A Greater Psychology

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. Some of the terms defined below have more than one meaning, and may have different connotations in different contexts. The meanings given below apply to the terms as used in this book.

the Absolute — the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities.

Advaitin — a Vedantic Monist.

Akshara — the Immobile, the Immutable.

akṣitaṃ śravaḥ — inexhaustible store of memory.

Akshara Brahman —the immutable Brahman.

Ananda — bliss, delight; the essential principle of delight.

antaḥ-karaṇa — the inner instrument; mind.

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.

Atman — the Self; the Spirit; the original and essential nature of our existence; the spiritual being above the mind. In its nature the Atman is transcendent or universal (Paramatma, Atma); when it individualises and becomes a central being, it is then the Jivatman.

Avidya — ignorance; the Ignorance of oneness; the consciousness of Multiplicity.

avyavahāryam — the incommunicable.

Bhagwan — the Lord, God.

Bhrighu Varuni —a Vedic sage.

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bhakti — love for the Divine; devotion to the Divine.

Brahman — the Absolute; the Supreme Being; the One besides whom there is nothing else existent.

brahmarandhra — (in yoga) the opening at the top of the skull

the Buddha —Gautama Buddha also known as Tathāgata (c. 563-c.483 BC), the renowned father of Buddhism. His personal name was Siddhartha. After realising the Truth, he became known as the "Buddha" ("the Enlightened").

buddeḥ paratastu saḥ — that which is supreme over the intelligent will is He. [Gītā 3.42]

Buddhi — the thinking mind proper; the mental power of understanding; the discerning intelligence and enlightened will; the discriminating principle of mind, at once intelligence and will.

caitya puruṣa — psychic Person; the psychic being.

Central Being — the term is generally applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. It has two forms: the Jivatman, which is above the manifestation in life and presides over it; and the psychic being which stands behind mind, life and body in the manifestation and uses them as its instruments.

Centres of Consciousness — " [The soul] is, according to our psychology, connected with the small outer personality by certain centres of consciousness of which we become aware by yoga....The inner centres are for the most part closed or asleep — to open them and make them awake and active is one aim of yoga." — Sri Aurobindo

"The centres or Chakras are seven in number: —

1. The thousand-petalled lotus on the top of the head.

2. In the middle of the forehead — the Ajna Chakra — (will, vision, dynamic thought).

3. Throat centre — externalising mind.

4. Heart-lotus — emotional centre. The psychic is behind it.

5. Navel — higher vital (proper).

6. Below navel — lower vital.

7. Muladhara — physical

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"All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body, sūkṣma deha, though one has the feeling of their activities as if in the physical body when the consciousness is awake." — Sri Aurobindo

"In the process of our yoga the centres have each a fixed psychological use and general function which base all their special powers and functionings. The mūlādbāra governs the physical down to the subconscient; the abdominal centre — svādhiṣṭhāna— governs the lower vital; the navel centre — nābhipadma or maṇipūra— governs the larger vital; the heart centre — hrt-padma or anāhata — governs the emotional being; the throat centre — viśuddha — governs the expressive and externalising mind; the centre between the eyebrows — ājñācakra — governs the dynamic mind, will, vision, mental formation; the thousand-petalled lotus — sahasradala — above commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an overflooding directness the overmind can have with the rest communication or an immediate contact." —Sri Aurobindo

Chakras — see Centres of Consciousness

Chit — pure consciousness; the essential consciousness of the Spirit; the free and all-creative self-awareness of the Absolute.

Chitta — the basic stuff of mental consciousness; the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse, etc.

"Chitta really means the ordinary consciousness including the mind, vital and physical — but practically it can be taken to mean something central in the consciousness." —Sri Aurobindo

"Chitta is ordinarily used for the mental consciousness in general, thought, feeling, etc. taken together with a stress now on one side or another, sometimes on the feelings..., sometimes on the thought-mind — 'heart and mind' in its wider sense...." — Sri Aurobindo

Chit Shakti — Consciousness-Force.

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cinmaya —consisting of pure consciousness; transcendental.

