... from some chemical process we shall ultimately discover. Even what life is, has not been satisfactorily settled. The term is sometimes rigidly confined to animal life,—surely a crude and unscientific limitation, since the peculiarities of animal life,—consciousness and organic growth—,exist quite as evidently in the highest forms of plant-life as in the animalcule or the jelly-fish. Or if we confine life... its marvellous career; and the two, helping and enriching each other, evolve complete, well-organized and richly-endowed Life. Prana receives its perfect development in animal life and when man, the highest term of animal life, has been reached, there is no farther need for its development. The true evolution of Man therefore lies not in the farther development of vitality, but in the complete &... derives his mind, body and moral nature from his brother the chimpanzee and his father the gorilla. In his organism he is merely a mass of animalculae which belong individually to the lowest stage of animal life; but by combining into a republic with the cells of the brain as a sort of despotic senate or council, these undeveloped forms of life have been able to master the world. What has not this republic ...
... of desire and sensation, is the creator of the sense of evil and of the fact of evil. Moreover, in animal life, the fact of evil is there, the evil of suffering and the sense of suffering, the evil of violence and cruelty and strife and deception, but the sense of moral evil is absent; in animal life there is no duality of sin or virtue, all action is neutral and permissible for the preservation of... consciousness and knowledge cannot be accounted for unless there is already a concealed consciousness in things with its inherent and native powers emerging little by little. Further, the facts of animal life and the operations of the emergent mind in life impose on us the conclusion that there is in this concealed consciousness an underlying Knowledge or power of knowledge which by the necessity of the... its highest purely mental operations are not in evidence; it accepts a large background of instinct and vital intuition as its support, and the intelligence developed, though always growing as the animal life-scale rises, is an added superstructure. When human intelligence adds itself to the animal basis, this basis still remains present and active, but it is largely changed, subtilised and uplifted ...
... was a life which resembled a kind of culmination of the animal life. My memory is that of a life in which the body was perfectly adapted to its natural environment, the climate to the needs of the body and the body to the needs of the climate. Life was completely spontaneous and natural, just as a more luminous and more conscious animal life would be. There were none of the complications and distortions... remember the condition, the state of material Nature and what the human form and the human consciousness were like then, and this kind of harmony with all the other elements on earth: harmony with the animal life and such a great harmony with the life of the plants. There was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, of the properties of the plants, the fruits and everything the... incarnation of an aspect of the Divine in a human body. × As we have seen elsewhere, plant and animal life are common life forms determined by the ‘spirit’ of the species, while it is only in the human being (at present) that life is fully individualized. ...
... say. But for man it was a life like a sort of flowering of animal life. My memory is of a life where the body was perfectly adapted to its natural surroundings. The climate was in harmony with the needs of the body, the body with the demands of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, as a more luminous and conscious animal life would be, with absolutely none of the complications and d... only remember the conditions at that time, the state of material Nature and the human form and human consciousness, and this state of harmony with all the other elements of the earth: harmony with animal life and a great harmony with plant life—there was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, the qualities of plants, fruits and all that vegetal nature could offer. There was... harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupations—those very preoccupations with time and space. It was a spontaneous life, extremely beautiful, and so close to Nature—a natural flowering of animal life. There were no oppositions or contradictions, nothing of the kind—everything happened in the best way possible. ( silence ) A similar memory has recurred several times under different circ ...
... power-value of instinctive will-impulse. That makes up the nexus of first perceptions and actions which is common to all developing animal life. But in addition there is in the manas or sense-mind a first resulting thought-element which accompanies the operations of animal life. Just as the living body has a certain pervading and possessing action of consciousness, citta , which forms into this sense-mind... wills on the sense basis. This sensational thought-mind which is based upon sense, memory, association, first ideas and resultant generalisations or secondary ideas, is common to all developed animal life and mentality. Man indeed has given it an immense development and range and complexity impossible to the animal, but still, if he stopped there, he would only be a more highly effective animal. He... knowledge and mastery, we must rise to something greater than the buddhi. Still it is a movement by which we come to the knowledge that there is a power within us greater than the Page 665 animal life, a truth greater than the first truths or appearances perceived by the sense-mind, and can try to get at that truth and to labour towards a greater and more successful power of action and control ...
... man it was a life that was like a kind of outflowering of animal life. I have a memory of a life in which the body was perfectly adapted to its natural environment and the climate adapted to the needs of the body, the body to the needs of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, just as a more luminous and more conscious animal life would be; but there were none of the complications and ... condition, the state, what material Nature was like, what the human form and the human consciousness were like at that time and this kind of harmony with all the other elements on earth—harmony with animal life, and such a great harmony with plant life. There was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, of the properties of plants, of fruits and everything vegetable Nature could... beyond all our preoccupations—precisely beyond all these preoccupations with time and place. It was a spontaneous, extremely beautiful life, and so close to Nature, like a natural flowering of the animal life. And there were no oppositions, no contradictions, or anything like that—everything happened in the best way possible. ( Silence ) Repeatedly, in different circumstances, several times, I have ...
