Our Many Selves

Glossary of Names and Terms

The Glossary includes Sanskrit terms, certain proper names and special terms found in Sri Aurobindo 's writings. Explanations of philosophical and psychological terms have generally been given in Sri Aurobindo's own words.

the Adversary—anti-divine Force that is in revolt against the Divine, against the Truth and Light, and opposed to the yoga; see also Asura.

Ananda—bliss, delight, beatitude, spiritual ecstasy; the essential principle of delight: a self-delight which is the very nature of the transcendent and infinite existence.

annamaya puruṣa—the physical being.

antarātman—inner self; soul.

aparārdha—the lower half (of world existence); the lower hemisphere. A separation, acute in practice though unreal in essence, divides the total being of man, the microcosm, as it divides also the world being, the macrocosm. Both have a higher and a lower hemisphere, the parārdha and aparārdha of the ancient wisdom. The higher hemisphere is the perfect and eternal reign of the Spirit; for there it manifests without cessation or diminution its infinities, deploys the unconcealed glories of its illimitable existence, its illimitable consciousness and knowledge, its illimitable force and power, its illimitable beatitude. The lower hemisphere belongs equally to the Spirit; but here it is veiled, closely, thickly, by its inferior self-expression of limiting mind, confining life and dividing body.

asat—Non-being; non-existence; something beyond the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or can conceive of it while in this universe. This Nothing is merely a something beyond positive conception.

Asura—the strong or mighty one, Titan; a hostile being or force of the vital mental plane, known in traditional Indian legends as the dark Titan or demon; see also Adversary.

Asuric—of the nature of the Asura.

Atman—Self; Spirit; the original and essential nature of Existence or Being.

Augustine, St.—(354-430), a great saint, bishop of Hippo and one of the four Latin fathers of the Christian Church.

Being—the Self; the sole and fundamental Reality or Truth of existence; all that exists is part of the one indivisible Being.

The One Being manifests itself on different planes or levels of consciousness, and in the individual being is constituted by different distinguishable parts of the indivisible Being.

The part of our nature of which we are normally conscious is our surface or outer being consisting of the body, the (surface) vital (related to life-energy and emotions, desires, passions, etc.), and the (surface) mind (having to do with cognition, intelligence, ideas, thought perceptions, etc.).

Behind this superficial consciousness there exists a far greater, deeper and more powerful consciousness in touch with the universal planes of Mind, Life and Matter. This hidden consciousness, referred to as our inner being, consists of the inner mental, the inner vital and the inner physical, with the psychic (the soul) as the innermost being which, as an aspect of the central being, supports all the different parts in the manifestation and which develops over the course of evolution an individuality which is called the psychic being.

The inner being is also sometimes referred to as the subliminal (being) or subliminal consciousness. It opens above to the Superconscient and below to the Subconscient and the Inconscient.

bhakti (Bhakti)—devotion; love for the Divine.

Buddhi—intelligence-will; understanding; intellect; reason; thinking mind; the discriminating principle, at once intelligence and will.

central being—the portion of the Divine which supports the individual being and survives from life to life; it has two forms: jivātman, which is above the manifestation in life, presiding over it, and the psychic being, which stands behind mind, life and body in the manifestation, supporting them and using them as its instruments.

Chaitya Purusha (caitya puruṣa)—psychic Person; the psychic being.

Chit—consciousness.

desire-soul—the surface soul which expresses itself in our cravings, impulses, feelings, emotions, ambitions, etc.; it is distinguished from the true soul in us—the psychic being.

Dharma —law; the deepest law of one's nature; the right law of individual and social life; literally, that which one lays hold of and which holds things together.

Divine, the—the Supreme Truth, the Supreme Being from whom all have come and in whom all are.

environmental consciousness (being)—part of the being that each person carries around him, outside his body, by which he is in touch with others and with the universal forces.

gradations between mind and Supermind—higher ranges of mind overtopping our normal mind and leading to Supermind; these succesive states, levels or graded powers of being are hidden in our own superconscious parts. In an ascending order the gradations of spiritualised mind are:

Higher Mind: a luminous thought-mind whose instrumentation is through an elevated thought-power and comprehensive mental sight. In the Higher Mind one becomes constantly and closely aware of the Self, the One everywhere and knows and sees habitually with that awareness.

