Guidance on Education

Advice to Students and Teachers

  On Education


Glossary of Sanskrit and Other Terms
The following definitions are based upon the writings of Sri Aurobindo.
The self-aware force of existence; its essence is the power to be aware of itself and its objects, but it is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. Consciousness is not synonymous with mentality.
The Supreme Being from which all comes and in which all lives. In its supreme Truth the Divine is absolute and infinite peace, consciousness, existence, power and delight.
The separative sense of individuality which makes each being conceive of itself as an independent personality. Ego implies the identification of one's existence with the outer mental, vital and physical self.
Not mental or vital energy but the Divine Force from above, a spiritual and supraphysical force acting on the physical world directly; a Force for illumination, transformation, purification.

The help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift an individual beyond the present possibilities of his nature.
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mental
The words "mental" and "mind" are used to connote specially the 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 physical is that part of human nature which includes the physical body and the physical consciousness.
The psychic or psychic being is the evolving soul of the individual, the divine portion in him which evolves from life to life, growing by its experiences until it becomes a fully self-conscious being. From its place behind the heart centre, the psychic supports the mind, life and body and, as it develops, increasingly aids their evolution and growth. The word psychic, from the Greek psyche, is used in its original sense of soul, as distinguished from the mind and vital; as an adjective it refers to the experience and movements of the soul and not to all the inward psychological experiences, surface or occult, in which the mind and vital predominate.
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in oneness with the Divine; self-existent being with an infinite power of consciousness and unconditioned delight in its being.

spirituality

An awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with that greater Reality, to be in communion and union with It, and, as a result, a transformation of our whole being, a growth into a new being, a new self, a new nature.

Tamas

A quality of Nature: the force of inconscience and inertia which translates in quality as incapacity and inaction.

transformation

In an individual, transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower.

Truth-Consciousness

The highest divine consciousness and force operative in the universe; a principle of consciousness superior to mentality which exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things; its fundamental character is knowledge by identity.

vital

The vital is the life nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire soul of man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, greed, lust

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etc., that belong to this field of the nature. The vital part of man is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and governed by the spiritual light and power.

yoga

Union with the Self, the Spirit, the Divine; the discipline by which one seeks deliberately and consciously to attain that union or, more generally, to attain a higher consciousness. Yoga is a generic name for the processes and the result of processes by which one transcends one's present mode of being and rises to a new, a higher, a wider mode of consciousness.

yogi

One who practises yoga; but especially, one who is already established in spiritual realisation, one who has attained the goal of yoga.

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