shakti Gawain,
276:Many of us have a tendency to deny any negative feelings. We judge them as "bad" or "unenlightened" when, in fact, they are our stepping stone to enlightenment. Our so-called negative feelings or attitudes are really parts of ourselves that need recognition, love, and healing. Not only is it safe and healthy to acknowledge and accept all of our feelings and beliefs, it is necessary, if we are to get in touch with the fears and pockets of blocked energy that are holding us back from what we want. ~ Shakti Gawain,
277:Nada Brahma Vishwaswaroopa Nada hi Sakala Jeeva Roopa Nada hi karma, Nada hi dharma Nada hi bandhana, Nada hi mukti Nada hi Shankara, Nada hi Shakti Nada Brahma Vishwaswaroopa Nadam Nadam, Sarvam Nadam Nadam Nadam, Nadam Nadam (Sound is Brahman, the manifestation of the universe, sound manifests itself in the form of all life, sound is bondage, sound is the means of liberation, sound is that which binds, sound is that which liberates, sound is the bestower of all, sound is the power behind everything, sound is everything.) ~ Sadhguru,
278:We each have an infinite supply of love and happiness within us. We have been accustomed to thinking that we have to get something from outside of us in order to be happy, but in truth it works the other way: We must learn to contact our inner source of happiness and satisfaction and flow it outward to share with others — not because it is virtuous to do so, but because it feels really good! Once we tune into it we just naturally want to share it because that is the essential nature of love, and we are all loving beings. ~ Shakti Gawain,
279:Now, her mother lifts Kavita’s head up out of her lap and holds her face, hot with tears, in her cool hands. “I am glad it is you who is going,” her mother whispers.
Kavita looks up at her with shock.
“I won’t worry about you, Kavita. You have strength. Fortitude. Shakti. Bombay will bring you hardship. But you, beti, have the strength to endure it.”
And through her mother’s words and her hands, Kavita feels it—shakti, the sacred feminine force that flows from the Divine Mother to all those who have come after her. ~ Shilpi Somaya Gowda,
280:As you learn to consciously observe the transformation process, you will watch yourself repeating a lot of old patterns long after you seemingly know better. Spiritually and intellectually, you realize there is another way, but emotionally you are still clinging to the old habits. This is a difficult time. Try to be patient and compassionate with yourself. When you recognize the futility of an old pattern so clearly, it's about to change! A short time later, you will suddenly begin to respond differently, in a more positive way. ~ Shakti Gawain,
281:India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
282:If you are trying to appear calm and collected on the outside when actually you are feeling upset and angry, your children may mirror this to you by becoming wild and disruptive. While you are trying to maintain control, they pick up the chaotic energy inside of you and reflect it in their behavior. If you express directly what you are feeling, without trying to cover it up, they will usually calm down. They feel comfortable with the truth, the congruity between your feelings and your words. This is true of other relationships as well. ~ Shakti Gawain,
283:If you are always waiting to be, do, or have what you want, your energy becomes blocked. Your body may reflect this in excess weight or other physical problems. Express yourself directly. Set clear boundaries with other people and do what you need to do to take good care of yourself. Energy will then move freely through your body and this circulation will dissolve any excess weight. The more you are willing to be yourself, the less you'll need to use food as a substitute nurturer. You will be receiving the natural nurturing of the universe. ~ Shakti Gawain,
284:In the East, we have developed a science: if you cannot find a soul mate, you can create one. And that science is Tantra. To find a soul mate means to find the person with whom all your seven centers meet naturally. That is impossible. Once in a while, a Krishna and a Radha, a Shiva and a Shakti. And when it happens it is tremendously beautiful. But it is like lightning - you cannot depend on it. If you want to read your Bible, you can't depend on it that when the lightning is there you will read. The lightning is a natural phenomenon, but not dependable. ~ Rajneesh,
285:In Demons of the Flesh, Zeena describes how Shiva and Shakti are actually ‘two sides of the same deity’. The goal of the initiate on the left-hand path is to become ‘this bisexual twin godhead’ and activate a state of perceptual sexual ecstasy within one's own consciousness. Zeena points out that a corresponding symbolism is found in the western hermeticism in the idea of ‘the inner androgyne.’

--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004 ~ Zeena Schreck,
286:The housecleaning our bodies perform while we sleep is powered by the shakti that energizes the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and autonomous nervous systems to send instructions to the lymphatic system, the pituitary gland, and a host of other places in our slumbering forms. Whether it is blood circulating in the veins and arteries, a nerve impulse jumping a synaptic gap in the brain, our body straining while running the hundred-meter dash, or the working out of a physics or organic chemistry problem, our shakti provides the energy to accomplish the activity. ~ Thomas Ashley Farrand,
287:People are often very frightened of their anger. They feel it will cause them to do something harmful. If you have this fear, create a safe situation where you can express your anger, alone or with a trusted therapist or friend. Allow yourself to talk angrily, shout, hit pillows, whatever you feel like. Once you've done this in a safe environment, you will have released some of the charge, and you can look underneath the anger to find what you need to do to take better care of yourself. Like any emotion, anger is a valuable tool, teaching us who we are and how we feel. ~ Shakti Gawain,
288:I see You, Every time I look into Buddha’s eyes. I give myself to You. Every time I alter one of Your 1,000s names. Honestly & fully I love You. Through Christ and Maria, Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, With every day that passes and every breath I take. I enter gratitude for receiving Your Love. Obeying Your Laws of Truthfulness and Ahimsa, Weaving Prana With hearts and souls of Gaia. Through mysticism, shamanism, sufism, and ecstatic meditations. I yearn to touch You, to feel You, to be You. Within this amazing Journey of Awareness of Your Consciousness. ~ Nata a Nuit Pantovi,
289:If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
290:There are variations of this practice, depending on an individual’s aspirations. Someone who seeks muscular fitness can practice a basic process that is known as surya shakti. Through practice, if one attains a certain level of stability and mastery over the system, one could be introduced to a more powerful and spiritually significant process called the surya kriya. While the surya namaskar is about balancing the two dimensions of sun and moon (or masculine and feminine) within the human system, the surya kriya is about connecting these two fundamental divisions for further spiritual growth. ~ Sadhguru,
291:In reality, thought is only a scout and pioneer; it can guide but not command or effectuate. The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Sraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
292:Purusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha. The Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti,-that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Soul and Nature,
293:You have a wellspring of beautiful energy inside of you. When you are open you feel it; when you are closed you don’t. This flow of energy comes from the depth of your being. It’s been called by many names. In ancient Chinese medicine, it is called Chi. In yoga, it is called Shakti. In the West, it is called Spirit. Call it anything you want. All the great spiritual traditions talk about your spiritual energy; they just give it different names. That spiritual energy is what you’re experiencing when love rushes up into your heart. That is what you’re experiencing when you’re enthused by something and all this high energy comes up inside of you. You ~ Michael A Singer,
294:Let us imagine that life is a river. Most people are clinging to the bank, afraid to let go and risk being carried along by the current of the river. At a certain point, each of us must be willing to simply let go, and trust the river to carry us along safely. At this point, we learn to “go with the flow” — and it feels wonderful. Once we have become accustomed to being in the flow of the river, we can begin to look ahead and guide our course onward, deciding where the course looks best, steering the way around boulders and snags, and choosing which of the many channels and branches of the river we prefer to follow, all the while still “going with the flow. ~ Shakti Gawain,
295:And here, Meister Eckhart distinguishes between the One and the Divine Mind, using the terms “Godhead” and “God”: God and the Godhead are as different from each other as heaven and earth… Creatures speak of God—but why do they not mention the Godhead? Because there is only unity in the Godhead and there is nothing to talk about. God acts. The Godhead does not. …The difference between God and the Godhead is the difference between action and non-action. …The Godhead is poor, naked and empty as though it were not; it has not, wills not, wants not, works not, gets not. It is God who has the treasure and the bride in Him; the Godhead is as void as though it were not.75 Eckhart’s “God” is the manifestory Power of the One, which has been referred to as Prakrti, Maya, Nous, Shakti, Logos, and many other names; we are calling It ‘the Divine Mind’. The Divine Mind is not a ~ Swami Abhayananda,
296:Please explain to me what is meant by the Divine Mother.
The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine - which is the Mother of all things.
24 June 1933

You have written in The Mother that the Mother is the consciousness and force of the Ishwara, but here my experience is that the Ishwara is the consciousness and force of the Supreme Mother. Could you please make it clear to me?
The Mother is the consciousness and force of the Divine - or, it may be said, she is the Divine in its consciousness-force. The Ishwara as Lord of the Cosmos does come out of the Mother who takes her place beside him as the cosmic Shakti - the cosmic Ishwara is one aspect of the Divine. The experience therefore is correct so far as it goes.
16 November 1934 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, The Mother, the Divine and the Lower Nature, The Consciousness and Force of the Divine,
297:Nevertheless, if we do accept this evidence, from the pre-Aryan (Dravidian) civilization, of a full-blown Shiva-Shakti mythology, we may trace the manifestation of the Shaivite tradition to these pre-Aryan peoples, and account for the appearance of two separately developing traditions among the early Indian peoples: one, the long-established tradition of the aboriginal races, and the other, the imported Vedic pantheon of the invading Aryans. For the Dravidian population, the Absolute Being came eventually to be known as Shiva, and His world-manifesting Power was called Shakti; while the Aryan tradition eventually adopted the name, Brahman for the Absolute principle, and Maya for Its world-manifesting Energy. And, while these two traditions eventually intermingled and became recognized by the wise as representative of a common and identical worldview, for many centuries each retained a semblance of independence while coexisting alongside one another. ~ Swami Abhayananda,
298:But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct command or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be no more happy condition than this union and dependence; for this step carries you back beyond the border-line from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, into its deep peace and its intense Ananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, 12,
299:The Lord sees in his omniscience the thing that has to be done. This seeing is his Will, it is a form of creative Power, and that which he sees the all-conscious Mother, one with him, takes into her dynamic self and embodies, and executive Nature-Force carries it out as the mechanism of their omnipotent omniscience.
   But this vision of what is to be and therefore of what is to be done arises out of the very being, pours directly out of the consciousness and delight of existence of the Lord, spontaneously, like light from the Sun. It is not our mortal attempt to see, our difficult arrival at truth of action and motive or just demand of Nature. When the individual soul is entirely at one in its being and knowledge with the Lord and directly in touch with the original Shakti, the transcendent Mother, the supreme Will can then arise in us too in the high divine manner as a thing that must be and is achieved by the spontaneous action of Nature. There is then no desire, no responsibility, no reaction; all takes place in the peace, calm, light, power of the supporting and enveloping and inhabiting Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218,
300:Ishwara-Shakti is not quite the same as Purusha-Prakriti; for Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other. Ishwara is Purusha who contains Prakriti and rules by the power of the Shakti within him. Shakti is Prakriti ensouled by Purusha and acts by the will of the Ishwara which is her own will and whose presence in her movement she carries always with her. The Purusha-Prakriti realisation is of the first utility to the seeker on the Way of Works; for it is the separation of the conscient being and the Energy and the subjection of the being to the mechanism of the Energy that are the efficient cause of our ignorance and imperfection; by this realisation the being can liberate himself from the mechanical action of the nature and become free and arrive at a first spiritual control over the nature. Ishwara-Shakti stands behind the relation of Purusha-Prakriti and its ignorant action and turns it to an evolutionary purpose. The Ishwara-Shakti realisation can bring participation in a higher dynamism and a divine working and a total unity and harmony of the being in a spiritual nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216,
301:The Transcendent Mother and the Higher Hemisphere
   "At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power."1 The Transcendent Mother thus stands above the Ananda plane.There are then four steps of the Divine Shakti:
   (1) The Transcendent Mahashakti who stands above the Ananda plane and who bears the Supreme Divine in her eternal consciousness.
   (2) The Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of SatChit-Ananda where all beings live and move in an ineffable completeness.
   (3) The Supramental Mahashakti immanent in the worlds of Supermind.
   (4) The Cosmic Mahashakti immanent in the lower hemisphere.
   Yes; that is all right. One speaks often however of all above the lower hemisphere as part of the transcendence. This is because the Supermind and Ananda are not manifested in our universe at present, but are planes above it. For us the higher hemisphere is pr [para], the Supreme Transcendence is prA(pr [paratpara]. The Sanskrit terms are here clearer than the English.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, Three Aspects of the Mother, 52,
302:The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and to nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother-Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine. In this Yoga, therefore, there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others; any such relation or interchange immediately ties down the soul to the lower consciousness and its lower nature, prevents the true and full union with the Divine and hampers both the ascent to the supramental Truth consciousness and the descent of the supramental Ishwari Shakti. Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation or a sexual enjoyment, even if kept free from any outward act; therefore these things are absolutely forbidden in the sadhana. It goes without saying that any physical act of the kind is not allowed, but also any subtler form is ruled out. It is only after becoming one with the supramental Divine that we can find our true spiritual relations with others in the Divine; in that higher unity this kind of gross lower vital movement can have no place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV,
303:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother, - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother, Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,
304:These are the conditions of our effort and they point to an ideal which can be expressed in these or in equivalent formulae. To live in God and not in the ego; to move, vastly founded, not in the little egoistic consciousness, but in the consciousness of the All-Soul and the Transcendent. To be perfectly equal in all happenings and to all beings, and to see and feel them as one with oneself and one with the Divine; to feel all in oneself and all in God; to feel God in all, oneself in all. To act in God and not in the ego. And here, first, not to choose action by reference to personal needs and standards, but in obedience to the dictates of the living highest Truth above us. Next, as soon as we are sufficiently founded in the spiritual consciousness, not to act any longer by our separate will or movement, but more and more to allow action to happen and develop under the impulsion and guidance of a divine Will that surpasses us. And last, the supreme result, to be exalted into an identity in knowledge, force, consciousness, act, joy of existence with the Divine Shakti; to feel a dynamic movement not dominated by mortal desire and vital instinct and impulse and illusive mental free-will, but luminously conceived and evolved in an immortal self-delight and an infinite self-knowledge. For this is the action that comes by a conscious subjection and merging of the natural man into the divine Self and eternal Spirit; it is the Spirit that for ever transcends and guides this world-Nature.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of the Gita, [101],
305:Instruction about Sadhana to a disciple:
   Disciple: What is the nature of realisation in this yoga?
   Sri Aurobindo: In this yoga we want to bring down the Truth-consciousness into the whole being - no part being left out. This can be done by the Higher Power itself. What you have to do is to open yourself to it.
   Disciple: As the Higher Power is there why does it not work in all men - consciously?
   Sri Aurobindo: Because man, at present, is shut up in his mental being, his vital nature and physical consciousness and their limitations. You have to open yourself. By an opening I mean an aspiration in the heart for the coming down of the Power that is above, and a will in the Mind, or above the Mind, open to it.
   The first thing this working of the Higher Power does is to establish Shanti - peace - in all the parts of the being and an opening above. This peace is not mere mental Shanti, it is full of power and, whatever action takes place in it, Samata, equality, is its basis and the Shanti and Samata are never disturbed. What comes from Above is peace, power and joy. It also brings about changes in various parts of our nature so that they can bear the pressure of the Higher Power.
   Knowledge also progressively develops showing all in our being that is to be thrown out and what is to be retained. In fact, knowledge and guidance both come and you have constantly to consent to the guidance. The progress may be more in one direction than in anotheR But it is the Higher Power that works. The rest is a matter of experience and the movement of the Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, EVENING TALKS WITH SRI AUROBINDO, RECORDED BY A B PURANI (28-09-1923),
306:But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when thePurusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purusha's consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceedingfrom an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith, - a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah sa eva sah, 'whatever is a man's faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.'
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Synthesis of the Systems, 43,
307:In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature.
   In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
   The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
   an aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing - the mind's will, the heart's seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature;
   rejection of the movements of the lower nature - rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
   surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
308:Man, rather the Superman, by participating with his Self, not with his 'I', in the immense process of Energy, which Nietzsche calls Will of Power, He does it without changing anything, accepting the fatality of chance of the Eternal Return, because you can not modify it, you can not change a single blade, or a detail, or a star.

However, by accepting the Eternal Return, having had the 'vision' (which includes nostalgia) has passed, in an instant (at the Gateway of the Moment) to modify everything irremediably and forever. How? Giving The Sense your acceptance.

That is, he has created, he has invented an Inexistent Flower, but it is more real than all the flowers of the gardens of the earth.

We will not try to explain this mostly, because you can not. the same Superman is a creation of this kind, non-existent, an illusion. Pure magic.

It is not real and it is more real than everything real. Without us everything will return, without doubt, but when we enter to intervene, wishing it with the Self and from the Self, everything will return in a different way, everything will be different, even when nothing has changed apparently. However, the alteration is essential, definitive: chance has been transformed into destination. Amor fati takes ownership of the process. This is why Nietzsche is a magician, a poet-magician.

We will return to this key point and center of the Drama, which is thus transmuted into game, in the Great Game of the Maya-Power, in the Dance of the Shakti-Power.

It's a Comedy, a Gay-Comedy, a histrionics, a slapstick, an affair cheerful, or a joy of pain, as Nietzsche would like to say, imagining that 'the highest music would be the one that could interpret the joy of pain and none another.' It is a Divine Comedy. ~ Miguel Serrano,
309:This inner Guide is often veiled at first by the very intensity of our personal effort and by the ego's preoccupation with itself and its aims. As we gain in clarity and the turmoil of egoistic effort gives place to a calmer self-knowledge, we recognise the source of the growing light within us. We recognise it retrospectively as we realise how all our obscure and conflicting movements have been determined towards an end that we only now begin to perceive, how even before our entrance into the path of the Yoga the evolution of our life has been designedly led towards its turning point. For now we begin to understand the sense of our struggles and efforts, successes and failures. At last we are able to seize the meaning of our ordeals and sufferings and can appreciate the help that was given us by all that hurt and resisted and the utility of our very falls and stumblings. We recognise this divine leading afterwards, not retrospectively but immediately, in the moulding of our thoughts by a transcendent Seer, of our will and actions by an all-embracing Power, of our emotional life by an all-attracting and all-assimilating Bliss and Love. We recognise it too in a more personal relation that from the first touched us or at the last seizes us; we feel the eternal presence of a supreme Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher. We recognise it in the essence of our being as that develops into likeness and oneness with a greater and wider existence; for we perceive that this miraculous development is not the result of our own efforts; an eternal Perfection is moulding us into its own image. One who is the Lord or Ishwara of the Yogic philosophies, the Guide in the conscious being ( caitya guru or antaryamin ), the Absolute of the thinker, the Unknowable of the Agnostic, the universal Force of the materialist, the supreme Soul and the supreme Shakti, the One who is differently named and imaged by the religions, is the Master of our Yoga.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids, 62 [T1],
310:... The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed - for there is no absolute rule for all, - but if the peace has not come first, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.

   The result of the concentration is not usually immediate - though to some there comes a swift and sudden outflowering; but with most there is a time longer or shorter of adaptation or preparation, especially if the nature has not been prepared already to some extent by aspiration and tapasya. ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
311:the spiritual force behind adoration :::
   All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life, 159,
312:
   Sweet Mother, here it is written: "There is a Yoga-Shakti lying coiled or asleep..." How can it be awakened?
I think it awakens quite naturally the moment one takes the resolution to do the yoga. If the resolution is sincere and one has an aspiration, it wakes up by itself.

   In fact, it is perhaps its awakening which gives the aspiration to do yoga.

   It is possible that it is a result of the Grace... or after some conversation or reading, something that has suddenly given you the idea and aspiration to know what yoga is and to practise it. Sometimes just a simple conversation with someone is enough or a passage one reads from a book; well, it awakens this Yoga-Shakti and it is this which makes you do your yoga.

   One is not aware of it at first - except that something has changed in our life, a new decision is taken, a turning.

   What is it, this Yoga-Shakti, Sweet Mother?

   It is the energy of progress. It is the energy which makes you do the yoga, precisely, makes you progress - consciously. It is a conscious energy.

   In fact, the Yoga-Shakti is the power to do yoga.

   Sweet Mother, isn't it more difficult to draw the divine forces from below?

   I think it is absolutely useless.

   Some people think that there are more reserves of energy - I have heard this very often: a great reserve of energy - in the earth, and that if they draw this energy into themselves they will be able to do things; but it is always mixed.

   The divine Presence is everywhere, that's well understood. And in fact, there is neither above nor below. What is called above and below, I think that is rather the expression of a degree of consciousness or a degree of materiality; there is the more unconscious and the less unconscious, there is what is subconscious and what is superconscious, and so we say above and below for the facility of speech.

   But in fact, the idea is to draw from the energies of the earth which, when you are standing up, are under your feet, that is, below in relation to you. But these energies are always mixed, and mostly they are terribly dark.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955,
313:The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit.
2:In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, 2.01 - The Object of Knowledge,
314:1. In the court, Siva, though motionless, dances before Shakti in stillness. In Arunachala, with solemnity, He stands. She withdraws there into His still Self. 2. 'A,' 'Ru,' and 'Na' Sat, Chit, and Ananda -- the Supreme Self, the individual self -- their union is Absolute; Thus, the great saying -- 'You are That.' 'Achala' bespeaks perfection. Worship Arunachala shining, golden; simply remembering unlocks the door. 3. Touching the lotus feet of the Lord of Arunachala, freed from attachment to wealth, family, place, ever purer, seeking grace -- darkness recedes. In the rising sun, golden, steady, full of grace, there abide, joyously sunk in the Sea of Bliss. 4. Annamalai! Don't let me pine forgetful. Don't crush me to dust, leaving me confused between body and Self. Turn Your restoring glance upon me, eye of my eyes! You Who are all Consciousness, You Who are neither male nor female, don't fail me! Seat Yourself in my heart. 5. You Who are all Consciousness, ruling over sublime Shonagiri, forgive the stumblings of this little one. Rain Cloud, shower me with Your gracious glance. Save me from being lost once more in the dreary waste. I cannot ford the grim stream of manifestation. Mother, what can match Your care? 6. 'Killer of Kama, Destroyer of Desire,' tied to You we know Your name. A question, though, if the title fits: How can mighty Kama continue, bold and conquering? How can he creep unseen upon one sheltered beneath Your feet? Tell me, You Who killed him? 7. Arunachala! As soon as You claimed me, I was Yours, body and soul. What is left to want? You are success and You are failure both, Oh my life! They are meaningless without You. Beloved, do as You will with me, but promise me ever greater desire for Your Feet! 8. To rescue me -- born of virtuous Sundara and Sundari in holy Tiruchuli, seat of Bhuminatheshware -- from the pain of the world, He raised me to his seat, His heart rejoices. Siva shines forth. And the Self flowers. Such is Arunachala, known across the universe! 9. Bearing me in the world as my father and mother, You hid in my mind. Before I drowned in the deep illusion, You drew me, Arunachala, You Who are All Consciousness, such is the wonder of Your Grace!

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, The Necklet of Nine Gems
,
315:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138,
316:reading :::
   Self-Help Reading List:
   James Allen As a Man Thinketh (1904)
   Marcus Aurelius Meditations (2nd Century)
   The Bhagavad-Gita
   The Bible
   Robert Bly Iron John (1990)
   Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy (6thC)
   Alain de Botton How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997)
   William Bridges Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980)
   David Brooks The Road to Character (2015)
   Brené Brown Daring Greatly (2012)
   David D Burns The New Mood Therapy (1980)
   Joseph Campbell (with Bill Moyers) The Power of Myth (1988)
   Richard Carlson Don't Sweat The Small Stuff (1997)
   Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)
   Deepak Chopra The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (1994)
   Clayton Christensen How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012)
   Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (1988)
   Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
   Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1991)
   The Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler The Art of Happiness (1999)
   The Dhammapada (Buddha's teachings)
   Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit (2011)
   Wayne Dyer Real Magic (1992)
   Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance (1841)
   Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run With The Wolves (1996)
   Viktor Frankl Man's Search For Meaning (1959)
   Benjamin Franklin Autobiography (1790)
   Shakti Gawain Creative Visualization (1982)
   Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence (1995)
   John Gray Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (1992)
   Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life (1984)
   James Hillman The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996)
   Susan Jeffers Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway (1987)
   Richard Koch The 80/20 Principle (1998)
   Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2014)
   Ellen Langer Mindfulness: Choice and Control in Everyday Life (1989)
   Lao-Tzu Tao-te Ching (The Way of Power)
   Maxwell Maltz Psycho-Cybernetics (1960)
   Abraham Maslow Motivation and Personality (1954)
   Thomas Moore Care of the Soul (1992)
   Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963)
   Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking (1952)
   M Scott Peck The Road Less Traveled (1990)
   Anthony Robbins Awaken The Giant Within (1991)
   Florence Scovell-Shinn The Game of Life and How To Play It (1923)
   Martin Seligman Learned Optimism (1991)
   Samuel Smiles Self-Help (1859)
   Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man (1955)
   Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)
   Marianne Williamson A Return To Love (1993)
   ~ Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help,
317: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,
318:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
   But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
   The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,
319:How can one awaken his Yoga-shakti?

It depends on this: when one thinks that it is the most important thing in his life. That's all.

Some people sit in meditation, concentrate on the base of the vertebral column and want it very much to awake, but that's not enough. It is when truly it becomes the most important thing in one's life, when all the rest seems to have lost all taste, all interest, all importance, when one feels within that one is born for this, that one is here upon earth for this, and that it is the only thing that truly counts, then that's enough.

One can concentrate on the different centres; but sometimes one concentrates for so long, with so much effort, and has no result. And then one day something shakes you, you feel that you are going to lose your footing, you have to cling on to something; then you cling within yourself to the idea of union with the Divine, the idea of the divine Presence, the idea of the transformation of the consciousness, and you aspire, you want, you try to organise your feelings, movements, impulses around this. And it comes.

Some people have recommended all kinds of methods; probably these were methods which had succeeded in their case; but to tell the truth, one must find one's own method, it is only after having done the thing that one knows how it should be done, not before.

If one knows it beforehand, one makes a mental construction and risks greatly living in his mental construction, which is an illusion; because when the mind builds certain conditions and then they are realised, there are many chances of there being mostly pure mental construction which is not the experience itself but its image. So for all these truly spiritual experiences I think it is wiser to have them before knowing them. If one knows them, one imitates them, one doesn't have them, one imagines oneself having them; whereas if one knows nothing - how things are and how they ought to happen, what should happen and how it will come about - if one knows nothing about all this, then by keeping very still and making a kind of inner sorting out within one's being, one can suddenly have the experience, and then later knows what one has had. It is over, and one knows how it has to be done when one has done it - afterwards. Like that it is sure.

One may obviously make use of his imagination, imagine the Kundalini and try to pull it upwards. But one can also tell himself tales like this. I have had so many instances of people who described their experiences to me exactly as they are described in books, knowing all the words and putting down all the details, and then I asked them just a little question like that, casually: that if they had had the experience they should have known or felt a certain thing, and as this was not in the books, they could not answer.~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 211-212,
320:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],
321:If this is the truth of works, the first thing the sadhaka has to do is to recoil from the egoistic forms of activity and get rid of the sense of an "I" that acts. He has to see and feel that everything happens in him by the plastic conscious or subconscious or sometimes superconscious automatism of his mental and bodily instruments moved by the forces of spiritual, mental, vital and physical Nature. There is a personality on his surface that chooses and wills, submits and struggles, tries to make good in Nature or prevail over Nature, but this personality is itself a construction of Nature and so dominated, driven, determined by her that it cannot be free. It is a formation or expression of the Self in her, - it is a self of Nature rather than a self of Self, his natural and processive, not his spiritual and permanent being, a temporary constructed personality, not the true immortal Person. It is that Person that he must become. He must succeed in being inwardly quiescent, detach himself as the observer from the outer active personality and learn the play of the cosmic forces in him by standing back from all blinding absorption in its turns and movements. Thus calm, detached, a student of himself and a witness of his nature, he realises that he is the individual soul who observes the works of Nature, accepts tranquilly her results and sanctions or withholds his sanction from the impulse to her acts. At present this soul or Purusha is little more than an acquiescent spectator, influencing perhaps the action and development of the being by the pressure of its veiled consciousness, but for the most part delegating its powers or a fragment of them to the outer personality, - in fact to Nature, for this outer self is not lord but subject to her, anı̄sa; but, once unveiled, it can make its sanction or refusal effective, become the master of the action, dictate sovereignly a change of Nature. Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha's assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails, - slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. Above and around him is the Shakti, the universal Mother and from her he can get all his inmost soul needs and wills if only he has a true knowledge of her ways and a true surrender to the divine Will in her. Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power. The rest of our progress depends on our knowledge of the ways in which the Lord of works manifests his Will in the world and in us and executes them through the transcendent and universal Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216,
322:It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 183,
323:Assim como no regime da criação, Shakti é o criador e Shiva é o testemunho de todo o jogo, no tantra a mulher tem o estado do guru e o homem do discípulo. A tradição tântrica é atualmente passada da mulher para o homem, na prática tântrica, é a mulher quem inicia. É só por seu poder que o ato de maithuna acontece. Todas as preliminares são feitas por ela. Ela coloca a marca na testa do homem e fala pra ele meditar. Na relação ordinária, quem controla é o homem e a mulher participa. Mas no tantra eles trocam de papéis. A mulher torna-se a operadora e o homem o seu intermédio. Ela tem que ser capaz de despertá-lo. então, no momento certo, ela deve criar o bindu para que ele possa praticar vajroli. Se o homem perde seu bindu, significa que a mulher não conseguiu realizar suas funções adequadamente.
No tantra se diz que Shiva é incapaz sem Shakti. Shakti é a sacerdotisa. Portanto, quando Vama marga é praticado, o homem deve ter uma atitude absolutamente tântrica com a mulher. Ele não pode comportar-se com ela como os homens geralmente fazem com outras mulheres. Normalmente, quando um homem olha uma mulher, ele torna-se apaixonado, mas durante o maithuna ele não deve. Ele deve vê-la como a mãe divina, a Devi, e aproximar-se dela como uma atitude de devoção e entrega, não com luxúria.
De acordo com o conceito tântrico, as mulheres são mais dotadas de qualidades espirituais e seria uma coisa sábia se elas assumissem posições elevadas na área social. Então, haveria maior beleza, compaixão, amor e compreensão em todas as esferas da vida. O que estamos discutindo aqui não é sociedade patriarcal versus matriarcal, mas tantra.
No relacionamento entre marido e mulher, por exemplo, há dependência e posse, enquanto que no tantra cada parceiro é independente, um para si mesmo. Outra coisa difícil na sadhana tântrica é cultivar a atitude de impassionalidade. O homem tem de se tornar praticamente um bramacharya, a fim de libertar a mente as emoções dos pensamentos sexuais e da paixão, que normalmente surgem na presença de uma mulher.
Ambos os parceiros devem ser absolutamente purificados e controlados interna e externamente antes de praticar o maithuna. É difícil para a pessoa comum compreender isto porque para a maioria das pessoas a relação sexual é o resultado da paixão e da atração emocional ou física, tanto para a procriação quanto para o prazer. É somente quando você está purificado que estes instintos sexuais estarão ausentes. Isto acontece porque, de acordo com a tradição, o caminho do Dakshina marga deve ser seguido por muitos anos antes do caminho do Vama marga poder ser iniciado. Então, a interação do maithuna não acontece por uma gratificação física. O propósito é muito claro – o despertar de sushumna, o aumento da energia de Kundalini no mooladhara chakra e a explosão nas áreas inconscientes do cérebro.
Se isto não ficar claro, quando você praticar os kriyas e sushumna se tornar ativa, você não será capaz de confrontar o despertar. Sua cabeça vai ficar quente e você nãos será capaz de controlar a paixão e o excitamento, porque você não tranqüilizou seu cérebro.
Portanto, em minha opinião, somente aqueles que são adeptos no yoga estão qualificados para o Vama marga. Este caminho não é para ser usado indiscriminadamente como um pretexto para a auto-indulgência. Ele se destina para os sadhakas maduros e chefes de família sérios, que são evoluídos, que têm praticado sadhana para despertar o potencial energético e atingir o samadhi Eles devem utilizar este caminho como um veículo para o despertar, caso contrário torna-se um caminho de queda. ~ Satyananda Saraswati,
324:They include: The Power of Shakti, Womb Wisdom, Sacred Relationships (Inner Traditions), The Christ Blueprint, The Nine Eyes of Light: Ascension Keys from Egypt (NAB/Random House), Dimensions of Love (O Books). Since 1997 he has presented, lectured and taught in 20 countries worldwide.

Padma Aon Prakasha is a wisdom author, vibrational media creator, visionary pioneer and public speaker bringing together ancient wisdom and modern science. Padma’s books, music and multimedia are drawn from the traditions he has been initiated into.

They include: The Power of Shakti, Womb Wisdom, Sacred Relationships (Inner Traditions), The Christ Blueprint, The Nine Eyes of Light: Ascension Keys from Egypt (NAB/Random House), Dimensions of Love (O Books). Since 1997 he has presented, lectured and taught in 20 countries worldwide.

Padma is a master of vibrational medicine through sound, translating the art and science of vibration to create moving and alchemical immersions. A globally distributed music producer, Padma performs worldwide.

Please Subscribe to enjoy his content for free on YouTube, and enjoy diving deep with Padma.

Science of Sound 1 : The Next Level

quencies of hydrogen and oxygen, the water molecule of life, with the vibrational frequencies of deep violet, light violet and the Sun with 432Hz, the natural tone of geometric harmony and organic wellbeing. 40 different tones are spherically mixed on this Song to provide a vibrational frequency healing.

This song invites you to drop into your centre of gravity in the womb/hara, the primordial source presence within your body. If you relax and breathe here, you will feel layers softening and opening, revealing more of this depth presence within you through this healing meditation [music and healing] frequencies.

This song touches the deep subconscious awareness of the water element. It can stir dormant memories held in the womb space, stirring them to be felt and released, allowing more openness and fluidity within you.

This Song is from The Souls Birth Album ( see other video) and is available on This DNA video is made with Lynn Claire Dennis ofwith her 'Universal Sound Frequency'' embedded within it.

Science of Sound 2: The Ultimate Guide to Sound Healing, Vibrational Frequency, Energy Medicine
Everything is vibration. The world is sound. You are made of sounds in a vibrational universe. What are these sounds? How can we tap into them? Why is this not known? Is there a system behind vibrational frequency, vibrational sound therapy, sound healing vibrational healing and [Energy Medicine? YES!

In this Sound Healing Documentary series based on the awakened wisdom of the Indian Masters and the Kabbalah, we discover the Second Mode of Sound. This works through sound healing vibrational healing, healing music, healing meditations, healing frequencies, energy medicine, sacred geometry, the water in our bodies, energy meditation such as Reiki, advanced listening techniques, mantra, kirtan, symbols and shapes. All of these are sound vibrations, just in a different form to what we are used to, yet known to our ancestors.

This mode of sound is the bridge from the 3D to the higher dimensions, and a key to our multidimensional self. Virtual Reality, VR, vibratory art, holographic technologies and new forms of conscious entertainment all work with this form of sound vibration, which empowers us to become our fully creative self!

Sound is creation, and the world is sound.