Illumined Mind: a mind no longer of higher thought, but of spiritual light; here the clarity of the intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit.

Intuition: a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate than the above-mentioned gradations to the original knowledge by identity. What is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition. This true and authentic intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, that power of involved reasoning that reaches its conclusion by a bound and does not need the ordinary steps of the logical mind.

Overmind: The Overmind is a delegate of the Supramental Consciousness, its delegate to the cosmic Ignorance. The Supramental is the total Truth-Consciousness; the Overmind draws down the truths separately and gives them a separate identity.

Guruvada—the doctrine that stresses the indispensability of the guru to the spiritual seeker.

Higher Mind—see under gradations between mind and Supermind.

the Ignorance—the consciousness of Multiplicity as distinguished from the Knowledge, the consciousness of Unity; a view of the reality based on separative or egoistic consciousness.

**Illumined Mind*—see under gradations between mind and Supermind.**

the Inconscient (Inconscience)—the most involved state of the Superconscience; all powers of the Superconscience progressively evolve and emerge out of the Inconscient, the first emergence being Matter.

inner being—the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical with the psychic behind as the inmost; see also the subliminal.

Intuition—1) Insight without conscious reasoning. 2) Plane of consciousness between Illumined Mind and Overmind. See under gradations between mind and Supermind.

Jivatman (Jiva)—the individual Self; the individualised self or spirit of the created being; the Spirit individualised and upholding the living being in its evolution from birth to birth. The full term is Jivatman—the Atman or eternal self of the living being (Jiva). The Jivatman in its essence does not change or evolve; it stands above the personal evolution; within the evolution itself it is represented by the evolving psychic being which supports all the rest of the nature.

life-nature (the life) —see the Vital.

manomaya puruṣa (Manomaya Purusha)—mental Person, the mental being.

mechanical mind—a part of the mind closely connected with the physical mind; its nature is to go on repeating without use whatever has happened—recent events, impressions, old habitual thoughts or ways of thinking and feeling.

mind (the mental)—"mind" and "mental" connote specially that part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc. that are part of man's intelligence. The ordinary mind has three main parts: mind proper, vital mind, and physical mind.

The mind proper is divided into three parts: the thinking mind or intellect, concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right; the dynamic mind, concerned with the putting out of mental forces for the realisation of the ideas; and the externalising mind, concerned with the expression of ideas in life.

The vital mind or desire mind is a mind of dynamic will, action, desire; it is occupied with force and achievement and satisfaction and possession, with enjoyment and suffering, giving and taking, growth and expansion, etc.

The physical mind is that part of the mind which is concerned with physical things only; limited by the physical view and experience of things, it mentalises the experience brought by the contact of outward life and things, but does not go beyond that. The mechanical mind, closely connected with the physical mind, goes on repeating without use whatever has happened.

Overtopping the ordinary mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, there are higher ranges of Mind, gradations of spiritualised mind leading to the Supermind. In ascending order they are: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind. See gradations between mind and supermind.

Nature, Nature Force—the outer or executive side of the Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. The higher, divine Nature (Para Prakriti) is free from Ignorance and its consequences; the lower Nature (Apara Prakriti) is a mechanism of active Force put forth for the working of the evolutionary Ignorance. The lower nature of an individual—mind, life and body—are part of Prakriti.

Nirvana—extinction (not necessarily of all being, but of being as we know it, extinction of ego, desire and egoistic action and mentality).

outer (surface) being (self) —See under Being.

Overmind —see under gradations between mind and Supermind.

Paramatma—the supreme Self or Spirit, the Absolute.

parārdha—See aparārdha.