... entire area of sordid and repulsive misery which makes a whole part of human life into something so frightful. That must disappear. This is what makes humanity in so many ways infinitely worse than animal life in its simplicity and the natural spontaneity and harmony that it has in spite of everything. Suffering in animals is never so miserable and sordid as it is in an entire section of humanity which... perverted by the use of a mentality exclusively at the service of egoistic needs. We must rise above, spring up into Light and Harmony or fall back, down into the simplicity of a healthy unperverted animal life. When this talk was first published in 1958, Mother added the following note on the "uplifting" of an entire part of humanity by the action of the new forces: But those who cannot be lifted ...
... of a spiritual consciousness at all times directed, meaningful and irreversible. And so Sri Aurobindo wrote: ‘We have to ask whether the soul, having once arrived at humanity, can go back to the animal life and body, a retrogression which the old popular theories of transmigration have supposed to be an ordinary movement. It seems impossible that it should so go back with any entirety, and for this... contain the essence of our existence in time; they are the stuff of our eternal existence. These constructive remembrances can only be gathered by an individualized soul, a soul of a human being. In animal life there is not yet enough soul-stuff to produce a remembrance remaining beyond death and rebirth. Between two lives the soul goes and rests in an internatal, harmonious psychic world where it a ...
... poverty, a whole zone of sordid and repugnant miseries that makes an entire portion of human life so hideous. That must disappear. That is what in many respects makes humanity infinitely inferior to animal life, with its simplicity and its natural spontaneity, and which in spite of everything is harmonious. Suffering among animals is never as miserable and sordid as it is in a whole section of humanity... perverted by a mentality exclusively turned towards egoistic needs. One must rise above, surge forth into the Light and the Harmony, or sink back down into the simplicity of a wholesome, unperverted animal life. ( After a moment of silence, Mother adds ) But those who cannot be lifted up, who refuse to progress, will automatically lose the use of the mental consciousness and fall back into an infrahuman ...
... sunlit Nature's surface thrills, And dragon raptures, python agonies Crawled in the marsh and mire and licked the sun. 91 This is a wonderful series of figures drawn from insect and animal life in Nature. Here we may remind ourselves of another image from the same world, already quoted: Thought's dance of dragon-flies on mystery's stream That skim but never test its murmurs'... Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair And in her body as on his homing tree Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings. 96 Then there are images drawn from animal-life. The neighing pride of rapid life that roams Wind-maned through our pastures, on my seeing mood Cast shapes of swiftness... 97 This image of a horse applied to life reminds ...
... the opposite feelings. You have to rise above the status of the lower nature and this can be done only by a calm detachment, a quiet withdrawal. One need not entertain repulsion or hatred for animal life in order to rise superior to it, one automatically rises superior to it when one links oneself to the higher status, when one is imbued with the superior consciousness. The animal consciousness... and may still discover a superior consciousness looking at the movements of the lower world dispassionately, indifferently, or even appreciatively, for a thing of beauty is there even in the animal life, for the Divine is everywhere. The moral impulse is towards a self-exceeding but this self-exceeding, I have said, is to be done in perfect equanimity, in absolute detachment and indifference ...
... to imitate, a sort of effort to copy "something". One can find very striking examples of this in animal life—it even begins already in plant life, but in animal life it is very striking. One could give numerous examples. And so, in that sense, one might very well conceive of a sort of effort of animal life to attempt to copy, to imitate, to create some resemblance to this ideal type which would be manifested ...
... of rasa, sap, sufficient for mere life, not for prana, nerve force, necessary for the operation in matter of mind. Apah is sufficient for life, vayu is necessary for life capable of mind. In the animal life is organised on a different plan and a nervous system capable Page 303 of carrying currents of pranic force is developed as one rises in the scale of animal creation, until it becomes... meeting place or bridge of the two principles. But this action of life-principle is not sufficient in itself to create thought, for if it were mind could be organised in vegetable as readily as in animal life. It is only when prana has developed a sufficient intensity of movement to form a medium for the rapid activities of mind and mind, at last possessed of a physical instrument, has poured itself into ...
... there is no reason to suppose that he will not one day make that discovery also. The day must inevitably come when he will be able even to originate no less than to modify freely both plant life & animal life in matter & govern them for his purposes as he now originates mechanisms of material force and modifies & governs its currents, combinations and separate workings Page 536 so as to abridge... divine joy and, breaking the walls of the mental ego, enlarge into the wideness of a cosmic consciousness. The gods, it is said in the Upanishad, presented by the Spirit with successive forms of animal life for their habitation, returned always the answer, "This is not enough Page 549 for us." Only when human life appeared, did they utter the cry of assent, "This indeed is well & wonderfully ...
... and rock of many kinds and numerous minerals and metals; a life principle produces its vegetable kingdom teeming with a countless foison of quite different plants, trees, flowers; a principle of animal life produces an enormous variety of genus, species, individual variations: so it proceeds into human life and mind and its mind-types towards the still unwritten end or perhaps the yet occult sequel... to construct hypotheses, to reason, to speculate. In order to discover the secret of Consciousness it would have to know itself and determine the reality of its own being and process; but as in animal life the emerging Consciousness is involved in vital action and movement, so in the human being Page 321 mind-consciousness is involved in its own whirl of thoughts, an activity in which it ...