Included are secret tips to working with sound, and a list of top sound healing techniques! ~ Padma Aon Prakasha,
325:Quando Shiva e Shakti se unem no sahasrara, a pessoa experimenta o samadhi, a iluminação ocorre no cérebro e as áreas silenciosas começam a funcionar. Shiva e Shakti permanecem unidos por algum tempo, e durante este período há uma perda total da consciência, pertencente um a outro. Ao mesmo tempo um bindu desenvolve. Bindu significa um ponto, uma gota, e bindu é o substrato de todo o cosmos. Dentro do bindu está a sede da inteligência humana e a sede de toda a criação. Em seguida, bindu se divide em dois, e Shiva e Shakti manifestam-se novamente em dualidade. Quando a ascensão aconteceu, ela foi somente a subida de shakti, mas agora quando a descida acontece, Shiva e Shakti, ambos, descem para os planos grosseiros e há novamente o conhecimento da dualidade. Depois da união total há uma espécie de retorno pelo mesmo caminho da ascensão. A consciência bruta que se tornou refinada, novamente torna-se embrutecida. Este é o conceito da encarnação divina ou avatar.
Quando alguém atinge o mais elevado pináculo de samadhi, purusha e prakriti, ou Shiva e Shakti estão em total união e somente advaita existe, a experiência não dual. Ao mesmo temo, quando não há sujeito/objeto mais distinto, é muito difícil para alguém diferenciar. Se ele está falando com um homem ou com uma mulher, ele não sabe, ele não percebe a diferença. Ele pode até mesmo ser associado com pessoas espirituais ou divinas sem estar ciente disto, porque neste momento, sua consciência está reduzida ao nível da inocência de um bebê. Assim, no estado de samadhi, você é um bebê. Um bebê não pode falar da diferença entre um homem e uma mulher porque ele não tem distinção física ou sexual. Ele não pode distinguir um estudioso de um idiota, ele não pode nem mesmo ver qualquer a diferença entre uma serpente e uma corda. Ele pode segurar uma cobra como segura uma cobra. Isso só acontece quando a união está acontecendo.
Quando Shiva e Shakti descem para os planos grosseiros, que é o mooladhara chakra, eles se separam e vivem como duas entidades. Há dualidade no mooladhara chakra, há dualidade na mente e sentidos e no mundo de nomes e formas, mas não há dualidade no samadhi. Não há nenhuma vidência ou experiência no estado de samadhi. Não há ninguém para dizer como o samadhi porque ele é uma experiência não-dual.
É muito difícil entender por que Shiva e Shakti, ambos, descem para os planos brutos após terem atingindo a mais elevada união. Qual é o objetivo da destruição do mundo e a criação novamente? Qual é o objetivo de transcendência da consciência se você tem de voltar para ele novamente? Por que se preocupar em despertar Kundalini e uni-la com Shiva no sahasrara se você tem de voltar para o mooladhara novamente? Isto é algo muito misterioso e podemos perguntar, "Por despertar Kundalini absolutamente?" Por que construir uma mansão se você sabe que terá de pô-la abaixo quando ela estiver concluída? Na verdade, criamos um monte de coisas que serão destruídas. Então, porque fazê-lo absolutamente? Fazemos muita sadhana para transcender os chakras e ascender da terra para o céu. Então, quando chegamos ao paraíso e nos tornamos um com a grande realidade, de repente decidimos voltar para baixo. E não só, nós trazemos a grande unidade conosco. Seria mais fácil entender se Shakti voltasse sozinha e Shiva permanecesse no céu. Talvez, quando Shakti está prestes a sair, Shiva diga: "Espere, estou indo com você."
Quando Shiva e Shakti descem aos níveis mais grosseiros da consciência, há a dualidade novamente. Isso é porque o homem auto-realizado é capaz de compreender a dor e todos os assuntos da vida mundana. Ele compreende todo o drama da dualidade, multiplicidade e diversidade. Às vezes nós, simples mortais, estamos em um dilema para compreender como este homem, como a mais elevada realização, é capaz de lidar com as dualidades sem esperanças da vida. ~ Satyananda Saraswati,

IN CHAPTERS [150/364]



  246 Integral Yoga
   10 Psychology
   5 Occultism
   2 Yoga
   2 Poetry
   2 Mythology


  330 Sri Aurobindo
   27 The Mother
   19 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   15 Satprem
   11 A B Purani
   8 Carl Jung
   5 Nirodbaran
   4 George Van Vrekhem
   2 Swami Krishnananda
   2 Joseph Campbell


  150 Record of Yoga
   63 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   14 Letters On Yoga II
   11 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   10 The Life Divine
   10 Essays On The Gita
   9 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   9 Letters On Yoga IV
   8 Letters On Yoga I
   7 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   6 Letters On Yoga III
   6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   5 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   5 Questions And Answers 1956
   5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
   5 Agenda Vol 03
   4 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   4 Preparing for the Miraculous
   4 Isha Upanishad
   4 Essays Divine And Human
   3 Vedic and Philological Studies
   3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   3 Questions And Answers 1954
   3 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   3 Agenda Vol 01
   2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   2 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
   2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   2 Some Answers From The Mother
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
   2 Agenda Vol 02


0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the worship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective force for all attainment. We get the other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search after the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence pure and infinite; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit, - it is power of the Purusha's self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed
  44

0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Darshan of the World-Mother, Adya Shakti Mahakali.
  She will know what is best for me. Then how can I do

01.01 - A Yoga of the Art of Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   As regards the possibility of such a consummation,Sri Aurobindo says it is not a possibility but an inevitabilityone must remember that the force that will bring about the result and is already at work is not any individual human power, however great it may be, but the Divine himself, it is the Divine's own Shakti that is labouring for the destined end.
   Here is the very heart of the mystery, the master-key to the problem. The advent of the superhuman or divine race, however stupendous or miraculous the phenomenon may appear to be, can become a thing of practical actuality, precisely because it is no human agency that has undertaken it but the Divine himself in his supreme potency and wisdom and love. The descent of the Divine into the ordinary human nature in order to purify and transform it and be lodged there is the whole secret of the sadhana in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. The sadhaka has only to be quiet and silent, calmly aspiring, open and acquiescent and receptive to the one Force; he need not and should not try to do things by his independent personal effort, but get them done or let them be done for him in the dedicated consciousness by the Divine Master and Guide. All other Yogas or spiritual disciplines in the past envisaged an ascent of the consciousness, its sublimation into the consciousness of the Spirit and its fusion and dissolution there in the end. The descent of the Divine Consciousness to prepare its definitive home in the dynamic and pragmatic human nature, if considered at all, was not the main theme of the past efforts and achievements. Furthermore, the descent spoken of here is the descent, not of a divine consciousness for there are many varieties of divine consciousness but of the Divine's own consciousness, of the Divine himself with his Shakti. For it is that that is directly working out this evolutionary transformation of the age.
   It is not my purpose here to enter into details as to the exact meaning of the descent, how it happens and what are its lines of activity and the results brought about. For it is indeed an actual descent that happens: the Divine Light leans down first into the mind and begins its purificatory work therealthough it is always the inner heart which first recognises the Divine Presence and gives its assent to the Divine action for the mind, the higher mind that is to say, is the summit of the ordinary human consciousness and receives more easily and readily the Radiances that descend. From the Mind the Light filters into the denser regions of the emotions and desires, of life activity and vital dynamism; finally, it gets into brute Matter itself, the hard and obscure rock of the physical body, for that too has to be illumined and made the very form and figure of the Light supernal. The Divine in his descending Grace is the Master-Architect who is building slowly and surely the many-chambered and many-storeyed edifice that is human nature and human life into the mould of the Divine Truth in its perfect play and supreme expression. But this is a matter which can be closely considered when one is already well within the mystery of the path and has acquired the elementary essentials of an initiate.

0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  "The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother
  stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal

0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   (Mother reads to the disciples an excerpt from Sri Aurobindos THE MOTHER, in which he describes the different aspects of the Creative Powerwhat is India is called the Shakti, or the Motherwhich have presided over universal evolution.)
   There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realization,most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda1 which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divines Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe.

0 1958-09-16 - OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Ya devi sarvabhuteshu Shaktirupena sansthita
   Ya devi sarvabhuteshu shantirupena sansthita

0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Its the very point where Nature (I mean the passive side of the force of manifestation) is a slave to the hostile forces. There is a point where She is dominated by them. And this must be cured before the Power from above, the Power of the Shakti, can pass through everything, dominate everything, and be infallible
   I saw the thing, the experience took place, but sometimes it takes long for all the consequences to be worked out.2

0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are two lines in the ancient traditions, two ways of explaining this. One says it is by the descent of what already exists in all its perfection that what is involved can be awakened to consciousness and evolution. Its like the old story: when what Sri Aurobindo calls the universal Mother or the Shakti (or Sachchidananda1) realized what had happened in Matter (that is, in what had created Matter) and that this involution had led to a state of Inconscience, total unconsciousness, the ancient lore says that at once the divine Love descended straight from the Lord into Matter and began to awaken what was involved there.
   Other traditions speak of the Consciousness, the divine Consciousness, instead of Love. One even finds accounts full of imagery depicting a Being of prismatic light lying in deep sleep in the cave of the Inconscient; and this Descent awakens him to an activity which is still (how to put it?) inner, an immobile activity, an activity by radiation. Countless rays issue from his body and spread throughout the Inconscient, and little by little they awaken in each thing, in each atom, as it were, the aspiration to Consciousness and the beginning of evolution.

0 1961-08-08, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   This is something new he has accepted, because the Supreme doesnt usually appear in tantrism they are in contact with the Shakti and dont bother about the Supreme. But here he has come to accept it.
   He has tried very hard to understand. But his spiritual conception has remained like this: one canone MUSTmaster life, and in life, to some extent, a certain adaptation to the higher forces can be achieved; but there is no question of transformation: the physical world remains the physical world. It can be a little better organized, more harmonious, but there is no question of something else, of divinizationno question at all.

0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The Shakti.
   The Universal Mother.

0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   First, about your yoga. You wish to give me the charge of your yoga and I am willing to take it, but that means to give its charge to Him who is moving by His divine Shakti [Energy], whether secretly or openly, both you and me. But you must know that the necessary result of this will be that you will have to walk in the special path which He has given to me, the path which I call the path of the Integral Yoga. What I began with, what Lele1 gave me, was a seeking for the path, a circling in many directionsa first touch, a taking up, a handling and scrutiny of this or that in all the old partial yogas, some sort of complete experience of one and then the pursuit of another.
   Afterwards, when I came to Pondicherry, this unsteady condition came to an end. The Guru of the world who is within us then gave me complete directions for my pathits complete theory, the ten limbs of the body of this Yoga. These past ten years He has been making me develop it in experience, and this is not yet finished. It may take another two years, and as long as it is not finished I doubt if I shall be able to return to Bengal. Pondicherry is the appointed place for my yoga siddhi [realization], except indeed one part of it, and that is action. The centre of my work is Bengal, although I hope that its circumference will be all India and the whole earth.
  --
   You write about the Deva Samgha and say, I am not a god, I am only a piece of much hammered and tempered iron. No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognize that there are great and small adharas [vessels]. I do not accept, however, your description of yourself as accurate. Still whatever the nature of the vessel, once the touch of God is upon it, once the spirit is awake, great and small and all that does not make much difference. There may be more difficulties, more time may be taken, there may be a difference in the manifestation, but even about that there is no certainty. The God within takes no account of these hindrances and deficiencies. He breaks his way out. Was the amount of my failings a small one? Were there less obstacles in my mind and heart and vital being and body? Did it not take time? Has God hammered me less? Day after day, minute after minute, I have been fashioned into I know not whether a god or what. But I have become or am becoming something. That is sufficient, since God wanted to build it. It is the same as regards everyone. Not our strength but the Shakti of God is the sadhaka [worker] of this yoga.
   Let me tell you in brief one or two things about what I have long seen. My idea is that the chief cause of the weakness of India is not subjection nor poverty, nor the lack of spirituality or dharma [ethics] but the decline of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the motherl and of Knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to thinkthought-incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages, this state of things is now the sign of a terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. The modern world is the age of the victory of Knowledge. Whoever thinks most, seeks most, labors most, can fathom and learn the truth of the world, and gets so much more Shakti. If you look at Europe, you will see two things: a vast sea of thought and the play of a huge and fast-moving and yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe is in that. And in the strength of that Shakti it has been swallowing up the world, like the tapaswins [ascetics] of our ancient times, by whose power even the gods of the world were terrified, held in suspense and subjection. People say Europe is running into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these revolutions and upsettings are the preconditions of a new creation.
   Then look at India. Except for some solitary giants, everywhere there is your simple man, that is, the average man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti but only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the easy word. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; there even an ordinary laborer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But there is still this difference: there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field, its thought-power can no longer move ahead. There Europe sees everything as riddlenebulous metaphysics, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still, some effort is being made in Europe to surmount even this limitation. We already have the spiritual sensewe owe it to our forefa thersand whoever has that sense has at his disposal such Knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get that Shakti one must be a worshiper of Shakti. We are not worshipers of Shakti. We are worshipers of the easy way. But Shakti is not to be had by the easy way. Our forefa thers dived into a sea of vast thought and gained a vast Knowledge and established a mighty civilization. As they went on in their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The force of thought diminished and with it also the strong current of Shakti. Our civilization has become an achalayatana [prison], our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues, any permanent resurgence of India is improbable
   In Bengal this weakness has gone to the extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is foremost in India in all these qualities. All of them are necessary but they do not suffice. If to these there were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labor, the Bengali might be a leader not only of India, but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without thinking, the fruits without labor, siddhi by an easy sadhana [discipline]. His stock is the excitement of the emotional mind. But excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of the malady. In the end it brings about fatigue and inertia. The country has been constantly and gradually going down. The life-power has ebbed away. What has the Bengali come to in his own country? He cannot get enough food to eat or clothes to wear, there is lamentation on all sides, his wealth, his trade and commerce, his lands, his very agriculture have begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the sadhana of Love, but where Knowledge and Shakti are not, there Love does not remain, there narrowness and littleness come, and in a little and narrow mind there is no place for Love. Where is Love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there than anywhere else even in India which is so much afflicted by division.
   In the noble heroic age of the Aryan people4 there was not so much shouting and gesticulating, but the endeavor they undertook remained steadfast through many centuries. The Bengalis endeavor lasts only for a day or two.
   You say that what is needed is maddening enthusiasm, to fill the country with emotional excitement. In the time of the Swadeshi [fight for independence, boycott of English goods] we did all that in the field of politics, but what we did is all now in the dust. Will there be a more favorable result in the spiritual field? I do not say there has been no result. There has been. Any movement will produce some result, but for the most part in terms of an increase of possibility. This is not the right method, however, to steadily actualize the thing. Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement or any intoxication of the mind the base. I wish to make a large and strong equanimity the foundation of the yoga. I want established on that equality a full, firm and undisturbed Shakti in the system and in all its movements. I want the wide display of the light of Knowledge in the ocean of Shakti. And I want in that luminous vastness the tranquil ecstasy of infinite Love, Delight and Oneness. I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the guru. I do not wish to be a guru. If anybody wakes and manifests from within his slumbering godhead and gets the divine lifebe it at my touch or at anothersthis is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.
   You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. I too hope, as they say, that this time a great light will manifest itself in Bengal. Still I have tried to show the other side of the shield, where the fault is, the error, the deficiency. If these remain, the light will not be a great light and it will not be permanent.

0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   From the standpoint of Shakti, this is the normal course: consciousness, vital, mental and spiritual.
   Is it different for men? I dont know. Sri Aurobindos case was quite special, and apart from him I dont see any convincing example. But generally speaking, what is most developed in a man, along with the mind, is the physical consciousness; the vital is very impulsive, practically ungoverned. Thats my experience of the hundreds and hundreds of men I have met. Theres normally a physical strength built up through games and exercises, and side by side a more or less advanced, but primarily mental development, very mental. The vital is terribly impulsive and barely organized, except in artists, and even there. I lived among artists for ten years and found this ground to be mostly fallow. I mingled with all the great artists of the time, I was like a kid sister to them (it was at the turn of the century, with the Universal Exposition in 1900; and these were the leading artists of the epoch); so I was by far the youngest, much younger than any of themthey were all thirty, thirty-five, forty years old, while I was nineteen or twenty. Well I was much more advanced in their own fieldnot in what I was producing (I was a perfectly ordinary artist), but from the viewpoint of consciousness: observations, experiences, studies.
  --
   The Shakti!
   Some receive it from above; for others, it rises from below (gesture to the base of the spine). As I once told you, the old system always proceeds from below upwards, while Sri Aurobindo pulls from above downwards. This becomes very clear in meditation (well, in yoga, in yogic experience): for those who follow the old system, its invariably the kundalini at the base [of the spine] rising from center to center, center to center, until the lotus (in an ironic tone) bursts open here gesture at the crown of the head). With Sri Aurobindo, it comes like this (gesture of descending Force) and then settles here (above the head); it enters, and from there it comes down, down, down, everywhere, to the very bottom, and even below the feet the subconscientand lower still, the inconscient.
   Its the Shakti. He said, you know (I am still translating it), that the Shakti drawn up from below (this is what happens in the individual process) is already what could be called a veiled Shakti (it has power, but it is veiled). While the Shakti drawn down from above is a PURE Shakti; and if it can be brought down carefully and slowly enough so that it isnt (how shall I put it?) polluted or, in any case, obscured as it enters matter, then the result is immediately much better. As he has explained, if you start out with this feeling of a great power in yourself (because its always a great power no matter where it awakens), theres inevitably a danger of the ego meddling in. But if it comes pure and you are very careful to keep it pure, not to rush the movement but let it purify as it descends, then half the work is done.
   Its a problem. When you contact the Supraconscient and the Shakti emerges at the crown of the head, its something rising from below, isnt it? Is it then another movement, an ascending movement?
   That is the consciousness of the jiva [soul], the personal, individual consciousness.
  --
   Of course! We can dip into it with our head or with the tips of our toes, but everything bathes in this same river of Force (except what's shut up within the walls of our minds). At certain moments, or in certain places, we are less hardened and it naturally "enters" there. And so we call it the Shakti "From above" or the Shakti "from below" or "from within." But when the walls tumble down, there is neither high nor lowwe are drenched in it.
   Mother is referring to a letter of Sri Aurobindo's which Satprem had quoted in his manuscript: "... in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace. Even if a thousand images or the most violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remains as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of eternal and indestructible peace. A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act, even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillnessoriginating nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the happy power and light of its passage."

0 1962-08-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its a sort of reply to something I am translating in The Synthesis of Yoga. You know, there are these three aspects that must always be kept united in ones consciousness: jiva (the individual), Shakti, and Ishwara (the Supreme). He gives a wonderful description of how we have all three together in a kind of inner hierarchy. So while reading that (as I translate I have all the experiences, they come spontaneously), I kept saying to myself, No, that jiva hampers me; that jiva hems me in! Its not natural to me. Whats natural to me is its probably Maha Shakti. There is always that sense of creative Power, and of the Lord. The infinite, marvelous, innumerable joy of the Lord, you see, which is so intermingled with the Poweryou can sense the presence of the Lord, yet you cannot distinguish or differentiate between the two. Its all a delectable play. So to introduce the individual, the jiva, into this spoils everything, makes everything so small!
   I wanted to put all this into my sentence.

0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Dont let this visit ruffle you. Essentially, his approach has always seemed peripheral to me, just one part of an immense whole. It represents ONE aspect of the quest for the Divine on earth,2 and it is part of an entire line, like all the sannyasins, all the saddhus, and so on. X happens to have come closer because he has worshipped the Goddess of Love so much, the Shaktis aspect of Love, and that naturally led him here, brought him close, but. I see it as part of a whole worldamong many other things. You know, theres that festival celebrated every ten years, I think, when all the saddhus go to ba the in the Ganges3; Ive seen all the photosits painful. Its its painful. It is no more beautiful or harmonious than a stampeding mob in a revolution. Its there is no special grace.
   Now, do you remember the story of that man who has been living at the source of the Ganges for twenty-five years? Here he is (Mother shows his photo). He was in his cave and V. said to him, Id like to take your picture. All right, he answered, and came out and sat down in the snowstark naked.

0 1963-04-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But thats because when youre alone, it lacks some Shakti! (laughter)
   Yes, thats true.

0 1964-11-12, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is something interesting (not the faintings!). You know that Z has started a yoga in the body (I didnt ask her to do anything, she did it spontaneously); she wrote to me her first experiences, and there were observations quite similar to those I had made and with an accuracy that interested me I have encouraged her. She is going on. I dont have the time to read her letters: theyre piling up there. But what I found very interesting is that yesterday I was read a letter from an English writer (a lady): she has a little group there, they meditate together, and they had a sort of Indian guru (I dont know who) who was teaching them meditation. Then they came across Sri Aurobindos writings, and they began to study and follow his indications and try to understand. As it happened (about a year ago now), during their meditation, instead of their making an effort of ascent to awaken the Kundalini and rise towards the heights, all of a sudden the Force the Power, the Shaktibegan to descend from above downward. They informed their guru, who told them, Very bad! Very dangerous, stop it, terrible things are going to happen to you! That was about a year ago. They werent quite sure that the gentleman was right and they went on, with very good results. Then, yesterday, that lady wrote, giving a detailed notation of their experiencesalmost the SAME WORDS as Z! Now thats beginning to be interesting. Because it represents an impersonalization of the Action, in other words it doesnt express itself subjectively according to each individual: it has a WAY of acting.
   I was very happy, I wrote her a note to congratulate her.

0 1965-07-28, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   "In the Yoga as in life it is the man who persists unwearied to the last in the face of every defeat and disillusionment and of all confronting, hostile and contradicting events and powers who conquers in the end and finds his faith justified because to the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible."
   The Synthesis of Yoga, XXI.745

03.01 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.
  Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations of sound - for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem to it unconscious,

05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We may illustrate here a little. At the apex of the pyramid of existence is the Divine, the Supreme Person, the Purushottama. Even there as He begins to lean and look dawn, He expresses himself at the very outset as the dual personality of Ishwara and Shakti (the Divine Father and the Divine Mother)sa dvityam aicchat, as the Upanishad says. That is still the Divine in His highest transcendent status, partpara. Next, this dual or biune or divalent reality shows itself or throws itself further out in a fourfold valency of the dynamic truth consciousness, creating and leading the cosmic evolution. The Four Aspects of Ishwara, forming the male or purua line, are the great names: Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna and Aniruddha. And the corresponding four aspects of Ishwari form the other great quaternary: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. They embody the four major attri butes of the Divine in his relation to the created universe: Knowledge, Power, Love and skill in work. They also represent thus a divine fourfold order. The first embodies the Brahmin quality of large wisdom, wide comprehension, a vast consciousness; the second has the Kshatriya quality of force, dynamism, concentration and drive of energy; the third possesses the Vaishya quality of harmony, beauty, mutuality and the fourth has the Shudra quality of perfect execution, thoroughness in detailed working, order and arrangement.
   The higher Gods, like those, for example, envisaged in the Veda, may be considered each as an emanation of one or other of these Divine Aspects. They are dwellers of Swar or the Overmind. Varuna seems to be an emanation of Mahavira, a son of Maheshwari: for he is pre-eminently the god of the pure and vast consciousness who releases us from the triple bonds and shows us the winding way into the embrace of the infinite Mother. His associate, Mitra, is the lord of love and harmony, evidently an emanation of Pradyumna (or Mahalakshmi). Other gods of the same category are Bhaga and Soma. The Balarama or Mahakali aspect is manifested in Aryaman: Rudra being another form of the same. And Mahasaraswati (or Aniruddha) must have given birth to and inspired the Ribhus, who are artisans of divinity. The Puranic trinityBrahma, Vishnu and Shivawith lndra as the fourth member forms a parallel system embodying a similar conception.

06.05 - The Story of Creation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The one indivisible Reality and its pure consciousness: that is the origin. This Supreme Consciousness chose to objectify himself, bring himself out of himself, witness himself in play the Upanishad says, the One wished to have a second, a companion to himself, sa dwityam aichhat. This power of self-objectification is a free-will given to the consciousness to move out of its original unified status and move abroad and away, as it liked. Thus the Supreme saw himself as his own power of self-manifestation, and that is the Mother Consciousness, Adya Shakti, Aditiconsciousness-power, who again in her forward creative urge expressed herself in the first four major Emanations (Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati). But this free urge, free to separate itself and proceed in an independent movement of self-expression and evolution precipitated itself immediately, almost as a logical consequence of its career of free choice, into the Denial, the Negation that is inconscience. So, against the Supreme, the Divine Consciousness, there stood out the utter unconsciousness: the Light disappeared into absolute Darkness. It was the result of a self-choice in the consciousness: but the end was the very opposite of consciousness.
   It was a dead silence, more silent than Death and more dead than Silence itself. And it was utter helplessness and hopelessness. The Divine Consciousness Aditisaw the terrible line of destiny that freedom had taken and ended in: she could stand it no longer and a cry went out for succour, for help. And the answer came immediate, a ray shot down from the one Supreme Consciousness and entered into the womb of Inconscience. Lo, the miracle, Matter was born, the first creation, the first manifestation of the Supreme Grace. Matter holds in it the spark of consciousness that is to grow and unfold itself, shine more and more into the enveloping gloom of Inconscience, illumining it farther and farther, pushing its frontiers ever backward and away.

10.02 - Beyond Vedanta, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Tantra comes next in the scale. Tantra does not consider Prakriti as absolutely separate from Purusha and opposite in character. Prakriti is not unconsciousness (Achit); it is instinct with consciousness. Indeed Prakriti as conceived by Sankhya or Mayavada is only a lower formulation, an inferior aspect of the higher Prakriti which is one with the higher Purusha, Purushottama. Tantra worships the higher Prakriti as Para Shakti, the Divine Mother who holds in herself the supreme Purusha. The world is created and exists not by the power of Maya but by the formative power of the Mother, which was the original meaning of the word 'maya', the Divine Maya. The Divine Mother creates the world and maintains the world in the Delight of her Conscious Existence. She is the Supreme Consciousness (Chinmayee), she is the Power of Delight (Hladini Shakti).
   The whole bifurcation between Tantra and Vedanta hinges upon one point. The Vedanta overlooked one term of the Truth and missed thereby a whole world of experience and reality. The central term of Vedanta is taken as Consciousness, Consciousness pure and simple. It omitted the fact that Consciousness is also Energy. That Chit is Tapas is the central principle in Tantra. The exclusive stress on Chit, Pure Consciousness, led to the realisation of the Pure Purusha as mere Witness, Observer, a passive consciousness. Subsequently it was also added that the Purusha is not merely a Witness, (sk), but the Upholder (bhart), even Enjoyer (bhokt) of the world and creation; finally it was added also that the Purusha may be a creator also (kart), but all this is somewhat outside the pale of orthodox Vedanta, Mayavada. Tantra equated Consciousness with Energy; for it Conscious Energy or Consciousness-Energy is the indivisible Mother-Reality.
   The Vedanta ends in Ananda, it is a static unitary Ananda. The Tantra posits a dynamic Ananda, a dual Ananda between Ishwara and Ishwari, Shiva and Shakti. The Vaishnava takes a further step and transmutes Ananda into Love, a terrestrial humanised love.
   An earlier form of this humanised love was given in Buddha's Compassion. The transcendent Delight (Ananda) was made terrestrial and human in Buddha. But Buddha's compassion was a universal feeling and had no personal frame as it were. Vaishnavism gave it a personal frame and a human form. Radha and Krishna are not figures of an allegory but concrete realities. Vrindavan is not merely the land of heart's desire, a garden of paradise but real habitation in a real and concrete consciousness and life. The human frame assumed by Radha and Krishna is not merely an assumption, an illusion but an eternal reality in an eternal domain. The gradation of the spiritual domains is thus sometimes given as (1) Brahmaloka of the Vedantin, (2) Shivaloka of the Tantrik and finally (3) Goloka of the Vaishnava.

10.03 - Life in and Through Death, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Creation started originally with an absolutely inconscient existence. It is the pressure of an indwelling spirit the Grace descending into matter that has forced matter to burst into, to flower into forms of light and consciousness. The pressure is ever-present and the flowering continues into higher and higher modes of the Divine Consciousness. The figure '52' of the mythological legend denotes perhaps the integral multiplicity of the manifested universe. We may suggest an interpretation just to satisfy a mental curiosity: 52=50+2; and 50 is 5 X 10. The number 5 is very well-known as representing the five planes of consciousness, and as there is a descending and an ascending movement in each level that gives the number 10. And 5 times 10 is 50. This makes up the manifested creation. The remaining two are the Supreme Divine and his Shakti, or two unities at each end the one above, the one below. This however may be considered as a playful calculation meaning to represent, as I said, a multiple integrality of existence.
   The injunction is: you must die to the world if you want the life Eternal. Even so you must die to yourself if you want the Divine. The existing life which your ego has built up is a life of ignorance, misery and decadence. Death is indeed the natural and inevitable consequence; but this is a death in ignorance and bondage, it does not lead you to liberation and freedom. The dying that liberates is a conscious, deliberate movement of intelligence and will; dying to the world means withdrawing yourself from the world and turning within. Dying to yourself means withdrawing from your egohood and turning to the self, the being that is beyond. This withdrawal is to be done constantly and consistently in all the parts of the being. The mind is to move away from its thoughts, the vital from its desires and impulses and the body from its hunger and thirst. The first result of this withdrawal is a division of the being, an inner passive part and an outer active part. The inner part becomes gradually a mere witness and the outer part a mere mechanical functioning. When the withdrawal is so complete that the outer being or the world has no effect upon the inner, does not raise any ripple in it by its touch or contiguity then is accomplished the real death. Then it is said the outer existence, the material life does not continue long, it comes sooner or later to a dead stop. Thus the inner being is liberated completely and is freed into the life beyond, the Divine Existence, the Brahman. It is said that when each and every seed of the various elements that compose the being, that sprouts into the luxuriant tree of material life, when each and every seed is burnt up by the heat of mounting 'tapas', the force of aspiring consciousness, then there is no more chance or possibility of an ignorant earthly life, one is then naturally born into the Life of the Eternal. That is the final, the supreme death which is laya or pralaya.

1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  they are Purusha and Prakriti or Ishvara and Shakti. The prin-
  ciple of the universal manifestation is then their Son, the

1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  21:This inner Guide is often veiled at first by the very intensity of our personal effort and by the ego's preoccupation with itself and its aims. As we gain in clarity and the turmoil of egoistic effort gives place to a calmer self-knowledge, we recognise the source of the growing light within us. We recognise it retrospectively as we realise how all our obscure and conflicting movements have been determined towards an end that we only now begin to perceive, how even before our entrance into the path of the Yoga the evolution of our life has been designedly led towards its turning point. For now we begin to understand the sense of our struggles and efforts, successes and failures. At last we are able to seize the meaning of our ordeals and sufferings and can appreciate the help that was given us by all that hurt and resisted and the utility of our very falls and stumblings. We recognise this divine leading afterwards, not retrospectively but immediately, in the moulding of our thoughts by a transcendent Seer, of our will and actions by an all-embracing Power, of our emotional life by an all-attracting and all-assimilating Bliss and Love. We recognise it too in a more personal relation that from the first touched us or at the last seizes us; we feel the eternal presence of a supreme Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher. We recognise it in the essence of our being as that develops into likeness and oneness with a greater and wider existence; for we perceive that this miraculous development is not the result of our own efforts; an eternal Perfection is moulding us into its own image. One who is the Lord or Ishwara of the Yogic philosophies, the Guide in the conscious being (caitya guru or antaryamin), the Absolute of the thinker, the Unknowable of the Agnostic, the universal Force of the materialist, the supreme Soul and the supreme Shakti, the One who is differently named and imaged by the religions, is the Master of our Yoga.
  22:To see, know, become and fulfil this One in our inner selves and in all our outer nature, was always the secret goal and becomes now the conscious purpose of our embodied existence.

1.01 - The Unexpected, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  The calendar stood at November 1938, the month of the Darshan. A few weeks more and we would meet the Master after a long wait of three months. After every Darshan we start counting the days for the next one, for each occasion brings the Eternal and his Shakti closer to us and is therefore a significant landmark in our lives. As the date comes nearer, our days too take on a brighter hue and the day before the Darshan, all faces glow with sweet smiles. Friends meeting on the road greet each other with one word, "Tomorrow!" or with a silent look of happy expectation. The Dining Room hums with the same theme. Wherever you go, whomsoever you meet, no other talk except the Guru's Darshan for one or two minutes, an eternal moment.
  As for myself, my feelings are more complex. I have broken verbal lances with him, challenged his views, poked fun at his Yoga. I know all these will be forgotten at the moment when I shall meet his august Presence. He will be as affable as in his letters and bestow his gracious smile from his transcendental height while my heart will beat in joy and wonder. Still, the mind cannot be entirely free from a conventional fear.

1.01 - Two Powers Alone, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  6:If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you.
  7:If you open yourself on one side or in one part to the Truth and on another side are constantly opening the gates to hostile forces, it is vain to expect that the divine Grace will abide with you. You must keep the temple clean if you wish to instal there the living Presence.

1.02.2.1 - Brahman Oneness of God and the World, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Integral Yoga
  (Chit), is Nature, Force or World-Principle (Prakriti, Shakti,
  Maya).3 The play of these two principles is the Life of the
  --
  cognizance of and enjoying the works of Prakriti. Shakti, the self-existent, self-cognitive,
  self-effective Power of the Lord (Ishwara, Deva or Purusha), which expresses itself in the

1.02.3.1 - The Lord, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Integral Yoga
  of whom Prakriti or Maya is the executive Puissance, the Shakti.
  The Isha Upanishad, having declared the Brahman as the

1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  25:For here, there are two movements with a transitional stage between them, two periods of this Yoga, -- one of the process of surrender, the other of its crown and consequence. In the first the individual prepares himself for the reception o? the Divine into his members. For all this first period he has to work by means of the instruments of the lower Nature, but aided more and more from above. But in the later transitional stage of this movement our personal and necessarily ignorant effort more and more dwindles and a higher Nature acts; the eternal Shakti descends into this limited form of mortality and progressively possesses and transmutes it. In the second period the greater movement wholly replaces the lesser, formerly indispensable first action; but this can be done only when our self-surrender is complete. The ego person in us cannot transform itself by its own force or will or knowledge or by any virtue of its own into the nature of the Divine; all it can do is to fit itself for the transformation and make more and more its surrender to that which it seeks to become. As long as the ego is at work in us, our personal action is and must always be in its nature a part of the lower grades of existence; it is obscure or half-enlightened, limited in its field, very partially effective in its power. If a spiritual transformation, not a mere illumining modification of our nature, is to be done at all, we must call in the Divine Shakti to effect that miraculous work in the individual; for she alone has the needed force, decisive, all-wise and illimitable. But the entire substitution of the divine for the human personal action is not at once entirely possible. All interference from below that would falsify the truth of the superior action must first be inhibited or rendered impotent, and it must be done by our own free choice. A continual and always repeated refusal of the impulsions and falsehoods of the lower nature is asked from us and an insistent support to the Truth as it grows in our parts: for the progressive settling into our nature and final perfection of the incoming informing Light, Purity and Power needs for its development and sustenance our free acceptance of it and our stubborn rejection of all that is contrary to it, inferior or incompatible.
  26:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature's all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, -- but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at all, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and Tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural successions of the action of the Yoga.

1.02 - Shakti and Personal Effort, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:1.02 - Shakti and Personal Effort
  class:chapter
  --
  1:In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature.
  2:In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
  3:The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
  --
  3.3:surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
  *_*
  4:In proportion as the surrender and self-consecration progress the Sadhaka becomes conscious of the Divine Shakti doing the Sadhana, pouring into him more and more of herself, founding in him the freedom and perfection of the Divine Nature. The more this conscious process replaces his own effort, the more rapid and true becomes his progress. But it cannot completely replace the necessity of personal effort until the surrender and consecration are pure and complete from top to bottom.
  5:Note that a tamasic surrender refusing to fulfil the conditions and calling on God to do everything and save one all the trouble and struggle is a deception and does not lead to freedom and perfection.

1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  The Darshan day at last! In the morning, the Mother arrived in his room with a flower, probably a red lotus, knelt before the Lord, placed the lotus on his bed and bowed down to receive his blessings and his sweet smile. This was the second time I saw her doing pranam to him. The first time was on her birthday, February 21. It was a revelation to me, for I did not expect her to bow down in the Indian way. On every Darshan day since then I enjoyed the sight. On other days she used to take his hand and lightly kiss it. With her customary drive, she chalked out the Darshan programme, the time for Sri Aurobindo's lunch and of her coming for the Darshan. We had to be ready and keep the Master ready too. From the early morning time began to move fast, the Mother was seen rushing about, she had so many things to attend to! Everything finished, clad in a lovely sari, a crown adorning her shapely head, looking like a veritable Goddess, she entered Sri Aurobindo's room with brisk steps, earlier than the appointed time, as was her wont. She gave a quick glance at us. We were all attention. The entire group was present, it being the first Darshan after the accident. She was pleased to find us ready. Sri Aurobindo was dressed in an immaculate white dhoti, its border daintily creased, as is the custom in Bengal; a silk chaddar across his chest and his long shining hair flowing down a picture that reminded us of Shiva and Shakti going out to give darshan to their bhaktas; Sri Aurobindo was in front and the Mother behind. They sat together as on other Darshan days, she on his right, a glorious view, and the ceremony began.
  It was, however, a simple Darshan. One by one the sadhaks stood for a brief moment before the One-in-Two, and passed on quietly thrilled and exalted by their silent look and gracious smile. The feelings of the sadhaks can be imagined when they saw their beloved Master restored to his normal health! The Darshan was over within an hour, and when Sri Aurobindo was back in his room Dr. Rao remarked in his childlike manner, "Sir, you looked grand at the Darshan!" Sri Aurobindo smiled and we retorted, just to tease him, "At other times he doesn't?" Rao, nonplussed, replied, "No, no, I did not mean that." Truly, Rao had expressed the sentiments of hundreds of devotees who had a glimpse of him during the Darshan. What a grandeur and majesty in his simple silent pose! What a power, as if he held the whole world in the palm of his hand! If ever a human being could attain the stature of a god, he was there for all to see and be blessed by. Many have had a deep change after just one touch of his God-like magnificence. "A touch can alter the fixed front of Fate." Many had visions and boons they had long been seeking for, and for the sadhaks each Darshan was a step to a further milestone towards the Eternal. Sri Aurobindo had said: "Darshans are periods of great descents!" It was not for nothing that Hitler chose the 15th of August for his royal ascension in Buckingham Palace and got the first heavy blow. Nor was it for nothing that India gained her independence on that immortal day.