Prakriti—Nature; Nature-Force. "Existence is composed of Prakriti and Purusha, the consciousness that sees and the consciousness that executes and formalises what we see. The one we call Soul, the other Nature." (Sri Aurobindo); see also* Purusha.

prāṇamaya puruṣa—soul in life; the (true) vital being.

the physical (being)—not the body alone, but the whole physical mind, vital, material nature.

physical mind —See under mind.

physical vital—the part of the vital that is turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane.

psyche—the soul; spark of the Divine before it has evolved into an individualised being; the divine essence in the individual. In the course of the evolution, the soul grows and evolves in the form of a soul-personality, the psychic being. See also psychic being and soul.

the psychic—psychic being, the term is sometimes used for the psyche or soul. See also psyche and psychic being.

psychic being—the divine portion in the individual which evolves from life to life, growing, by its experiences until it becomes a fully conscious being. The term "soul" is often used as a synonym for "psychic being", but strictly speaking, the soul is the undifferentiated psychic essence, whereas the psychic being is the individualised soul-personality developed by the psychic essence in the course of evolution. See also the psychic, soul, and soul-personality.

Purusha—Conscious Being; Conscious-Soul; essential being supporting the play of Prakriti; the Purusha represents the true being on whatever plane it manifests—physical, vital, mental, psychic.

Rig—veda—the Veda of the Riks (words of illumination), the most ancient of the sacred books of India.

Russell, Bertrand—(1872-1970), English philosopher.

Sachchidananda (Sat-Chit-Ananda)—the One Divine Being with a triple aspect of Existence (Sat), Consciousness (Chit) and Delight (Ananda). God is Sachchidananda; He manifests Himself as infinite Existence of which the essentiality is Consciousness, of which again the essentiality is bliss, is self-delight.

Sadhana—the practice of yoga.

Samadhi—yogic trance (in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness).

Sanskara—association, impression, fixed notion, habitual reaction formed by one's past.

the Self—the Atman, the universal Spirit, the self-existent Being, the conscious essential Existence, one in all. The Self is being, not a being; it is the original and essential nature of our existence.

soul—the psychic essence or entity, the divine essence in the individual; a spark of the Divine that comes down into the manifestation to support the evolution of the individual. In the course of the evolution, the soul grows and evolves in the form of a soul-personality, the psychic being. The term "soul" is also often used as a synonym for "psychic being". See also the psychic and psychic being.

soul-personality—the psychic being or soul-form developing through evolution and passing from life to life. See psychic being.

Spirit—the Consciousness above mind, the Atman or universal Self which is always in oneness with the Divine.

spark-soul —see psyche.

the subconscient—the subconscient or subconscious of the individual is that submerged part of his being in which there is no waking conscious and coherent thought, will, feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up; from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements can surge up into dream or into the waking state. In the ordinary man the subconscient includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and the secret body-consciousness. It is not to be confused with the subliminal: the subconscient is a nether diminished consciousness, the subliminal is an inner consciousness larger than our surface existence.

the subliminal—the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical, with the soul or psychic entity supporting them. The subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature; it is not subconscient, but conscient and greater than the waking consciousness. The subconscient is that which is below the ordinary physical consciousness, the subliminal that which is behind and supports it.

Supermind—the Supramental, the Truth-Consciousness, the Divine Gnosis, the highest divine consciousness and force operative in the universe. A principle of consciousness superior to mentality, it exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions. Its fundamental character is knowledge by identity, by which the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of manifestation is known because this too is that.

tamas (Tamas)—the quality that hides or darkens; the quality of ignorance, inertia and obscurity, of incapacity and inaction; the force of inconscience. Tamas is one of the three Gunas or modes of Nature.

Upanishads—a class of Hindu sacred writings, regarded as the source of the Vedanta philosophy.

vairāgya—distaste, disgust for the world and life.

the vital (being)—the life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action and of all the play of possessive and other related instincts, such as anger, fear, greed, lust, etc. The vital has three main parts:

higher vital: the mental vital and emotional vital taken together. The mental vital gives a mental expression by thought, speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations or other movements of the vital being; the emotional vital is the seat of various feelings, such as love, joy, sorrow, hatred and the rest.

central vital or vital proper: dynamic, sensational and passionate, it is the seat of the stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies.

lower vital: made up of the smaller movements of human Iife desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dis likings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds, etc.

vital mind—a sort of mediator between the vital and the mental proper; a part of the nature of the mind whose function is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, but to plan or dream or imagine what can be done; see also under mind.

Vital-physical—the nervous part of the being; the life-force closely enmeshed in the reactions, desires, needs, sensations of the body.

Yoga—the discipline by which one seeks consciously and deliberately to realise union with the Divine or, more generally, to attain a higher consciousness.