... hopes and dreams can be crowned only if, with the help of the highest consciousness developed up to now, we rise beyond ourselves to a new level of being, a level above mind as mind is above animal life and animal life above mere matter in which everything lay latent and unevolved. This new level has to be a step forward in evolution and not just Science, Philosophy Art, Ethics or Religion achieving ...
... sordid and repulsive misery which turns a great part of human life into something so horrible. This is what must disappear. This is what makes humanity in so many ways infinitely inferior to the animal life in its simplicity and in the natural spontaneity and harmony that it has in spite of everything. Suffering in animals is never so miserable and sordid as it is in an entire section of humanity that... use of a mentality utilised exclusively for egoistic needs.” The Mother concludes: “We must rise beyond, emerge into the Light and the Harmony, or fall back below, into the simplicity of a healthy animal life without perversions.” 13 Overman . Overman, according to the Mother’s definition, is a being born from animal-human parents, as have been all humans in past ages and as they still are today ...
... of his changing religious beliefs. Since Descartes the dominant scientific view of the world had become mechanistic. Descartes had still accepted a rational soul, but held that the body and all animal life forms were machines. Newton had been an alchemist and a Bible exegete, but his model of the universe was a kind of clockwork, put in motion by God Almighty, but afterwards left to its own automatic... idea [of gradualism] with a ruthless severity that even Hutton would not have recognized. In the past, Lyell said, Earth had always looked much as it looks now … Everything concerning plant and animal life was determined: similar conditions recurring in the future would give rise to exactly the same species as in the past … Lyell’s uniformitarianism [another name for gradualism] was taken to a fanatical ...
... distribution of rewards and retributory misfortunes! It is the same with the problem of the taking of animal life under the circumstances put forward by your friend in the letter. It is put on the basis of an invariable ethical right and wrong to be applied to all cases—is it right to take animal life at all, under any circumstances, is it right to allow an animal to suffer under your eyes when you can ...
... distribution of rewards and retributory misfortunes! It is the same with the problem of the taking of animal life under the circumstances put forward by your friend in the letter. It is put on the basis of an invariable ethical right and wrong to be applied to all cases - is it right to take animal life at all, under any circumstances, is it right Page 55 to allow an ...
... descent Page 77 of a single being, it was the descent of two beings), they were beings who lived in Nature an animal life, but with a mental consciousness; but there was no conflict with the general harmony. All the memories are absolutely clear of a spontaneous, animal life, perfectly natural, in Nature. A marvelously beautiful Nature that strangely resembles the nature in Ceylon and tropical ...
... still see it, I still have the image of it in my memory. It had nothing to do with civilization and mental development: it was a blossoming of force, of beauty, in a NATURAL, spontaneous life, like animal life, but with a perfection of consciousness and power that far surpasses the one we have now; and indeed with a power over all surrounding Nature, animal nature and vegetable nature and mineral nature... higher life in a natural setting, but with an extraordinary beauty and harmony! And I don't have the feeling it was (how can I explain?) something known; the relationships with vegetable life and animal life were spontaneous ones, absolutely harmonious, and with the sensation of an undisputed power (you didn't even feel it was possible for it not to be), undisputed, but without any idea that there were ...
... place if he were not constantly in a learning situation of communicative interaction with other minds for whom the same is true, thus signifying a constant run of mentality from the beginning of animal life. Each individual, is therefore, responsible for the whole within which he is inseparably constituted. Any radical change in him will naturally mark a change in the whole. Since he is an integral... Family—Adjustment, Love and Respect 3.Society—Utility, Help, Harmony, Avoidance of social evils 4.Nation—Service, Integration 5.World—Globalisation of Thought, Integral Humanism 6.Animal Life and Environment—Protective, Sympathy, Harmony with Nature 7.Self Realization—Oneness with the Cosmic World. C)1. Equality 2.Freedom 3.Fraternity D)1. Harmony with self ...
... third and collateral primary instinct –that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously restrains, diverts and even metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond to certain actual realities... inclinations, since there is a pressure upon them of higher forces coming down from his mental and spiritual levels. It is these latter which have deviated him from the direct line of the pure animal life. Thus then we may distinguish three types of control on three levels. First, the natural control, secondly the conscious, i.e. to say the mental – the ethical and religious control ...
... of the opposite feelings. You have to rise above the status of the lower nature and this can be done only by a calm detachment, a quiet withdrawal. One need not entertain repulsion or hatred for animal life in order to rise superior to it, one automatically rises superior to it when one links oneself to the higher status, when one is imbued with the superior consciousness. The animal consciousness is... such and may still discover a superior consciousness looking at the movements of the lower world dispassionately, indifferently, or even appreciatively, for a thing of beauty is there even in the animal life, for the Divine is everywhere. The moral impulse is towards a self-exceeding but this self-exceeding, I have said, is to be done in perfect equanimity, in absolute detachment and indifference ...