1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Disciple: I have, at present, a very strong impulse to realise the infinite Transcendent Shakti. I want to know whether it is safer to leave the sadhana to the Universal or to the Divine?
   Sri Aurobindo: The Transcendent and the Universal powers are not always exclusive of each other; they are almost mutual: when the Transcendent is realised in Mind it is the Universal. One has to have that realisation also.
  --
   When the Divine Power the Supramental Shakti works, She establishes harmony between the various instruments of nature and also harmony in the whole of our life. R and people like him feel that such a harmonisation of the being is a limitation. But it is not a limitation because that action is in keeping with the truth of our being and our becoming.
   Disciple: Is the Transcendent Power the same as the Supramental Power ?
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: The word 'egoism' is used in a very limited sense in English, it means anything for the self. That which is not done for the self is regarded as unegoistic. But that is not so in Yoga. One can do all unselfish actions and have full egoism in him. He will have the egoism of the doer. Nishkama Karma means first desirelessness. You have to first establish that condition in which good or bad desires are absent. You must realise that it is the Power of God, His Shakti, that does the work in reality. All work, good and bad, in you and in the world, is Her work.
   G: If a man takes up that attitude he may go on indiscriminately doing good or bad actions and say that God is doing them.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: They are also in the hands of the Shakti. She knows what fruit to give and what not. When that kind of desirelessness is established you have to go on offering all your actions as a sacrifice to God. You must realise that it is the Shakti that does the work in yourself and She offers the same as a sacrifice to the Lord. The more desirelessness in the action, the purer the offering.
   The action and the fruit of action both belong to God, not to us. There should be no insistence on the fruit of good or unselfish action. When this is done then everything becomes easy.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: When you have realised desirelessness then there will be no impulse of either good or bad desire in yourself. Then there will be an impulsion from the Shakti and She takes up the work. Slowly the whole of your being opens and everything comes from Above. We merely become the instrument.
   G: But how to distinguish between the work that the Shakti impels and that which is prompted by our lower self?
   Sri Aurobindo: In order to distinguish the work intended by the Shakti and that dictated by the lower nature you have to be very careful. You must develop the power of looking within. When you look within you must first realise yourself as the Purusha, that is to say, the being quite separate from the movements of Prakriti, Nature, going on in the Prana (the vital parts), the Chitta, the Mind etc. Any movement that arises in Prakriti has to be rejected and anything that comes from Above has to be accepted. Not only must you separate yourself, but the Purusha must become the calm and passive witness. Thus there will be a portion in yourself which will be quiet, unaffected by anything in Prakriti. The calm of the Sakshi, witness, then extends to the nature and then nature remains quite unmoved by any disturbance. You can not merely remain unmoved but also, as Anumanta, give the sanction to certain movements of nature and withhold it from others.
   G: Is this the Yoga? No Asanas, no Pranayama!
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Learning is not indispensable. The Yoga is done by the Shakti only. You do not know it because you are not aware of the higher movement. You have only to keep the attitude described and be sincere in the offering.
   28 SEPTEMBER 1923
  --
   Knowledge also progressively develops showing all in our being that is to be thrown out and what is to be retained. In fact, knowledge and guidance both come and you have constantly to consent to the guidance. The progress may be more in one direction than in another. But it is the Higher Power that works. The rest is a matter of experience and the movement of the Shakti.
   23 DECEMBER 1923
  --
   A young man from Tinnevelly, knowing Sanskrit, came this morning and wanted to see Sri Aurobindo. He said he had received inspiration from par Shakti to go to Sri Aurobindo who is Bhagawan. He was directly going up the staircase without asking anyone when he was stopped. It seemed that he had been fasting for some days; he brought fruits to offer to Sri Aurobindo.
   Disciple: Like the other man, shall I send this one to Ramana Maharshi ?
   Sri Aurobindo: He won't, probably, go, because the Para Shakti has not asked him to go there. Very inconvenient Para Shakti! She has asked him to come here!
   There are only two ways. One is to send him to X (one of the disciples).
  --
   The man who came with the inspiration from Para Shakti was finally seen by Sri Aurobindo who found that his physical and vital beings were weak and his mind lacked discretion. He therefore decided to send him back. "These parts the physical, the vital and the mental are the basis; unless the ground is there no structure can be raised on it," he said.
   A wire was sent in reply to Krishnashashi asking him not to come to Pondicherry. (Krishnashashi, a sadhak from Chittagong, had become deranged in mind.) Another wire was sent to a disciple at Calcutta to stop Krishnashashi from proceeding to Pondicherry.
  --
   Disciple: That Para Shakti man has been giving away his clothes one by one everyday to somebody!
   Sri Aurobindo: I hope he wont turn up tomorrow without anything on! (Laughter)
  --
   Vyas: It is a great Shakti but I do not know the meaning.
   Sri Aurobindo: It means: "We choose the Supreme Light of the divine Sun; we aspire that it may impel our minds."

1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2 This Power is the conscious divine Shakti of the Ishwara, the transcendent and universal Mother
  The individual soul or the conscious being in a form may identify itself with this experiencing Purusha or with this active Prakriti. If it identifies itself with Prakriti, it is not master, enjoyer and knower, but reflects the modes and workings of Prakriti. It enters by its identification into that subjection and mechanical working which is characteristic of her. And even, by an entire immersion in Prakriti, this soul becomes inconscient or subconscient, asleep in her forms as in the earth and the metal or almost asleep as in plant life. There, in that inconscience, it is subject to the domination of tamas, the principle, the power, the qualitative mode of obscurity and inertia: sattwa and rajas are there, but they are concealed in the thick coating of tamas.
  --
  To act in God and not in the ego. And here, first, not to choose action by reference to personal needs and standards, but in obedience to the dictates of the living highest Truth above us. Next, as soon as we are sufficiently founded in the spiritual consciousness, not to act any longer by our separate will or movement, but more and more to allow action to happen and develop under the impulsion and guidance of a divine Will that surpasses us. And last, the supreme result, to be exalted into an identity in knowledge, force, consciousness, act, joy of existence with the Divine Shakti; to feel a dynamic movement not dominated by mortal desire and vital instinct and impulse and illusive mental free-will, but luminously conceived and evolved in an immortal self-delight and an infinite self-knowledge. For this is the action that comes by a conscious subjection and merging of the natural man into the divine Self and eternal Spirit; it is the Spirit that for ever transcends and guides this world-Nature.
  * *

1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  About an hour after food, came the bath. I have described the sponge-bath. Now I shall speak of the shower-bath, given with a spraying arrangement. For this kind of bath to be possible we had to wait for over two years. He would take some rest after his meal, then get up and sit on the edge of the bed waiting for the Mother's arrival. In the interval he would do the leg exercises prescribed by Dr. Manilal. Sometimes if she was late in coming, we used to fidget but Sri Aurobindo was an image of patience. Now and then if he felt drowsy, Champaklal would put a few pillows as back-rest and support them from behind till the Mother came. Then he would start walking in her presence for about half an hour. One may be tempted to ask, "Why should he walk in her presence?" It was certainly not for any physical reason. As Sri Aurobindo's walking had not yet become steady, the Mother's presence was necessary to protect him from any harm that could be caused by occult forces that is how I understand it. Just as Sri Aurobindo used to protect the Mother, she protected him, when needed: it was the role of the Lord and the Shakti. These are occult phenomena beyond our human intelligence. After her departure, he would go to the adjacent room which had been turned into a small bathroom, with walls of glazed tiles, the floor of mosaic and there was constant supply of hot and cold water. After long years of austerity, affluence and luxury indeed! The Divine also passes through hardships, though with a smile! The bath itself was simple enough, not taking more than half an hour. This again was like the bath of the temple Deity in a shrine, except that here the Deity was in a human body one of the most sensitive. The Deity, entirely passive, submitted himself to the care of the attendants, the sevaks who did what they thought best. In this priestly act of ablution, we felt a thrill as we touched and cleansed his body, part by part. As the face was rubbed, he closed his eyes, leaned in front or back when these parts were done respectively, and when one arm was lifted for cleaning, his hand gently pressed the fingers of the operator. Finally came the turn of the two small and dainty feet all the activities going on silently and in mutual understanding, while the conversation proceeded simultaneously. Another operation that we, following the ancient traditional practice, undertook during the bath for a short time, at the earnest request of some devotees, was what we call "sipping of water touched by the feet of the Deity". Sri Aurobindo granted the boon and even put forward his feet so that we could wash them and collect the water in a bowl.
  After the bath when the word "finished" was uttered, he would rise and walk to his bed for rest. We would Put a sprinkling of talcum powder on his body. Then relaxing himself, he would enjoy a calm repose.

1.04 - Money, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  6:If you are free from the money-taint but without any ascetic withdrawal, you will have a greater power to comm and the money-force for the divine work. Equality of mind, absence of demand and the full dedication of all you possess and receive and all your power of acquisition to the Divine Shakti and her work are the signs of this freedom. Any perturbation of mind with regard to money and its use, any claim, any grudging is a sure index of some imperfection or bondage.
  7:The ideal Sadhaka in this kind is one who if required to live poorly can so live and no sense of want will affect him or interfere with the full inner play of the divine consciousness, and if he is required to live richly, can so live and never for a moment fall into desire or attachment to his wealth or to the things that he uses or servitude to self-indulgence or a weak bondage to the habits that the possession of riches creates. The divine Will is all for him and the divine Ananda.

1.04 - Relationship with the Divine, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The Lord and his Shakti
  God and his devotee

1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  I have dwelt at length in the previous chapters on the Mother's relation with Sri Aurobindo and her role in his outer life. There used to be considerable speculation in the early days about their mutual relationship. Was it one of Purusha and Prakriti, Master and disciple or Shiva and Shakti? I was therefore very curious from the start to observe and discern the relationship. I came to the conclusion that it was that of Shiva and Shakti. The Mother has said, "Without him, I exist not; without me he is unmanifest." And we were given the unique opportunity of witnessing the dual personality of the One enacting on our earth-plane an immortal drama, rare in the spiritual history of man. I could perfectly realise that without the Mother, Sri Aurobindo's stupendous realisations could not have taken such a concrete shape on this terrestrial base. In fact, he was waiting for the Mother's coming. He said that with the Mother's help he covered ten years of sadhana in one year. The very building up of the Ashram testifies to this irrefutable truth: "He wills, I execute." After Sri Aurobindo's passing, it was feared in some quarters that the Ashram would collapse, at least decline. On the contrary, the manifestation of the Supramental Truth took place after his withdrawal, and since then the Ashram has expanded beyond all belief.
  Sri Aurobindo wrote to me, "...The Mother's pressure for change is always strong even when she does not put it as force, it is there by the very nature of the Divine Energy in her." That is the indubitable, puissant impression of all those who have had anything to do with her from near or far. While one felt in Sri Aurobindo's atmosphere a wide and large freedom of nature, the Mother's contact always brought us to the hard reality of things. Whenever she came to Sri Aurobindo's room, a powerful vibration was set within the calm, passive silence of the Self and we had to be qui vive. We were no longer left to our easy movements. If chattering was going on, it would stop; a newspaper would remain unread; if anyone was leaning against the wall, he would sit upright. In a word, everyone was like a taut bow-string, certainly not out of fear but to rise to her expectations. Even Sri Aurobindo, if in the course of the evening talk, happened to see her coming, would say in a hushed voice, "The Mother is coming!" and would stop talking, while the Mother would encourage us with a smile, "Go on, go on!" Such was her dynamism, cit tapas! This does not imply that she was a stern school-mistress.
  --
  However, the class began, if I remember rightly, with the reading of the Prayers and Meditations and questions were asked in relation to the text. Only questions on spiritual matters were allowed, but when they gradually grew fewer in number, it was made an open class, I believe. There were not many at that time who knew French very well. And the Mother talked so fast that I wonder how many could follow her. Here is one difference between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The Mother being by her very nature Shakti, the Divine Energy; could not be slow and leisurely in manner, action or speech like the Purusha, though as I have shown, she could be extraordinarily patient and continue a work for a long stretch of time.
  It was a new experience indeed, for till then our approach to her was individual and restricted mostly to practical guidance; there was no intellectual communication and the Mother would always discourage intellectual questions. This was the first time she became collectively expansive and was ready to respond to intellectual seekings, but mainly on spiritual matters. These talks naturally reminded me of Sri Aurobindo's talks for their vivid contrast and I could not but make a mental comparison between them; they sharply bring out the characteristics of two different personalities though their consciousness is one. Here the Mother's personality dominated the whole atmosphere; her tone, mood and manner were stamped with a seriousness, energy and force that demanded close attention. Humour did not play a conspicuous role, but there were flashes of wit. Her eyes were on everybody, her answers, though meant for the questioner, were directed towards all so that there was no room for being inattentive or indifferent. When a play by the Mother was staged by our students, she strictly enjoined on the young children to keep complete silence. The striking difference with Sri Aurobindo, as I have pointed out, was his impersonality. He asked questions or answered them without looking at the questioner. He spoke slowly in a subdued voice with no stress in it. There was no constraint upon you, you were having a talk with a friend, and in friendship, levity, gravity, all were in order. Still, Sri Aurobindo remained Sri Aurobindo to us; there was no loss of reverence. Some of us had hotly discussed topics even to the point of losing our temper before his Witness-Purusha consciousness. That would be very unusual before the Mother. To put a homely simile, they were like a father and mother, both loving but one indulgent, liberal, large, the other a firm though not inconsiderate disciplinarian. Both are aspects of the one Divine Impersonal and Personal, Purusha and Prakriti and both have their ineffable charm. Though all were free to ask her questions, it was not always easy to ask them, as the answers instead of having a direct bearing on the questions were sometimes directed against the consciousness of the person involved; for to her, it was that which was more important, and our consciousness was an open book to her inner sight. These talks continued for quite a long time; the hall used to be packed. Unfortunately no regular record has been kept, first because they flowed very fast and secondly, there were only a few who understood French well. In later days, some talks were held in English out of a special consideration for a few people. I shall quote one or two of them from my scanty records.
  --
  Where did she get all this energy from? Her body was frail, food and sleep were medically quite inadequate to copewith her super-abundant vitality. "Do you think I live on these frugal meals alone? One can draw any amount of energy from universal Nature," she once said. Here we are face to face with the Divine Energy, the Shakti incarnate. Like Sri Aurobindo with regard to his massive correspondence, she could say, "If for nothing else, at least for my interminable activity, I should be called an Avatar!"
  My aim in drawing this picture of the Mother is not merely to demonstrate her dynamism. There have been quite a number of people in the world, Napoleon for example, who had a magnificent vital energy, but they are of a different category. Here all her actions are symbolic, they are the expressions of the Divine Force, chit Shakti, she embodies, and that force she has given freely to the young ones as she had done to the older generation. It infiltrates everything that it comes in contact with; she leaves a part of her Divine Presence wherever she goes. She has said also she never forgets any person who has come in contact with her even for a moment! The person finds a place in her Divine Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo said to me that with each one of us here she has her emanation. I believe that would be in some sense true for all those who have come in contact with her, and it would help them through life's strenuous and perilous journey.
  I shall now finish this chapter with an account of my utter discomfiture in trying to argue with the Mother over a subject about which I had very little knowledge. The Mother was describing to Sri Aurobindo the physical features of the brothers of a particular family. At some point, I don't remember exactly when, I was foolish enough to contradict her. She replied, "Better keep quiet! You know nothing." The episode was over and I had forgotten all about it. But the surprise of surprises, later on the Mother called me out of Sri Aurobindo's room and putting her hand on my shoulder explained almost in an apologetic tone how I was wrong. I expressed my sincere regret for my interruption and said that I certainly did not mind her rebuke. I was indeed very much moved by her divine considerateness. If she would be rude or severe on occasions she once said that Sri Aurobindo was a gentleman, she was not we have seen her Mahakali aspect, freezing silence, ironical smile, cold look, her Mahalakshmi graciousness too was showered upon us often. For example, she used to give me, on my birthdays, a pair of fine dhotis from the stock meant for Sri Aurobindo. However hard she might appear outside, and it was unfortunately for us very necessary she is our true Mother and her only concern is to lead us to the Light.

1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, the Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in the Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in the vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means the Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchidananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit- Shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma the Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purposeya thatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.
  Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek . We may also compare the Greek , meaning judgment, opinion etc & , I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,by virtue of his purified discernment.

1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For the Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many. On one side, by the play of the energies which she brings from the One, she manifests the multiple Divine in the universe, involving and evolving its endless appearances out of her revealing substance; on the other by the reascending current of the same energies she leads back all towards That from which they have issued so that the soul in its evolutionary manifestation may more and more return towards the Divinity there or here put on its divine character. There is not in her, although she devises a cosmic mechanism, the character of an inconscient mechanical Executrix which we find in the first physiognomy of Prakriti, the Nature-Force; neither is there that sense of an Unreality, creatrix of illusions or semi-illusions, which is attached to our first view of Maya. It is at once clear to the experiencing soul that here is a conscious Power of one substance and nature with the Supreme from whom she came. If she seems to have plunged us into the Ignorance and Inconscience in pursuance of a plan we cannot yet interpret, if her forces present themselves as all these ambiguous forces of the universe, yet it becomes visible before long that she is working for the development of the Divine Consciousness in us and that she stands above drawing us to her own higher entity, revealing to us more and more the very essence of the Divine Knowledge, Will and Ananda. Even in the movements of the Ignorance the soul of the seeker becomes aware of her conscious guidance supporting his steps and leading them slowly or swiftly, straight or by many detours out of the darkness into the light of a greater consciousness, out of mortality into immortality, out of evil and suffering towards a highest good and felicity of which as yet his human mind can form only a faint image. Thus her power is at once liberative and dynamic, creative, effective,creative not only of things as they are, but of things that are to be; for, eliminating the twisted and tangled movements of his lower consciousness made of the stuff of the Ignorance, it rebuilds and new-makes his soul and nature into the substance and forces of a higher divine Nature.
  In this Duality too there is possible a separative experience. At one pole of it the seeker may be conscious only of the Master of Existence putting forth on him His energies of knowledge, power and bliss to liberate and divinise; the Shakti may appear to him only an impersonal Force expressive of these things or an attribute of the Ishwara. At the other pole he may encounter the World-Mother, creatrix of the universe, putting forth the Gods and the worlds and all things and existences out of her spirit-substance. Or even if he sees both aspects, it may be with an unequal separating vision, subordinating one to the other, regarding the Shakti only as a means for approaching the Ishwara. There results a one-sided tendency or a lack of balance, a power of effectuation not perfectly supported or a light of revelation not perfectly dynamic. It is when a complete union of the two sides of the Duality is effected and rules his consciousness that he begins to open to a fuller power that will draw him altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance. He has begun to lay his hand on the integral secret which in its fullness can be grasped only when he overpasses the double term that reigns here of Knowledge inextricably intertwined with an original Ignorance and crosses the border where spiritual mind disappears into supramental Gnosis. It is through this third and most dynamic dual aspect of the One that the seeker begins with the most integral completeness to enter into the deepest secret of the being of the Lord of the Sacrifice.
  For it is behind the mystery of the presence of personality in an apparently impersonal universeas in that of consciousness manifesting out of the Inconscient, life out of the inanimate, soul out of brute Matter that is hidden the solution of the riddle of existence. Here again is another dynamic Duality more pervading than appears at first view and deeply necessary to the play of the slowly self-revealing Power. It is possible for the seeker in his spiritual experience, standing at one pole of the Duality, to follow Mind in seeing a fundamental Impersonality everywhere. The evolving soul in the material world begins from a vast impersonal Inconscience in which our inner sight yet perceives the presence of a veiled infinite Spirit; it proceeds with the emergence of a precarious consciousness and personality that even at their fullest have the look of an episode, but an episode that repeats itself in a constant series; it arises through experience of life out of mind into an infinite, impersonal and absolute Superconscience in which personality, mind-consciousness, life-consciousness seem all to disappear by a liberating annihilation, Nirvana. At a lower pitch he still experiences this fundamental impersonality as an immense liberating force everywhere. It releases his knowledge from the narrowness of personal mind, his will from the clutch of personal desire, his heart from the bondage of petty mutable emotions, his life from its petty personal groove, his soul from ego, and it allows them to embrace calm, equality, wideness, universality, infinity. A Yoga of works would seem to require Personality as its mainstay, almost its source, but here too the impersonal is found to be the most direct liberating force; it is through a wide egoless impersonality that one can become a free worker and a divine creator. It is not surprising that the overwhelming power of this experience from the impersonal pole of the Duality should have moved the sages to declare this to be the one way and an impersonal Superconscience to be the sole truth of the Eternal.

1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  truly the feeling of bathing in the Source. Indeed, this "descending force" is the very Force of the Spirit Shakti. Spiritual Force is not just a word. Ultimately, it will no longer be necessary to close our eyes and withdraw from the surface to feel it; it will be there every second of our life, no matter what we are doing, whether we are eating, reading, or speaking; we will see it take on a greater and greater intensity as our being becomes accustomed to it. It is actually a formidable mass of energy, limited only by the smallness of our receptivity and capacity.
  When the disciples speak of their experience with this descending Force, they call it "Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's Force." But they do not mean that this Shakti is the personal property of Sri Aurobindo and Mother; they merely express, unwittingly, the fact that it has no equivalent in any other known yoga. Here, experientially, we touch 36
  On Yoga II, Tome 2, 302

1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience -- or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions or instigations of the Life-force, the positive necessities of physical things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes false lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for the rest either detain or confuse us. The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and comm and and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga.
     In accordance with the triple character of the sacrifice we may divide works too into a triple order, the works of Knowledge, the works of Love, the works of the Will-in-Life, and see how this more plastic spiritual rule applies to each province and effects the transition from the lower to the higher nature.
  --
     A Yoga turned towards an all-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the dreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid toil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself In the human creature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the world too must be part of the sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none else, to the Divine Shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with the right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bondslave of material Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance. But otherwise, apart from this division, all activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials for a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues and utilises his world and environment, and the noble and beautiful Arts which are at once work and knowledge, -- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expressions-all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
     For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its works, to express that One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from the high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, -- for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose.

1.05 - The True Doer of Works, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1:If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme; your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. You must grow in the divine consciousness till there is no difference between your will and hers, no motive except her impulsion in you, no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.
  2:Until you are capable of this complete dynamic identification, you have to regard yourself as a soul and body created for her service, one who does all for her sake. Even if the idea of the separate worker is strong in you and you feel that it is you who do the act, yet it must be done for her. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of selfregarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness and calm and strength and bliss. The joy of service and the joy of inner growth through works is the sufficient recompense of the selfless worker.
  3:But a time will come when you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker. For first by the force of your devotion your contact with the Divine Mother will become so intimate that at all times you will have only to concentrate and to put everything into her hands to have her present guidance, her direct comm and or impulse, the sure indication of the thing to be done and the way to do it and the result. And afterwards you will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers, mind, life and body are conscious and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe. There can be no more happy condition than this union and dependence; for this step carries you back beyond the border-line from the life of stress and suffering in the ignorance into the truth of your spiritual being, into its deep peace and its intense Ananda.
  4:While this transformation is being done it is more than ever necessary to keep yourself free from all taint of the perversions of the ego. Let no demand or insistence creep in to stain the purity of the self-giving and the sacrifice. There must be no attachment to the work or the result, no laying down of conditions, no claim to possess the Power that should possess you, no pride of the instrument, no vanity or arrogance. Nothing in the mind or in the vital or physical parts should be suffered to distort to its own use or seize for its own personal and separate satisfaction the greatness of the forces that are acting through you. Let your faith, your sincerity, your purity of aspiration be absolute and pervasive of all the planes and layers of the being; then every disturbing element and distorting influence will progressively fall away from your nature.

1.05 - Yoga and Hypnotism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yo yacchraddha sa eva sa. According as is a mans fixed and complete belief, that he is,not immediately always but sooner or later, by the law that makes the psychical tend inevitably to express itself in the material. The will is the agent by which all these changes are made and old saskras replaced by new, and the will cannot act without faith. The question then arises whether mind is the ultimate force or there is another which communicates with the outside world through the mind. Is the mind the agent or simply the instrument? If the mind be all, then it is only animals that can have the power to evolve; but this does not accord with the laws of the world as we know them. The tree evolves, the clod evolves, everything evolves Even in animals it is evident that mind is not all in the sense of being the ultimate expression of existence or the ultimate force in Nature. It seems to be all only because that which is all expresses itself in the mind and passes everything through it for the sake of manifestation. That which we call mind is a medium which pervades the world. Otherwise we could not have that instantaneous and electrical action of mind upon mind of which human experience is full and of which the new phenomena of hypnotism, telepathy etc. are only fresh proofs. There must be contact, there must be interpenetration if we are to account for these phenomena on any reasonable theory. Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument. There is an ulterior force which works through this subtle medium called mind. An animal species develops, according to the modern theory, under the subtle influence of the environment. The environment supplies a need and those who satisfy the need develop a new species which survives because it is more fit. This is not the result of any intellectual perception of the need nor of a resolve to develop the necessary changes, but of a desire, often though not always a mute, inarticulate and unthought desire. That desire attracts a force which satisfies it What is that force? The tendency of the psychical desire to manifest in the material change is one term in the equation; the force which develops the change in response to the desire is another. We have a will beyond mind which dictates the change, we have a force beyond mind which effects it. According to Hindu philosophy the will is the Jiva, the Purusha, the self in the nandakoa acting through vijna, universal or transcendental mind; this is what we call spirit. The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action. Behind both is the single Self of the universe which contains both Jiva and Prakriti, spirit and material energy. Yoga puts these ultimate existences within us in touch with each other and by stilling the activity of the saskras or associations in mind and body enables them to act swiftly, victoriously, and as the world calls it, miraculously. In reality there is no such thing as a miracle; there are only laws and processes which are not yet understood.
  Yoga is therefore no dream, no illusion of mystics. It is known that we can alter the associations of mind and body temporarily and that the mind can alter the conditions of the body partially. Yoga asserts that these things can be done permanently and completely. For the body conquest of disease, pain and material obstructions, for the mind liberation from bondage to past experience and the heavier limitations of space and time, for the heart victory over sin and grief and fear, for the spirit unclouded bliss, strength and illumination, this is the gospel of Yoga, is the goal to which Hinduism points humanity.

1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendour appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter the image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. Our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
  An ultimate inexpressible adoration offered by us to the Transcendent, to the Highest,1 to the Ineffable, is yet no complete worship if it is not offered to him wherever he manifests or wherever even he hides his godhead - in man2 and object and every creature. An Ignorance is there no doubt which imprisons the heart, distorts its feelings, obscures the significance of its offering; all partial worship, all religion which erects a mental or a physical idol is tempted to veil and protect the truth in it by a certain cloak of ignorance and easily loses the truth in its image. But the pride of exclusive knowledge is also a limitation and a barrier. For there is, concealed behind individual love, obscured by its ignorant human figure, a mystery which the mind cannot seize, the mystery of the body of the Divine, the secret of a mystic form of the Infinite which we can approach only through the ecstasy of the heart and the passion of the pure and sublimated sense, and its attraction which is the call of the divine Flute-player, the mastering compulsion of the AllBeautiful, can only be seized and seize us through an occult love and yearning which in the end makes one the Form and the Formless, and identifies Spirit and Matter. It is that which the spirit in Love is seeking here in the darkness of the Ignorance and it is that which it finds when individual human love is changed into the love of the Immanent Divine incarnate in the material universe.
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  Power is divine and put here for a divine use. Shakti, Will, Power is the driver of the worlds and, whether it be Knowledge-Force or Love-Force or Life-Force or Action-Force or Body-Force, is always spiritual in its origin and divine in its native character.
  It is the use of it made in the Ignorance by brute, man or Titan
  --
  It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces,
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   detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender.
  But all this can only constitute a greater inner life with a greater possibility of the outer action and is a transitional achievement; the full transformation can come only by the ascent of the sacrifice to its farthest heights and its action upon life with the power and light and beatitude of the divine supramental

1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:There are three ways of being of the Mother of which you can become aware when you enter into touch of oneness with the Conscious Force that upholds us and the universe. Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti, she stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme. Universal, the cosmic Maha Shakti, she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between the human personality and the divine Nature.
  3:The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe. The Supreme is manifest in her for ever as the everlasting Sachchidananda, manifested through her in the worlds as the one and dual consciousness of Ishwara- Shakti and the dual principle of Purusha-Prakriti, embodied by her in the Worlds and the Planes and the Gods and their Energies and figured because of her as all that is in the known worlds and in unknown others. All is her play with the Supreme; all is her manifestation of the mysteries of the Eternal, the miracles of the Infinite. All is she, for all are parcel and portion of the divine Conscious-Force. Nothing can be here or elsewhere but what she decides and the Supreme sanctions; nothing can take shape except what she moved by the Supreme perceives and forms after casting it into seed in her creating Ananda.
  4:The Maha Shakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Maha Shakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda. But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Maha Shakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Maha Shakti.
  5:The Mother as the Maha Shakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put out in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds to intervene, to govern, to battle and conquer, to lead and turn their cycles, to direct the total and the individual lines of their forces. These Emanations are the many divine forms and personalities in which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhutis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhutis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence. All the scenes of the earth-play have been like a drama arranged and planned and staged by her with the cosmic Gods for her assistants and herself as a veiled actor.
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  10:Wisdom and Force are not the only manifestations of the supreme Mother there is a subtler mystery of her nature and without it Wisdom and Force would be incomplete things and without it perfection would not be perfect. Above them is the miracle of eternal beauty, an unseizable secret of divine harmonies, the compelling magic of an irresistible universal charm and attraction that draws and holds things and forces and beings together and obliges them to meet and unite that a hidden Ananda may play from behind the veil and make of them its rhythms and its figures. This is the power of MAHALAKSHMI and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of embodied beings. Maheshwari can appear too calm and great and distant for the littleness of earthly nature to approach or contain her, Mahakali too swift and formidable for its weakness to bear; but all turn with joy and longing to Mahalakshmi. For she throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart is to make existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and tenderness flow out from her like light from the sun and wherever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss. Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.
  11:And yet it is not easy to meet the demand of this enchanting Power or to keep her presence. Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the demand of Mahalakshmi. Where there is affinity to the rhythms of the secret world-bliss and response to the call of the AllBeautiful and concord and unity and the glad flow of many lives turned towards the Divine, in that atmosphere she consents to abide. But all that is ugly and mean and base, all that is poor and sordid and squalid, all that is brutal and coarse repels her advent. Where love and beauty are not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come; where they are mixed and disfigured with baser things, she turns soon to depart or cares little to pour her riches. If she finds herself in men's hearts surrounded with selfishness and hatred and jealousy and malignance and envy and strife, if treachery and greed and ingratitude are mixed in the sacred chalice, if grossness of passion and unrefined desire degrade devotion, in such hearts the gracious and beautiful Goddess will not linger. A divine disgust seizes upon her and she withdraws, for she is not one who insists or strives; or, veiling her face, she waits for this bitter and poisonous devil's stuff to be rejected and disappear before she will found anew her happy influence. Ascetic bareness and harshness are not pleasing to her nor the suppression of the heart's deeper emotions and the rigid repression of the soul's and the life's parts of beauty. For it is through love and beauty that she lays on men the yoke of the Divine. Life is turned in her supreme creations into a rich work of celestial art and all existence into a poem of sacred delight; the world's riches are brought together and concerted for a supreme order and even the simplest and commonest things are made wonderful by her intuition of unity and the breath of her spirit. Admitted to the heart she lifts wisdom to pinnacles of wonder and reveals to it the mystic secrets of the ecstasy that surpasses all knowledge, meets devotion with the passionate attraction of the Divine, teaches to strength and force the rhythm that keeps the might of their acts harmonious and in measure and casts on perfection the charm that makes it endure for ever.
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  15:But be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that are beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and complexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehension; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Bewildered by the swift alternation of her many different personalities, her making of rhythms and her breaking of rhythms, her accelerations of speed and her retardations, her varied ways of dealing with the problem of one and of another, her taking up and dropping now of this line and now of that one and her gathering of them together, it will not recognise the way of the Supreme Power when it is circling and sweeping upwards through the maze of the Ignorance to a supernal Light. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth. Then the Mother herself will enlighten by their psychic elements your mind and heart and life and physical consciousness and reveal to them too her ways and her nature.
  16:Avoid also the error of the ignorant mind's demand on the Divine Power to act always according to our crude surface notions of omniscience and omnipotence. For our mind clamours to be impressed at every turn by miraculous power and easy success and dazzling splendour; otherwise it cannot believe that here is the Divine. The Mother is dealing with the Ignorance in the fields of the Ignorance; she has descended there and is not all above. Partly she veils and partly she unveils her knowledge and her power, often holds them back from her instruments and personalities and follows that she may transform them the way of the seeking mind, the way of the aspiring psychic, the way of the battling vital, the way of the imprisoned and suffering physical nature. There are conditions that have been laid down by a Supreme Will, there are many tangled knots that have to be loosened and cannot be cut abruptly asunder. The Asura and Rakshasa hold this evolving earthly nature and have to be met and conquered on their own terms in their own longconquered fief and province; the human in us has to be led and prepared to transcend its limits and is too weak and obscure to be lifted up suddenly to a form far beyond it. The Divine Consciousness and Force are there and do at each moment the thing that is needed in the conditions of the labour, take always the step that is decreed and shape in the midst of imperfection the perfection that is to come. But only when the supermind has descended in you can she deal directly as the supramental Shakti with supramental natures. If you follow your mind, it will not recognise the Mother even when she is manifest before you. Follow your soul and not your mind, your soul that answers to the Truth, not your mind that leaps at appearances; trust the Divine Power and she will free the godlike elements in you and shape all into an expression of Divine Nature.
  17:The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit. But that the change may arrive, take form and endure, there is needed the call from below with a will to recognise and not deny the Light when it comes, and there is needed the sanction of the Supreme from above. The power that mediates between the sanction and the call is the presence and power of the Divine Mother The Mother s power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal's Ananda.

1.06 - The Greatness of the Individual, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In all movements, in every great mass of human action it is the Spirit of the Time, that which Europe calls the Zeitgeist and India Kala, who expresses himself. The very names are deeply significant. Kali, the Mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity manifesting herself in the perpetual surge of men, institutions and movements, Mahakala the Spirit within whose energy goes abroad in her and moulds the progress of the world and the destiny of the nations. His is the impetus which fulfils itself in Time, and once there is movement, impetus from the Spirit within, Time and the Mother take charge of it, prepare, ripen and fulfil. When the Zeitgeist, God in Time, moves in a settled direction, then all the forces of the world are called in to swell the established current towards the purpose decreed. That which consciously helps, swells it, but that which hinders swells it still more, and like a wave on the windswept Ocean, now rising, now falling, now high on the crest of victory and increase, now down in the troughs of discouragement and defeat, the impulse from the hidden Source sweeps onward to its preordained fulfilment. Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists.
  The great and memorable vision of Kurukshetra when Sri Krishna manifesting his world-form declared himself as destroying Time, is significant of this deep perception of humanity. When Arjuna wished to cast aside his bow and quiver, when he said, This is a sin we do and a great destruction of men and brothers, I will forbear, Sri Krishna after convincing his intellect of error, proceeded by that marvellous vision described in the eleventh canto of the Gita to stamp the truth of things upon his imagination. Thus run the mighty stanzas:

1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  scendent Shakti; as Maha Shakti, the cosmic Mother of the
  Gods; and as the incarnated Mother in the Yoga.164
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  man from eternity divided into Ishwara and Shakti, Puru-
  sha and Prakriti. On the Origin of the World, a gnostic text
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  [the Great Mother, the one original transcendent Shakti];
  It is I who am the wife
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  [because I am his force, Shakti];
  I am in the process of becoming

1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  Once one masters the exemplar or the paradigmatic practice (strand one), then one is ushered into a worldspace in which new data disclose themselves (strand two). These are direct apprehensions or illuminations-in a word, direct spiritual experiences (unio mystica, satori, kensho, Shaktipat, nada, shabd, etc.). These data are rigorously checked (strand three) in the community of those who have also completed the first two strands (injunction and illumination). Bad data are rebuffed by the community (the sangha) of those whose cognitive eyes are adequate to the addressed domain.
  Thus, as I covered in more detail in Eye to Eye, au thentic knowledge has a component that is similar to Kuhn's paradigm (namely, the injunction), a component that is similar to the broad empirical demand for evidence or data or experience (namely, the illumination or apprehension, whether that be from sensory experience, mental experience, or spiritual experience), and a component similar to Sir Karl Popper's fallibilistic criterion (namely, the potential confirmation or refutation by a community of the adequate).