Circumconscient — the subliminal has a formation of consciousness which projects itself beyond the mental, vital, subtle physical and gross physical sheaths and forms a circumconscient, an environing part of itself, through which it receives the contacts of the world outside us.

cittākāśa — mental ether.

Consciousness-Force, the Force — the Conscious Force that builds the worlds; a universal Energy that is the power of the Cosmic Spirit working out the cosmic and individual truth of things.

Desire-soul — the surface soul in us, which works in our vital cravings, our emotions, aesthetic faculty and mental seeking for power, knowledge and happiness; the true soul is the subliminal psychic essence.

the Divine — 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 Transcendent, the Cosmic (Universal) and the Individual are three powers of the Divine, overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole of manifestation.

Ego —the "I" constituted by a mental, vital and physical formation which serves to centralise and individualise the outer consciousness and action; when the true self is discovered, the utility of the ego ceases, this formation disappears and the true individuality is felt in its place.

Environmental consciousness — see Circumconscient.

the Force — see Consciousness-Force

the Gita —short form of Bhagavad Gita, "the Song of the Blessed Lord", being the spiritual teachings of Sri Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra; it occurs as an episode in the Mahabharata.

Gnosis — a supreme totally self-aware and all-aware Intelligence; the Divine Gnosis is the Supermind.

Gradations between Mind and Supermind —higher ranges of Mind overtopping our normal Mind and leading to Supermind; these

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successive 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 knowlege 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 Supra-mental is the total Truth-Consciousness; the Overmind draws down the truths separately and gives them a separate identity.

guṇa, Guna — quality, character, property; the three Gunas of Nature, her qualities or modes, are Sattwa, Rajas, and Tamas.

Hemispheres, Higher and Lower —"The higher hemisphere is the perfect and eternal reign of the Spirit; for there it manifests without cessation or diminution of 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." —Sri Aurobindo

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Higher Mind — see under Gradations between Mind and Supermind.

hirạnmaya pātra — golden lid.

Horace —(65-08 BC) Latin poet.

icchā-mṛtyu — the power of abandoning the body definitively without the ordinary phenomena of death, by an act of will.

Idea-force — the power in the idea — a force of which the idea is a shape.

the Ignorance — see Avidya.

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.

the Intraconscient — the subliminal.

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

Ishwara — Lord, Master, the Divine, God.

Ishwarakoti — a human being who in losing himself in God yet keeps himself and is able to lean down again to humanity. See also Jivakoti.

jāgrat — the waking state, the consciousness of the material world.

Jivakoti — a human being who, once immersed in the Reality, cannot return; he is lost in God and lost to humanity. See also Ishwarakoti.

Jivatma — see Atman and Central Being.

jyoti — (the authentic spiritual) light.

kalpa — aeon.

karma, Karma — action, work; the work or function of a man; action entailing its consequences, the chain of act and consequence.

the Knowledge — the knowledge of the One Reality, the consciousness of Unity. See Vidya.

laya — dissolution; annullation of the individual soul in the Infinite.

Life — "The English word life does duty for many very different shades of meaning; but the word Prana familiar in the Upanishad and in

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the language of Yoga is restricted to the life-force whether viewed in itself or in its functionings;" —Sri Aurobindo "Life is an energy of spirit subordinated to action of mind and body, which fulfils itself through mentality and physicality and acts as a link between them." —Sri Aurobindo

Life-mind —see vital mind under mind.

Manas — mind, the mind proper [as distinct from the intellect (buddhi)], sense-mind.

manomaya puruṣa — mental Person; the mental being.

manvantara — an age or period of a Manu, an extremely long period. of time, one-fourteenth of a day of Brahmā, mātrā — measure, the quantitative action of Nature. Maya — illusion; the power of self-illusion in Brahman. Menes —(fl. c. 3100 BC) first historic ruler of the first dynasty of unified Egypt.

mind — "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

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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.

mokṣa, Moksha — spiritual liberation.

mole ruet sua — (Latin) will collapse by its own mass.

Mukta —free.