... double —male and female —it wasn't one single being, it was two who descended. Those beings lived an animal life in Nature, but with a mental consciousness, without, however, any disaccord with the general harmony. All the memories are perfectly clear about a spontaneous animal life, absolutely natural, lived in Nature. A marvellously beautiful Nature, strangely similar to the nature in Ceylon ...
... constitution of its self-experience different from the mental being. Does the range of what we can call consciousness cease with the plant, with that in which we recognise the existence of a sub-animal life? If so, we must then suppose that there is a force of life and consciousness originally alien to Matter which has yet entered into and occupied Matter,—perhaps from another Page 94 world ...
... naturally produce something altogether different. And where the mind has intervened the determinism will necessarily be different from the one where it does not intervene; that is, in the higher animal life Page 85 there is already a mental determinism which intervenes that is altogether different from the determinism of the vegetable plane. Above these planes there are others—above each ...
... in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection. But while the former steps in evolution were taken by Nature without a conscious will in the plant and animal life, in man Nature becomes able to evolve by a conscious will in the instrument. It is not however by the mental will in man that this can be Page 547 wholly done, for the mind goes only ...
... had on February 3 : Between the beings of the supramental world and men, almost the same separation exists as between men and animals. Some time ago I had the experience of identification with animal life, and it is a fact that animals do not understand us; their consciousness is so constructed that we elude them almost entirely. And yet I have known pet animals—cats and dogs, but especially cats—that ...
... asleep because you don't perceive it! Fundamentally, without this kind of inner will of the psychic being, I believe human beings would be quite dismal, dull, they would have an altogether animal life. Every gleam of aspiration is always the expression of a psychic influence. Without the presence of the psychic, without the psychic influence, there would never be any sense of progress or any will ...
... of its forms.—The distinction between animal and plant life is unreal and that between the animate and the inanimate unessential. Plant-life has been found to be identical in organisation with animal-life and, although the organisation may differ, life is also present in the metal, the earth, the atom. This life-force pervades the universe and is present in every form of it and there is a constant ...
... light comes to us from above to emergence in the very light itself. The spirit in the stone, clod and metal is at the bottom of that ladder; tree & plant and all vegetable life a little higher; animal life dwelling in vitality but using from below the lower functions of mind and a reason which entirely depends on memory & observation & almost consists in memory & observation climbs yet higher; man ...
... its own inferior or perverse workings. Life is indispensable to the completeness of the creative spiritual realisation, but life released, transformed, uplifted, not the ordinary mentalised human-animal life, nor the demoniac or Titanic, nor even the divine and the undivine mixed together. Whatever may be done by other world-shunning or heaven-seeking disciplines, this is the difficult but unavoidable ...
... physical body, should be but is not, except in a few among this multitude of ensouled bodies, of this nature. Ordinarily he has too much in him of the obscure earth-inertia and a troubled ignorant animal life-force to be a soul of light and bliss or even a mind of harmonious will and knowledge. There is here in man an incomplete and still hampered and baffled ascension towards the true character of the ...
... status passing through many lacs of births in plant and animal forms before it can reach the human level and be ready for salvation. Here, again, there is implied the conception of vegetable and animal life-forms as the lower steps of a ladder, humanity as the last or culminating development of the conscious being, the form which the soul has to inhabit in order to be capable of the spiritual motive ...
... dissolution of this egoistic construction by the self-opening of the individual to the universe and to God as the means of that supreme fulfilment to which egoistic life is only a prelude even as animal life was only a prelude to the human. We have the realisation of the All in the individual by the transformation of the limited ego into Page 64 a conscious centre of the divine unity and ...
... conceptive soul basing itself on the animal body in Matter. He is conscious Name or Numen accepting and utilising form as a medium through which Person can deal with Page 51 substance. The animal life emerging out of Matter is only the inferior term of his existence. The life of thought, feeling, will, conscious impulsion, that which we name in its totality Mind, that which strives to seize upon ...
... . The mental ego in man is a creation & instrument of intelligence and intelligence itself is a force of Nature manifesting itself in a Page 127 rudimentary or advanced state in all animal life. This objection, therefore, vanishes. Not only so, but Science herself by putting the ego in its right place as a product of mind has shown that Intelligence is not a human possession but a force ...
... plant at the head and top of Nature. And what then was gained when Nature passed from the obscurity of the plant kingdom to the awakened sense and desire and emotion and the free mobility of animal life? The gain was liberated sense and feeling and desire and courage and cunning and the contrivance of the objects of desire, passion and action and hunger and battle and conquest and the sex-call and ...
... recurrent working; it would be the conscient energy of the universal Spirit hidden in the greatness of its processes, mahimānam asya . And the soul ascending from the sleep of matter through plant and animal life to the human degree of the power of life and there battling with ignorance and limit to take possession of its royal and infinite kingdom would be the mediator appointed to unfold in Nature the spirit ...
... established for all children born in an illegal way! Page 117 I don't care for legality, I don't care for law, I don't care for convention. But what I want is a more divine life, not an animal life. And they use the liberty for license, for the satisfaction of desires, and all these things that we truly have worked all our life to master, they indulge in—dissipation. I am absolutely disgusted ...