1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  between the embodied Ishwara and Shakti? There are no
  words which can describe the collapse that has been for it,

1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  7:At first, the higher Love and Truth will fulfil its movement in the sadhaka according to the essential law or way of his own nature. For that is the special aspect of the divine Nature, the particular power of the supreme Shakti, out of which his soul has emerged into the Play, not limited indeed by the forms of this law or way, for the soul is infinite. But still its stuff of nature bears that stamp, evolves fluently along those lines or turns around the spiral curves of that dominating influence. He will manifest the divine Truth-movement according to the temperament of the sage or the lion-like fighter or the lover and enjoyer or the worker and servant or in any combination of essential attributes (gunas) that may constitute the form given to his being by its own inner urge. It is this self-nature playing freely in his acts which men will see in him and not a conduct cut, chalked out, artificially regulated, by any lesser rule or by any law from outside.
  8:But there is a yet higher attainment, there is an infinity (anantya) in which even this last limitation is exceeded, because the nature is utterly fulfilled and its boundaries vanish. There the soul lives without any boundaries; for it uses all forms and moulds according to the divine Will in it, but it is not restrained, it is not tied down, it is not imprisoned in any power or form that it uses. This is the summit of the path of works and this the utter liberty of the soul in its actions. In reality, it has there no actions; for all its activities are a rhythm of the Supreme and sovereignly proceed from That alone like a spontaneous music out of the Infinite.
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  12:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother Prakriti- Shakti, is the one and only worker.
  13:Purusha-Prakriti, Consciousness-Force, Soul supporting Nature, - for the two even in their separation are one and inseparable, - are at once a universal and a transcendent Power. But there is something in the individual too which is not the mental ego, something that is one in essence with this greater reality: it is a pure reflection or portion of the one Purusha; it is the Soul Person or the embodied being, the individual self, Jivatman; it is the Self that seems to limit its power and knowledge so as to support an individual play of transcendent and universal Nature. In deepest reality the infinitely One is also infinitely multiple; we are not only a reflection or portion of That but we are That; our spiritual individuality - unlike our ego - does not preclude our universality and transcendence. But at present the soul or self in us intent on individualisation in Nature allows itself to be confused with the idea of the ego; it has to get rid of this ignorance, it has to know itself as a reflection or portion or being of the supreme and universal Self and solely a centre of its consciousness in the world-action. But this Jiva Purusha too is not the doer of works any more than the ego or the supporting consciousness of the Witness and Knower. Again and always it is the transcendent and universal Shakti who is the sole doer. But behind her is the one Supreme who manifests through her as the dual power, Purusha-Prakriti, Ishwara- Shakti.1 The Supreme becomes dynamic as the Shakti and is by her the sole originator and Master of works in the universe.
  14:If this is the truth of works, the first thing the sadhaka has to do is to recoil from the egoistic forms of activity and get rid of the sense of an "I" that acts. He has to see and feel that everything happens in him by the plastic conscious or subcon- scious or sometimes superconscious automatism of his mental and bodily instruments moved by the forces of spiritual, mental, vital and physical Nature. There is a personality on his surface that chooses and wills, submits and struggles, tries to make good in Nature or prevail over Nature, but this personality is itself a construction of Nature and so dominated, driven, determined by her that it cannot be free. It is a formation or expression of the Self in her, - it is a self of Nature rather than a self of Self, his natural and processive, not his spiritual and permanent being, a temporary constructed personality, not the true immortal Person. It is that Person that he must become. He must succeed in being inwardly quiescent, detach himself as the observer from the outer active personality and learn the play of the cosmic forces in him by standing back from all blinding absorption in its turns and movements. Thus calm, detached, a student of himself and a witness of his nature, he realises that he is the individual soul who observes the works of Nature, accepts tranquilly her results and sanctions or withholds his sanction from the impulse to her acts. At present this soul or Purusha is little more than an acquiescent spectator, influencing perhaps the action and development of the being by the pressure of its veiled consciousness, but for the most part delegating its powers or a fragment of them to the outer personality, - in fact to Nature, for this outer self is not lord but subject to her, ansa; but, once unveiled, it can make its sanction or refusal effective, become the master of the action, dictate sovereignly a change of Nature. Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha's assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails, - slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. Above and around him is the Shakti, the universal Mother and from her he can get all his inmost soul needs and wills if only he has a true knowledge of her ways and a true surrender to the divine Will in her. Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara- Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power. The rest of our progress depends on our knowledge of the ways in which the Lord of works manifests his Will in the world and in us and executes them through the transcendent and universal Shakti.
  15:The Lord sees in his omniscience the thing that has to be done. This seeing is his Will, it is a form of creative Power, and that which he sees the all-conscious Mother one with him, takes into her dynamic self and embodies, and executive Nature-Force carries it out as the mechanism of their omnipotent omniscience. But this vision of what is to be and therefore of what is to be done arises out of the very being, pours directly out of the consciousness and delight of existence of the Lord, spontaneously, like light from the Sun. It is not our mortal attempt to see, our difficult arrival at truth of action and motive or just demand of Nature. When the individual soul is entirely at one in its being and knowledge with the Lord and directly in touch with the original Shakti, the transcendent Mother the supreme Will can then arise in us too in the high divine manner as a thing that must be and is achieved by the spontaneous action of Nature. There is then no desire, no responsibility, no reaction; all takes place in the peace, calm, light, power of the supporting and enveloping and inhabiting Divine.
  16:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, later. But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single comm and or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels.

1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The powers are not really miracles as most people think. They are revelations of the forces of nature which are hidden, through which one passes when one rises from one realm to another realm. In each realm a particular law operates, just as different laws operate in different countries. When one gains entry into a particular realm, one becomes one with the law that operates in that realm; and to a lower realm, that upper law looks like a miracle. The aim of yoga is the liberation of the spirit. The highest perfections are not control of the elements, or bodily perfection, etc., as mentioned. The eight siddhis etc. are not the aim of yoga. Rather, they are obstacles if they are independently aimed at. The purpose is Cosmic-consciousness, which also is an incidental experience to the last stage which is called liberation, or moksha. Omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence are the last powers that come to a person. That is Ishvara Shakti: entering into the mind of a yogi. That is the last perfection, and is connected with the Pure Spirit, or the purusha.
  These perfections come in various ways: sometimes without ones knowing that they have come, or sometimes they become objects of ones mental awareness. All people are not of the same kind. Every yogi is a specific character by himself or herself, so we cannot compare one with the other. Though many people may practise a similar technique of meditation, the experiences will not be uniform; they will vary because of the peculiarity or novelty of the physical and the mental strain of the individual concerned. These powers and experiences are the reactions set up in the personality of the yogi by the powers of nature as a whole, and inasmuch as the individualities of the yogis vary in the structure and the makeup of their organism, the reactions also vary in nature. Hence, experiences vary. Sometimes we may see light, sometimes we may not see light, and so on.

1.097 - Sublimation of Object-Consciousness, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Svrthasayamt puruajnam (III.36). Here is the secret of yoga, or true meditation, from the spiritual point of view. Purusha jnana, or knowledge of the purusha, arises by svartha samyama samyama on svartha, meditation on ones own essential nature, or the purpose of the spirit. This is the meditation prescribed. The purpose of the spirit, the character of the spirit, is the object of meditation. We cannot once again go into all the details of this subject, inasmuch as we have covered it in the Samadhi Pada. But suffice it to say that the contemplation of the nature of the spirit, or its purpose, is equivalent to a precondition of a grasp of the nature of the spirit by viveka Shakti, or analytic understanding. It is enough for the mind to understand and appreciate that the purusha is consciousness in nature. And consciousness has to be indivisible, by the very nature of it, which means that it is infinite, unconditioned by objects, space and time. Therefore, any experience in terms of space and time or objects is contrary to the nature of the purusha. Hence, there should be an effort exercised upon the mind to sublimate object awareness into spiritual awareness.
  Spiritual contemplation is a process of sublimation of objectivity into universality. This kind of meditation is what is introduced in this sutra, and when this is practised, purusha jnana arises knowledge of the purusha comes. But this is a hard task because the conception of the purusha is not provided to the mind usually, in ordinary world experience. The nature of the purusha does not mean the nature of the individual self. It is the nature of the Universal Self. Purusha is a name that we give to the Absolute itself that which comprehends all things. Therefore, there is the need for the practice of those conditions mentioned in the Samadhi Pada, meaning the conditions which are designated as vairagya and abhyasa.

1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  3:At this stage of the Yoga and even throughout the Yoga this form of desire, this figure of the ego is the enemy against whom we have to be always on our guard with an unsleeping vigilance. We need not be discouraged when we find him lurking within us and assuming all sorts of disguises, but we should be vigilant to detect him in all his masks and inexorable in expelling his influence. The illumining Word of this movement is the decisive line of the Gita, "To action thou hast a right but never under any circumstances to its fruit." The fruit belongs solely to the Lord of all works; our only business with it is to prepare success by a true and careful action and to offer it, if it comes, to the divine Master. Afterwards even as we have renounced attachment to the fruit, we must renounce attachment to the work also; at any moment we must be prepared to change one work, one course or one field of action for another or abandon all works if that is the clear comm and of the Master. Otherwise we do the act not for his sake but for our satisfaction and pleasure in the work, from the kinetic nature's need of action or for the fulfilment of our propensities; but these are all stations and refuges of the ego. However necessary for our ordinary motion of life, they have to be abandoned in the growth of the spiritual consciousness and replaced by divine counterparts: an Ananda, an impersonal and God-directed delight will cast out or supplant the unillumined vital satisfaction and pleasure, a joyful driving of the Divine Energy the kinetic need; the fulfilment of the propensities will no longer be an object or a necessity, there will be instead the fulfilment of the Divine Will through the natural dynamic truth in action of a free soul and a luminous nature. In the end, as the attachment to the fruit of the work and to the work itself has been excised from the heart, so also the last clinging attachment to the idea and sense of ourselves as the doer has to be relinquished; the Divine Shakti must be known and felt above and within us as the true and sole worker.
  4:The renunciation of attachment to the work and its fruit is the beginning of a wide movement towards an absolute equality in the mind and soul which must become all-enveloping if we are to be perfect in the spirit. For the worship of the Master of works demands a clear recognition and glad acknowledgment of him in ourselves, in all things and in all happenings. Equality is the sign of this adoration; it is the soul's ground on which true sacrifice and worship can be done. The Lord is there equally in all beings, we have to make no essential distinctions between ourselves and others, the wise and the ignorant, friend and enemy, man and animal, the saint and the sinner. We must hate none, despise none, be repelled by none; for in all we have to see the One disguised or manifested at his pleasure. He is a little revealed in one or more revealed in another or concealed and wholly distorted in others according to his will and his knowledge of what is best for that which he intends to become in form in them and to do in works in their nature. All is ourself, one self that has taken many shapes. Hatred and disliking and scorn and repulsion, clinging and attachment and preference are natural, necessary, inevitable at a certain stage: they attend upon or they help to make and maintain Nature's choice in us. But to the Karmayogin they are a survival, a stumbling-block, a process of the Ignorance and, as he progresses, they fall away from his nature. The child-soul needs them for its growth; but they drop from an adult in the divine culture. In the God-nature to which we have to rise there can be an adamantine, even a destructive severity but not hatred, a divine irony but not scorn, a calm, clear-seeing and forceful rejection but not repulsion and dislike. Even what we have to destroy, we must not abhor or fail to recognise as a disguised and temporary movement of the Eternal.
  --
  12:An entire removal of this separative ego-sense is an essential aim of our Yoga. If any ego is to remain in us for a while, it is only a form of it which knows itself to be a form and is ready to disappear as soon as a true centre of consciousness is manifested or built in us. That true centre is a luminous formulation of the one Consciousness and a pure channel and instrument of the one Existence. A support for the individual manifestation and action of the universal Force, it gradually reveals behind it the true Person in us, the central eternal being, an everlasting being of the Supreme, a power and portion of the transcendent Shakti.2
  13:Here too, in this movement by which the soul divests itself gradually of the obscure robe of the ego, there is a progress by marked stages. For not only the fruit of works belongs to the Lord alone, but our works also must be his; he is the true lord of our actions no less than of our results. This we must not see with the thinking mind only, it must become entirely true to our entire consciousness and will. The sadhaka has not only to think and know but to see and feel concretely and intensely even in the moment of the working and in its initiation and whole process that his works are not his at all, but are coming through him from the Supreme Existence. He must be always aware of a Force, a Presence, a Will that acts through his individual nature. But there is in taking this turn the danger that he may confuse his own disguised or sublimated ego or an inferior power with the Lord and substitute its demands for the supreme dictates. He may fall into a common ambush of this lower nature and distort his supposed surrender to a higher Power into an excuse for a magnified and uncontrolled indulgence of his own self-will and even of his desires and passions. A great sincerity is asked for and has to be imposed not only on the conscious mind but still more on the subliminal part of us which is full of hidden movements. For there is there, especially in our subliminal vital nature, an incorrigible charlatan and actor. The sadhaka must first have advanced far in the elimination of desire and in the firm equality of his soul towards all workings and all happenings before he can utterly lay down the burden of his works on the Divine. At every moment he must proceed with a vigilant eye upon the deceits of the ego and the ambushes of the misleading Powers of Darkness who ever represent themselves as the one Source of Light and Truth and take on them a simulacrum of divine forms in order to capture the soul of the seeker.
  --
  15:Thus are made possible the final steps when the veil of Nature is withdrawn and the seeker is face to face with the Master of all existence and his activities are merged in the action of a supreme Energy which is pure, true, perfect and blissful for ever. Thus can he utterly renounce to the supramental Shakti his works as well as the fruits of his works and act only as the conscious instrument of the eternal Worker. No longer giving the sanction, he will rather receive in his instruments and follow in her hands a divine mandate. No longer doing works, he will accept their execution through him by her unsleeping Force. No longer willing the fulfilment of his own mental constructions and the satisfaction of his own emotional desires, he will obey and participate in an omnipotent Will that is also an omniscient Knowledge and a myterious, magical and unfathomable Love and a vast bottomless sea of the eternal Bliss of Existence.
  

1.09 - Saraswati and Her Consorts, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Prakriti or Shakti, - the Purusha is in this early pastoral imagery the Bull, Vrishabha, - the Mother of things taking form on the seven planes of her world-action as energy of conscious being.
  So also, the seven rivers are conscious currents corresponding to

1.09 - The Pure Existent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  14:But as we cannot describe or think out the Absolute in itself, beyond stability and movement, beyond unity and multitude, - nor is that at all our business, - we must accept the double fact, admit both Shiva and Kali and seek to know what is this measureless Movement in Time and Space with regard to that timeless and spaceless pure Existence, one and stable, to which measure and measurelessness are inapplicable. We have seen what pure Reason, intuition and experience have to say about pure Existence, about Sat; what have they to say about Force, about Movement, about Shakti?
  15:And the first thing we have to ask ourselves is whether that Force is simply force, simply an unintelligent energy of movement or whether the consciousness which seems to emerge out of it in this material world we live in, is not merely one of its phenomenal results but rather its own true and secret nature. In Vedantic terms, is Force simply Prakriti, only a movement of action and process, or is Prakriti really power of Chit, in its nature force of creative self-conscience? On this essential problem all the rest hinges.

1.1.01 - The Divine and Its Aspects, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
      In the ordinary nature we live in the Ignorance and do not know the Divine. The forces of the ordinary nature are undivine forces because they weave a veil of ego and desire and unconsciousness which conceals the Divine from us. To get into the higher and deeper consciousness which knows and lives consciously in the Divine, we have to get rid of the forces of the lower nature and open to the action of the Divine Shakti which will transform our consciousness into that of the Divine Nature.
      This is the conception of the Divine from which we have to start - the realisation of its truth can only come with the opening of the consciousness and its change.

1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti.
  1 Sri Aurobindo's incomplete draft reply, which "began to develop itself at great length", is reproduced immediately after the present letter. - Ed.
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   can see different degrees, kinds, powers of consciousness, mental, vital, physical, psychic, spiritual. The Divine has been described as Being-Consciousness-Ananda, even as a Consciousness (Chaitanya), as putting out a force or energy, Shakti, that creates worlds. The mind is a modified consciousness that puts forth a mental energy. But the Divine can stand back from his energy and observe it at its work, it can be the Witness Purusha watching the works of Prakriti. Even the mind can do that - a man can stand back in his mind-consciousness and watch the mental energy doing things, thinking, planning, etc.; all introspection is based upon that fact that one can so divide oneself into a consciousness that observes and an energy that acts. These are quite elementary things supposed to be known to everybody.
  Anybody can do that merely by a little practice; anybody who observes his own thoughts, feelings, actions has begun doing it already. In Yoga we make the division complete, that is all.
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  Force, Energy, Power, Shakti
  There is a force behind each action acting in a manner appropriate to that action. It takes all these many forms for the necessity of the working, but it is one Force.
  --
  In each atom of the being there is an Energy, a Shakti - just as there is in every material atom a great material energy. When you see like that, you become aware of these energies. They are neither good nor bad - it depends on how they are used or how they act.
  Power means strength and force, Shakti, which enables one to face all that can happen and to stand and overcome, also to carry out what the Divine Will proposes. It can include many things, power over men, events, circumstances, means etc. But all this not of the mental or vital kind, but by an action through unity of consciousness with the Divine and with all things and beings. It is not an individual strength depending on certain personal capacities, but the Divine Power using the individual as an instrument. It has no special relation to occult siddhis.
  Force is the essential Shakti; Energy is the working drive of the
  Force, its active dynamism; Power is the capacity born of the
  --
  The Supreme cannot create through the Transcendent because the Transcendent is the Supreme. It is through the Cosmic Shakti that the Divine creates.
  Sachchidananda

1.1.04 - The Self or Atman, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Self or Atman is inactive, Nature (Prakriti) or Shakti acts.
  When the Self is realised it is first an infinite existence, wideness, silence, freedom, peace that is felt - that is called Atman or Self.

11.06 - The Mounting Fire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Tantriks devised a different way, an about-turn way. Instead of trying to bring down the superior or the supreme consciousness into these lower darknesses, they sought to attack these from below, set a blazing fire below that would shoot up its tongues into those nether regions of the brain or mind. Instead of a force of light from above coming down, a force of fire is rocketed upward and made to strike as it were at the back of the lower masses of the mind. Now where to find this fire, this mounting tongue of a living flame? That is what the Tantras have imaged in the concept of the Kundalini Shakti. There is a force, a mighty energy coiled and concentrated at the base of the spine holding it and supporting at its top, first, the subliminal region of the brain at the bottom, and over it the other two. There is a secret fire at the base of the human system. It is a fire as invoked by the Vedic Rishis: the tantriks view it as a coiled python the universal nature-power, her massive ingathered creative energy. This energy is forceful and fierce because it is as much creative as it is destructive. That is the poison which the python carries, it is a poison in the ignorant state and unconsciousness, to the ignorant and the unconscious, but to the aspirant and the awakened and the luminous consciousness it begins to work as the immortalising draughtnectar.
   The energy at the root of the spine is stored, as it is said, in the muladhara, the root, that is to say, in the root of the very material constitution of the human being. It is the concentrated energy in matter, indeed it is the energy of the mother earth. The Vedic Rishis speak of fire as being a deity of earth, as the Sun or the God of Light is the deity of the heaven. The earth-energy has to be awakened or kindled and it has to move upward and forward, piercing and burning and illumining all the inferior and denser regions of consciousness till it pierces through and enters into the head, and then goes beyond, into the supreme solar light. That is the image given in the Tantras calling it a-chakrabheda.

1.10 - Conscious Force, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  6:Physical analysis of Matter by modern Science has come to the same general conclusion, even if a few last doubts still linger. Intuition and experience confirm this concord of Science and Philosophy. Pure reason finds in it the satisfaction of its own essential conceptions. For even in the view of the world as essentially an act of consciousness, an act is implied and in the act movement of Force, play of Energy. This also, when we examine from within our own experience, proves to be the fundamental nature of the world. All our activities are the play of the triple force of the old philosophies, knowledge-force, desire-force, action-force, and all these prove to be really three streams of one original and identical Power, Adya Shakti. Even our states of rest are only equable state or equilibrium of the play of her movement.
  7:Movement of Force being admitted as the whole nature of the Cosmos, two questions arise. And first, how did this movement come to take place at all in the bosom of existence? If we suppose it to be not only eternal but the very essence of all existence, the question does not arise. But we have negatived this theory. We are aware of an existence which is not compelled by the movement. How then does this movement alien to its eternal repose come to take place in it? by what cause? by what possibility? by what mysterious impulsion?
  8:The answer most approved by the ancient Indian mind was that Force is inherent in Existence. Shiva and Kali, Brahman and Shakti are one and not two who are separable. Force inherent in existence may be at rest or it may be in motion, but when it is at rest, it exists none the less and is not abolished, diminished or in any way essentially altered. This reply is so entirely rational and in accordance with the nature of things that we need not hesitate to accept it. For it is impossible, because contradictory of reason, to suppose that Force is a thing alien to the one and infinite existence and entered into it from outside or was non-existent and arose in it at some point in Time. Even the Illusionist theory must admit that Maya, the power of self-illusion in Brahman, is potentially eternal in eternal Being and then the sole question is its manifestation or non-manifestation. The Sankhya also asserts the eternal coexistence of Prakriti and Purusha, Nature and Conscious-Soul, and the alternative states of rest or equilibrium of Prakriti and movement or disturbance of equilibrium.
  9:But since Force is thus inherent in existence and it is the nature of Force to have this double or alternative potentiality of rest and movement, that is to say, of self-concentration in Force and self-diffusion in Force, the question of the how of the movement, its possibility, initiating impulsion or impelling cause does not arise. For we can easily, then, conceive that this potentiality must translate itself either as an alternative rhythm of rest and movement succeeding each other in Time or else as an eternal self-concentration of Force in immutable existence with a superficial play of movement, change and formation like the rising and falling of waves on the surface of the ocean. And this superficial play - we are necessarily speaking in inadequate images - may be either coeval with the self-concentration and itself also eternal or it may begin and end in Time and be resumed by a sort of constant rhythm; it is then not eternal in continuity but eternal in recurrence.
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  11:But if we suppose or find Existence to be conscious Being, the problem arises. We may indeed suppose a conscious Being which is subject to its nature of Force, compelled by it and without option as to whether it shall manifest in the universe or remain unmanifest. Such is the cosmic God of the Tantriks and the Mayavadins who is subject to Shakti or Maya, Purusha involved in Maya or controlled by Shakti. But it is obvious that such a God is not the supreme infinite Existence with which we have started. Admittedly, it is only a formulation of Brahman in the cosmos by the Brahman which is itself logically anterior to Shakti or Maya and takes her back into its transcendental being when she ceases from her works. In a conscious existence which is absolute, independent of its formations, not determined by its works, we must suppose an inherent freedom to manifest or not to manifest the potentiality of movement. A Brahman compelled by Prakriti is not Brahman, but an inert Infinite with an active content in it more powerful than the continent, a conscious holder of Force of whom his Force is master. If we say that it is compelled by itself as Force, by its own nature, we do not get rid of the contradiction, the evasion of our first postulate. We have got back to an Existence which is really nothing but Force, Force at rest or in movement, absolute Force perhaps, but not absolute Being.
  12:It is then necessary to examine into the relation between Force and Consciousness. But what do we mean by the latter term? Ordinarily we mean by it our first obvious idea of a mental waking consciousness such as is possessed by the human being during the major part of his bodily existence, when he is not asleep, stunned or otherwise deprived of his physical and superficial methods of sensation. In this sense it is plain enough that consciousness is the exception and not the rule in the order of the material universe. We ourselves do not always possess it. But this vulgar and shallow idea of the nature of consciousness, though it still colours our ordinary thought and associations, must now definitely disappear out of philosophical thinking. For we know that there is something in us which is conscious when we sleep, when we are stunned or drugged or in a swoon, in all apparently unconscious states of our physical being. Not only so, but we may now be sure that the old thinkers were right when they declared that even in our waking state what we call then our consciousness is only a small selection from our entire conscious being. It is a superficies, it is not even the whole of our mentality. Behind it, much vaster than it, there is a subliminal or subconscient mind which is the greater part of ourselves and contains heights and profundities which no man has yet measured or fathomed. This knowledge gives us a starting-point for the true science of Force and its workings; it delivers us definitely from circumscription by the material and from the illusion of the obvious.

1.10 - The Three Modes of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  O TRANSCEND the natural action of the lower Prakriti is indispensable to the soul, if it is to be free in its self and free in its works. Harmonious subjection to this actual universal Nature, a condition of good and perfect work for the natural instruments, is not an ideal for the soul, which should rather be subject to God and his Shakti, but master of its own nature. As agent or as channel of the Supreme Will it must determine by its vision and sanction or refusal the use that shall be made of the storage of energy, the conditions of environment, the rhythm of combined movement which are provided by Prakriti for the labour of the natural instruments, mind, life and body. But this inferior Nature can only be mastered if she is surmounted and used from above. And this can only be done by a transcendence of her forces, qualities and modes of action; otherwise we are subject to her conditions and helplessly dominated by her, not free in the spirit.
  The idea of the three essential modes of Nature is a creation of the ancient Indian thinkers and its truth is not at once obvious, because it was the result of long psychological experiment and profound internal experience. Therefore without a long inner experience, without intimate self-observation and intuitive perception of the Nature-forces it is difficult to grasp accurately or firmly utilise. Still certain broad indications may help the seeker on the Way of Works to understand, analyse and control by his assent or refusal the combinations of his own nature.
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   away the power to respond to divine impulse and the energy to change and the will to progress and make ourselves plastic to a greater Shakti. Rajas perverts knowledge, makes our reason the accomplice of falsehood and the abettor of every wrong movement, disturbs and twists our life-force and its impulses, oversets the balance and health of the body. Rajas captures all high-born ideas and high-seated movements and turns them to a false and egoistic use; even divine Truth and divine influences, when they descend into the earthly plane, cannot escape this misuse and seizure. Tamas unenlightened and rajas unconverted, no divine change or divine life is possible.
  An exclusive resort to sattwa would seem to be the way of escape: but there is this difficulty that no one of the qualities can prevail by itself against its two companions and rivals. If, envisaging the quality of desire and passion as the cause of disturbance, suffering, sin and sorrow, we strain and labour to quell and subdue it, rajas sinks but tamas rises. For, the principle of activity dulled, inertia takes its place. A quiet peace, happiness, knowledge, love, right sentiment can be founded by the principle of light, but, if rajas is absent or completely suppressed, the quiet in the soul tends to become a tranquillity of inaction, not the firm ground of a dynamic change. Ineffectively right-thinking, right-doing, good, mild and even, the nature may become in its dynamic parts sattwa-tamasic, neutral, pale-tinted, uncreative or emptied of power. Mental and moral obscurity may be absent, but so are the intense springs of action, and this is a hampering limitation and another kind of incompetence. For tamas is a double principle; it contradicts rajas by inertia, it contradicts sattwa by narrowness, obscurity and ignorance and, if either is depressed, it pours in to occupy its place.
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   to be nothing better than a device and the sustaining knot of their interaction and, perceiving it, he is delivered from the illusion of the lower egoistic Nature. He escapes from the sattwic egoism of the altruist and the saint and the thinker; he shakes off from its control on his life-impulses the rajasic egoism of the self-seeker and ceases to be the laborious caterer of self-interest and the pampered prisoner or toiling galley-slave of passion and desire; he slays with the light of knowledge the tamasic egoism of the ignorant or passive being, dull, unintelligent, attached to the common round of human life. Thus convinced and conscious of the essential vice of the ego-sense in all our personal action, he seeks no longer to find a means of self-correction and self-liberation in the rajasic or sattwic ego but looks above, beyond the instruments and the working of Nature, to the Master of works alone and his supreme Shakti, the supreme Prakriti. There alone all the being is pure and free and the rule of a divine Truth possible.
  In this progression the first step is a certain detached superiority to the three modes of Nature. The soul is inwardly separated and free from the lower Prakriti, not involved in its coils, indifferent and glad above it. Nature continues to act in the triple round of her ancient habits, - desire, grief and joy attack the heart, the instruments fall into inaction and obscurity and weariness, light and peace come back into the heart and mind and body; but the soul stands unchanged and untouched by these changes. Observing and unmoved by the grief and desire of the lower members, smiling at their joys and their strainings, regarding and unoverpowered by the failing and the darknesses of the thought and the wildness or the weaknesses of the heart and nerves, uncompelled and unattached to the mind's illuminations and its relief and sense of ease or of power in the return of light and gladness, it throws itself into none of these things, but waits unmoved for the intimations of a higher Will and the intuitions of a greater luminous knowledge. Thus doing always, it becomes eventually free even in its nature parts from the strife of the three modes and their insufficient values and imprisoning limits. For now this lower Prakriti feels progressively a compulsion from a higher Shakti. The old habits to which it
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  Self-Power and Bliss other than our own personal being or its building of Nature. This is a state of freedom which can come in the Yoga of works through renunciation of ego and desire and personal initiation and the surrender of the being to the cosmic Self or to the universal Shakti; it can come in the Yoga of knowledge by the cessation of thought, the silence of the mind, the opening of the whole being to the cosmic Consciousness, to the cosmic Self, the cosmic Dynamis or to the supreme Reality; it can come in the Yoga of devotion by the surrender of the heart and the whole nature into the hands of the All-Blissful as the adored Master of our existence. But the culminating change intervenes by a more positive and dynamic transcendence: there is a transference or transmutation into a superior spiritual status, trigun.atta, in which we participate in a greater spiritual dynamisation; for the three lower unequal modes pass into an equal triune mode of eternal calm, light and force, the repose, kinesis, illumination of the divine Nature.
  This supreme harmony cannot come except by the cessation of egoistic will and choice and act and the quiescence of our limited intelligence. The individual ego must cease to strive, the mind fall silent, the desire-will learn not to initiate. Our personality must join its source and all thought and initiation come from above. The secret Master of our activities will be slowly unveiled to us and from the security of the supreme Will and Knowledge give the sanction to the Divine Shakti who will do all works in us with a purified and exalted nature for her instrument; the individual centre of personality will be only the upholder of her works here, their recipient and channel, the reflector of her power and luminous participator in her light, joy and force. Acting it will not act and no reaction of the lower
  Prakriti will touch it. The transcendence of the three modes of

1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  [the Great Mother, the one original transcendent Shakti];
  It is I who am the wife

1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     But the passage is long and the labour arduous before we can look upon him with eyes that see true, and still longer and more arduous must be our endeavour if we would rebuild ourselves in his true image. The Master of the work does not reveal himself at once to the seeker. Always it is his Power that acts behind the veil, but it is manifest only when we renounce the egoism of the worker, and its direct movement increases in proportion as that renunciation becomes more and more concrete. Only when our surrender to his divine Shakti is absolute, shall we have the right to live in his absolute presence. And only then can we see our work throw itself naturally, completely and simply into the mould of the Divine Will.
     There must, therefore, be stages and gradations in our approach to this perfection, as there are ill the progress towards all other perfection on any plane of Nature. The vision of the full glory may come to us before, suddenly or slowly, once or often, but until the foundation is complete, it is a summary and concentrated, not a durable and all-enveloping experience, not a lasting presence. The amplitudes, the infinite contents of the Divine Revelation come afterwards and unroll gradually their power and their significance. Or, even, the steady vision can be there on the summits of our nature, but the perfect response of the lower members comes only by degrees. In all Yogas the first requisites are faith and patience. The ardours of the heart and the violences of the eager will that seek to take the kingdom of heaven by storm can have miserable reactions if they disdain to support their vehemence on these humbler and quieter auxiliaries. And in the long and difficult integral Yoga there must be an integral faith and an unshakable patience.
  --
     The first step on this long path is to consecrate all our works as a sacrifice to the Divine in us and in the world; this is an attitude of the mind and heart, not too difficult to initiate, but very difficult to make absolutely sincere and all-pervasive. The second step is to renounce attachment to the fruit of our works; for the only true, inevitable and utterly desirable fruit of sacrifice-the one thing needful -- is the Divine Presence and the Divine Consciousness and Power in us, and if that is gained, all else will be added. This is a transformation of the egoistic will in our vital being, our desire-soul and desire-nature, and it is far more difficult than the other. The third step is to get rid of the central egoism and even the ego-sense of the worker. That is the most difficult transformation of all and cannot be perfectly done if the first two steps have not been taken; but these first steps too cannot be completed unless the third comes in to crown the movement and, by the extinction of egoism, eradicates the very origin of desire. Only when the small ego-sense is rooted out from the nature can the seeker know his true person that stands above as a portion and power of the Divine and renounce all motive-force other than the will of the Divine Shakti.
     There are gradations in this last integralising movement; for it cannot be done at once or without long approaches that bring it progressively nearer and make it at last possible. The first attitude to be taken is to cease to regard ourselves as the worker and firmly to realise that we are only one instrument of the cosmic Force. At first it is not the one Force but many cosmic forces that seem to move us; but these may be turned into feeders of the ego and this vision liberates the mind but not the rest of the nature. Even when we become aware of all as the working of one cosmic Force and of the Divine behind it, that too need not liberate. If the egoism of the worker disappears, the egoism of the instrument may replace it or else prolong it in a disguise. The life of the world has been full of instances of egoism of this kind and it can be more engrossing and enormous than any other; there is the same danger in Yoga. A man becomes a leader of men or eminent in a large or lesser circle and feels himself full of a power that he knows to be beyond his own ego-Force; he may be aware of a Fate acting through him or a Will mysterious and unfathomable or a Light within of great brilliance. There are extraordinary results of his thoughts, his actions or his creative genius. He effects some tremendous destruction that clears the path for humanity or some great construction that becomes its momentary resting-place. He is a scourge or he is a bringer of light and healing, a creator of beauty or a messenger of knowledge. Or, if his work and its effects are on a lesser scale and have a limited field, still they are attended by the strong sense that he is an instrument and chosen for his mission or his labour. Men who have this destiny and these powers come easily to believe and declare themselves to be mere instruments in the hand of God or of Fate: but even in tile declaration we can see that there can intrude or take refuge an intenser and more exaggerated egoism than ordinary men have the courage to assert or the strength to house within them. And often if men of this kind speak of God, it is to erect all image of him which is really nothing but a huge shadow of themselves or their own nature, a sustaining Deific Essence of their own type of will and thought and quality and force. This magnified image of their ego is the Master whom they serve. This happens only too often in Yoga to strong but crude vital natures or minds too easily exalted when they allow ambition, pride or the desire of greatness to enter into their spiritual seeking and vitiate its purity of motive; a magnified ego stands between them and their true being and grasps for its own personal purpose the strength from a greater unseen Power, divine or undivine, acting through them of which they become vaguely or intensely aware. An intellectual perception or vital sense of a Force greater than ours and of ourselves as moved by it is not sufficient to liberate from the ego.
  --
     The elimination of this form of ego leads straight towards the true instrumental action which Is the essence of a perfect Karmayoga. For while we cherish the instrumental ego, we may pretend to ourselves that we are conscious instruments of the Divine, but in reality we are trying to make of the Divine Shakti an instrument of our own desires or our egoistic purpose. And even if the ego is subjected but not eliminated, we may indeed be engines of the divine Work, but we shall be imperfect tools and deflect or impair the working by our mental errors, our vital distortions or the obstinate incapacities of our physical nature. If this ego disappears, then we can truly become, not only pure instruments consciously consenting to every turn of the divine Hand that moves us, but aware of our true nature, conscious portions of the one Eternal and Infinite put out in herself for her works by the supreme Shakti.
     There is another greater step to be taken after the surrender of our instrumental ego to the Divine Shakti. It is not enough to know her as the one Cosmic Force that moves us and all creatures on the planes of mind, life and Matter; for this is the lower Nature and, although the Divine Knowledge, Light, Power are there concealed and at work in the Ignorance and can break partly its veil and manifest something of their true character or descend from above and uplift these inferior workings, yet, even if we realise the One ill a spiritualised mind, a spiritualised life-movement, a spiritualised body-consciousness, an imperfection remains in the dynamic parts. There is a stumbling response to the Supreme Power, a veil over the face of the Divine, a constant mixture of the Ignorance. It is only when we open to the Divine Shakti in the truth of her force which transcends this lower prakriti that we can be perfect instruments of her power and knowledge.
     Not only liberation but perfection must be the aim of the Karmayoga. The Divine works through our nature and according to our nature; if our nature is imperfect, the work also will be imperfect, mixed, inadequate. Even it may be marred by gross errors, falsehoods, moral weaknesses, diverting influences. The work of the Divine will be done in us even then, but according to our weakness, not according to the strength and purity of its source. If ours were not an integral Yoga, if we sought only the liberation of the self within us or the motionless existence of Purusha separated from prakriti, this dynamic imperfection might not matter. Calm, untroubled, not depressed, not elated, refusing to accept the perfection or imperfection, fault or merit, sin or virtue as ours, perceiving that it is the modes of Nature working in the field of her modes that make this mixture, we could withdraw into the silence of the spirit and, pure, untouched, witness only the workings of prakriti. But in an integral realisation this can only be a step on the way, not our last resting-place. For we aim at the divine realisation not only in the immobility of the Spirit, but also in the movement of Nature. And this cannot be altogether until we can feel the presence and power of the Divine in every step, motion, figure of our activities, in every turn of our will, in every thought, feeling and impulse. No doubt, we can feel that in a sense even in the nature of the Ignorance, but it is the divine Power and Presence in a disguise, a diminution, an inferior figure. Ours is a greater demand, that our nature shall be a power of the Divine in the Truth of the Divine, in the Light, in the force of the eternal self-conscient Will, in the wideness of the sempiternal Knowledge.