Muladhar —"root vessel or chamber"; the physical consciousness centre (Chakra); see also Centres of Consciousness.

Mukti — spiritual liberation, the release of the soul from the bondage of Ignorance.

nāstyanto vistrarasya me — there is no end to my self-extension. [Gītā 10.19]

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.

Nescience — Inconscience.

Nihilism —Nagarjuna's (Buddhist) philosophy according to which the ultimate Reality is nihil, Void, Non-Being or Non-Existence.

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

Nirvikalpa Samadhi — complete trance, in which there is no thought or movement of consciousness or awareness of either inner or outer things.

nistraiguṇya — a state in which one is free from the three guṇas.

Overmind — see under Gradations Between Mind and Supermind.

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parātparam —the Supreme beyond the Most High, the supreme of the Supreme.

Physical mind — see under mind.

Prajna — 1. (prajñā) —the all-wise Intelligence. 2. (prājña) — the Self situated in deep sleep (suṣupti), the lord and creator of things; the Master of Wisdom and Knowledge.

Prakriti — Nature; Nature-Force, the Lord's executive force; the outer or executive side of the Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds. See also Nature.

prāṇa, Prana — life energy; one of the five workings of the life-force.

the Psychic — 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. The term is also often used for the soul-personality or the psychic being. See also Psychic Being and Soul.

Psychic(al) —ordinarily, the term, used as an adjective, means: 1. mental as opposed to physical; 2. outside physical or natural laws. In his earlier writings Sri Aurobindo used the term in similar senses. Thus he spoke about "psychic(al) Prana", meaning Prana which is subtler and more inward than the physical Prana; and he referred to clairvoyance, telepathy, etc. as psychic(al) phenomena. However, subsequently he stated: "The word psychic is indeed used in English to indicate anything that is other or deeper than the external mind, life and body or it indicates sometimes anything occult or supraphysical: but that is a use which brings confusion and error and we have almost entirely to discard it." Explaining the meaning of the term as used in his later writings, he wrote: "I use the word psychic for the soul as distinguished from the mind and the vital. All movements and experiences of the soul would in that sense be called psychic, those which arise from or directly touch the psychic being.... " He continued to use the word "psychical" to refer to phenomena connected with the subliminal (inner mind, inner vital, inner physical), such as clairvoyance, telepathy, etc.

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Psychical consciousness — the consciousness of the subliminal or inner 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.

Psychic entity —psychic essence.

Psychic essence —the soul in its essence; the divine essence in the individual, the divine spark which supports the evolution of the being in Nature. In the course of the evolution the psychic essence grows and takes form as the psychic being.

Psychicisation — the psychic change in which the psychic being comes forward to dominate the mind, vital and physical and change the lower nature.

Purusha — Conscious Being; Conscious-Soul; essential being supporting the play of Prakriti (Nature); a Consciousness behind that is the lord, witness, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for Nature's works; the Purusha represents the true being on whatever plane it manifests — physical, vital, mental, psychic.

Purushottama — the supreme divine Person; the Supreme Being who is superior both to the mutable Being and the Immutable.

the Quiescent — Inactive Brahman. (The Inactive and the Active Brahman are two aspects of the one Brahman.)

rajas, Rajas —the quality that energises and drives to action; the quality of action and passion and struggle impelled by desire and instinct; the force of kinesis. Rajas is one of the three Gunas or modes of Nature.

Ramakrishna —Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886), a spiritual teacher of modem India.

rasa — taste, liking, pure taste of enjoyment; the response of the mind, the vital feeling and the sense to a certain "taste" in things.

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Rig Veda — the most ancient of the sacred books of India.

Rishi — a seer.

Sachchidananda (Sat-Chit-Ananda) —the One Divine Being with a triple aspect of Existence (Sat), Consciousness (Chit) and Delight (Ananda).

Sadhana — the practice of yoga.

śama — the divine quiet, peace, rest.

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

samādhistha — arrived at the essential samādhi and settled in it.