... on 2.19.58 ) Between the beings of the supramental world and men, there exists approximately the same gap as between men and animals. Sometime ago, I had the experience of identification with animal life, and it is a fact that animals do not understand us; their consciousness is so constituted that we elude them almost entirely. And yet I have known domestic animals—cats and dogs, but especially ...
... Secondly, the cell always fears the worst, its attitude is spontaneously catastrophic. Life, of which it is the bearer, has always existed in the shadow and under the threat of death. One look at animal life in nature gives us instant illustrations of this. For all forms which Life has created up to now survival ever remains precarious and is constantly accompanied by hunger, pain, mutilation, illness ...
... conceived of as the overman [surhomme], who must be the intermediate being between humanity as it is and the supramental being created in the supramental way, in other words: in no way part of the animal life any longer and freed from all animal needs. “As we are, we have been procreated in the ordinary way, the animal way, and as a consequence something of this animal origin will remain, even if we ...
... unless there is already a concealed consciousness in things with its inherent and native powers emerging little by little,” wrote Sri Aurobindo already in The Life Divine . “Further, the facts of animal life and the operations of the emergent mind in life impose on us the conclusion that there is in this concealed consciousness an underlying Knowledge or power of knowledge which by the necessity of the ...
... what he conceived of as the overman, who must be the intermediate being between humanity as it is and the supramental being created in the supramental way – in other words, in no way part of the animal life any longer and freed from all animal needs … It is quite obvious that intermediary beings are necessary, and that it is these intermediary beings who must find the means to create beings of the Supermind ...
... higher consciousness’ 14 (Sri Aurobindo) — in the evolutionary stage of the Earth in which humankind has been present, that is, for previously Avatars have also helped in creating higher forms of animal life, as may be concluded from the procession of the Avatars. In order to work out a new evolutionary phase the Avatar has to take into himself and assimilate everything that has been worked out before; ...
... construct hypotheses, to reason, to speculate. In order to discover the secret of Consciousness it would have to know itself and determine the reality of its own being and process; but as in animal life the emerging Consciousness is involved in vital action and movement, so in the human being mind-consciousness is involved in its own whirl of thoughts, an activity in which it is carried on without ...
... things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection. But while the former steps in evolution were taken by Nature without a conscious will in the plant and animal life, in man Nature becomes able to evolve by a conscious will in the instrument. It is not, however, by the mental will in man that this can be wholly done, for the mind goes only to a certain point ...
... physical body, should be but is not, except in a few among this multitude of ensouled bodies, of this nature. Ordinarily he has too much in him of the obscure earth-inertia and a troubled ignorant animal life-force to be a soul of light and bliss or even a mind of harmonious will and knowledge. There is here in man an incomplete and still hampered and baffled ascension towards the true character of ...
... dissolution of this egoistic construction by the self-opening of the individual to the universe and to God as the means of that supreme fulfillment to which egoistic life is only a prelude even as animal life was only a prelude to the human. We have the realization of the All in the individual by the transformation of the limited ego into a conscious centre of the divine unity and freedom as the term ...
... constitution of its self-experience different from the mental being. Does the range of what we can call consciousness cease with the plant, with that in which we recognise the existence of a sub-animal life? If so, we must then suppose that there is a force of life and Page 119 consciousness originally alien to Matter which has yet entered into and occupied Matter, — perhaps from another ...
... what is expected of us as sadhakas of the Integral Path. As a matter of fact there are three classes of people among human beings. Most men are well content to lead an ordinary material and animal life. A few, may be ten per cent of all men, try to lead a more mental but still a highly limited way of living. And there is a negligible minority which aspires after a greater spiritual life, a life ...
... march of evolution. For the terrestrial evolution is essentially an evolution of Consciousness-Force and the oestrus of evolution has by no means stopped with the emergence of man, the mental animal. Life emerged in Matter; Mind has followed Life. But Mind is not the highest possible Power of the Spirit and in the inevitability of things Supermind, the supremely dynamic Gnosis, is bound to emerge ...
... conscious of itself... . before becoming a psychic being as it is found in the human form..." (CWM, Vol. 9, p. 215) (Q. 35): Can the soul, having once arrived at humanity, go back to the animal life and body, which will be a retrogression? (A. 35): "It seems impossible that it should so go back with any entirety, and for this reason that the transit from animal to human life means a ...
... as follows: Between the beings of the supramental world and men, there exists approximately the same gap as between men and animals. Sometime ago, I had the experience of identification with animal life, and it is a fact that animals do not understand us; their consciousness is so constituted that we elude them almost entirely. And yet I have known domestic animals—cats and dogs, but especially ...
... intervene and produce something that is quite different. Where the mind intervenes the determinism will necessarily be different from the determinism where it does not intervene. In the higher animal life there is already an intervening mental determinism which is quite different from the determinism on the vegetal plane. Above these planes there are others up to the highest. Page 114 ...
... plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding period—it ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal Page 26 life, again, has been very much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years old—it is fully time that a higher order ...
... concentrated in its substance. Thus is found the golden bridge uniting earth and heaven. The physical mind, with its satellite, the human speech, must indeed be rescued from the thraldom of the animal life, the life of the ordinary senses. They should be put under the regimen of the new consciousness, the status of the Idea-Force. The action of that consciousness will create its own norm and pattern ...