1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The strong perception of the great cosmic action and the eternal activity and power of the cosmic energy which was so much emphasised afterwards by the teaching of the Tantric Shaktas who even made Prakriti or Shakti superior to Purusha, is a very remarkable feature of the Gita. Although here an undertone, it is still strong enough, coupled with what we might call the theistic and devotional elements of its thought, to bring in that activism which so strongly modifies in its scheme of Yoga the quietistic tendencies of the old metaphysical Vedanta. Man embodied in the natural world cannot cease from action, not for a moment, not for a second; his very existence here is an action; the whole universe is an act of God, mere living even is His movement.
  Our physical life, its maintenance, its continuance is a journey, a pilgrimage of the body, sarra-yatra, and that cannot be effected without action. But even if a man could leave his body unmaintained, otiose, if he could stand still always like a tree or sit inert like a stone, tis.t.hati, that vegetable or material immobility would not save him from the hands of Nature; he would not be liberated from her workings. For it is not our physical movements and activities alone which are meant by works, by karma; our mental existence also is a great complex action, it is even the greater and more important part of the works of the unresting energy, - subjective cause and determinant of the physical. We have gained nothing if we repress the effect but

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Prakriti to be only its Shakti or the Force of its conscious being
  which operates upon itself as the material of forms.1 The latter

1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  no personal initiative. It is the Divine Shakti that works in him
  through his nature; his action develops through the spontaneity

1.13 - Conclusion - He is here, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  The second effect whose purport will not be evident to those who are unfamiliar with Sri Aurobindo's Yoga was, to quote the Mother, "As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he had called the Mind of Light got realised here. The Supermind had descended long ago very long ago in the mind and even in the vital: it was working in the physical also, but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question now was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light."[1] It is because the Mother as his supreme collaborator was there to receive the Light and continue his work that Sri Aurobindo could make that holocaust of himself. The holocaust has also had one effect which cannot but be regarded as being eminently in accord with Sri Aurobindo's own vision. It is clear that the Ashram "instead of dwindling after the Master's self-withdrawal has leaped gloriously forward under the Mother's leadership". Earlier Sri Aurobindo's towering personality, though in seclusion, dominated the scene. Now the picture, as I said, is entirely different. We can see that all the world is coming to the Mother and accepting her as the Divine Mother, the Shakti who rules, guides and saves. This is what Sri Aurobindo had wanted and laid down since the Mother took charge of the Ashram, as the prime desideratum of his Supramental Yoga. It has been rendered possible and quickly effective by his unprecedented sacrifice. It is also in keeping with his nature. He had admitted that temperamentally he was always prone to act from behind the veil, the way of the Supreme to move men and forces without their knowledge. His political life, except for a short period, and life in Pondicherry, bear testimony to its truth. So the final retirement was consistent with that disposition and is its highest culmination. This culmination has carried the Mother even more to the forefront. There she stands now and plays the role of Shakti and, as she has said, is doing Sri Aurobindo's work and giving his final dream, of which he has spoken in his Independence Day message, a concrete shape on this earth. Sri Aurobindo constantly helps her from behind. The Mother has said in the Bulletin, as I have stated before, what a vast amount of work Sri Aurobindo has done in the occult field in consequence of which the work of transformation of the physical has become easier. Similarly, can we have any idea of his world-action, particularly in the political field, for example his occult contribution to the liberation of Bangladesh? Let us remember Sri Aurobindo's prophetic voice, "Division must go." His Force has not ceased to act in that direction. On the contrary it is moving powerfully towards the realisation of this prophecy. These are his works on a cosmic scale that we are aware of. In our individual cases too his Presence and his dynamic action have been testified to by devotees and disciples all over India and in the West We hear his voice, get his touch, protection, active intervention. The Mother told me more than once that she always saw Sri Aurobindo working on me. I had a personal proof of his surprisingly direct intervention, saving me from a critical situation that could have otherwise put my sadhana in peril. I have mentioned another occult phenomenon in the preface of my Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Vol. I to illustrate his subtle help. A third small instance will suffice: when the Ashram was passing through a financial difficulty, the Mother reported the matter to Sri Aurobindo. He replied, "Ask Prodyot." And it is well known that Prodyot brings a lot of money for the Ashram.
  Still, it cannot be denied that we do miss his physical Presence, especially those of us whom he had drawn near by his personal intimacy and those who had the exceptional privilege of living with him and serving him. "Nirod is no doctor to me; he has come to serve me," is one of his few utterances I cannot forget, though I know too well how poorly I served him. Sometimes when we think of the old days that will never come back, when I go over his unparalleled correspondence with me, a void, a sore loss fills my heart. A few days after Sri Aurobindo's departure, the Mother asked a group of sadhaks what was the greatest loss caused by his absence. Different answers were given, but the Mother replied, "No, not these; the biggest loss is that I can no longer approach him for his advice. For instance, if he were there, I could have gone and asked him to stop the rain." (It was raining heavily at that moment.) To this, someone said, "But, Mother, you can look into yourself." She kept quiet. Here I may speculate on this incident. To deal with any serious problem needs a degree of concentration. The Mother has always been a very busy person; She often fell back on Sri Aurobindo to do the concentration needed. The more important point, however, seems to be that certain problems are better dealt with by an embodied spiritual force than a disembodied one, problems concerned perhaps with the most outward material aspect of existence. We see how our difficulties and problems get quickly solved by the Mother's direct intervention. Apropos of the above incident, I may further ask: Did not the Mother hint at something more poignant? The difference between a physical presence and a subtle one? Whenever there was an intricate situation to face, some crucial stage to be crossed, she quietly came and laid the burden at his feet with an utter trust, that he would see it through. The ineffable physical Presence of an Avatar of Sri Aurobindo's stature, one whose work ultimately was transformation and divinisation of the very body, was a heavenly boon to our corporeal earthly life. The incarnation itself would have otherwise lost much of its significance.

1.13 - The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   dynamic nature of the man of will and works which can easily be led away by the pursuit of power. Power comes inevitably by the supramental change, it is a necessary condition for a perfect action: but it is the Divine Shakti that comes and takes up the nature and the life, the power of the One acting through the spiritual individual; it is not an aggrandisement of the personal force, not the last crowning fulfilment of the separative mental and vital ego. Self-fulfilment is a result of the Yoga, but its aim is not the greatness of the individual. The sole aim is a spiritual perfection, a finding of the true self and a union with the Divine by putting on the divine consciousness and nature.1
  All the rest is constituent detail and attendant circumstance.

1.14 - The Principle of Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   inactive, impersonal self; for that by itself would lead the liberated man to actionless immobility. It is not characteristically that of the Kshara, the multitudinous, the personal, the Purusha self-subjected to Prakriti; for that by itself would lead him back into subjection to his personality and to the lower nature and its qualities. It is the nature of the Purushottama who holds both these together and by his supreme divinity reconciles them in a divine reconciliation which is the highest secret of his being, rahasyam hyetad uttamam. He is not the doer of works in the personal sense of our action involved in Prakriti; for God works through his power, conscious nature, effective force, - Shakti,
  Maya, Prakriti, - but yet above it, not involved in it, not subject to it, not unable to lift himself beyond the laws, workings, habits of action it creates, not affected or bound by them, not unable to distinguish himself, as we are unable, from the workings of life, mind and body. He is the doer of works who acts not, kartaram akartaram. "Know me," says Krishna, "for the doer of this (the fourfold law of human workings) who am yet the imperishable non-doer. Works fix not themselves on me (na limpanti), nor have I desire for the fruits of action." But neither is he the inactive, impassive, unpuissant Witness and nothing else; for it is he who works in the steps and measures of his power; every movement of it, every particle of the world of beings it forms is instinct with his presence, full of his consciousness, impelled by his will, shaped by his knowledge.

1.15 - The Supramental Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  The Supramental Power The spiritualists dismiss power as a weapon unworthy of the seeker of truth, but this is not Sri Aurobindo's view. On the contrary, the concept of Power, Shakti, is one of the keys to his yoga, because without power nothing can be transformed. I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream! exclaims Savitri.273
  A fire to call eternity into Time,

1.15 - The Supreme Truth-Consciousness, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  17:Secondly, this conscious Soul concentrated in knowledge, this Purusha observing and governing the Force that has gone forth from him, his Shakti or Prakriti, repeats himself in every form of himself. He accompanies, as it were, his Force of consciousness into its works and reproduces there the act of selfdivision from which this apprehending consciousness is born. In each form this Soul dwells with his Nature and observes himself in other forms from that artificial and practical centre of consciousness. In all it is the same Soul, the same divine Being; the multiplication of centres is only a practical act of consciousness intended to institute a play of difference, of mutuality, mutual knowledge, mutual shock of force, mutual enjoyment, a difference based upon essential unity, a unity realised on a practical basis of difference.
  18:We can speak of this new status of the all-pervading Supermind as a further departure from the unitarian truth of things and from the indivisible consciousness which constitutes inalienably the unity essential to the existence of the cosmos. We can see that pursued a little farther it may become truly Avidya, the great Ignorance which starts from multiplicity as the fundamental reality and in order to travel back to real unity has to commence with the false unity of the ego. We can see also that once the individual centre is accepted as the determining standpoint, as the knower, mental sensation, mental intelligence, mental action of will and all their consequences cannot fail to come into being. But also we have to see that so long as the soul acts in the Supermind, Ignorance has not yet begun; the field of knowledge and action is still the truth-consciousness, the basis is still the unity.

1.18 - The Divine Worker, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Outwardly the liberated man seems to undertake works of all kinds like other men, on a larger scale perhaps with a more powerful will and driving-force, for the might of the divine will works in his active nature; but from all his inceptions and undertakings the inferior concept and nether will of desire is entirely banished, sarve samarambhah. kamasankalpavarjitah.. He has abandoned all attachment to the fruits of his works, and where one does not work for the fruit, but solely as an impersonal instrument of the Master of works, desire can find no place, - not even the desire to serve successfully, for the fruit is the Lord's and determined by him and not by the personal will and effort, or to serve with credit and to the Master's satisfaction, for the real doer is the Lord himself and all glory belongs to a form of his Shakti missioned in the nature and not to the limited human personality. The human mind and soul of the liberated man does nothing, na kincit karoti; even though through his nature he engages in action, it is the Nature, the executive Shakti, it is the conscious Goddess governed by the divine Inhabitant who does the work.
  It does not follow that the work is not to be done perfectly,

1.2.02 - Qualities Needed for Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  No attachments, desires or habits of the mind, heart, vital being or body should be clung to which come in the way of this one aspiration and one object of the life. One must be ready to renounce all these completely as soon as the demand comes from above and from the divine Shakti.
  (2) A fundamental calm, peace and purity in the mind, vital being and all the nature.

1.2.04 - Sincerity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  One cannot become altogether this at once, but if one aspires at all times to it and calls in always the aid of the Divine Shakti with a true heart and straightforward will, one grows more and more into this consciousness.
  Sincerity in Sadhana

1.2.07 - Surrender, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Surrender everything, reject all other desires or interests, call on the divine Shakti to open the vital nature and bring down calm, peace, light, Ananda into all the centres. Aspire, await with faith and patience the result. All depends on a complete sincerity and an integral consecration and aspiration.
  The world will trouble you so long as any part of you belongs to the world. It is only if you belong entirely to the Divine that you can become free.

1.2.10 - Opening, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The object of the self-opening is to allow the force of the Divine to flow in bringing light, peace, Ananda etc. and to do the work of transformation. When the being so receives the Divine Shakti and it works in him, produces its results (whether he is entirely conscious of the process or not), then he is said to be open.
  Opening to the Divine

1.2.11 - Patience and Perseverance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  One who has not the courage to face patiently and firmly life and its difficulties will never be able to go through the still greater inner difficulties of the sadhana. The very first lesson in this Yoga is to face life and its trials with a quiet mind, a firm courage and an entire reliance on the Divine Shakti.
  It is true that a great patience and steadfastness is needed. Be then firm and patient and fixed on the aims of the sadhana, but not over-eager to have them at once. A work has to be done in you and is being done; help it to be done by keeping an attitude of firm faith and confidence. Doubts rise in all, they are natural to the human physical mind - reject them. Impatience and overeagerness for the result at once are natural to the human vital; it is by firm confidence in the Mother that they will disappear. The love, the belief in her as the Divine to whom your life is given, - oppose with that every contrary feeling and then those contrary feelings will after a time no longer be able to come to you.

1.3.01 - Peace The Basis of the Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The wider your consciousness becomes, the more you will be able to receive from above. The Shakti will be able to descend and bring strength and light as well as peace into the system.
  What you feel as narrow and limited in you is the physical mind; it can only widen if this wider consciousness and the light come down and possess the nature.
  --
  Remain quiet, open yourself and call the divine Shakti to confirm the calm and peace, to widen the consciousness and to bring into it as much light and power as it can at present receive and assimilate.
  Take care not to be over-eager, as this may disturb again such quiet and balance as has been already established in the vital nature.

1.3.04 - Peace, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Passivity of the mind is good, but take care to be passive only to the Truth and to the touch of the Divine Shakti. If you are passive to the suggestions and influences of the lower nature, you will not be able to progress or else you will expose yourself to adverse forces which may take you far away from the true path of Yoga.
  Aspire to the Mother for this settled quietness and calm of the mind and this constant sense of the inner being in you standing back from the external nature and turned to the Light and Truth.

1.3.2.01 - I. The Entire Purpose of Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  He has manifested in the world through the play of allgoverning Soul with its own formative Will or Shakti a rhythm of existence of which Matter is the lowest term and pure being the highest. Mind & Life stand upon Matter (Manas &
  Prana on Annam) and make the lower half of world-existence

1.4.02 - The Divine Force, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Energy - a material Energy it used to be called, but it is now doubted whether Matter, scientifically speaking, exists except as a phenomenon of Energy. All the world, according to Vedanta, is a play of a power of a spiritual entity, the power of an original consciousness, whether it be Maya or Shakti, and the result an illusion or real. In the world so far as man is concerned we are aware only of mind energy, life energy, energy in matter; but it is supposed that there is a spiritual energy or force also behind them from which they originate. All things, in either case, are the results of a Shakti, energy or force. There is no action without a Force or Energy doing the action and bringing about its consequence. Farther, anything that has no Force in it is either something dead or something unreal or something inert and without consequence. If there is no such thing as spiritual consciousness, there can be no reality of Yoga, and if there is no
  Yoga force, spiritual force, Yoga Shakti, then also there can be no effectivity in Yoga. A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something inert and without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness - a Yoga force or spiritual force - is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If Yoga is a reality, if spirituality is anything better than a delusion, there must be such a thing as
  Yoga force or spiritual force.

17.11 - A Prayer, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This High Knowledge (Vidya) has been very secretly taught by the different branches of Yajurveda in their hymns and their Upanishadic versions. It has been mysteriously revealed by the various branches of Rigveda in their hymns or their Upanishadic versions. It is mystically awakened through a certain subtle duct in the body, evoked by manifold metrical hymns of the Sarna Veda. This Vidya is commonly found in all the Vedas. It is the essence of all Vedic mantras, Brahmanas and Upanishads. It is the Queen of the Shaktichakra, a wave of supremely great light, a form or embodiment of supreme consciousness. This is a mystic truth inherited from a tradition of Gurus.
   The tradition enjoins that to realise this Maha-Vidya a sadhaka should take an initiation and do the ceremonial worship as directed. And when initiated by a true adept he must first meditate on the Holy Feet, Sri Mahapaduka, uttering the sacred words that mean "I adore the Sri Mahapaduka in the eight-petalled white lotus that looks upward, that has twelve extremities and that is established within the womb of the thousand-petalled lotus, spread out like an umbrella and facing downward. The great Holy Feet is possessed of all sciences, embodies the Powers of all deities. It represents the three strides of the holy preceptor in the three centres, the crown (Brahma-randhra), the heart and the lower abdomen, even as it is richly decorated with resplendent ornaments."
  --
   Then he must contemplate, as force in his mantric vision, the Light wave ranging from the lowest mystical circle to the opening in the crown he must know and realise it as rising up from the bottom of the spine to the crown of the head. He should meditate on it and realise that it is the tan-coloured point of lightning and the golden rising sun; it is a flaming Force which is no other than the Original Consciousness, it acts like a kindled fire that burns the knots of sin. Then he should contemplate on himself and see that his tangles of evil and sin that impede the fruition of Initiation and the flow of Shakti, have all been burnt out by the gathered rays reflected from the spontaneous Grace of the original consciousness-force. All the bonds of evil and sin having thus been destroyed by its rays, he must remember in his inner heart the original Divine Knowledge with the following prayer:
   "May the Goddess Kundalini, luminous as the new-risen sun, rise up from her abode, in her graceful movement to open the centres (lotuses) in succession on her way upwards and kindle the spiritual light by the nectarous rays of the Abode of Shiva."

1951-04-21 - Sri Aurobindos letter on conditions for doing yoga - Aspiration, tapasya, surrender - The lower vital - old habits - obsession - Sri Aurobindo on choice and the double life - The old fiasco - inner realisation and outer change, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   [This yoga] cannot be done if you insist on identifying these lowest things of the Ignorance with the divine Truth or even the lesser truth permissible on the way. It cannot be done if you cling to your past self and its old mental, vital and physical formations and habits; one has continually to leave behind his past selves and to see, act and live from an always higher and higher conscious level. It cannot be done if you insist on freedom for your human mind and vital ego. All the parts of the human being are entitled to express and satisfy themselves in their own way at their own risk and peril, if he so chooses, as long as he leads the ordinary life. But to enter into a path of yoga whose whole object is to substitute for these human things the law and power of a greater Truth and the whole heart of whose method is surrender to the Divine Shakti, and yet to go on claiming this so-called freedom, which is no more than a subjection to certain ignorant cosmic Forces, is to indulge in a blind contradiction and to claim the right to lead a double life.
   Least of all can this yoga be done if those who profess to be its sadhaks continue always to make themselves centres, instruments or spokesmen of the forces of the Ignorance which oppose, deny and ridicule its very principle and object.

1951-04-26 - Irrevocable transformation - The divine Shakti - glad submission - Rejection, integral - Consecration - total self-forgetfulness - work, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1951-04-26 - Irrevocable transformation - The divine Shakti - glad submission - Rejection, integral - Consecration - total self-forgetfulness - work
  author class:The Mother
  --
   What is the difference between the divine Shakti and the divine Power?
   The divine Power is only a part of the divine Shakti; the divine Power is an attribute of the divine Shakti. Sri Aurobindo uses the word divine Shakti, here, in the sense of chit-tapas, the creative power, the creative consciousness; consequently, the divine Power is only a part of the Shakti.
   An inert passivity is constantly confused with the real surrender, but out of an inert passivity nothing true and powerful can come. It is the inert passivity of physical Nature that leaves it at the mercy of every obscure or undivine influence. A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force.

1951-05-05 - Needs and desires - Discernment - sincerity and true perception - Mantra and its effects - Object in action- to serve - relying only on the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Your only object in action shall be to serve, to receive, to fulfil, to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works.
   Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p. 15

1951-05-07 - A Hierarchy - Transcendent, universal, individual Divine - The Supreme Shakti and Creation - Inadequacy of words, language, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1951-05-07 - A Hierarchy - Transcendent, universal, individual Divine - The Supreme Shakti and Creation - Inadequacy of words, language
  author class:The Mother
  --
   It is a grouping organised in order of merit. For instance, you have a chief at the centre and you may have four persons around him, and around these four, 8, then 12, 24, 36, 48, 124, and so on, each with his special mission, his special work, his particular authority, and all referring in an ascending order to the centre. That is a hierarchy. In governments they try to form hierarchies, but these are untrue, they are arbitrary and not worth anything. But in all ancient initiations there were hierarchies which were expressions of individual meritindividual powers and meritshaving always at their centre the representative of the Supreme and the Shakti; sometimes having only the Supreme, depending on the religions. But the groups were always organised in that way, that is, with a growing number of individuals, each one having to refer to the officer immediately above him. For instance, the 124 had to refer to the 48, the 48 had to refer to the 24, the 24 refer to the 12, the 12 to the 8, and so on. That is a hierarchy. The word is used in a very imprecise and vague way. They speak of a hierarchy and think it is the men who govern and have subordinates. But the true hierarchy is an occult hierarchy, and this occult hierarchy had as its purpose the manifesting, the expressing of a more profound hierarchy which is a hierarchy of the invisible worlds.
   What is the transcendent Mother?
  --
   The divine Mother is the divine Shakti, that is, the creative Force. She is identified with the cosmos. How can she have a transcendent aspect?
   But perhaps the divine Mother was there before the creation! She must certainly have existed before the creation, for she cannot be her own product. If it is she who has created, she must have existed before the creation, otherwise she could never have created.
  --
   In the Supreme. It is a little difficult to speak of within and without when one is outside all forms! If you like, say that she is a movement of the Supreme (if that makes you understand better) or an action of the Supreme or a state of the Supreme, a mode You may say what you like, what most gives you an understanding of the thing. You see, the human mind likes to cut things into little bits. I am going to tell you a little story meant for children. The Supreme, having decided to create a universe, took a certain inner attitude which corresponded with the inner manifestation (unexpressed) of the divine Mother, the supreme Shakti. At the same time, he did this with the intention of its being the mode of creation of the universe he wanted to create, the creative power of the universe. Hence, first of all, he had to conceive the possibility of the divine Mother in order that this divine Mother could conceive the possibility of the universe. You are following? I tell you once again that it is not quite like that, but after all, it is meant for childish minds. So, we may very well say that there is a transcendent Divine Mother, that is, independent of her creation. She may have been conceived, formed (whatever you like) for the creation, with the purpose of creation, but she had to exist before the creation to be able to create, else how could she have created? That is the transcendent aspect, and note that this transcendent aspect is permanent. We speak as though things had unfolded in time at a date which could be fixed: the first of January 0000, for the beginning of the world, but it is not quite like that! There is constantly a transcendent, constantly a universal, constantly an individual, and the transcendent, universal and individual are co-existent. That is, if you enter into a certain state of consciousness, you can at any moment be in contact with the transcendent Shakti, and you can also, with another movement, be in contact with the universal Shakti, and be in contact with the individual Shakti, and all this simultaneously that does not unfold itself in time, it is we who move in time as we speak, otherwise we cannot express ourselves. We may experience it but we can express it only by saying one word after another. (Unfortunately, one cannot say all the words at the same time; if one could say them all at the same time, that would be a little more like the truth.)
   Finally, all that is said, all that has been said, all that will be said, is always only an extremely clumsy and limited way of expressing something which may be lived but which cannot be described. And there is a moment, when one lives the thing, in which one sees that the same thing can be expressed almost with the same exactness or the same truth in religious language, mystical language, philosophic language and materialistic language and that from the point of view of the lived truth, it makes very little difference. It is only when one is in the mental consciousness that one thing seems true to you and another does not seem true; but all these are only ways of expression. The experience carries in itself its absolute, but words cannot describe itone may choose one language or another to express oneself, and with just a very little precaution, one can always say something approaching the Truth in all instances.

1954-07-14 - The Divine and the Shakti - Personal effort - Speaking and thinking - Doubt - Self-giving, consecration and surrender - Mothers use of flowers - Ornaments and protection, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1954-07-14 - The Divine and the Shakti - Personal effort - Speaking and thinking - Doubt - Self-giving, consecration and surrender - Mothers use of flowers - Ornaments and protection
  class:chapter
  --
  Sweet Mother, does Sri Aurobindo make a difference between the Divine and the Shakti? Here he speaks of surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
  He has said that the Divine is the Supreme. Thats the origin. He has said, hasnt he? at the very beginning of this chapter, I think, he has said, The Divine
  (The child reads the text) through his Shakti is behind all action1
  He takes the Shakti as the executive power, the creative Consciousness.
  What is the meaning of surrender and of every plane of the consciousness?
  --
    The complete sentence is: "In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature."
    "In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana."

1954-07-21 - Mistakes - Success - Asuras - Mental arrogance - Difficulty turned into opportunity - Mothers use of flowers - Conversion of men governed by adverse forces, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  In what way does the divine Shakti act against the Asuras?
  I dont hear a thing! Acts against the Asuras? Why do you want to know that?

1954-08-18 - Mahalakshmi - Maheshwari - Mahasaraswati - Determinism and freedom - Suffering and knowledge - Aspects of the Mother, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Sweet Mother, I didnt understand this: This is the power of Mahalakshmi and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of embodied beings.
  That means men. It is another way of saying human beings upon the earth, beings upon earth. There are also it means animals also. She is very, very loving towards animals and animals love her very much; even the most ferocious ones become very gentle with her, and that is why instead of using the words human beings, he has used embodied beings, beings with a body upon earth.

1956-04-18 - Ishwara and Shakti, seeing both aspects - The Impersonal and the divine Person - Soul, the presence of the divine Person - Going to other worlds, exteriorisation, dreams - Telling stories to oneself, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1956-04-18 - Ishwara and Shakti, seeing both aspects - The Impersonal and the divine Person - Soul, the presence of the divine Person - Going to other worlds, exteriorisation, dreams - Telling stories to oneself
  author class:The Mother
  --
    At one pole of it the seeker may be conscious only of the Master of Existence putting forth on him His energies of knowledge, power and bliss to liberate and divinise; the Shakti may appear to him only an impersonal Force expressive of these things or an attribute of the Ishwara. At the other pole he may encounter the World-Mother, creatrix of the universe, putting forth the gods and the worlds and all things and existences out of her spirit-substance. Or even if he sees both aspects, it may be with an unequal separating vision, subordinating one to the other, regarding the Shakti only as a means for approaching the Ishwara. There results a one-sided tendency or a lack of balance, a power of effectuation not perfectly supported or a light of revelation not perfectly dynamic. It is when a complete union of the two sides of the Duality is effected and rules his consciousness that he begins to open to a fuller power that will draw him altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance.
    Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 117
  --
  Sri Aurobindo says that when one succeeds in not separating them in ones consciousness, one can fully understand who the Lord of the Sacrifice is. Otherwise one leans to one side or the other and naturally what one does is in complete. He says very clearly, doesnt he? that if one leans to the side of the Master without laying stress on the Shakti or the Mother, one goes into the Impersonal and out of the creation, one returns into Nirvana. He says that this tendency towards the Impersonal may exist even in the yoga of works, in Karmayoga, and that impersonal force, impersonal action is always considered as the liberating aspect which frees you from the narrowness of the person. And that is why there is nothing surprising in the overwhelming strength of this experience. Till today this is what has always been considered as yoga: to abandon the personal and enter into the consciousness of the impersonal. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it as an overwhelming experience, for it gives you the impression of liberation from all the egos limitations. And later, he describes the union: insistence on the personal side and union with the divine Person; then the world is no longer an illusion nor something transient which will disappear after a time, but the constant and dynamic expression of the eternal divine Person.
  That is the other side.

1956-05-16 - Needs of the body, not true in themselves - Spiritual and supramental law - Aestheticised Paganism - Morality, checks true spiritual effort - Effect of supramental descent - Half-lights and false lights, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo has said that one must find a light within, then surrender to the divine Shakti. Now that the Supermind has come down, will this be easier?
  Well, that is the light within, now.

1956-05-30 - Forms as symbols of the Force behind - Art as expression of contact with the Divine - Supramental psychological perfection - Division of works - The Ashram, idle stupidities, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    Mother, about the division of works, Sri Aurobindo writes here: A Yoga turned towards an all-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the dreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid toil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself in the human creature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the world too must be part of the sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none else, to the Divine Shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with the right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bond slave of material Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance.
    The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 132

1956-11-07 - Thoughts created by forces of universal - Mind Our own thought hardly exists - Idea, origin higher than mind - The Synthesis of Yoga, effect of reading, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working.
    Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, pp. 172-73

1956-11-14 - Conquering the desire to appear good - Self-control and control of the life around - Power of mastery - Be a great yogi to be a good teacher - Organisation of the Ashram school - Elementary discipline of regularity, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    "It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it."
    (Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 172)

1.lla - Word, Thought, Kula and Akula cease to be there!, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
   English version by B. N. Paramoo Original Language Kashmiri Word, Thought, Kula and Akula cease to be there! Neither silence nor yogic postures gain you admission there; Neither Shiva, nor Shakti abide there! Whatever remains is That; this is the Lesson! [bk1sm.gif] -- from The Ascent of Self: A Reinterpretation of the Mystical Poetry of Lalla-Ded, by B. N. Paramoo <
1.srm - The Necklet of Nine Gems, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
   English version by Ivan M. Granger Original Language Tamil 1. In the court, Siva, though motionless, dances before Shakti in stillness. In Arunachala, with solemnity, He stands. She withdraws there into His still Self. 2. 'A,' 'Ru,' and 'Na' Sat, Chit, and Ananda -- the Supreme Self, the individual self -- their union is Absolute; Thus, the great saying -- 'You are That.' 'Achala' bespeaks perfection. Worship Arunachala shining, golden; simply remembering unlocks the door. 3. Touching the lotus feet of the Lord of Arunachala, freed from attachment to wealth, family, place, ever purer, seeking grace -- darkness recedes. In the rising sun, golden, steady, full of grace, there abide, joyously sunk in the Sea of Bliss. 4. Annamalai! Don't let me pine forgetful. Don't crush me to dust, leaving me confused between body and Self. Turn Your restoring glance upon me, eye of my eyes! You Who are all Consciousness, You Who are neither male nor female, don't fail me! Seat Yourself in my heart. 5. You Who are all Consciousness, ruling over sublime Shonagiri, forgive the stumblings of this little one. Rain Cloud, shower me with Your gracious glance. Save me from being lost once more in the dreary waste. I cannot ford the grim stream of manifestation. Mother, what can match Your care? 6. 'Killer of Kama, Destroyer of Desire,' tied to You we know Your name. A question, though, if the title fits: How can mighty Kama continue, bold and conquering? How can he creep unseen upon one sheltered beneath Your feet? Tell me, You Who killed him? 7. Arunachala! As soon as You claimed me, I was Yours, body and soul. What is left to want? You are success and You are failure both, Oh my life! They are meaningless without You. Beloved, do as You will with me, but promise me ever greater desire for Your Feet! 8. To rescue me -- born of virtuous Sundara and Sundari in holy Tiruchuli, seat of Bhuminatheshware -- from the pain of the world, He raised me to his seat, His heart rejoices. Siva shines forth. And the Self flowers. Such is Arunachala, known across the universe! 9. Bearing me in the world as my father and mother, You hid in my mind. Before I drowned in the deep illusion, You drew me, Arunachala, You Who are All Consciousness, such is the wonder of Your Grace! <
20.01 - Charyapada - Old Bengali Mystic Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Outcastebecause she is cast out of the normal human consciousness, which does not recognise the worth of such a status. Womanbecause it is Power, Shakti and Delight (ananda). Yoginisall the attendant powers that aid and vivify the game.
   This poem or song is an outright cryptogram. It speaks of mysterious things in an even more mysterious way. First of all, we must note that the poet is a woman. She calls herself kukkuri. But why of all names a "bitch"? Well, she is in good company. One remembers the Vedic Sarama or Sarameya. The West too has its Hound of Heaven. Only the term here has been put in its vernacular form. Anyhow it is a yogini who embodies or represents the divine Being, nairatma devi, as the Buddhist commentator says.
   The opening lines have a clear Vedic ring, they take us back to the famous Devi Sukta where the poetess there too it is a Rishika, Vak or Vagambhrinifeels herself one with the Supreme Shakti and declares her mightinesses.
   Here also the woman-singer, filled with the divine afflatus, intones her inexpressible experiences. Her individual consciousness is identified with the universal Mother consciousness. And as such while she casts her glance into herself, into the depth of her womb, she finds the entire universe there and it comes out in a burst. But she notes that the first creation is only a world of the mere senses, the world of desires and it was not what she wanted. Therefore she severed the life-line that held itas though the umbilical cordby a stroke of the concentrated luminous energy that her consciousness was. So the wrong manifestation, the false world (of Maya and Mara) dissolved and disappeared. And in its stead the true, the world of truth that is the voidwas firmly established, never to move or change. The process is a difficult path and only a heroic soul can go through it.

2.01 - Mandala One, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  (12) Swaha (O Shakti), perform the yajna to Indra in the house of the master of the yajna. Thither I call the gods.
  ***

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Mohanpuri did not give him daivi upsan introduction to spiritual life. It was for a purely political purpose that Sri Aurobindo took a Shakti Mantra from him. He performed a certain Yajna for the same purpose. But it was not Yoga.
   6. Bhawni Mandir: There is a similarity to the Ananda Math in that both envisage spiritual life and politics together. The temple of Bhawani was to be there for initiating men for complete consecration to the service of Mother India. It was for preparing political Sannyasins. But this scheme did not get materialised. Sri Aurobindo took to politics and Barin to revolution. The latter tried to find a place in the Vindhya mountains for the Bhawani Mandir. But he came back with mountain fever.

2.01 - The Object of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  4:In reality thought is only a scout and pioneer; it can guide but not comm and or effectuate. The leader of the journey, the captain of the march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will. This Will is not the wish of the heart or the demand or preference of the mind to which we often give the name. It is that inmost, dominant and often veiled conscious force of our being and of all being, Tapas, Shakti, Shraddha, that sovereignly determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments. The Self that is quiescent, at rest, vacant of things and happenings is a support and background to existence, a silent channel or a hypostasis of something Supreme: it is not itself the one entirely real existence, not itself the Supreme. The Eternal, the Supreme is the Lord and the all-originating Spirit. Superior to all activities and not bound by ally of them, it is the source, sanction, material, efficient power, master of all activities. All activities proceed from this supreme Self and are determined by it; all are its operations, processes of its own conscious force and not of something alien to Self, some power other than this Spirit. In these activities is expressed the conscious Will or Shakti of the Spirit moved to manifest its being in infinite ways, a Will or Power not ignorant but at one with its own self-knowledge and its knowledge of all that it is put out to express. And of this Power a secret spiritual will and soul-faith in us, the dominant hidden force of our nature, is the individual instrument, more nearly in communication with the Supreme, a surer guide and enlightener, could we once get at it and hold it, because profounder and more intimately near to the Identical and Absolute than the surface activities of our thought powers. To know that will in ourselves and in the universe and follow it to its divine finalities, whatever these may be, must surely be the highest way and truest culmination for knowledge as for works, for the seeker in life and for the seeker in Yoga.
  5:The thought, since it is not the highest or strongest part of Nature, not even the sole or deepest index to Truth, ought not to follow its own exclusive satisfaction or take that for the sign of its attainment to the supreme Knowledge. It is here as the guide, up to a certain point, of the heart, the life and the other members but it cannot be a substitute for them; it has to see not only what is its own ultimate satisfaction but whether there is not an ultimate satisfaction intended also for these other members. An exclusive path of abstract thought would be justified, only if the object of the Supreme Will in the universe has been nothing more than a descent into the activity of the ignorance operated by the mind as blinding instrument and jailor through false idea and sensation and an ascent into the quiescence of knowledge equally operated by the mind through correct thought as enlightening instrument and saviour. But the chances are that there is an aim in the world less absurd and aimless, an impulse towards the Absolute less dry and abstract, a truth of the world more large and complex, a more richly infinite height of the Infinite. Certainly, an abstract logic must always arrive, as the old systems arrived, at an infinite empty Negation or an infinite equally vacant Affirmation; for, abstract it moves towards an absolute abstraction and these are the only two abstractions that are absolutely absolute. But a concrete ever deepening wisdom waiting on more and more riches of infinite experience and not the confident abstract logic of the narrow and incompetent human mind is likely to be the key to a divine suprahuman knowledge. The heart, the will, the life and even the body, no less than the thought, are forms of a divine Conscious-Being and indices of great significance. These too have powers by which the soul can return to its complete self-awareness or means by which It can enjoy it. The object of the Supreme Will may well be a culmination in which the whole being is intended to receive its divine satisfaction, the heights enlightening the depths, the material Inconscient revealed to itself as the Divine by the touch of the supreme Superconscience.
  --
  13:This supreme Existence is not conditioned by the individual or by the universe. A spiritual knowledge can therefore surpass or even eliminate these two powers of the Spirit and arrive at the conception of something utterly Transcendent, something that is unnameable and mentally Unknowable, a sheer Absolute. The traditional way of knowledge eliminates individual and universe. The Absolute it seeks after is featureless, indefinable, relationless, not this, not that, neti neti. And yet we can say of it that it is One, that it is Infinite, that it is Ineffable Bliss, Consciousness, Existence. Although Unknowable to the mind, yet through our individual being and through the names and forms of the universe we can approach the realisation of the supreme Self that is Brahman, and by the realisation of the Self we come to a certain realisation also of this utter Absolute of which our true Self is the essential form in our consciousness (svarupa). These are the devices the human mind is compelled to use if it is to form to itself any conception at all of a transcendent and unconditioned Absolute. The system of negation is indispensable to it in order to get rid of its own definitions and limited experience; it is obliged to escape through a vague Indefinite into the Infinite. For it lives in a closed prison of constructions and representations that are necessary for its action but are not the self-existent truth either of Matter or Life or Mind or Spirit. But if we can once cross beyond the Mind's frontier twilight into the vast plane of supramental Knowledge, these devices cease to be indispensable. Supermind has quite another, a positive and direct and living experience of the supreme Infinite. The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme Shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit.
  14:The consciousness of the transcendent Absolute with its consequence in individual and universal is the last, the eternal knowledge. Our minds may deal with it on various lines, may build upon it conflicting philosophies, may limit, modify, overstress, understress sides of the knowledge, deduce from it truth or error; but our intellectual variations and imperfect statements make no difference to the ultimate fact that if we push thought and experience to their end, this is the knowledge in which they terminate. The object of a Yoga of spiritual knowledge can be nothing else than this eternal Reality, this Self, this Brahman, this Transcendent that dwells over all and in all and is manifest yet concealed in the individual, manifest yet disguised in the universe.