Sanjnana, samjñāna — essential sense; contact of consciousness with its object; the inbringing movement of apprehensive consciousness

which draws the object placed before it back to itself so as to possess it in conscious substance, to feel it.

Sankhya —one of the six systems of orthodox Hindu philosophy whose method is based on analysis, enumeration and discriminitive setting forth of the principles of our being.

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

sarvabhāvena — in every way of his being. (Gita).

Sat — Being, Existence; Pure Existence.

sattva, Sattwa — the quality that illumines and clarifies; the quality of light, harmony, purity and peace; the force of equilibrium. Sattwa is one of the three Gunas or modes of Nature, 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)

Shakti — Force, Power; the Divine Power; the Power of the other; the consciousness and power of the Divine; the Mother and Energy of the worlds.

Shunya — void; the Nothing which is All.

Sorley, Prof. —William Ritchie Sorley (1855-1935), professor of philosophy at Cambridge, England.

Soul — the psychic essence or entity, the divine essence in the individual;

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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, spark-soul — see the Psychic and Soul.

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

Spiritualisation — the spiritual change in which there is the established descent of the divine peace, light, knowledge, power, bliss from above, the awareness of the Self and the Divine and of a higher cosmic consciousness and the change of the whole nature to that.

śraddhā —faith.

the Subconscient — the part of the being which is below the level of the mental, vital and physical consciousness; in the average person, it includes the larger part of the physical mind, the vital being and the body-consciousness.

Subconscious mind — the inner or subliminal mind.

the Subliminal —comprises the inner being, taken in its entirety of inner mind, inner life, inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them; (sometimes) all that lies outside the surface consciousness, including the subconscient, the subliminal proper and the superconscient.

the Superconscient; Superconscience — consciousness above and beyond our present level of awareness in which are included the higher planes of mental being as well as the supramental and spiritual.

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

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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.

suṣupti, Sushupti — deep sleep; the Sleep-State, a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us, its faculties not active, and therefore we are in relation to that plane in a state of dreamless sleep.

svabhāva — "own being", "own becoming"; the essential nature and self-principle of being of each becoming.

svapna — the dream-state, a consciousness correponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane beyond.

svayamprakāśa — supreme existence supremely aware of itself; direct or essential knowledge.

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.

Tantra —a yogic system based on the principle of Consciousness-Power (conceived of as the Divine Mother) as the Supreme Reality; its method of discipline is to raise Nature in man into manifest power of Spirit.

Tantrik —relating to Tantra; a follower of the Tantra system of philosophy and yoga.

tapas, Tapas — the essential principle of energy.

Transcendence, the Transcendent — the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a divine reflection. See also the Divine.

triguṇātīta — above or beyond the three Gunas.

Truth-Consciousness — see Supermind.

Turiya — the fourth plane of our consciousness; the superconscient; the Absolute.

udāna —one of the five prāṇas it moves upward from the body to

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the crown of the head and is a regular channel of communication between the physical life and the greater life of the spirit. See also prāṇa.

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

upari budhna eṣām —their foundation is above. (Rig Veda)

Veda — generic name for the most ancient Indian sacred literature.

Vedanta —the "end or culmination of the Veda"; a system of philosophy based on the Upanishads (which occur at the end of the Veda), teaching the culminating knowledge of the Absolute.

Vedantin, Vedantist — an advocate of Vedanta.

Vedic — pertaining to the Veda.

Vidya —knowledge; Knowledge in its highest spiritual sense; the consciousness of Unity.

the Vital — 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 life-desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds, etc.

Vital mind — see mind.

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Vivekananda, Swami —monastic name of Narendranath Dutta (1863-1902), the most famous disciple of Sri Ramakrishna and one of the great spiritual teachers of modern India.

Yajnavalkya —a famous Rishi who figures prominently in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

Yoga — 1. joining, union; union with the Divine and the conscious seeking for this union. Yoga is in essence the union of the soul with the immortal being and consciousness and bliss of the Divine, effected through the human nature with a result of development into the divine nature of the being. Yoga is a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one's ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness. 2. one of the six systems of orthodox Indian philosophy systematised by Patanjali.

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