... in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding period—it ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very Page 23 much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And man is already more than a million or two years old—it is fully time that a ...
... is the categorical imperative of the Divine seated within your heart. Indeed the first dawning of the spiritual life means the coming forward, the unveiling of this inner being. The ignorant and animal life of man persists so long as the inner being remains in the background, away from the dynamic life, so long as man is subject to the needs and impulses of his mind and life and body. True, through ...
... in the plant world that followed, although it too lasted a good many millions of years, was much briefer than the preceding period – it ended with the advent of the first animal form. The age of animal life, again, has been very Page 15 much shorter than that of the plant life before man came upon earth. And. man is already more than a million or two years old-it is fully time ...
... successive lives, in many successive bodies. The process of evolution has been the development from and in inconscient Matter of a subconscient and then a conscious Life, of conscious mind first in animal life and then fully in conscious and thinking man, the highest present achievement of evolutionary Nature. The achievement of mental being is at present her highest and tends to be regarded as her final ...
... seems to have subsided of its own accord once the new emergence was assured. The explosion of vegetal life seems to have subsided once the animal became firmly established in Life. The teeming of animal life seems similarly to have subsided once humankind became definitively settled in evolution. It does not seem that Nature has created any new animal or plant species since the human species has occupied ...
... and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind as much above our incomplete mental nature as that is above the nature of animal life and animated Matter,.. as it is immeasurably above the mere material nature. The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free .from the Ignorance which ...
... the first one, the usual one, is through satisfaction (or rather what is called so, because there is no such thing as satisfaction in the domain of desire). That means leading the ordinary human-animal life, marriage, children and all the rest of it. There is, of course, another way, a better way,—control, mastery, transformation; this is more dignified and also more effective. ...
... of Reason REASON is our best guide and mentor so long as we live in the mind. It is the one faculty in us that distinguishes our mind from the mind of the animal. In the lower forms of animal life, it is the instinct that leads, instinct which has more of drive in it than light. Whatever light is in it is buried in the turbid waters of life. Instinct works within a very restricted field and ...
... inordinately attached to somebody or something on earth, he will be irresistibly pulled by his attachment to return to the earth almost immediately after his death, or, if a soul has just emerged from animal life and assumed the human form for the first time, it may not feel at home in the new environment and atmosphere, and has to depart only to return again and again till it gets acclimatised and accustomed ...
... 24 For the Mind, to be conscious is to mentalize, in other words, obstruct the Current, divide things into pieces and put them into little pigeonholes that replace (poorly) the spontaneity of animal life. To be conscious means to label. No label, no "consciousness." All this has a meaning, really a meaning, only if we reach the end. The end is consciousness reassuming its power. 24 Will it ...
... with the order of things as they are, it has necessarily culminated in the production of a monstrous species whose object in acquiring knowledge cannot reach beyond the vision of mere luxurious animal life, who have been content with merely thinking of and describing the incident of their political slavery in the language of freedom learned from the noble literature of England, and then imagining ...
... and body were not taken up and transformed by a state of being and a force of being superior to them, a power of Supermind as much above our incomplete mental nature as that is above the nature of animal life and animated Matter, as it is immeasurably above the mere material nature. The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the ...
... pregnant of the bark, sap, pith, fibre, leaf, fruit and flower and all else that unites to make the conception of a tree; just as the protoplasm is pregnant of all the extraordinary variations of animal life. It is, in its objective aspect, the seed-state of things. The objective possibility, and indeed necessity of such a condition of the whole Universe, cannot be denied; for this is the invariable ...
... mother bird facing the animal of prey in defence of its young, the patriot dying for his country's freedom, the religious martyr or the martyr of an idea, these in the lower and the superior scale of animal life are highest examples of self-sacrifice, and it is evident to what they bear witness. But if we look at after results, an easy optimism becomes even less possible. See the patriot dying in order ...
... this was only the foundation and preparation for another highest thing which by its presence exalts human life beyond itself into something spiritual and divine. Indian culture raised the crude animal life of desire, self-interest and satisfied propensity beyond its first intention to a noble self-exceeding and shapeliness by infusing into it the order and high aims of the Dharma. But its profounder ...
... word and thinking, in the creations of the mind and in the passion and actions of the doer, in the measures of Time, in cosmic powers and godheads and in the forces of Nature, in plant life, in animal life, in human and superhuman beings. If we look at things with this eye of vision unblinded by Page 361 differentiations of quality and quantity or by difference of values and oppositions ...
... on of its self-experience different from the mental being. Does the range of what we can call consciousness cease with the plant, with that in which we recognise the existence of a sub-animal life? If so, we must then suppose that there is a force of life and consciousness originally alien to Matter which has yet entered into and occupied Matter, — perhaps from another world.... The ancient ...
... symbols of the Puranas.” 4 What is evolution to the modern mind? The Oxford Dictionary of Biology gives this definition: “The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms, which is believed to have been continuing for at least the past 3000 million years.” According to Denyse O’Leary, “evolution is the theory that ...