2.01 - The Two Natures, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   the absolute powers and values of the supreme Shakti and must go back to them to find their own source and truth and the essential law of their operation and movement. So too the soul or Jiva involved here in the shackled, poor and inferior play of the phenomenal qualities, if he would escape from it and be divine and perfect, must by resort to the pure action of his essential quality of Swabhava go back to that higher law of his own being in which he can discover the will, the power, the dynamic principle, the highest working of his divine nature.
  This is clear from the immediately subsequent passage in which the Gita gives a number of instances to show how the
  --
  Rudra have woven its complex threads; the Shakti, the Supreme
  Nature is there at its base and is hidden in its every tissue. We have to work out this web in ourselves and turn through it and from it leaving it behind us when its use is finished, turn from the gods to the original and supreme Godhead in whom we shall discover at the same time the last sense of the gods and their works and the inmost spiritual verities of our own imperishable existence. "To Me who turn and come, they alone cross over beyond this Maya."

2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Purusha who merely watches, consents to God's work, holds up the Adhar and enjoys the fruits that God gives. The work itself is done by God as Shakti, by Kali, and is offered up by her as a Yajna to Sri Krishna; you are the Yajamana who sees the sacrifice done, whose presence is necessary to every movement of the sacrifice and who tastes its results. This separation of yourself, this renunciation of the kartr.tva-abhimana (the idea of yourself as the doer) is easier if you know what the Adhar is. Above the buddhi which is the highest function of mind is the higher buddhi, or vijnana, the seat of the satyadharma, truth of knowledge, truth of bhava, truth of action, and above this ideal faculty is the ananda or cosmic bliss in which the divine part of you dwells. It is of this vijnana and this ananda that Christ spoke as the kingdom of God that is within you.
  76
  --
  It is not only in things animate but in things inanimate also that we must see Narayana, experience Shiva, throw our arms around Shakti. When our eyes, that are now blinded by the idea of Matter, open to the supreme Light, we shall find that nothing is inanimate, but all contains, expressed or unexpressed, involved or evolved, secret or manifest or in course of manifestation, not only that state of involved consciousness which we call annam or Matter, but also life, mind, knowledge, bliss, divine force and being, - pran.a, manas, vijnana, ananda, cit, sat. In all things the self-conscious personality of God broods and takes the delight of his gun.as. Flowers, fruits, earth, trees, metals, all things have a joy in them of which you will become aware, because in all Sri Krishna dwells, pravisya, having entered into them, not materially or physically, - because there is no such thing, Space and Time being only conventions and arrangements of perception, the perspective in God's creative Art, - but by cit, the divine awareness in his transcendent being.
  IfA vA-yEmd\ sv yt^ Ek jg(yA\ jgt^.
  --
   knowledge, (3) the vision of God everywhere and in all things and in all happenings, the surrender of the fruits of action and action itself to God, and the freedom thereby from ignorance, from ahankara, from the dvandvas, from desire, so that you are suddha, mukta, siddha, full of Ananda, pure, free, perfect and blissful in your being. But the processes will be worked out, once the sankalpa is made, by God's Shakti, by a mighty process of
  Nature. All that is indispensable on your part is the anumati and smr.ti. Anumati is consent, you must give a temporary consent to the movements of the yoga, to all that happens inside or outside you as part of the circumstances of the sadhana, not exulting at the good, not fretting at the evil, not struggling in your heart to keep the one or get rid of the other, but always keeping in mind and giving a permanent assent to that which has to be finally effected. The temporary consent is passive submission to the methods and not positive acceptance of the results. The permanent consent is an anticipatory acceptance of the results, a sort of effortless and desireless exercise of will. It is the constant exercise of this desireless will, an intent aspiration and constant remembrance of the path and its goal which are the dhr.ti and utsaha needed, the necessary steadfastness and zeal of the sadhak; vyakulata or excited, passionate eagerness is more intense, but less widely powerful, and it is disturbing and exhausting, giving intense pleasure and pain in the pursuit but not so vast a bliss in the acquisition. The followers of this path must be like the men of the early yugas, dhrah., the great word of praise in the Upanishads. In the remembrance, the smr.ti or smaran.a, you must be apramatta, free from negligence. It is by the loss of the smr.ti owing to the rush and onset of the gun.as that the yogin becomes bhras.t.a, falls from his firm seat, wanders from his path. But you need not be distressed when the pramada comes and the state of fall or clouded condition seems to persist, for there is no fear for you of a permanent fall since God himself has taken entire charge of you and if you stumble, it is because it is best for you to stumble, as a child by frequent stumbling and falling learns to walk. The necessity of apramattata disappears when you can replace the memory of the yoga and its objects by
  --
  Therefore never be troubled by the time that is being taken, even if it seems very long, but when imperfections and obstructions arise, be apramatta, dhra, have the utsaha, and leave God to do the rest. Time is necessary. It is a tremendous work that is being done in you, the alteration of your whole human nature into a divine nature, the crowding of centuries of evolution into a few years. You ought not to grudge the time. There are other paths that offer more immediate results or at any rate, by offering you some definite kriya you can work at yourself, give your ahankara the satisfaction of feeling that you are doing something, so many more pran.ayamas today, so much longer a time for the asana, so many more repetitions of the japa, so much done, so much definite progress marked. But once you have chosen this path, you must cleave to it. Those are human methods, not the way that the infinite Shakti works, which moves silently, sometimes imperceptibly to its goal, advances here, seems to pause there, then mightily and triumphantly reveals the grandiose thing that it has done. Artificial paths are like canals hewn by the intelligence of man; you travel easily, safely, surely, but from one given place to another. This path is the broad and trackless ocean by
  88

2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  object:2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti
  class:chapter
  --
  Chapter II - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti
    It is there in beings indivisible and as if divided.Gita.1
  --
    It is the might of the Godhead in the world that turns the wheel of Brahman. Him one must know, the supreme Lord of all lords, the supreme Godhead above all godheads. Supreme too is his Shakti and manifold the natural working of her knowledge and her force. One Godhead, occult in all beings, the inner Self of all beings, the all-pervading, absolute without qualities, the overseer of all actions, the witness, the knower. Swetaswatara Upanishad.5
  THERE is then a supreme Reality eternal, absolute and infinite. Because it is absolute and infinite, it is in its essence indeterminable. It is indefinable and inconceivable by finite and defining Mind; it is ineffable by a mind-created speech; it is describable neither by our negations, neti neti, for we cannot limit it by saying it is not this, it is not that, - nor by our affirmations, for we cannot fix it by saying it is this, it is that, iti iti. And yet, though in this way unknowable to us, it is not altogether and in every way unknowable; it is selfevident to itself and, although inexpressible, yet self-evident to a knowledge by identity of which the spiritual being in us must be capable; for that spiritual being is in its essence and its original and intimate reality not other than this Supreme Existence.
  --
  The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman, Life is Brahman, Matter is Brahman; addressing Vayu, the Lord of Air, of Life, it is said "O Vayu, thou art manifest Brahman"; and, pointing to man and beast and bird and insect, each separately is identified with the One, "O Brahman, thou art this old man and boy and girl, this bird, this insect." Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the Force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could brea the or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of ForceNature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
  An absolute, eternal and infinite Self-existence, Self-awareness, Self-delight of being that secretly supports and pervades the universe even while it is also beyond it, is, then, the first truth of spiritual experience. But this truth of being has at once an impersonal and a personal aspect; it is not only Existence, it is the one Being absolute, eternal and infinite. As there are three fundamental aspects in which we meet this Reality, Self, Conscious Being or Spirit and God, the Divine Being, or to use the Indian terms, the absolute and omnipresent Reality, Brahman, manifest to us as Atman, Purusha, Ishwara, - so too its power of Consciousness appears to us in three aspects: it is the self-force of that consciousness conceptively creative of all things, Maya; it is Prakriti, Nature or Force made dynamically executive, working out all things under the witnessing eye of the Conscious Being, the Self or Spirit; it is the conscious Power of the Divine Being, Shakti, which is both conceptively creative and dynamically executive of all the divine workings. These three aspects and their powers base and comprise the whole of existence and all Nature and, taken together as a single whole, they reconcile the apparent disparateness and incompatibility of the supracosmic Transcendence, the cosmic universality and the separativeness of our individual existence; the Absolute, cosmic Nature and ourselves are linked in oneness by this triune aspect of the one Reality. For taken by itself the existence of the Absolute, the Supreme Brahman, would be a contradiction of the relative universe and our own real existence would be incompatible with its sole incommunicable Reality. But the Brahman is at the same time omnipresent in all relativities; it is the Absolute independent of all relatives, the Absolute basing all relatives, the Absolute governing, pervading, constituting all relatives; there is nothing that is not the omnipresent Reality. In observing the triple aspect and the triple power we come to see how this is possible.
  If we look at this picture of the Self-Existence and its works as a unitary unlimited whole of vision, it stands together and imposes itself by its convincing totality: but to the analysis of the logical intellect it offers an abundance of difficulties, such as all attempts to erect a logical system out of a perception of an illimitable Existence must necessarily create; for any such endeavour must either effect consistency by an arbitrary sectioning of the complex truth of things or else by its comprehensiveness become logically untenable. For we see that the Indeterminable determines itself as infinite and finite, the Immutable admits a constant mutability and endless differences, the One becomes an innumerable multitude, the Impersonal creates or supports personality, is itself a Person; the Self has a nature and is yet other than its nature; Being turns into becoming and yet it is always itself and other than its becomings; the Universal individualises itself and the Individual universalises himself; Brahman is at once void of qualities and capable of infinite qualities, the Lord and Doer of works, yet a non-doer and a silent witness of the workings of Nature. If we look carefully at these workings of Nature, once we put aside the veil of familiarity and our unthinking acquiescence in the process of things as natural because so they always happen, we discover that all she does in whole or in parts is a miracle, an act of some incomprehensible magic. The being of the Self-existence and the world that has appeared in it are, each of them and both together, a suprarational mystery. There seems to us to be a reason in things because the processes of the physical finite are consistent to our view and their law determinable, but this reason in things, when closely examined, seems to stumble at every moment against the irrational or infrarational and the suprarational: the consistency, the determinability of process seems to lessen rather than increase as we pass from matter to life and from life to mentality; if the finite consents to some extent to look as if it were rational, the infinitesimal refuses to be bound by the same laws and the infinite is unseizable. As for the action of the universe and its significance, it escapes us altogether; if Self, God or Spirit there be, his dealings with the world and us are incomprehensible, offer no clue that we can follow. God and Nature and even ourselves move in a mysterious way which is only partially and at points intelligible, but as a whole escapes our comprehension. All the works of Maya look like the production of a suprarational magical Power which arranges things according to its wisdom or its phantasy, but a wisdom which is not ours and a phantasy which baffles our imagination.
  --
  Brahman the Reality is the self-existent Absolute and Maya is the Consciousness and Force of this self-existence; but with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and at the same time individual-universal in each being; Maya can then be seen as the self-power, Atma- Shakti, of the Atman. It is true that when we first become aware of this Aspect, it is usually in a silence of the whole being or at the least in a silence within which draws back or stands away from the surface action; this Self is then felt as a status in silence, an immobile immutable being, self-existent, pervading the whole universe, omnipresent in all, but not dynamic or active, aloof from the ever mobile energy of Maya. In the same way we can become aware of it as the Purusha, separate from Prakriti, the Conscious Being standing back from the activities of Nature. But this is an exclusive concentration which limits itself to a spiritual status and puts away from it all activity in order to realise the freedom of Brahman the self-existent Reality from all limitation by its own action and manifestation: it is an essential realisation, but not the total realisation. For we can see that the Conscious-Power, the Shakti that acts and creates, is not other than the Maya or all-knowledge of Brahman; it is the Power of the Self; Prakriti is the working of the Purusha, Conscious Being active by its own Nature: the duality then of Soul and WorldEnergy, silent Self and the creative Power of the Spirit, is not really something dual and separate, it is biune. As we cannot separate Fire and the power of Fire, it has been said, so we cannot separate the Divine Reality and its Consciousness-Force, Chit- Shakti. This first realisation of Self as something intensely silent and purely static is not the whole truth of it, there can also be a realisation of Self in its power, Self as the condition of world-activity and world-existence. However, the Self is a fundamental aspect of Brahman, but with a certain stress on its impersonality; therefore the Power of the Self has the appearance of a Force that acts automatically with the Self sustaining it, witness and support and originator and enjoyer of its activities but not involved in them for a moment. As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above, adhyaks.a; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a
  Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the Self.
  --
  If we place ourselves in a silent Self-existence immobile, static, inactive, it will appear that a conceptive Consciousness-Force, Maya, able to effectuate all its conceptions, a dynamic consort of the Self of silence, is doing everything; it takes its stand on the fixed unmoving eternal status and casts the spiritual substance of being into all manner of forms and movements to which its passivity consents or in which it takes its impartial pleasure, its immobile delight of creative and mobile existence. Whether this be a real or an illusory existence, that must be its substance and significance. Consciousness is at play with Being, Force of Nature does what it wills with Existence and makes it the stuff of her creations, but secretly the consent of the Being must be there at every step to make this possible. There is an evident truth in this perception of things; it is what we see happening everywhere in us and around us; it is a truth of the universe and must answer to a fundamental truth-aspect of the Absolute. But when we step back from the outer dynamic appearances of things, not into a witness Silence, but into an inner dynamic participating experience of the Spirit, we find that this Consciousness-Force, Maya, Shakti, is itself the power of the Being, the Self-Existent, the Ishwara. The Being is lord of her and of all things, we see him doing everything in his own sovereignty as the creator and ruler of his own manifestation; or, if he stands back and allows freedom of action to the forces of Nature and her creatures, his sovereignty is still innate in the permission, at every step his tacit sanction, "Let it be so", tathastu, is there implicit; for otherwise nothing could be done or happen. Being and its Consciousness-Force, Spirit and Nature cannot be fundamentally dual: what
  Nature does, is really done by the Spirit. This too is a truth that becomes evident when we go behind the veil and feel the presence of a living Reality which is everything and determines everything, is the All-powerful and the All-ruler; this too is a fundamental truth-aspect of the Absolute.
  Again, if we remain absorbed in the Silence, the creative Consciousness and her works disappear into the Silence; Nature and the creation for us cease to exist or be real. On the other hand, if we look exclusively at the Being in its aspect of the sole-existent Person and Ruler, the Power or Shakti by which he does all things disappears into his uniqueness or becomes an attribute of His cosmic personality; the absolute monarchy of the one Being becomes our perception of the universe. Both these experiences create many difficulties for the mind due to its nonperception of the reality of the Self-Power whether in quiescence or in action, or to a too exclusively negative experience of the
  Self, or to the too anthropomorphic character our conceptions attach to the Supreme Being as Ruler. It is evident that we are looking at an Infinite of which the Self-Power is capable of many movements, all of them valid. If we look again more largely and take account of both the impersonal and the personal truth of things as one truth, if in that light, the light of personality in impersonality, we see the biune aspect of Self and Self-Power, then in the Person Aspect a dual Person emerges, Ishwara- Shakti, the Divine Self and Creator and the Divine Mother and Creatrix of the universe; there becomes apparent to us the mystery of the masculine and feminine cosmic Principles whose play and interaction are necessary for all creation. In the superconscient truth of the Self-Existence these two are fused and implied in each other, one and indistinguishable, but in the spiritual-pragmatic truth of the dynamism of the universe, they emerge and become active; the Divine Mother Energy as the universal creatrix, Maya, Para-Prakriti, Chit- Shakti, manifests the cosmic Self and Ishwara and her own self-power as a dual principle; it is through her that the Being, the Self, the Ishwara, acts and he does nothing except by her; though his Will is implicit in her, it is she who works out all as the supreme Consciousness-Force who holds all souls and beings within her and as executive Nature; all exists and acts according to Nature, all is the Consciousness-Force manifesting and playing with the Being in millions of forms and movements into which she casts his existence. If we draw back from her workings, then all can fall into quiescence and we can enter into the silence, because she consents to cease from her dynamic activity; but it is in her quiescence and silence that we are quiescent and cease. If we would affirm our independence of
  Nature, she reveals to us the supreme and omnipresent power of the Ishwara and ourselves as beings of his being, but that power is herself and we are that in her supernature. If we would realise a higher formation or status of being, then it is still through her, through the Divine Shakti, the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit that it has to be done; our surrender must be to the Divine Being through the Divine Mother for it is towards or into the supreme Nature that our ascension has to take place and it can only be done by the supramental Shakti taking up our mentality and transforming it into her supramentality. Thus we see that there is no contradiction or incompatibility between these three aspects of Existence, or between them in their eternal status and the three modes of its Dynamis working in the universe. One Being, one Reality as Self bases, supports, informs, as Purusha or Conscious Being experiences, as Ishwara wills, governs and possesses its world of manifestation created and kept in motion and action by its own Consciousness-Force or Self-Power, - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti.
  A certain difficulty arises for our mind in reconciling these different faces or fronts of the One Self and Spirit, because we are obliged to use abstract conceptions and defining words and ideas for something that is not abstract, something that is spiritually living and intensely real. Our abstractions get fixed into differentiating concepts with sharp lines between them: but the Reality is not of that nature; its aspects are many but shade off into each other. Its truth could only be rendered by ideas and images metaphysical and yet living and concrete, - images which might be taken by the pure Reason as figures and symbols but are more than that and mean more to the intuitive vision and feeling, for they are realities of a dynamic spiritual experience. The impersonal truth of things can be rendered into the abstract formulas of the pure reason, but there is another side of truth which belongs to the spiritual or mystic vision and without that inner vision of realities the abstract formulation of them is insufficiently alive, incomplete. The mystery of things is the true truth of things; the intellectual presentation is only truth in representation, in abstract symbols, as if in a cubist art of thought-speech, in geometric figure. It is necessary in a philosophic inquiry to confine oneself mostly to this intellectual presentation, but it is as well to remember that this is only the abstraction of the Truth and to seize it completely or express it completely there is needed a concrete experience and a more living and full-bodied language.

2.02 - Meeting With the Goddess, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta (London and Madras, 1929), p. 39, and
  Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, ed. by

2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   The attitude of the soul to Shakti's work.
   Sri Aurobindo: He has been progressing well and should be asked to continue till he has a glimpse of something higher than the mind.
  --
   Even when the union of the psychic takes place between the two, the other parts, the mental, the vital and the physical of one may clash with that of the other and the gain of the psychic being may be spoiled by this disharmony. But if the psychic being dominates in both then these difficulties may slowly clear up. The spiritual relation between man and woman is the most difficult to achieve. The man seeking the higher divine life, the seeker after Divine Consciousness and the Truth, who is Purusha, if he meets the woman of the right type the woman who is his Shakti then his spiritual life, the life which he is to manifest, is enriched and becomes full. In this case also there is the psychic union between the two.
   In the case of those who have the psychic union of the proper kind to start with, the spiritual relation may gradually develop and manifest itself.
   In the spiritual union, the woman who is the Shakti must be really a Power that is to say, a powerful personality who can receive the help from the Purusha in the proper way. Each must be of real help to the other: this relation is the most difficult to attain. These difficulties come to the sadhak; to the Siddha, the perfected soul, there is no difficulty. He knows fully well what is to be manifested. If his Shakti is there he knows where she is and he will get her.
   Disciple: Is the Shakti necessary for the Supramental Yoga?
   Sri Aurobindo: The Shakti is not necessary for the Yoga: without the Shakti full knowledge, consciousness, power and Ananda can be attained. But if these elements are to be brought to and manifested in life then the Shakti is necessary. If there is no Shakti then he cannot bring down the knowledge, power, Ananda, etc. that are in him into life. He can, in that case, only prepare the way for the work to be done at a future time.
   Disciple: Suppose a person aspiring for spiritual life marries, what would happen to him?
  --
   He was self-willed and never used to pay attention to the instructions sent to him from Pondicherry. He had one idea in his mind: that everything that was coming to him was from Shakti or Kali, though he was repeatedly warned against it.
   He could not distinguish between what was true and what came to him from the vital and the lower world.
  --
   There is a relation deeper than that it is of the soul. That relation comes from within by itself. It manifests itself in both as an ideal oneness oneness in mind, oneness of the soul, oneness of self. That relation is Shanta, full of peace, wide, pure Pavitra. In it there is no trace of vital lust and physical craving. There is also possible a relation of Purusha and Shakti between man and woman. But that relation is not social, it is not ordinary. Because one is married to a certain woman it does not follow that his wife is necessarily his Shakti.
   So long as these relations are not understood and experienced by you another possible relation is that of friends. That is to say, you ought to live with your wife just as you would with a friend who has the same aim of life, without any other relation than that of friendship.
  --
   He can read the first few chapters of the Essays on the Gita and try to understand Karma Yoga. Some sort of Karma Yoga is the best preparation for this Yoga. He cannot get the current of the Higher Power now; he must make himself fit for the Higher Power. The real Shakti cannot come unless the Adhar is purified. She can force the way, but in that case there will be all confusion and the Adhar may break.
   9 OCTOBER 1925

2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Integral Yoga
  One put forth by the Shakti of the One, which by dividing itself
  into the Male and Female, Purusha and Prakriti, has created this
  --
  Brahman manifesting the universe by his Shakti, and that there
  is no Devadatta, no Harischandra, but only Brahman in various
  --
  His own Shakti is playing for Himself by Himself this lila of
  creation, preservation and destruction; in this view Brahman is
  --
  For what is Prakriti itself but the creation of the mighty Shakti,
  who is without end & without beginning, the Shakti of the
  Eternal? Without some Jnana, some knowledge & feeling of the
  --
  and more energetic manifestation of the Eternal Shakti than
  130
  --
  Krishna or Shakti; yet we all recognize but one Lord of the Universe behind the form we worship. If on the other hand the same
  man worshipped different nature-forces, but each in its turn as
  --
  by the twofold nature of the Self, of himself, the Shakti that
  knows & the Shakti that plays at not knowing, the Sruti gives an
  unfailing guide, a sure staff and a perfect ideal. See all creatures
  --
  & skill, but by the mere flowing forth of his Shakti or Will.
  Finally He is not only that side of Matter, but He is that side of
  --
  & its Shakti are still one & undivided. He is therefore best
  spoken of in the neuter. But when we see Him as the Ruler
  --
  Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwara, filled with the force of that Shakti
  are creating, preserving & destroying the countless worlds and
  --
  by ogre & giant, by fiend & foeman? Seek His mighty Shakti,
  Bhavani Mahishamardini, in yourself and She will externalize
  --
  Christ saved the world. But this is not so. The power of Shakti
  of Brahman is twofold & simultaneous; He is able to exercise
  --
  finite mind can make of this mysterious Shakti of the Illimitable,
  Unconditioned, Unknowable Brahman. Maya in its forms may
  be unreal & transitory but Maya in its essence as a Shakti of the
  Eternal, must itself be eternal, from of old & for ever.

2.02 - The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Nature is always a spiritual, a divine working. It is force of the supreme divine Nature, it is the conscious will of the being of the Supreme that throws itself out in various essential and spiritual power of quality in the Jiva: that essential power is the swabhava of the Jiva. All act and becoming which proceed directly from this spiritual force are a divine becoming and a pure and spiritual action. Therefore it follows that in action the effort of the human individual must be to get back to his true spiritual personality and to make all his works flow from the power of its supernal Shakti, to develop action through the soul and the inmost intrinsic being, not through the mental idea and vital desire, and to turn all his acts into a pure outflowing of the will of the Supreme, all his life into a dynamic symbol of the
  Divine Nature.

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Integral Yoga
  or False Knowledge. Then He is a great Will, Shakti or Force
  pouring itself out in a million forms and names and keeping
  --
  forms of the Supreme Lord in which His mighty Shakti, His
  Will to live and create has expressed itself in its highest, purest
  --
  well direct his worship. Or he may worship Isha in His Shakti,
  in the form of Durga-Kali, the most powerful realisation of
  --
  are lost in Sat or absolute Existence. But as Isha or Shakti, He
  does works by which He is not bound and the Jivatman also
  --
  when he is made one with Isha or Shakti continues to do works
  without being bound.
  --
  the force of His own Shakti is playing for Himself and by Himself
  this dramatic lila of creation, preservation and destruction. He is

2.03 - The Supreme Divine, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Purushottama is there and supports on his eternal immutability the action of his higher spiritual Shakti. He displays the divine
  Being, Consciousness, Will or Power, yayedam dharyate jagat: that is the Para Prakriti. The self-awareness of the Spirit in this supreme Nature perceives in the light of self-knowledge the dynamic idea, the au thentic truth of whatever he separates in his own being and expresses it in the Swabhava, the spiritual nature of the Jiva. The inherent truth and principle of the self of each Jiva, that which works itself out in manifestation, the essential divine nature in all which remains constant behind all conversions, perversions, reversions, that is the Swabhava. All that is in the Swabhava is loosed out into cosmic Nature for her to do what she can with it under the inner eye of the Purushottama. Out of the constant svabhava, out of the essential nature and self-principle of being of each becoming, she creates the varied mutations by which she strives to express it, unrolls all her changes in name and form, in time and space and those successions of condition developed one out of the other in time and space which we call causality, nimitta.

2.05 - Apotheosis, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  Oedipus. Shiva appears united in a single body with Shakti,
  his spouse-he the right side, she the left-in the manifestation

2.08 - God in Power of Becoming, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I know thee, O Yogin, by thinking of thee everywhere at all moments and in what pre-eminent becomings should I think of thee?" This Yoga by which thou art one with all and one in all and all are becomings of thy being, all are pervading or pre-eminent or disguised powers of thy nature, tell me of it, he cries, in its detail and extent, and tell me ever more of it; it is nectar of immortality to me, and however much of it I hear, I am not satiated. Here we get an indication in the Gita of something which the Gita itself does not bring out expressly, but which occurs frequently in the Upanishads and was developed later on by Vaishnavism and Shaktism in a greater intensity of vision, man's possible joy of the Divine in the world-existence, the universal Ananda, the play of the Mother, the sweetness and beauty of God's Lila.2
  The divine Teacher accedes to the request of the disciple, but with an initial reminder that a full reply is not possible. For

2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   A question was not taken up the other day. The disciple raised it again today: Is complete transformation possible without having a Shakti a feminine counterpart in Sadhana?
   Sri Aurobindo evidently was not prepared to say everything that was in his mind.
   Sri Aurobindo: I don't understand why it should not be possible to bring about the transformation without a Shakti. Transformation would be complete if one can bring down the Higher Consciousness that you get in the mind and the vital being into the physical being and even into the very cells of the material body. The conditions of complete transformation are that you should be able to keep the same deep peace, wideness, strength, purity, power and plasticity from the mind downward to the very material cells. That is the fundamental basis. This transformation does not require a Shakti.
   Disciple: Perhaps he wants to say that this transformation is only possible in your case and in no other.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Incarnating the Divine means incarnating your own divine Self that is in the Supermind. It is something quite different from your present self, it is full of knowledge, power and Ananda of the Supramental plane; yet it is a Person not merely an impersonal being. As I said, the conditions for that Being to come down and work here are that you must have the same deep peace, wideness, strength, plasticity, etc. even in your physical being. Transformation is a personal affair, I don't quite see what a Shakti has got to do with it.
   You are mixing up things: 1. Transformation and the need of a Shakti. 2. You are mixing up myself and yourself!
   Disciple: No, I didn't want to mix up myself with you.
   Sri Aurobindo: I thought your question about Shakti was, perhaps, a distant preliminary to an application for marriage. (Laughter)
   (After a pause) I do not object to a Shakti if there is a genuine case. You can produce your Shakti, if there is one up your sleeve! (Laughter)
   Disciple: He was thinking: "What is the good of transformation without a Shakti?"
   Disciple: I have no personal concern in the question. I wanted to understand it and to have more knowledge.
   Sri Aurobindo: I am not prepared to say everything on the question. I think I have already said something on some other occasion. The function of the Shakti is something quite different. In my own case it was a necessary condition for the work that I had to do. If I had to do my own transformation, or give a new Yoga, or a new ideal to a select few people who came in my personal contact, I could have done that without having any Shakti. But for the work that I had to do it was necessary that the two sides must come together. By the coming together of the Mother and myself certain conditions are created which make it easy for you to achieve the transformation. You can take advantage of those conditions.
   But it is not necessary that everybody should have a Shakti. People have a passion for generalisation.
   Disciple: I wanted to say that we are not as great as you.
  --
   And before you can have a Shakti, you must first of all deserve a Shakti. The first condition is that you must be master of Kama.
   Disciple: I know it as a condition.
  --
   Disciple: But if the Shakti is there then all these conditions would be fulfilled.
   Sri Aurobindo: Do you think that because there is meeting between the two in the central being, or somewhere else, the whole thing is done? There are many personalities in man and in order to have complete perfection you must know the value of personality in the world. What is the true personality in you? There are various personalities on each plane and in the case of Purusha and Shakti they must all agree. It is a long and arduous Sadhana you have to undergo before such a complete union can take place.
   But that has nothing to do with transformation.
  --
   The second reason is that the excitement accompanying the ordinary sexual act destroys the psychic possibilities of the man. He gets separated and dissociated from the higher centres of consciousness and goes downwards. People say that they take the attitude of Shakti taking Bhoga through them, but that is only a way of saying. People indulge in lower movements, yield to hostile forces and at the same time pass as yogis. Even the Vedantic attitude is often made an excuse for yielding to the hostile forces. "All this is Maya, illusion, there is no virtue, no sin, no good, no evil," they say and give themselves up to lower vital forces.
   Disciple: But are the lower movements of nature themselves not hostile?

2.09 - The Release from the Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is then in the way of the spiritual philosophies and religions, not in that of any earth-bound materialistic doctrine, that the seeker of the highest knowledge has to walk, even if with enriched aims and a more comprehensive spiritual purpose. But how far has he to proceed in the elimination of the ego? In the ancient way of Knowledge we arrive at the elimination of the ego-sense which attaches itself to the body, to the life, to the mind and says of all or any of them, "This is I." Not only do we, as in the way of works, get rid of the "I" of the worker and see the Lord alone as the true source of all works and sanction of works and His executive Nature-power or else His supreme Shakti as the sole agent and worker, -- but we get rid also of the ego-sense which mistakes the instruments or the expressions of our being for our true self and spirit. But even if all this has been done, something remains still; there remains a substratum of all these, a general sense of the separate I. This substratum ego is something vague, indefinable, elusive; it does not or need not attach itself to anything in particular as the self; it does not identify itself with anything collective, it is a sort of fundamental form or power of the mind which compels the mental being to feel himself as a perhaps indefinable but still a limited being which is not mind, life or body but under which their activities proceed in Nature. The others were a qualified ego-idea and ego-sense supporting themselves on the play of the prakriti; but this is the pure fundamental ego-power supporting itself on the consciousness of the mental Purusha. And because it seems to be above or behind the play and not in it, because it does not say "I am the mind, life or body," but "I am a being on whom the action of mind, life and body depends," many think themselves released and mistake this elusive Ego for the One, the Divine, the true Purusha or at the very least for the true Person within them, -- mistaking the indefinable for the Infinite. But so long as this fundamental ego-sense remains, there is no absolute release. The egoistic life, even if diminished in force and intensity, can still continue well enough with this support. If there is the error m identification, the ego life may under that pretext get rather exaggerated intensity and force. Even if there is no such error, the ego life may be wider, purer, more flexible and release may be now much easier to attain and nearer to accomplishment, but still there is as yet no definitive release. It is imperative to go farther, to get rid of this indefinable but fundamental ego-sense also and get back to the Purusha on whom it is supporting itself, of whom it is a shadow; the shadow has to disappear and by its disappearance reveal the spirit's unclouded substance.
  That substance is the self of the man called in European thought the Monad, in Indian philosophy, Jiva or Jivatman, the living entity, the self of the living creature. This Jiva is not the mental ego-sense constructed by the workings of Nature for her temporary purpose. It is not a thing bound, as the mental being, the vital, the physical are bound, by her habits, laws or processes. The Jiva is a spirit and self, superior to Nature. It is true that it consents to her acts, reflects her moods and upholds the triple medium of mind, life and body through which she casts them upon the soul's consciousness; but it is itself a living reflection or a soul-form or a self-creation of the Spirit universal and transcendent. The One Spirit who has mirrored some of His modes of being in the world and in the soul, is multiple in the Jiva. That Spirit is the very Self of our self, the One and the Highest, the Supreme we have to realise, the infinite existence into which we have to enter. And so far the teachers walk in company, all agreeing that this is the supreme object of knowledge, of works and of devotion, all agreeing that if it is to be attained, the Jiva must release himself from the ego-sense which belongs to the lower Nature or Maya. But here they part company and each goes his own way. The Monist fixes his feet on the path of an exclusive Knowledge and sets for us as sole ideal an entire return, loss, immersion or extinction of the Jiva in the Supreme. The Dualist or the partial Monist turns to the path of Devotion and directs us to shed indeed the lower ego and material life, but to see as the highest destiny of the spirit of man, not the self-annihilation of the Buddhist, not the self-immersion of the Adwaitin, not a swallowing up of the many by the One, but an eternal existence absorbed in the thought, love and enjoyment of the Supreme, the One, the All-Lover.

2.1.01 - The Central Process of the Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As regards Xs questionthis is not a Yoga of Bhakti alone; it is or at least it claims to be an integral Yoga, that is, a turning of all the being in all its parts to the Divine. It follows that there must be knowledge and works as well as Bhakti and, in addition, it includes a total change of the nature, a seeking for perfection, so that the nature also may become one with the nature of the Divine. It is not only the heart that has to turn to the Divine and change, but the mind alsoso knowledge is necessary, and the will and power of action and creation alsoso works too are necessary. In this Yoga the methods of other Yogas are taken uplike this of Purusha-Prakriti, but with a difference in the final object. Purusha separates from Prakriti, not in order to abandon her, but in order to know himself and her and to be no longer her plaything, but the knower, lord and upholder of the nature; but having become so or even in becoming so, one offers all that to the Divine. One may begin with knowledge or with works or with Bhakti or with Tapasya of self-purification for perfection (change of nature) and develop the rest as a subsequent movement or one may combine all in one movement. There is no single rule for all, it depends on the personality and the nature. Surrender is the main power of the Yoga, but the surrender is bound to be progressive; a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, but only a will in the being for that completeness,in fact it takes time; yet it is only when the surrender is complete that the full flood of the sadhana is possible. Till then there must be the personal effort with an increasing reality of surrender. One calls in the power of the Divine Shakti and once that begins to come into the being, it at first supports the personal endeavour, then progressively takes up the whole action, although the consent of the sadhak continues to be always necessary. As the Force works, it brings in the different processes that are necessary for the sadhak, processes of knowledge, of Bhakti, of spiritualised action, of transformation of the nature. The idea that they cannot be combined is an error.
  ***

2.1.02 - Classification of the Parts of the Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Ishwara, Shakti and Jiva, or else Sachchidananda, Maya and
  Jiva. But in our system which seeks to go beyond the present manifestation, these could very well be taken for granted and, looked at from the point of view of the planes of consciousness, the three highest - Ananda (with Sat and Chit resting upon it),

2.1.02 - Nature The World-Manifestation, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Power of itself which thus manifests what is in its being is its Shakti, Maya or Prakriti, three names for the same thing. It is called Prakriti when it is seen in its executive aspect as working out the manifestation for the Purusha or Ishwara.
  Whether we regard the soul that manifests in a body as a portion of the Divine, eternal therefore like the Divine, as is held by the
  --
  Ishwara, the Prakriti is His Shakti. Their play with each other is both the motive & the executive force of all existence in the universe.
  25

2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Matter-force casts matter-substance, material Shakti casts
  Matter-Brahman into form expressive of its own most characteristic powers. When that has been done, the physical world is ready for the splendid intrusion of conscious Life into the force-driven inertia of material substance.

2.1.1 - The Nature of the Vital, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The human vital is almost always of that nature [full of desires and fancies], but that is no reason why one should accept it as an unchangeable fact and allow a restless vital to drive one as it likes. Even apart from Yoga, in ordinary life, only those are considered to have full manhood or are likely to succeed in their life, their ideals or their undertakings who take in hand this restless vital, concentrate and control it and subject it to discipline. It is by the use of the mental will that they discipline it, compelling it to do not what it wants but what the reason or the will sees to be right or desirable. In Yoga one uses the inner will and compels the vital to submit itself to tapasya so that it may become calm, strong, obedientor else one calls down the calm from above obliging the vital to renounce desire and become quiet and receptive. The vital is a good instrument but a bad master. If you allow it to follow its likes and dislikes, its fancies, its desires, its bad habits, it becomes your master and peace and happiness are no longer possible. It becomes not your instrument or the instrument of the Divine Shakti, but of any force of the Ignorance or even any hostile force that is able to seize and use it.
  ***

2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindo: It is true that there are beings behind collective units, like the nations. There is what you may call the national devat or national Shakti.
   Disciple: Is there such a being behind India?

2.12 - The Origin of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   phenomenon of the dynamic action of Force of Consciousness, not an essential fact but a creation, a consequence of that action, it is this Force aspect of Consciousness that it will be fruitful to consider. Absolute consciousness is in its nature absolute power; the nature of Chit is Shakti: Force or Shakti concentrated and energised for cognition or for action in a realising power effective or creative, the power of conscious being dwelling upon itself and bringing out, as it were, by the heat of its incubation6 the seed and development of all that is within it or, to use a language convenient to our minds, of all its truths and potentialities, has created the universe. If we examine our own consciousness, we shall see that this power of its energy applying itself to its object is really the most positive dynamic force it has; by that it arrives at all its knowledge and its action and its creation. But for us there are two objects on which the dynamism within can act, ourselves, the internal world, and others, whether creatures or things, the external world around us. To Sachchidananda this distinction with its effective and operative consequences does not apply in the same way as for us, because all is himself and within himself and there is no such division as we make by the limitations of our mind. Secondly, in us only a part of the force of our being is identified with our voluntary action, with our will engaged in mental or other activity, the rest is to our surface mental awareness involuntary in its action or subconscient or superconscient, and from this division also a great number of important practical consequences emerge: but in Sachchidananda this division too and its consequences do not apply, since all is his one indivisible self and all action and result
  6 Tapas means literally heat, afterwards any kind of energism, askesis, austerity of conscious force acting upon itself or its object. The world was created by Tapas in the form, says the ancient image, of an egg, which being broken, again by Tapas, heat of incubation of conscious force, the Purusha emerged, Soul in Nature, like a bird from the egg. It may be observed that the usual translation of the word tapasya in English books, "penance", is quite misleading - the idea of penance entered rarely into the austerities practised by Indian ascetics. Nor was mortification of the body the essence even of the most severe and self-afflicting austerities; the aim was rather an overpassing of the hold of the bodily nature on the consciousness or else a supernormal energising of the consciousness and will to gain some spiritual or other object.
  --
  Existence and in Nature as well as an activity, immobile status as well as kinesis, what is the place and role of this Force, this power and its concentration in regard to a status where there is no play of energy, where all is immobile. In ourselves we habitually associate our Tapas, our conscious force, with active consciousness, with energy in play and in internal or external act and motion. That which is passive in us produces no action or only an involuntary or mechanical action, and we do not associate it with our will or conscious force; still, since there too there is the possibility of action or the emergence of an automatic activity, it must have at least a passively responsive or automatic conscious force in it; or there is in it either a secretly positive or a negative and inverse Tapas. It may also be that there is a larger conscious force, power or will in our being unknown to us which is behind this involuntary action, - if not a will, at least a force of some kind which itself initiates action or else responds to the contacts, suggestions, stimulations of the universal Energy. In Nature also we know that things stable, inert or passive are yet maintained in their energy by a secret and unceasing motion, an energy in action upholding the apparent immobility. Here too, then, all is due to the presence of Shakti, to the action of its power in concentration, its Tapas. But beyond this, beyond this relative aspect of status and kinesis, we find that we have the power to arrive at what seems to us an absolute passivity or immobility of our consciousness in which we cease from all mental and physical activity. There seem, then, to be an active consciousness in which consciousness works as an energy throwing up knowledge and activity out of itself and of which therefore Tapas is the character, and a passive consciousness in which consciousness does not act as an energy, but only exists as a status and of which therefore absence of Tapas or force in action is the character. Is the apparent absence of Tapas in this state
  The Origin of the Ignorance
  --
  Its immobile energy; the activity is Tapas of Its being releasing what It held out of that incubation into mobility and travelling in a million waves of action, dwelling still upon each as It travels and liberating in it the being's truths and potentialities. There too is a concentration of force, but a multiple concentration, which seems to us a diffusion. But it is not really a diffusion, but a deploying; Brahman does not cast Its energy out of Itself to be lost in some unreal exterior void, but keeps it at work within Its being, conserving it unabridged and undiminished in all its continual process of conversion and transmutation. The passivity is a great conservation of Shakti, of Tapas supporting a manifold initiation of movement and transmutation into forms and happenings; the activity is a conservation of Shakti, of Tapas in the movement and transmutation. As in ourselves, so in Brahman, both are relative to each other, both simultaneously coexist, pole and pole in the action of one Existence.
  The Reality then is neither an eternal passivity of immobile

2.1.2 - The Vital and Other Levels of Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The life-force in the vital is the indispensable instrument for all action of the Divine Power on the material world and the physical nature. It is therefore only when this vital is transformed and made a pure and strong instrument of the Divine Shakti, that there can be a divine life. Then only can there be a successful transformation of the physical nature or a free perfected divine action on the external world; for with our present means any such action is impossible. That is why you feel that the vital movement gives all the energy one can need, that all things are possible by this energy and that you can get with it any experience you like, whether good or bad, of the ordinary or of the spiritual life, and that also is why, when this energy comes, you feel power pervading the body-consciousness and its matter. As for the contact with the Mother in the vital and your sense of the fine, the magnificent experience it was,that too is natural and right; for the vital, no less than the psychic and every other part of the being, has to feel the Divine Mother and give itself entirely to her.
  But this must always be remembered that the vital being and the life-force in man are separated from the Divine Light and, so separated, they are an instrument for any power that can take hold of them, illumined or obscure, divine or undivine. Ordinarily, the vital energy serves the common obscure or half-conscious movements of the human mind and human life, its normal ideas, interests, passions and desires. But it is possible for the vital energy to increase beyond the ordinary limits and, if so increased, it can attain an impetus, an intensity, an excitation or sublimation of its force by which it can become, is almost bound to become an instrument either of divine powers, the powers of the gods, or of Asuric forces. Or, if there is no settled central control in the nature, its action can be a confused mixture of these opposites, or in an inconsequent oscillation serve now one and now the other. It is not enough then to have a great vital energy acting in you; it must be put in contact with the higher consciousness, it must be surrendered to the true control, it must be placed under the government of the Divine. That is why there is sometimes felt a contempt for the action of the vital force or a condemnation of it, because it has an insufficient light and control and is wedded to an ignorant undivine movement. That also is why there is the necessity of opening to inspiration and power from a higher source. The vital energy by itself leads nowhere, runs in chequered, often painful and ruinous circles, takes even to the precipice, because it has no right guidance; it must be connected with the dynamic power of the higher consciousness and with the Divine Force acting through it for a great and luminous purpose.
  --
  Your former sadhana was mostly on the vital plane. The experiences of the vital plane are very interesting to the sadhak but they are mixed, i.e. not all linked with the higher Truth. A greater, purer and firmer basis for the sadhana has to be established the psychic basis. For that reason all the old experiences are stopped. The heart has to be made the centre and through bhakti and aspiration you have to bring forward the psychic being and enter into close touch with the Divine Shakti. If you can do this, your sadhana will begin again with a better result.
  ***
  --
  Your difficulty in getting rid of the aboriginal in your nature will remain so long as you try to change your vital part by the sole or main strength of your mind and mental will, calling in at most an indefinite and impersonal divine Power to aid you. It is an old difficulty which has never been radically solved in life itself because it has never been met in the true way. In many ways of Yoga it does not so supremely matter because the aim is not a transformed life but withdrawal from life. When that is the object of an endeavour, it may be sufficient to keep the vital down by a mental and moral compulsion, or else it may be stilled and kept lying in a kind of sleep and quiescence. There are some even who allow it to run and exhaust itself if it can while its possessor professes to be untouched and unconcerned by it; for it is only old Nature running on by a past impetus and will drop off with the fall of the body. When none of these solutions can be attained, the sadhaka sometimes simply leads a double inner life, divided between his spiritual experiences and his vital weaknesses to the end, making the most of his better part, making as little as may be of the outer being. But none of these methods will do for our purpose. If you want a true mastery and transformation of the vital movements, it can be done only on condition you allow your psychic being, the soul in you, to awake fully, to establish its rule and, opening all to the permanent touch of the divine Shakti, impose its own way of pure devotion, whole-hearted aspiration and complete uncompromising urge to all that is divine on the mind and heart and vital nature. There is no other way and it is no use hankering after a more comfortable path. Nnya panth vidyateyanya.
  ***

2.1.3 - Wrong Movements of the Vital, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It would make it easier if you could get rid of certain fixed ideas and of the habitual reaction of depression or despair when these recurrences come. For instance, you ought to throw away once for all this idea of Xs malediction; it is a thing of the past and it is only the physical minds memory of it that gives it some appearance of survival. The difficulties we are now meeting have nothing to do with X; they are part only of the necessity of conquest over the habits of the physical consciousness and he has nothing to do there and no influence of any kind whatever. Also dismiss any question about the possibility of conversion of your vital being; you should see rather that it is certain and not merely possible. This idea of identification with the dark Shakti is also another old notion which you ought to root out without cherishing any least trace of it. It has no meaning on the plane of the physical and vital physical consciousness where the whole work is now going on and to nourish any such ideas can only hamper your progress. Finally, when there are these recurrences, do not allow yourself to be depressed by them, but simply observe and stand back and call in the higher force with the full confidence that these are mechanical recurrences and in substance nothing morehowever strong they may seem in appearance. The principle of mechanical repetition is very strong in the material nature, so strong that it makes one easily think that it is incurable. That however is only a trick of the forces of this material inconscience; it is by creating this impression that they try to endure. If, on the contrary, you remain firm, refuse to be depressed or discouraged and, even in the moment of attack, affirm the certainty of eventual victory, the victory itself will come much more easily and sooner.
  ***

2.1.4 - The Lower Vital Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  1) A certain vanity and arrogance and self-assertive rajasic vehemence which in this smaller vital being are, for those who have a pronounced strength in these parts, the deformation of the vital force and habit of leading and domination that certain qualities in the higher vital gave them. This is accompanied by an excessive amour-propre which creates the necessity of making a figure, maintaining by any means position and prestige, even of posturing before others, influencing, controlling or helping them, claiming the part of a superior sadhaka, one with greater knowledge and with occult powers. The larger vital being itself has to give up its powers and capacities to the Divine Shakti from whom they come and must use them only as the Mothers instrument and according to her directions; if it intervenes with the claim of its ego and puts itself between her and the work or between her and other sadhakas, then whatever its natural power, it deviates from the true way, spoils the work, brings in adverse forces and wrong movements and does harm to those whom it imagines it is helping. When these things are transferred to the smallness of the lower vital nature and the external personality and take lower and pettier forms, they become still more false to the Truth, incongruous, grotesque, and at the same time can be viciously harmful, though in a smaller groove. There is no better way of calling in hostile forces into the general work or of vitiating and exposing to their influence ones own sadhana. On a smaller scale these defects of vanity, arrogance and rajasic violence are present in most human natures. They take other forms, but are then also a great obstacle to any true spiritual change.
  2) Disobedience and indiscipline. This lower part of the being is always random, wayward, self-assertive and unwilling to accept the imposition on it of any order and discipline other than its own idea or impulse. Its defects even from the beginning stand in the way of the efforts of the higher vital to impose on the nature a truly regenerating tapasya. This habit of disobedience and disregard of discipline is so strong that it does not always need to be deliberate; the response to it seems to be immediate, irresistible and instinctive. Thus obedience to the Mother is repeatedly promised or professed, but the action done or the course followed is frequently the very opposite of the profession or promise. This constant indiscipline is a radical obstacle to the sadhana and the worst possible example to others.
  --
  This Yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasya needed too constant and intense. It cannot be done if there is a petulant self-assertion of the ideas of the human mind or wilful indulgence of the demands and instincts and pretensions of the lowest part of the being, commonly justified under the name of human nature. It cannot be done if you insist on identifying these lowest things of the Ignorance with the divine Truth or even the lesser truth permissible on the way. It cannot be done if you cling to your past self and its old mental, vital and physical formations and habits; one has continually to leave behind his past selves and to see, act and live from an always higher and higher conscious level. It cannot be done if you insist on freedom for your human mind and vital ego. All the parts of the human being are entitled to express and satisfy themselves in their own way at their own risk and peril, if he so chooses, as long as he leads the ordinary life. But to enter into a path of Yoga whose whole object is to substitute for these human things the law and power of a greater Truth and the whole heart of whose method is surrender to the Divine Shakti, and yet to go on claiming this so-called freedom which is no more than a subjection to certain ignorant cosmic Forces, is to indulge in a blind contradiction and to claim the right to lead a double life.
  Least of all can this Yoga be done if those who profess to be its sadhakas continue always to make themselves centres, instruments or spokesmen of the forces of the Ignorance which oppose, deny and ridicule its very principle and object. On one side there is the supramental realisation, the overshadowing and descending power of the supramental Divine, the light and force of a far greater Truth than any yet realised on the earth, something therefore beyond what the little human mind and its logic regard as the only permanent realities, something whose nature and way and process of development here it cannot conceive or perceive by its own inadequate instruments or judge by its puerile standards; in spite of all opposition this is pressing down for manifestation in the physical consciousness and the material life. On the other side is this lower vital nature with all its pretentious arrogance, ignorance, obscurity, dullness or incompetent turbulence, standing for its own prolongation, standing against the descent, refusing to believe in any real reality or real possibility of a supramental or suprahuman consciousness and creation or, still more absurd, demanding, if it exists at all, that it should conform to its own little standards, seizing greedily upon everything that seems to disprove it, denying the presence of the Divine for it knows that without that presence the work is impossible,affirming loudly its own thoughts, judgments, desires, instincts, and, if these are contradicted, avenging itself by casting abroad doubt, denial, disparaging criticism, revolt and disorder. These are the two things now in presence between which every one will have to choose.

2.14 - The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Divinity within of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness ever living within us and the conscious instrument of its light and power and joy and beauty. Aware of the Divine as the Master of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his Shakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her rule of light and power within us. Our action will not then be mastered by our vital impulse or governed by a mental standard, for she acts according to the permanent yet plastic truth of things, - not that which the mind constructs, but the higher, deeper and subtler truth of each movement and circumstance as it is known to the supreme knowledge and demanded by the supreme will in the universe. The liberation of the will follows upon the liberation in knowledge and is its dynamic consequence; it is knowledge that purifies, it is truth that liberates: evil is the fruit of a spiritual ignorance and it will disappear only by the growth of a spiritual consciousness and the light of spiritual knowledge. The division of our being from the being of others can only be healed by removing the divorce of our nature from the inner soul-reality, by abolishing the veil between our becoming and our self-being, by bridging the remoteness of
  The Origin of Falsehood and Evil
  --
  But the last division to be removed is the scission between this Nature and the Supernature which is the Self-Power of the Divine Existence. Even before the dynamic Knowledge Ignorance is removed, while it still remains as an inadequate instrumentation of the spirit, the supreme Shakti or Supernature can work through us and we can be aware of her workings; but it is then by a modification of her light and power so that it can be received and assimilated by the inferior nature of the mind, life and body. But this is not enough; there is needed an entire remoulding of what we are into a way and power of the divine Supernature. The integration of our being cannot be complete unless there is this transformation of the dynamic action; there must be an uplifting and change of the whole mode of Nature itself and not only some illumination and transmutation of the inner ways of the being. An eternal TruthConsciousness must possess us and sublimate all our natural modes into its own modes of being, knowledge and action; a spontaneous truth-awareness, truth-will, truth-feeling, truthmovement, truth-action can then become the integral law of our nature.
  END OF BOOK TWO, PART I

2.15 - On the Gods and Asuras, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindo: Para Shakti is not Supermind. There are above the Supramental Power other ranges like the Ananda Consciousness. You can say that the Supermind is the organising power of the Divine which is behind all this manifestation. It is the Supermind which supports the whole universal movement.
   Disciple: Can one say that the Supramental Power is also "one's own" power in essence as we say of mind "my mind"? Can I speak of "my supermind"?
  --
   Disciple: Is it not possible for man to manifest the whole of Para Shakti? What is the Ananda plane in life?
   Sri Aurobindo: He may be able to manifest it in the future, when the Supermind has become a stable achievement. But the present organisation of human nature is quite unable to bear it. It is too infinite for man. I am not speaking of the mental infinite. I am speaking of the Sachchidananda on its own highest level. You can imagine what would happen to man if the whole of the infinite Ananda came down upon him, when you know that even a drop of it coming to the mind sends him flying and dancing and crying! When only a particle of Ananda descends you get the paramahasa, jaa, bla, unmatta or pica types, i.e., the inert, the childlike, the mad or perverse, and the devilish.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: There is the Supreme beyond description, who manifests himself as Sat, Chit, Ananda; in this Sat is the universal individuality of beings. Then comes the Supermind with its four Maha Shaktis, great powers. In the Supermind unity is the governing principle.
   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.

2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But if we thus get back to the biune or the dual reality of Being and Consciousness, we can either suppose with Vedanta one original Being or with Sankhya a plurality of beings to whom Consciousness or some Energy to which we attribute consciousness presents its structures. If a plurality of separate original beings alone is real, then, since each would be or create its own world in its own consciousness, the difficulty is to account for their relations in a single identical universe; there must be a one Consciousness or one Energy, - corresponding to the Sankhya idea of a single Prakriti which is the field of experience of many like Purushas, - in which they meet in an identical mind-constructed universe. This theory of things has the advantage of accounting for the multitude of souls and multitude of things and the oneness in diversity of their experience, while at the same time it gives a reality to the separate spiritual growth and destiny of the individual being. But if we can suppose a One Consciousness, or a One Energy, creating a multitude of figures of itself and accommodating in its world a plurality of beings, there is no difficulty in supposing a one original Being who supports or expresses himself in a plurality of beings, - souls or spiritual powers of his one-existence; it would follow also that all objects, all the figures of consciousness would be figures of the Being. It must then be asked whether this plurality and these figures are realities of the one Real Existence, or representative personalities and images only, or symbols or values created by Mind to represent It. This would depend largely on whether it is only Mind as we know it that is in action or a deeper and greater Consciousness, of which Mind is a surface instrument, executrix of its initiations, medium of its manifestations. If it is the former, the universe constructed and seen by Mind can only have a subjective or symbolic or representative reality: if the latter, then the universe and its natural beings and objects can be true realities of the One Existence, forms or powers of its being manifested by its force of being. Mind would be only an interpreter between the universal Reality and the manifestations of its creative Consciousness-Force, Shakti, Prakriti, Maya.
  It is clear that a Mind of the nature of our surface intelligence can be only a secondary power of existence. For it bears the stamp of incapacity and ignorance as a sign that it is derivative and not the original creatrix; we see that it does not know or understand the objects it perceives, it has no automatic control of them; it has to acquire a laboriously built knowledge and controlling power. This initial incapacity could not be there if these objects were the Mind's own structures, creations of its self-Power. It may be that this is so because individual mind has only a frontal and derivative power and knowledge and there is a universal Mind that is whole, endowed with omniscience, capable of omnipotence. But the nature of Mind as we know it is an Ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is a knower of fractions and worker of divisions striving to arrive at a sum, to piece together a whole, - it is not possessed of the essence of things or their totality: a universal Mind of the same character might know the sum of its divisions by force of its universality, but it would still lack the essential knowledge, and without the essential knowledge there could be no true integral knowledge.

2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindo: Both. The physical mind has these things doubt, etc. and they come up at one time or another. And by contact with other people also faith gets obscured. I know a shocking instance in the Ashram. A truthful man came here. A sadhak told him that speaking the truth always is a superstition. One must be free to say what one likes. And then there is another instance of a sadhak who said that sex-indulgence is no hindrance to Yoga, it can be allowed and everyone must have his Shakti. When such ideas are prevalent no wonder that they cast a bad influence on others.
   Disciple: Such people ought to be quarantined.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Kundalini is, of course, the Tantrik idea: the Shakti lying coiled in Muladhara awakes, rises up and carries the consciousness upward opening all the chakras up to Brahmarandhra and then meets the Brahman, and then the descent begins. The Tantrik process is more technical.
   It is curious to see the action of the Force in some cases. Some feel as if a drilling were being done in the brain. Some people can't hold the Force in. They sway from side to side, make peculiar sounds. I remember a man practising Pranayama rigorously and making horrible sounds. I did not hear of his getting any good results. Sometimes the Force raises up what lies below in the lower nature in order to be able to deal with it.

2.17 - The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The unity of God and Nature cannot fail to manifest itself to him: for he finds in the end that it is the Absolute who is all these relativities; he sees that it is the Spirit of whom every other principle is a manifestation; he discovers that it is the Self who has become all these becomings; he feels that it is the Shakti or Power of being and consciousness of the Lord of all beings which is Nature and is acting in the cosmos. Thus in the progress of our self-knowledge we arrive at that by the discovery of which all is known as one with our self and by the possession of which all is possessed and enjoyed in our own self-existence.
  Equally, by virtue of this unity, the knowledge of the universe must lead the mind of man to the same large revelation. For he cannot know Nature as Matter and Force and Life without being driven to scrutinise the relation of mental consciousness with these principles, and once he knows the real nature of mind, he must go inevitably beyond every surface appearance.

2.17 - The Soul and Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The first of these principles in importance is the duality -- which resolves itself into a unity -- of Purusha and prakriti of which we have had occasion to speak in the Yoga of Works, but which is of equal importance for the Yoga of knowledge. This division was made most clearly by the old Indian philosophies; but it bases itself upon the eternal fact of practical duality in unity upon which the world-manifestation is founded. It is given different names according to our view of the universe. The Vedantins spoke of the Self and Maya, meaning according to their predilections by the Self the Immutable and by Maya the power the Self has of imposing on itself the cosmic illusion, or by the Self the Divine Being and by Maya the nature of conscious-being and the conscious-force by which the Divine embodies himself in soul-forms and forms of things. Others spoke of Ishwara and Shakti, the Lord and His force. His cosmic power. The analytic philosophy of the Sankhyas affirmed their eternal duality without any possibility of oneness, accepting only relations of union and separation by which the cosmic action of prakriti begins, proceeds or ceases for the Purusha; for the Purusha is an inactive conscious existence, -it is the Soul the same in itself and immutable forever, -- prakriti the active force of Nature which by its motion creates and maintains and by its sinking into rest dissolves the phenomenon of the cosmos. Leaving aside these philosophical distinctions, we come to the original psychological experience from which all really take their start, that there are two elements in the existence of living beings, of human beings at least if not of all cosmos, -- a dual being. Nature and the soul.
  This duality is self-evident. Without any philosophy at all, by the mere force of experience it is what we can all perceive, although we may not take the trouble to define. Even the most thoroughgoing materialism which denies the soul or resolves it into a more or less illusory result of natural phenomena acting upon some ill-explained phenomenon of the physical brain which we call consciousness or the mind, but which is really no more than a sort of complexity of nervous spasms, cannot get rid of the practical fact of this duality. It does not matter at all how it came about; the fact is not only there, it determines our whole existence, it is the one fact which is really important to us as human beings with a will and an intelligence and a subjective existence which makes all our happiness and our suffering. The whole problem of life resolves itself into this one question, -- "What are we to do with this soul and nature set face to face with each other, this Nature, this personal and cosmic activity, which tries to impress itself upon the soul, to possess, control, determine it, and this soul which feels that in some mysterious way it has a freedom, a control over itself, a responsibility for what it is and does, and tries therefore to turn upon Nature, its own and the world's, and to control, possess, enjoy, or even, it may be, reject and escape from her?" In order to answer that question we have to know, -- to know what the soul can do, to know what it call do with itself, to know too what it can do with Nature and the world. The whole of human philosophy, religion, science is really nothing but an attempt to get at the right data upon which it will be possible to answer the question and solve, as satisfactorily as our knowledge will allow, the problem of our existence.
  --
  Purusha and prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha: the Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti, -- that is prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects, unrolling the worlds and viewing them, acting in them and upholding the action, executing works and giving the sanction without which the force of Nature cannot act, executing and controlling the knowledge and the will and knowing and controlling the determinations of the knowledge-force and will-force, ministering to the enjoyment and enjoying, -- the Soul possessor, observer, knower, lord of Nature, Nature expressing the being, executing the will, satisfying the self-knowledge, ministering to the delight of being of the soul. There we have, founded on the very nature of being, the supreme and the universal relation of prakriti with Purusha. The absolute joy of the soul in itself and, based upon that, the absolute joy of the soul in Nature are the divine fulfilment of the relation.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindo: In principle it is true; for the Supreme Shakti is the Divine Force and all the Gods are from Her. It is said that even Shiva cannot act unless She gives him power to act.
   Disciple: Harnath had his decisive spiritual experience in Kashmir where, it is related, Gauranga came to him and gave him his 'mission'. But his later disciples regard him as equal to Gauranga.
  --
   The first time she came to see me, she said, "I hear, Mr. Ghose, you are a worshipper of Shakti?" There was no non-violence about her. She had an artistic side too. Khaserao Jadhav and I went to receive her at the station. When she saw the Dharmashala near the station, she exclaimed, "How beautiful!" But looking at the College building she cried out, "How ugly!" Later Khaserao said, "She must be a little mad!"
   Disciple: The College building is supposed to be an imitation of Eton.

2.19 - Feb-May 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindo: You can tell her that what she calls losing of consciousness is its movement inwards. It is rather unusual to get these experiences at the outset. Usually, one takes months and months to make the mind quiet and she did it at the first sitting. The lightning strokes is the action of the Higher Power or Yoga Shakti, to make the Adhar fit for Yoga. All these things show that she has capacity for the Yoga. But she must get rid of fear. Otherwise, all the experiences will stop. The letter shows that her inner mind is ready but her vital and the physical are not one is full of fear and the other suffers from bad health, as she herself says. This produces a conflict in the being which is not desirable. It may be better for her not to take up Yoga seriously until she has restored her health.
   But the most important thing is to get rid of fear.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes. Each collective being is a projection of the Cosmic Spirit for a particular purpose. You can speak of it as a particular Shakti.
   Disciple: How does the collective being or Shakti work?
   Sri Aurobindo: It identifies itself with a particular form here of a group of individuals. There is a mutual action: it acts on the individual and the individual acts on it by manifesting it.

2.2.01 - Work and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A persistent faith which no circumstance or event can break. If difficulties occur, they raise not mental doubts or an inert acquiescence, but the firm belief that, with sincere consecration, the Divine Shakti will remove the difficulties, and with this belief a greater turning to her and dependence on her for that purpose. When there is full faith and consecration, there comes also a receptivity to the Force which makes one do the right thing and take the right means and then circumstances adapt themselves and the result is visible.
  To arrive at this condition the important thing is a persistent aspiration, call and self-offering, and a will to reject all in oneself or around that stands in the way. Difficulties there will always be at the beginning and for as long a time as is necessary for the change; but they are bound to disappear if they are met by a settled faith, will and patience.
  --
  All I can suggest to him is to practise some kind of Karmayogaremembering the Supreme in all his actions from the smallest to the greatest, doing them with a quiet mind and without ego-sense or attachment and offering them to Him as a sacrifice. He may also try or aspire to feel the presence of the Divine Shakti behind the world and its forces, distinguish between the lower nature of the Ignorance and the higher divine nature whose character is absolute calm, peace, power, Light and Bliss and aspire to be raised and led gradually from the lower to the higher.
  If he can do this, he will become fit in time to dedicate himself to the Divine and lead a wholly spiritual life.

2.2.03 - The Divine Force in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If you mean by failure the weakness of the body, it is due probably to your having unduly strained it in obedience to rajasic vital impulses, an effect which was increased by vital relapses into tamas and the struggle of the vital attacks you had. But also it often happens even in the ordinary course of Yoga that physical strength is replaced by a Yogic strength or Yogic life force which keeps up the body and makes it work, but in the absence of this force the body is denuded of power, inert and tamasic. This can only be remedied by the whole being opening to Yoga Shakti in each of its planesYogic mind force, Yogic life force, Yogic body force.
  ***

2.21 - Towards the Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If we ask why this reservation, why this indulgence to the dynamic principle when our object is to become the pure self and the pure self is described as inactive, akarta, the answer is that that inactivity and divorce of self from Nature are not the whole truth of our spiritual release. Self and Nature are in the end one thing; a total and perfect spirituality makes us one with all the Divine in self and in nature. In fact this becoming Brahman, this assumption into the self of eternal silence, brahma-bhuya, is not all our objective, but only the necessary immense base for a still greater and more marvellous divine becoming, madbhava. And to get to that greatest spiritual perfection we have indeed to be immobile in the self, silent in all our members, but also to act in the power, Shakti, Prakriti, the true and high force of the Spirit. And if we ask how a simultaneity of what seem to be two opposites is possible, the answer is that that is the very nature of a complete spiritual being; always it has this double poise of the Infinite. The impersonal self is silent; we too must be inwardly silent, impersonal, withdrawn into the spirit.
  The impersonal self looks on all action as done not by it but by Prakriti; it regards with a pure equality all the working of her qualities, modes and forces: the soul impersonalised in the self must similarly regard all our actions as done not by itself but by the qualities of Prakriti; it must be equal in all things, sarvatra.
  --
  There is no longer the lower blind and limping action of the ego and the three gunas, but instead the vast self-determining movement of an infinite spiritual Force, a free immeasurable Shakti.
  All Nature becomes the power of the one Divine and all action his action through the individual as channel and instrument. In place of the ego there comes forward conscious and manifest the true spiritual individual in the freedom of his real nature, in the power of his supernal status, in the majesty and splendour of his eternal kinship to the Divine, an imperishable portion of the supreme Godhead, an indestructible power of the supreme Prakriti, mamaivamsah. sanatanah., para prakr.tir jva-bhuta. The soul of man then feels itself to be one in a supreme spiritual impersonality with the Purushottama and in its universalised personality a manifest power of the Godhead. Its knowledge is a light of his knowledge; its will is a force of his will; its unity with all in the universe is a play of his eternal oneness. It is in this double realisation, it is in this union of two sides of an ineffable Truth of existence by either and both of which man can approach and enter into his own infinite being, that the liberated man has to live and act and feel and determine or rather have determined for him by a greatest power of his supreme self his relations with all and the inner and outer workings of his spirit. And in that unifying realisation adoration, love and devotion are not only still possible, but are a large, an inevitable and a crowning portion of the highest experience. The One who eternally becomes the Many, the Many who in their apparent division are still eternally one, the Highest who displays in us this secret and mystery of existence, not dispersed by his multiplicity, not limited by his oneness, - this is the integral knowledge, this is the reconciling experience which makes one capable of liberated action, muktasya karma.
  --
  Nothing can be more positive than the Gita's statement in this matter. "And by doing also all actions always lodged in Me he attains by my grace the eternal and imperishable status." This liberating action is of the character of works done in a profound union of the will and all the dynamic parts of our nature with the Divine in ourself and the cosmos. It is done first as a sacrifice with the idea still of our self as the doer. It is done next without that idea and with a perception of the Prakriti as the sole doer. It is done last with the knowledge of that Prakriti as the supreme power of the Divine and a renunciation, a surrender of all our actions to him with the individual as a channel only and an instrument. Our works then proceed straight from the Self and Divine within us, are a part of the indivisible universal action, are initiated and performed not by us but by a vast transcendent Shakti. All that we do is done for the sake of the Lord seated in the heart of all, for the Godhead in the individual and for the fulfilment of his will in us, for the sake of the Divine in the world, for the good of all beings, for the fulfilment of the world action and the world purpose, or in one word for the sake of the Purushottama and done really by him through his universal Shakti. These divine works, whatever their form or outward character, cannot bind, but are rather a potent means for rising out of this lower Prakriti of the three gunas to the perfection of the supreme, divine and spiritual nature. Disengaged from these mixed and limited dharmas we escape into the immortal Dharma which comes upon us when we make ourselves one in all our consciousness and action with the Purushottama. That oneness here brings with it the power to rise there into the immortality beyond Time. There we shall exist in his eternal transcendence.
  Thus these eight verses carefully read in the light of the knowledge already given by the Teacher are a brief, but still a comprehensive indication of the whole essential idea, the entire central method, all the kernel of the complete Yoga of the Gita.

2.22 - 1941-1943, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   Disciple: The feminine aspect will also have to include the Tantric idea of the Shakti.
   Sri Aurobindo: Quite so.

2.22 - The Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   must be broken and we must feel ourselves one with all and infinite. But the ego is not the real person; when it has been dissolved there still remains the spiritual individual, there is still the eternal Jiva. The ego limitation disappears and the soul lives in a profound unity with the One and feels its universal unity with all things. And yet it is still our own soul that enjoys this expanse and oneness. The universal action, even when it is felt as the action of one and the same energy in all, even when it is experienced as the initiation and movement of the Ishwara, still takes different forms in different souls of men, amsah. sanatanah., and a different turn in their nature. The light of spiritual knowledge, the manifold universal Shakti, the eternal delight of being stream into us and around us, concentrate in the soul and flow out on the surrounding world from each as from a centre of living spiritual consciousness whose circumference is lost in the infinite. More, the spiritual individual remains as a little universe of divine existence at once independent and inseparable from the whole infinite universe of the divine self-manifestation of which we see a petty portion around us. A portion of the Transcendent, creative, he creates his own world around him even while he retains this cosmic consciousness in which are all others. If it be objected that this is an illusion which must disappear when he retreats into the transcendent Absolute, there is after all no very certain certainty in that matter. For it is still the soul in man that is the enjoyer of this release, as it was the living spiritual centre of the divine action and manifestation; there is something more than the mere self-breaking of an illusory shell of individuality in the Infinite. This mystery of our existence signifies that what we are is not only a temporary name and form of the One, but as we may say, a soul and spirit of the Divine Oneness. Our spiritual individuality of which the ego is only a misleading shadow and projection in the ignorance has or is a truth that persists beyond the ignorance; there is something of us that dwells for ever in the supreme nature of the Purushottama, nivasis.yasi mayi. This is the profound comprehensiveness of the teaching of the Gita that while it recognises the truth of the universalised impersonality into which we enter by the extinction of ego, brahma-nirvan.a,
  550

2.23 - The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Thus the being of Vijnana is in all its activities a play of perfected knowledge-power, will-power, delight-power, raised to a higher than the mental, vital and bodily level. All-pervasive, universalised, freed from egoistic personality and individuality, it is the play of a higher Self, a higher consciousness and therefore a higher force and higher delight of being. All that acts in the Vijnana in the purity, in the right, in the truth of the superior or divine prakriti. Its powers may often seem to be what are caned in ordinary Yogic parlance Siddhis, by the Europeans occult powers, shunned and dreaded by devotees and by many Yogins as snares, stumbling-blocks, diversions from the true seeking after the Divine. But they have that character and are dangerous here because they are sought in the lower being, abnormally, by the ego for an egoistic satisfaction. In the Vijnana they are neither occult nor Siddhis, but the open, unforced and normal play of its nature. The Vijnana is the Truth-power and Truth-action of the divine Being in its divine identities, and, when this acts through the individual lifted to the gnostic plane, it fulfils itself unperverted, without fault or egoistic reaction, without diversion from the possession of the Divine. There the individual is no longer the ego, but the free Jiva domiciled in the higher divine nature of which he is a portion, paraf prakrtir jivabhita, the nature of the supreme and universal Self seen indeed in the play of multiple individuality but without the veil of ignorance, with self-knowledge, in its multiple oneness, in the truth of its divine Shakti.
  In the Vijnana the right relation and action of Purusha and prakriti are found, because there they become unified and the Divine is no longer veiled in Maya. All is his action. The Jiva no longer says, "I think, I act, I desire, I feel"; he does not even say like the Sadhaka striving after unity but before he has reached it, "As appointed by Thee seated in my heart, I act". For the heart, the centre of the mental consciousness is no longer the centre of origination but only a blissful channel. He is rather aware of the Divine seated above, lord of all, adhisthita, as well as acting within him. And seated himself in that higher being, parardhe, paramasyam paravati, he can say truly and boldly, "God himself by his prakriti knows, acts, loves, takes delight through my individuality and its figures and fulfils there in its higher and divine measures the multiple lila which the Infinite for ever plays in the universality which is himself for ever."