... scale of our world inserted as it were one after the other, hierarchically. After the “miracle” of the phenomena of matter emerging from the Inconscient, there was the “miracle” of the vegetal and animal life-forms taking shape in lifeless matter, followed by the “miracle” of a rationally conscious homo sapiens. Seen like this, a new evolutionary miracle would be a rather logical occurrence. “The ...
... before 11. Vie Life Divine, pp. 74546. Page 89 it can reach the human level and be ready for salvation. Here, again, there is implied the conception of vegetable and animal life-forms as the lower steps of a ladder, humanity as the last or culminating development of the conscious being, the form which the soul has to inhabit in order to be capable of the spiritual motive ...
... clinic is established for all children born in an illegal way. Voilà. I don't care for legality. I don't care for law, I don't care for convention, but what I want is a divine life and not an animal life. And they use the liberty for licence, for the satisfaction of desires, and all these things that we truly have worked all our life to master, they indulge in dissipation. I am absolutely disgusted ...
... in what seems to us the action of an Inconscient, when through the complete or the partial nescience—more thick than our ignorance—of the electron, atom, cell, plant, insect, the lowest forms of animal life, it arranges perfectly its order of things and guides the instinctive impulse or the inconscient impetus to an end possessed by the All-Knowledge but held behind a veil, not known by the instrumental ...
... this succession of rebirths still continues and, if so, how, by what series or by what alternations. And, first, we have to ask whether the soul, having once arrived at humanity, can go back to the animal life and body, a retrogression which the old popular theories of transmigration have supposed to be an ordinary movement. It seems impossible that it should so go back with any entirety, and for this ...
... mechanically without any beginning of participation, initiation or conscious awareness in the individual object which emerges as the first dumb result and inanimate field of her action and creation. In animal life the Force begins to become slowly conscious on the surface and puts forth the form, no longer of an object, but of an individual being; but this imperfectly conscious individual, although it participates ...
... be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life. And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence ...
... not-life, say, of the metal, the mineral kingdom of the old phraseology, or that new chemical kingdom which Science has discovered? Page 189 Ordinarily, when we speak of life, we have meant animal life, that which moves, breathes, eats, feels, desires, and, if we speak of the life of plants, it has been almost as a metaphor rather than a reality, for plant life was regarded as a purely material ...
... hands on to the second, who takes the type, fulfils it and evolves it into the Pishacha-Asura. This he does by bringing the Ape curiosity uppermost and applying it to all the experiences of man's animal life, to play, work, domesticity, battle, pleasure, pain, laughter, grief, relations, arrangements etc. All the higher qualities—imagination, reflection, invention, thought, spirituality even are turned ...
... over the life forces he embodies or uses, and one condition of that mastery is a necessary self-control, a restraint, an order, a discipline imposed on his mental, vital and physical being. The animal life is automatically subjected to certain measures; it is the field of an instinctive vital Dharma. Man, liberated from these automatic checks by the free play of his mind, has to replace them by willed ...
... by all Page 310 the evidence; and there is no reason to suppose that it has any spiritual justification. The physical history of humankind is the growth out of the subvital and the animal life into the greater power of manhood; our inner history as indicated by our present nature, which is the animal plus something that exceeds it, must have been a simultaneous and companion growing on ...
... t Bliss, from limited human-animal consciousness into all-consciousness and God-consciousness, from the ignorant seeking of Mind into the self-existent knowledge of Supermind, from obscure half animal life into luminous God-force, from the material consciousness [ sentence not completed ] 161 It is at the high line where the surrender can become absolute that a divine gnostic consciousness ...
... without which there can be no full development either of the totality or of the units. In the life-type itself she creates always the three terms of genus, species and individual. But while in the animal life she is satisfied to separate rigidly and group summarily, in the human she strives, on the contrary, to override the divisions she has made and lead the whole kind to the sense of unity and the ...
... you asleep because you don't perceive it! Fundamentally, without this kind of inner will of the psychic being, I believe human beings would be quite dismal, dull, they would have an altogether animal life. Every gleam of aspiration is always the expression of a psychic influence. Without the presence of the psychic, without the psychic influence, there would never be any sense of progress or any will ...
... shall be quite inferior animals. Therefore, I don't want to anticipate what we are going to read, but all this purely animal functioning of our body, all this part which is exactly the same as in animal life—that we depend for life on the circulation of the blood and to have blood we need to eat, and so on, and all that this implies—these are terrible limitations and bondages! As long as material life ...
... The process of evolution has been the development from and in inconscient Matter of a subconscient and then a conscious Life, of conscious mind first in animal life and then fully in conscious and thinking man, the highest present achievement of evolutionary Nature. The achievement of mental being is at present her highest and tends to be regarded as her final ...
... all aspiration for progress. "Fundamentally, without this kind of inner will of the psychic being, I believe human beings would be quite dismal, dull, they would have an altogether animal life. Every gleam of aspiration is always the expression of a psychic influence. Without the presence of the psychic, without the psychic influence, there would never be any sense ...