2.24 - Gnosis and Ananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  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.
  The life-soul and life-consciousness in man, pranamaya purusa, can in the same way directly reflect and enter into the self of Sachchidananda by a large and splendid and blissful reflection of the Soul in universal Life or by losing its separate sense of life and existence in the vast Self within or without it. The result is either a profound state of sheer self-oblivion or else an action driven irresponsibly by the life nature, an exalted enthusiasm of self-abandonment to the great world-energy in its vitalistic dance. The outer being lives in a God-possessed frenzy careless of itself and the world, inmattavat, or with an entire disregard whether of the conventions and proprieties of fitting human action or of the harmony and rhythms of a greater Truth. It acts as the unbound vital being, pisacavat, the divine maniac or else the divine demoniac. Here too there is no mastery or supreme sublimation of nature. There is only a joyful static possession by the Self within us and an unregulated dynamic possession by the physical and the vital Nature without us.
  --
  But the gnostic soul, the vijnanammaya purusa, is the first to participate not only in the freedom, but in the power and sovereignty of the Eternal. For it receives the fullness, it has the sense of plenitude of the Godhead in its action; it shares the free, splendid and royal march of the Infinite, is a vessel of the original knowledge, the immaculate power, the inviolable bliss, transmutes all life into the eternal Light and the eternal Fire and the eternal Wine of the nectar. It possesses the infinite of the Self and it possesses the infinite of Nature. It does not so much lose as find its nature self in the self of the Infinite. On the other planes to which the mental being has easier access, man finds God in himself and himself in God; he becomes divine in essence rather than in person or nature. In the gnosis, even the mentalised gnosis, the Divine Eternal possesses, changes and stamps the human symbol, envelops and partly finds himself in the person and nature. The mental being at most receives or reflects that which is true, divine and eternal; the gnostic soul reaches a true identity, possesses the spirit and power of the truth-Nature. In the gnosis the dualism of Purusha and prakriti, Soul and Nature, two separate powers complementary to each other, the great truth of the Sankhyas founded on the practical truth of our present natural existence, disappears in their biune entity, the dynamic mystery of the occult Supreme. The Truth-being is the Hara-Gauri481 of the Indian iconological symbol; it is the double Power masculine-feminine born from and supported by the supreme Shakti of the Supreme.
  Therefore the truth-soul does not arrive at self-oblivion in the Infinite; it comes to an eternal self-possession in the Infinite. Its action is not irregular; it is a perfect control in an infinite freedom. In the lower planes the soul is naturally subject to Nature and the regulating principle is found in the lower nature; all regulation there depends on the acceptance of a strict subjection to the law of the finite. If the soul on these planes withdraws from that law into the liberty of the infinite, it loses its natural centre and becomes centreless in a cosmic infinitude, it forfeits the living harmonic principle by which its external being was till then regulated and it finds no other. The personal nature or what is left of it merely continues mechanically for a while its past movements, or it dances in the gusts and falls of the universal energy that acts on the individual system rather than in that system, or it strays in the wild steps of an irresponsible ecstasy, or it remains inert and abandoned by the breath of the Spirit that was within it. If on the other hand the soul moves in its impulse of freedom towards the discovery of another and divine centre of control through which the Infinite can consciously govern its own action in the individual, it is moving towards the gnosis where that centre pre-exists, the centre of an eternal harmony and order. It is when he ascends above mind and life to the gnosis that the Purusha becomes the master of his own nature because subject only to supreme Nature. For there force or will is the exact counterpart, the perfect dynamis of the divine knowledge. And that knowledge is not merely the eye of the Witness, it is the immanent and compelling gaze 'of the Ishwara. Its luminous governing power, a power not to be hedged in or denied, imposes Its self-expressive force on all the action and makes true and radiant and au thentic and inevitable every movement and impulse.
  The gnosis does not reject the realisations of the lower planes; for it is not an annihilation or extinction, not a Nirvana but a sublime fulfilment of our manifested Nature. It possesses the first realisations under its own conditions after it has transformed them and made them elements of a divine order. The gnostic soul is the child, but the king-child;482 here is the royal and eternal childhood whose toys are the worlds and all universal Nature is the miraculous garden of the play that tires never. The gnosis takes up the condition of divine inertia; but this is no longer the inertia of the subject soul driven by Nature like a fallen leaf in the breath of the Lord. It is the happy passivity bearing an unimaginable intensity of action and Ananda of the Nature-Soul at once driven by the bliss of the mastering Purusha and aware of herself as the supreme Shakti above and around him and mastering and carrying him blissfully on her bosom for ever. This biune being of Purusha-prakriti is as if a flaming Sun and body of divine Light self-carried in its orbit by its own inner consciousness and power at one with the universal, at one with a supreme Transcendence. Its madness is a wise madness of Ananda, the incalculable ecstasy of a supreme consciousness and power vibrating with an infinite sense of freedom and intensity in its divine life-movements. Its action is supra-rational and therefore to the rational mind which has not the key it seems a colossal madness. And yet this that seems madness is a wisdom in action that only baffles the mind by the liberty and richness of its contents and the infinite complexity in fundamental simplicity of its motions, it is the very method of the Lord of the worlds, a thing no intellectual interpretation can fathom, -- a dance this also, a whirl of mighty energies, but the Master of the dance holds the hands of His energies and keeps them to the rhythmic order, the self-traced harmonic circles of his Rasa-Lila. The gnostic soul is not bound any more than the divine demoniac by the petty conventions and proprirties of the normal human life or the narrow rules through which it makes some shift to accommodate itself with the perplexing dualities of the lower nature and tries to guide its steps among the seeming contradictions of the world, to avoid its numberless stumbling-blocks and to foot with gingerly care around its dangers and pitfalls. The gnostic supramental life is abnormal to us because it is free to all the hardi-hoods and audacious delights of a soul dealing fearlessly and even violently with Nature, but yet it is the very normality of the infinite and all governed by the law of the Truth in its exact unerring process. It obeys the law of a self-possessed Knowledge, Love, Delight in an innumerable Oneness. It seems abnormal only because its rhythm is not measurable by the faltering beats of the mind, but yet it steps in a wonderful and transcendent measure.
  And what then is the necessity of a still higher step and what difference is there between the soul in gnosis and the soul in the Bliss? There is no essential difference, but yet a difference, because there is a transfer to another consciousness and a certain reversal in position, -- for each step of the ascent from Matter to the highest Existence there is a reversal of consciousness. The soul no longer looks up to something beyond it, but is in it and from it looks down on all that it was before. On all planes indeed the Ananda can be discovered because everywhere it exists and is the same. Even there is a repetition of the Ananda plane on each lower world of consciousness. But in the lower planes not only is it reached by a sort of dissolution into it of the pure mind or the life-sense or the physical awareness, but it is, as it were, itself diluted by the dissolved form of mind, life or matter held in the dilution and turned into a poor thinness wonderful to the lower consciousness but not comparable to its true intensities. The gnosis has on the contrary a dense light of essential consciousness483a in which the intense fullness of the Ananda can be. And when the form of gnosis is dissolved into the Ananda, it is not annulled altogether, but undergoes a natural change by which the soul is carried up into its last and absolute freedom; for it casts itself into the absolute existence of the spirit and is enlarged into its own entirely self-existent bliss infinitudes. The gnosis has the infinite and absolute as the conscious source, accompaniment, condition, standard, field and atmosphere of all its activities, it possesses it as its base, fount, constituent material, indwelling and inspiring Presence; but in its action it seems to stand out from it as its operation, as the rhythmical working of its activities, as a divine Maya483b or Wisdom-Formation of the Eternal. Gnosis is the divine Knowledge-Will of the divine Consciousness-Force; it is harmonic consciousness and action of prakriti-Purusha -- full of the delight of the divine existence. In the Ananda the knowledge goes back from these willed harmonies into pure self-consciousness, the will dissolves into pure transcendent force and both are taken up into the pure delight of the Infinite. The basis of the gnostic existence is the self-stuff and self-form of the Ananda.
  --
  The Purusha in mind, life and body is divided from Nature and in conflict with her. He labours to control and coerce what he can embody of her by his masculine force and is yet subject to her afflicting dualities and in fact her plaything from top to bottom, beginning to end. In the gnosis he is biune with her, finds as master of his own nature their reconciliation and harmony by their essential oneness even while he accepts an infinite blissful subjection, the condition of his mastery and his liberties, to the Supreme in his sovereign divine Nature. In the tops of the gnosis and in the Ananda he is one with the prakriti and no longer solely biune with her. There is no longer the baffling play of Nature with the soul in the Ignorance; all is the conscious play of the soul with itself and all its selves and the Supreme and the divine Shakti in its own and the infinite bliss nature. This is the supreme mystery, the highest secret, simple to our experience, however difficult and complex to our mental conceptions and the effort of our limited intelligence to understand what is beyond it. In the free infinity of the self-delight of Sachchidananda there is a play of the divine Child, a rasa lila of the infinite Lover, and its mystic soul-symbols repeat themselves in characters of beauty and movements and harmonies of delight in a timeless forever.
  author class:Sri Aurobindo

2.24 - The Message of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  "Next know that you are an eternal portion of the Eternal and the powers of your nature are nothing without him, nothing if not his partial self-expression. It is the Divine Infinite that is being progressively fulfilled in your nature. It is the supreme power-to-be, it is the Shakti of the Lord that shapes and takes shape in your swabhava. Give up then all sense that you are the doer; see the Eternal alone as the doer of the action. Let your natural being be an occasion, an instrument, a channel of power, a means of manifestation. Offer up your will to him and make it one with his eternal will: surrender all your actions in the silence of your self and spirit to the transcendent Master of your nature. This cannot be really done or done perfectly so long as there is any ego sense in you or any mental claim or vital clamour. Action done in the least degree for the sake of the ego or tinged with the desire and will of the ego is not a perfect sacrifice. Nor can this great thing be well and truly done so long as there is inequality anywhere or any stamp of ignorant shrinking and preference. But when there is a perfect equality to all works, results, things and persons, a surrender to the Highest and not to desire or ego, then the divine Will determines without stumbling or deflection and the divine Power executes freely without any nether interference or perverting reaction all works in the purity and safety of your transmuted nature. To allow
  588

2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Integral Yoga
   | 09-08-23 | Gokuldas: Nishkama karma, surrender, Yoga done by Divine Shakti |
   | 28-09-23 | Disciple: Open to Higher Power; peace, samata, knowledge |
  --
   | 21-09-25 | Narmadashankar Vyas: Fitness, Gayatri, calm, action of Shakti, meditation |
   | Chapter 2 | On Books and Letters |
  --
   | 25-11-24 | Yoga and marriage, sex, psychic union, wife as Shakti |
   | 21-01-25 | Yogic knowledge, politics and Yoga, call to Yoga |
  --
   | 18-05-26 | Having a Shakti; speed of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga; 'external' work, 'isms' |
   | 08-08-26 | Life on other planets; preconceived notions; present-day philosophy |
  --
   | 17-01-39 | Shakti; Bhakti; Impersonal and Personal God; Vishnu Purna; Veda, Tantra, Vedanta |
   | 19-01-39 | Problems of society, communes; propaganda, morality; psychic and evolution; saints and yogis; boons of Krishna and Shiva; Bhakti, Jnana, Buddhism |
  --
   | 24-02-39 | Mind and disease; collective or national being; nation as Shakti |
   | 25-02-39 | Satyagraha and students; labour strikes in Europe and India |

2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This is the first result, but the second is a free inflow of all kinds of spiritual experience, experience of the Self, experience of the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti, experience of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic forces and with the occult movements of universal Nature, a psychic sympathy and unity and inner communication and interchanges of all kinds with other beings and with Nature, illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love and devotion and spiritual joy and ecstasy, illuminations of the sense and the body by higher experience, illuminations of dynamic action in the truth and largeness of a purified mind and heart and soul, the certitudes of the divine light and guidance, the joy and power of the divine force working in the will and the conduct. These experiences are the result of an opening outward of the inner and inmost being and nature; for then there comes into play the soul's power of unerring inherent consciousness, its vision, its touch on things which is superior to any mental cognition; there is there, native to the psychic consciousness in its pure working, an immediate sense of the world and its beings, a direct inner contact with them and a direct contact with the Self and with the Divine, - a direct knowledge, a direct sight of Truth and of all truths, a direct penetrating spiritual emotion and feeling, a direct intuition of right will and right action, a power to rule and to create an order of the being not by the gropings of the superficial self, but from within, from the inner truth of self and things and the occult realities of Nature.
  Some of these experiences can come by an opening of the inner mental and vital being, the inner and larger and subtler mind and heart and life within us, without any full emergence of the soul, the psychic entity, since there too there is a power of direct contact of consciousness: but the experience might then be of a mixed character; for there could be an emergence not only of the subliminal knowledge but of the subliminal ignorance. An insufficient expansion of the being, a limitation by mental idea, by narrow and selective emotion or by the form of the temperament so that there would be only an imperfect self-creation and action and not the free soul-emergence, could easily occur. In the absence of any or of a complete psychic emergence, experiences of certain kinds, experiences of a greater knowledge and force, a surpassing of the ordinary limits, might lead to a magnified ego and even bring about instead of an outflowering of what is divine or spiritual an uprush of the titanic or demoniac, or might call in agencies and powers which, though not of this disastrous type, are of a powerful but inferior cosmic character. But the rule and guidance of the soul brings into all experience the tendency of light, of integration, of harmony and intimate rightness which is native to the psychic essence. A psychic or, more widely speaking, a psycho-spiritual transformation of this kind would be already a vast change of our mental human nature.

2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For the action of a new power of being in a higher range of consciousness might, even in its control on outer Nature, be extraordinarily effective, but only because of its light of vision and a consequent harmony or identification with the cosmic and transcendent Will; for it is when it becomes an instrumentation of a higher instead of a lower Power that the will of the being becomes free from a mechanical determinism by action and process of cosmic Mind-Energy, Life-Energy, Matter-Energy and an ignorant subjection to the drive of this inferior Nature. A power of initiation, even of an individual overseeing of world-forces could be there; but it would be an instrumental initiation, a delegated overseeing: the choice of the individual would receive the sanction of the Infinite because it was itself an expression of some truth of the Infinite. Thus the individuality would become more and more powerful and effective in proportion as it realised itself as a centre and formation of the universal and transcendent Being and Nature. For as the progression of the change proceeded, the energy of the liberated individual would be no longer the limited energy of mind, life and body, with which it started; the being would emerge into and put on - even as there would emerge in him and descend into him, assuming him into it - a greater light of Consciousness and a greater action of Force: his natural existence would be the instrumentation of a superior Power, an overmental and supramental Consciousness-Force, the power of the original Divine Shakti. All the processes of the evolution would be felt as the action of a supreme and universal Consciousness, a supreme and universal Force working in whatever way it chose, on whatever level, within whatever self-determined limits, a conscious working of the transcendent and cosmic Being, the action of the omnipotent and omniscient World-Mother raising the being into herself, into her supernature. In place of the Nature of Ignorance with the individual as its closed field and unconscious or half-conscious instrument, there would be a Super-Nature of the divine Gnosis and the individual soul would be its conscious, open and free field and instrument, a participant in its action, aware of its purpose and process, aware too of its own greater Self, the universal, the transcendent Reality, and of its own Person as illimitably one with that and yet an individual being of Its being, an instrument and a spiritual centre.
  A first opening towards this participation in an action of Supernature is a condition of the turn towards the last, the supramental transformation: for this transformation is the completion of a passage from the obscure harmony of a blind automatism with which Nature sets out to the luminous au thentic spontaneity, the infallible motion of the self-existent truth of the Spirit.

2.28 - Rajayoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This arrangement of the psychic body is reproduced in the physical with the spinal column as a rod and the ganglionic centres as the Chakras which rise up from the bottom of the column, where the lowest is attached, to the brain and find their summit in the brahmarandhra at the top of the skull. These Chakras or lotuses, however, are in physical man closed or only partly open, with the consequence that only such powers and only so much of them are active in him as are sufficient for his ordinary physical life, and so much mind and soul only is at play as will accord with its needs. This is the real reason, looked at from the mechanical point of view, why the embodied soul seems so dependent on the bodily and nervous life, -- though the dependence is neither so complete nor so real as it seems. The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake, -- therefore it is called the kundalini sakti, -- in the lowest of the Chakras, in the muladhara. When by Pranayama the division between the upper and lower Prana currents in the body is dissolved, this Kundalini is struck and awakened, it uncoils itself and begins to rise upward like a fiery serpent breaking open each lotus as it ascends until the Shakti meets Put less symbolically, in more philosophical though perhaps less profound language, this means that the real energy of our being is lying asleep and inconscient in the depths of our vital system, and is awakened by the practice of Pranayama. In its expansion it opens up all the centres of our psychological being in which reside the powers and the consciousness of what would now be called perhaps our subliminal self; therefore as each centre of power and consciousness is opened up, we get access to successive psychological planes and are able to put ourselves in communication with the worlds or cosmic states of being which correspond to them; all the psychic powers abnormal to physical man, but natural to the soul develop in us. Finally, at the summit of the ascension, this arising and expanding' energy meets with the superconscient self which sits concealed behind and above our physical and mental existence; this meeting leads to a profound Samadhi of union in which our waking consciousness loses itself in the superconscient. Thus by the thorough and unremitting practice of Pranayama the Hathayogin attains in his own way the psychic and spiritual results which are pursued through more directly psychical and spiritual methods in other Yogas. The one mental aid which he conjoins with it, is the use of the Mantra, sacred syllable, name or mystic formula which is of so much importance in the Indian systems of Yoga and common to them all. This secret of the power of the Mantra, the six Chakras and the Kundalini Shakti is one of the central truths of all that complex psycho-physical science and practice of which the Tantric philosophy claims to give us a rationale and the most complete compendium of methods. All religions and disciplines in India which use largely the psycho-physical method, depend more or less upon it for their practices.
  Rajayoga also uses the Pranayama and for the same principal psychic purposes as the Hathayoga, but being in its whole principle a psychical system, it employs it only as one stage in the series of its practices and to a very limited extent, for three or four large utilities. It does not start with Asana and Pranayarna, but insists first on a moral purification of the mentality. This preliminary is of supreme importance; without it the course of the rest of the Rajayoga is likely to be troubled, marred and full of unexpected mental, moral and physical perils.517 This moral purification is divided in the established system under two heads, five Yamas and five Niyamas. The first are rules of moral self-control in conduct such as truth-speaking, abstinence from injury or killing, from theft, etc.; but in reality these must be regarded as merely certain main indications of the general need of moral self-control and purity. Yama is, more largely, any self-discipline by which the rajasic egoism and its passions and desires in the human being are conquered and quieted into perfect cessation. The object is to create a moral calm, a void of the passions, and so prepare for the death of egoism in the rajasic human being. The Niyamas are equally a discipline of the mind by regular practices of which the highest is meditation on the divine Being, and their object is to create a sattwic calm, purity and preparation for concentration upon which the secure pursuance of the rest of the Yoga can be founded.
  It is here, when this foundation has been secured, that the practice of Asana and Pranayama come in and can then bear their perfect fruits. By itself the control of the mind and moral being only puts our normal consciousness into the right preliminary condition; it cannot bring about that evolution or manifestation of the higher psychic being which is necessary for the greater aims of Yoga. In order to bring about this manifestation the present nodus of the vital and physical body with the mental being has to be loosened and the way made clear for the ascent through the greater psychic being to the union with the superconscient Purusha. This can be done by Pranayama. Asana is used by the Rajayoga only in its easiest and most natural position, that naturally taken by the body when seated and gathered together, but with the back and head strictly erect and in a straight line, so that there may be no deflection of the spinal cord. The object of the latter rule is obviously connected with the theory of the six Chakras and the circulation of the vital energy between the muladhara and the brahmarahdhra. The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears the nervous system; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will according to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being; it gives us control of all the five habitual operations of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality are possible to the normal life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings into the waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Purusha on each of the ascending planes. Coupled with the use of the Mantra it brings the divine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadhi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method.
  Rajayogic concentration is divided into four stages; it commences with the drawing both of the mind and senses from outward things, proceeds to the holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of all other ideas and mental activities, then to the prolonged absorption of the mind in this object, finally, to the complete ingoing of the consciousness by which it is lost to all outward mental activity in, the oneness of Samadhi. The real object of this mental discipline is to draw away the mind from the outward and the mental world into union with the divine Being. Therefore in the first three stages use has to be made of some mental means or support by which the mind accustomed to run about from object to object, shall fix on one alone, and that one must be something which represents the idea of the Divine. It is usually a name or a form or a Mantra by which the thought can be fixed in the sole knowledge or adoration of the Lord. By this concentration on the idea the mind enters from the idea into its reality, into which it sinks silent, absorbed, unified. This is the traditional method. There are, however, others which are equally of a Rajayogic character, since they use the mental and psychical being as key. Some of them are directed rather to the quiescence of the mind than to its immediate absorption, as the discipline by which the mind is simply watched and allowed to exhaust its habit of vagrant thought in a purposeless running from which it feels all sanction, purpose and interest withdrawn, and that, more strenuous and rapidly effective, by which all outward-going thought is excluded and the mind forced to sink into itself where in its absolute quietude it can only reflect the pure Being or pass away into its superconscient existence. The method differs, the object and the result are the same.

2.3.01 - Aspiration and Surrender to the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - interpreted not as a complete surrender to the Divine Shakti, but as giving yourself up to anything that came, which might very well be a wrong movement of the lower vital Nature or even a hostile force.
  I have repeatedly said that this kind of passivity is not the meaning of surrender. You cannot surrender at the same time to the Divine Shakti and to the movements of the lower cosmic
  Nature. To allow everything as her movement is to contradict the very sense and object of this Yoga. To surrender to the

2.3.02 - The Supermind or Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - sarvam khalvidam brahma, Vasudevah. sarvam etc. Mind is an instrument of the Ignorance trying to know - Supermind is the Knower possessing knowledge because one with it and the known, therefore seeing all things in the Light of His own Truth, the light of their true Self which is He. It is a dynamic and not only a static Power, not only a Knowledge, but a Will according to Knowledge - there is a supramental Power or Shakti which can manifest directly its world of Light and Truth in which all is luminously based on the harmony and unity of the One, not disturbed by a veil of Ignorance or any disguise. The Supermind therefore does not transcend all manifestation, but it is above the triplicity of mind, life and matter which is our present experience of this manifestation.
  (4) The Overmind is a sort of delegation from the Supermind

2.3.03 - Integral Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the end it will be found that this Yoga cannot be carried through to its end by any effort of mind, life and body, any human psychological or physical process but only by the action of the supreme Shakti. But her way is at once too mysteriously direct and outwardly intricate, too great, too complete and subtle to be comprehensively followed, much more to be cut out and defined into a formula by our human intelligence.
  Man cannot by his own effort make himself more than man, but he can call down the divine Truth and its power to work in him. A descent of the Divine Nature can alone divinise the human receptacle. Self-surrender to a supreme transmuting

2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What is the Yoga Shakti? What is Yogic mind-force, Yogic life-force and Yogic body-force?
  In the Yogic consciousness one is not only aware of things, but of forces, not only of forces, but of the conscious being behind the forces. One is aware of all this not only in oneself but in the universe. There is a force which accompanies the growth of this new consciousness and at once grows with it and helps it to come about and to perfect itself. This force is the Yoga Shakti.
  It is here asleep and coiled up in all the centres of our inner being (chakras) and is at the base what is called in the Tantras the Kundalini Shakti. But it is also above us, above our head as the Divine Force - not there coiled up, involved, asleep, but awake, scient, potent, extended and wide; it is there waiting for manifestation and to this Force we have to open ourselves - to the power of the Mother. In the mind it manifests itself as a divine mind-force or a universal mind-force and it can do everything that the personal mind cannot do; it is then the Yogic mindforce. When it manifests and works in the vital or physical in the same way, it is then apparent as a Yogic life-force or a Yogic body-force. It can awake in all these forms, bursting outwards and upwards, extending itself into wideness from below; or it can descend and become there a definite power for things; it can pour downwards into the body, working, establishing its reign, extending into wideness from above, link the lowest in us with the highest above us, release the individual into a cosmic universality or into absoluteness and transcendence.
  23 March 1933
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  Divine Force or Shakti, the Power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.
  11 September 1934
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  You can write to him1 that the pressure he feels on his head is the pressure of the Mother's force (the force of the higher consciousness) preparing an opening through the three upper centres (brahmarandhra, base of sahasradala; inner mind centre in the forehead; and the heart or psychic-emotional centre). The feeling in the spine is due to a very slight flow of the current of the Shakti from above - the spine being the base of all the centres and the channel through which the Force tends most easily to flow from one centre to another (Sahasradala = the centre where the human or mental and the higher or spiritual
  15 September 1935 consciousness meet).
  --
  Put your faith in the Divine Shakti, set your mind at rest and let the Mother's Force work.
  26 August 1933
  --
  Divine Shakti and it is her work to press on this lower Nature to change. You can say that under the pressure, the Prakriti stumbles and is unable to reply perfectly and makes mistakes.
  But it is not the Mother who makes you do wrong movements or does the wrong movements in you - if you think that, you
  --
  There are two cosmic Forces - one the higher Cosmic Shakti which is a form of the Mother, the other a Power of the Ignorance. You have not to open to the latter, only to the Mother.
  25 October 1933

2.3.05 - Sadhana through Work for the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is the same with the truth about the instrument. It is true that each being is an instrument of the cosmic Shakti, therefore of the Mother. But the aim of the sadhana is to become a conscious and perfect instrument instead of one that is unconscious and therefore imperfect. You can be a conscious and perfect instrument only when you are no longer acting in obedience to the ignorant push of the lower nature, but in surrender to the
  Mother and aware of her higher Force acting within you. So here too your intuition was perfectly true.

2.3.07 - The Mother in Visions, Dreams and Experiences, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is not a woman. A woman does not radiate and is not surrounded by rays either. Probably a Sun Goddess or a Shakti of
  20 December 1935 the inner Light, one of the Mother's Powers.
  --
  (your eternal why) higher powers should be given. People do not question the gifts of the Shakti or demand reasons for her giving them, they are only too glad to get them. Trance within trance of course, since your sadhana was going on in the trance, according to the ways of trance. It is also in this way that it can
  10 June 1936 go on in conscious sleep.
  --
  Out of this silence emerges the Divine Shakti concentrated for the transformation of the material.
  12 October 1936

29.05 - The Bride of Brahman, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Once upon a time - of course I am speaking of a time when there was no time nor space, before the existence of time and space, when there existed only One Being, the nameless Being - named Brahman! To us, human beings, it is the Supreme Existence, the Lord, God or whatever one chooses to call him. He is also the Lord Surya, the luminous Truth, the sale Light of Lights. So then it once happened: this luminous Brahman looked at himself and found surprisingly that his luminosity, his brightness was getting dimmed, he was becoming darker and darker. He was at a loss, and confused. What was it due to? Then he thought of the Gods, his companions. They came along immediately, and the foremost among them was Varuna: Varuna means also one who has the vast consciousness and vision. He can see far, far into the longest distance, into the unseen future. Then he found it out, what the matter was, and said: "Lord, your Shakti has gone away." Brahman and his Shakti, Brahmajaya, were one: they were both together, fused into one united single being always. Varuna said: "the Bride of Brahman has left Brahman." Now it was the task of all to find out where she had gone leaving Brahman in this state of darkness. Then it was always Varuna who through his sight, long sight, his penetrating vision found that Brahma Shakti, the Divine Power has gone away far, very far, deep into the bosom of the Earth, and has disintegrated herself into material substances. She has become Matter, unconscious and dark like matter. The Gods found she was there one with ordinary creatures and things and objects. Then they conferred among themselves and decided: "We must awaken her, make her conscious of herself, take her back to her Lord, the Brahman - so can he also reclaim and regain his own identity." So the first of the Gods who approached her was the God Soma. Soma means the Moon or Delight, that is Ananda. The Gods said: It was Ananda, Delight, that joined them together, the Lord and the Shakti; so, for their union, their reunion, it is natural and in the fitness of things that Soma should lead the way and approach her. So all the Gods went together to her and explained to her the situation, and at last persuaded her to follow them in their path, the long journey, the return journey homeward. We may recollect here also the image of Parvati sojourning in her earthly mother's home and returning to Kailash, to her heavenly Lord.
   ***

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun shakti

The noun shakti has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
                    
1. Shakti, Sakti ::: (the female or generative principle; wife of Siva and a benevolent form of Devi)


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun shakti

1 sense of shakti                          

Sense 1
Shakti, Sakti
   INSTANCE OF=> Hindu deity
     => deity, divinity, god, immortal
       => spiritual being, supernatural being
         => belief
           => content, cognitive content, mental object
             => cognition, knowledge, noesis
               => psychological feature
                 => abstraction, abstract entity
                   => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun shakti
                                    


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun shakti

1 sense of shakti                          

Sense 1
Shakti, Sakti
   INSTANCE OF=> Hindu deity




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun shakti

1 sense of shakti                          

Sense 1
Shakti, Sakti
  -> Hindu deity
   HAS INSTANCE=> Aditi
   => Aditya
   HAS INSTANCE=> Agni
   HAS INSTANCE=> Asura
   => Ahura
   => Asvins
   HAS INSTANCE=> Bhaga
   HAS INSTANCE=> Brahma
   HAS INSTANCE=> Brihaspati
   HAS INSTANCE=> Bhumi Devi
   HAS INSTANCE=> Devi
   HAS INSTANCE=> Chandi
   => Dharma
   HAS INSTANCE=> Durga
   HAS INSTANCE=> Dyaus, Dyaus-pitar
   HAS INSTANCE=> Ganesh, Ganesa, Ganesha, Ganapati
   => Garuda
   HAS INSTANCE=> Gauri
   HAS INSTANCE=> Hanuman
   HAS INSTANCE=> Indra
   HAS INSTANCE=> Ka
   HAS INSTANCE=> Kali
   HAS INSTANCE=> Kama
   HAS INSTANCE=> Mara
   HAS INSTANCE=> Kartikeya, Karttikeya
   HAS INSTANCE=> Lakshmi
   => Marut
   HAS INSTANCE=> Mitra
   HAS INSTANCE=> Parjanya
   HAS INSTANCE=> Parvati, Anapurna, Annapurna
   HAS INSTANCE=> Prajapati
   HAS INSTANCE=> Pushan
   HAS INSTANCE=> Rahu
   => Ribhus, Rhibhus
   HAS INSTANCE=> Rudra
   HAS INSTANCE=> Sarasvati
   HAS INSTANCE=> Savitar
   HAS INSTANCE=> Shakti, Sakti
   HAS INSTANCE=> Siva, Shiva
   HAS INSTANCE=> Skanda
   => Soma
   HAS INSTANCE=> Surya
   HAS INSTANCE=> Uma
   HAS INSTANCE=> Ushas
   => Vajra
   HAS INSTANCE=> Varuna
   HAS INSTANCE=> Vayu
   HAS INSTANCE=> Vishnu
   HAS INSTANCE=> Yama
   => avatar




--- Grep of noun shakti
shakti
shaktism
shaktist



IN WEBGEN [10000/176]

Wikipedia - Abla Ki Shakti -- 1940 film
Wikipedia - Adi Parashakti -- Primordial Goddess in Hinduism
Wikipedia - Amar Shakti -- 1978 film
Wikipedia - Anushakti Nagar (Vidhan Sabha constituency) -- Constituency of the Maharashtra legislative assembly in India
Wikipedia - Aparshakti Khurana -- Indian actor, radio jockey and TV host
Wikipedia - Aradhana (1969 film) -- 1969 film by Shakti Samanta
Wikipedia - Attahas, Katwa -- Shakti Peetha in West Bengal
Wikipedia - Banglar Jubo Shakti -- A country-wide campaign by TMC to help people of west bengal in distress
Wikipedia - Barsaat Ki Ek Raat -- 1981 Indian Hindi-Bengali film by Shakti Samanta
Wikipedia - Bhakti Mein Shakti -- 1978 film
Wikipedia - Devi Adi Parashakti -- Indian mythological television series
Wikipedia - Durga Shakti Nagpal -- Indian bureaucrat (born 1985)
Wikipedia - Hero - Bhakti Hi Shakti Hai -- Indian television series
Wikipedia - INS Shakti (A57) -- Deepak-class fleet tanker
Wikipedia - Kashmir Ki Kali -- 1964 film by Shakti Samanta
Wikipedia - Kati Patang -- 1971 film by Shakti Samanta
Wikipedia - Kaumari -- Shakti of Kartikeya, the Hindu God of War
Wikipedia - Lok Janshakti Party -- Political party in India
Wikipedia - Mahashakti -- 1995 Indian television mini-series
Wikipedia - Mantra Shakti -- 1954 Bengali film
Wikipedia - Mehbooba (1976 film) -- 1976 film by Shakti Samanta
Wikipedia - Mission Mangal -- 2019 Indian Hindi-language drama film by Jagan Shakti
Wikipedia - Mission Shakti -- First Indian anti-satellite weapon test
Wikipedia - Nagorik Shakti -- Bangladeshi political party
Wikipedia - Parameshashakti
Wikipedia - Prem Shakti -- 1994 Hindi-language film
Wikipedia - Rastriya Janashakti Student Union -- Student organisation in Nepal
Wikipedia - Shakti (2004 film) -- 2004 film
Wikipedia - Shakti Anand -- Indian actor
Wikipedia - Shakti Arora -- Indian actor
Wikipedia - Shakti - Astitva Ke Ehsaas Ki -- Indian social drama television series
Wikipedia - Shakti Bahadur Basnet -- Nepalese politician
Wikipedia - Shakti Bhatt Prize -- Literary award
Wikipedia - Shakti Chattopadhyay -- Bengali poet and writer
Wikipedia - Shaktimaan (2005 film) -- 2005 Bengali film
Wikipedia - Shaktimaan: The Animated Series -- 2011 Indian animated television show directed by Vikram Veturi
Wikipedia - Shaktimaan -- Indian Hindi-language superhero television show
Wikipedia - Shaktiman (1993 film) -- 1993 film by K. C. Bokadia
Wikipedia - SHAKTI - Microprocessor & Microcontroller -- Technology project funded by the Government of India
Wikipedia - Shaktipat
Wikipedia - Shakti Peethas
Wikipedia - Shakti Prasad -- Indian actor (1928-1986)
Wikipedia - Shakti Samuha -- non-profit organization
Wikipedia - Shakti Singh (actor) -- Indian actor
Wikipedia - Shakti Singh (athlete) -- Indian athlete
Wikipedia - Shakti Singh Kaliyas -- Indian politician from the Bharatiya Janata Party
Wikipedia - Shakti Singh Yadav -- Indian politician
Wikipedia - Shaktism -- A major sect of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Shakti Thakur -- Indian actor, comedian and playback singer
Wikipedia - Shakti -- Personification of Divine Energy and Power in Hinduism
Wikipedia - Shivshakti Sachdev -- Indian television actress
Wikipedia - Stree Shakti -- Indian television series
Wikipedia - Teddy (film) -- Upcoming Tamil-language kids animation film directed by Shakti Soundar Rajan
Wikipedia - Tik Tik Tik (2018 film) -- 2018 film by Shakti Soundar Rajan
Wikipedia - Yoni -- Aniconic representation of the goddess Shakti, the consort of Shiva, also means "womb, origin, abode, vulva, vagina, uterus, female procreative organs"
Shakti Gawain ::: Born: September 30, 1948; Occupation: Author;
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1055365.Shakti_Mantras
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1323997.Shakti_Woman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16202068-awakening-shakti
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16202072-shakti-meditations
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17788885-the-touch-of-shakti
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18875323-shakti-mantras
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18940168-awakening-shakti
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20516916-shakti-woman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22632283-the-shakti-coloring-book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22963509-jesus-was-a-shaktipat-guru
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26828977-shakti
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27037551-shakti-leadership
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28476458-the-poetical-remains-of-the-late-mrs-shivshakti-khattananda
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34503748-shakti-leadership
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36264563-unbridled-shakti
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39320476-lideran-a-shakti
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44619698-parashakti
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5778235-shakti
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6481352-the-power-of-shakti
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13837179.Shakti_Parwha_Kaur_Khalsa
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/319038.Shakti_Para_Khalsa
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/41093.Shakti_Gawain
Goodreads author - Shakti_Gawain
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Adi_parashakti
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Shakti_Peethas
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Shaktism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hindu_deities#Adi_Shakti
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Shakti
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Shaktipat
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Shakti_Peetha
Kheper - Shaktism -- 50
Kheper - Shakti -- 58
Kheper - Shaktism -- 5
auromere - dharana-shakti-the-capacity-to-sustain-spiritual-experiences
auromere - synthesis-of-yoga
auromere - physical-culture
selforum - shakti formulation given to us by sri
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2015/04/shaktipat.html
wiki.auroville - Dehashakti_Gym
wiki.auroville - Dehashakti_School_of_Physical_Education
wiki.auroville - Ishwara-Shakti
wiki.auroville - Purna_Shakti
wiki.auroville - Shakti_(Aurovilian)
wiki.auroville - The_Shakti
Dharmapedia - Category:Shaktism
Psychology Wiki - Category:Shaktism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shakti
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Shakti_Hunzrin
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Shakti
https://nolf.fandom.com/wiki/Shakti_Cola
Mobile Suit Victory Gundam -- -- Studio Deen, Sunrise -- 51 eps -- Original -- Drama Mecha Military Sci-Fi Space -- Mobile Suit Victory Gundam Mobile Suit Victory Gundam -- In the year 153 of the Universal Century, the tyrannical Zanscare Empire has taken hostile control over Side 2, a space colony outside of Earth's orbit. Following in the footsteps of the long expired Principality of Zeon and the more recent Crossbone Vanguard, Zanscare rules over its subjects with cruelty, routinely using a large guillotine for public executions. -- -- Living in Central Europe, space immigrant Üso Ewin joins the League Militaire, a militia made up of civilians frustrated with the Earth Federation's inability to combat the Zanscare Empire. Üso's latent abilities as a psychic Newtype awaken and allow him to pilot the Victory Gundam, the only mobile suit capable of holding off the elite BESPA forces of the Zanscare Empire. -- -- Hoping to protect his best friend Shakti Kareen and locate his parents within the ranks of the Federation, Üso fights on with the Victory, striving to bring an end to the empire's reign. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Nozomi Entertainment -- 21,225 6.75
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shaktiananda.jpg
Adi Parashakti
Anushakti Nagar
Bhabanipur Shaktipeeth
Bharatiya Gorkha Janashakti
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Bharatiya Navshakti Party
Communist Party of India (MarxistLeninist) Janashakti
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Hero - Bhakti Hi Shakti Hai
History of Shaktism
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INS Shakti (A57)
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Jharkhand Raksha Shakti University
Kishori Shakti Yojana
Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe
List of Shakti peeth in Bengal
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Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan
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Order of Tri Shakti Patta
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Shaktimaan: The Animated Series
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Shakti Nagar, Delhi
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Shaktinagar, Uttar Pradesh
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Shakti Singh (16th century Indian noble)
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Shakti Singh Yadav
Shaktism
Shakti: The Power
Shram Shakti Express
Shri Shakti AC Express
Sikkim Janashakti Party
VaranasiShaktinagar Terminal Intercity Express



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