... the first one, the usual one, is through satisfaction (or rather what is called so, because there is no such thing as satisfaction in the domain of desire). That means leading the ordinary human-animal life, marriage, children and all the rest of it. There is, of course, another way, a better way,—control, mastery, transformation; this is more dignified and also more effective. 5) Do you think ...
... maternity clinic is intended for all illegitimate children. I am not concerned about legality, I am not concerned about laws or conventions. But what I do want is a more divine life and not an animal life. And they turn freedom into license, they use it to satisfy their desires. And all the things that we have truly worked all our lives to master, they indulge in―a dissipation. I am absolutely ...
... maternity clinic is established for all children born in an illegal way! I don't care for legality, I don't care for law, I don't care for convention. But what I want is a more divine life, not an animal life. And they use the liberty for license, for the satisfaction of desires, and all these things that we truly have worked all our life to master, they indulge in - dissipation. I am absolutely ...
... speech and therefore for saying useless things. It is the same thing with food: eating only what is necessary. In the transitional state we have reached, we no longer want to lead this entirely animal life based on material Page 194 exchange and food; but it would be foolish to believe that we have reached a state where the body can subsist entirely without food—nevertheless there is already ...
... therefore of saying unnecessary things. For food, it's the same problem: how to eat only just what is needed?... In the transitional state we find ourselves in, we no longer want to live that wholly animal life based on material exchanges and food, Page 190 but it would be folly to think we have reached the state in which the body can live on without any food at all (still, there is already ...
... the earth only in a superhuman body... a supramental body. 6 ( silence ) A host of problems have instantly arisen.... You see, there's a considerable difference between human life and animal life, and there will be a considerable difference between superhuman life and human life (supramental life and human life). But then, IN WHAT SENSE?... Take wholly... practical things: Will they have ...
... part of man has come down directly from God but it has had to pass through many different existences before it could be embodied in a human being. After traversing the stages of plant-life and animal life, it gets caught in the prison-house of a nether world called 'Anufu'. After a sustained effort extending over a long period of time it gets freed from this prison and reaches the human field of 'Abred' ...
... and mind to emerge fully into its own sovereign and independent Reality. This Consciousness has taken millions of years and myriads of physical forms—insentient matter, plants, insects, birds and animal life—to come to the human mental stage of evolution but there also it is still enveloped by its inconscient beginnings and is even in the highest and widest reach of the mind only a dim and pale reflection ...
... Mind is too imperfect an expression and Man too hampered and burdened a creature to be the last terms of evolution. (viii)The former steps in evolution were taken by Nature in the plant and animal life without a conscious will or participation; but in men the substitution of a conscious for this subconscious evolution has become conceivable and practicable. Page 63 (ix)Indeed ...
... It contains everything in Itself. Does the soul coming from the Divine enter into Page 92 this universe from the very beginning or after the evolution of animal life? The soul is there from the beginning as a spark of the Divine. It grows and takes form as the psychic being in the course of the evolution. THE PSYCHIC BEING AFTER ...
... survive and form the nucleus of the new humanity— the rest if they cannot be corrected or converted will naturally be extirpated annihilated or else relegated to a status of barbarism worse than the animal life. But we expect a better fate for mankind. Today we call it—à la mani è re Churchill—our finest hour—for it is the hour when we have at our disposal the greatest opportunity to find ...
... survive and form the nucleus of the new humanity – the rest if they cannot be corrected or converted will naturally be extirpated annihilated or else relegated to a status of barbarism worse than the animal life. But we expect a better fate for mankind. Today we call it – à la manière Churchill – our finest hour – for it is the hour when we have at our disposal the greatest opportunity to find our soul ...
... is the categorical imperative of the Divine seated within your heart. Indeed, the first dawning of the spiritual life means the coming forward, the unveiling of this inner being. The ignorant and animal life of man persists so long as the inner being remains in the background, away from the dynamic life, so long as man is subject to the needs and impulses of his mind and life and body. True, through ...
... self-expression incarnated in Matter. ...Life is indispensable to the completeness of the creative spiritual realization, but life released, transformed, uplifted, not the ordinary mentalised human-animal life, nor the demoniac or Titanic, not even the divine and the undivine mixed together. Whatever may be done by other world-shunning or heaven-seeking disciplines, this is the difficult but unavoidable ...
... from dead matter, and mind evolved out of life. We know that—although we do not know exactly how life sprang forth from lifeless matter or how mind managed to get into mindless life, that is, into animal life. There are so many hows and many more possible and impossible answers. We may say, rather Sri Aurobindo and the Mother said to us, that there were two processes: on one side, a seed of the ...
... The urge for interchange is a blind impulse. Here the interchange is intellectual, conscious, with understanding, and there is also interchange that is under the drive of passion. We see that in animal life or in plant life there is interchange all the time of life-force, but there the interchange is not mentally conscious and is not a result of an understanding of the need of association on their part ...
... Inconscient matter knows neither joy nor pain, neither life nor death; Matter and Energy persist through seeming outward or functional changes, and are undestroyed and indestructible. Plant or animal life experiences the cycle of birth and growth and decay and death, but it is incapable of cerebration, and it indulges in no speculation about good and evil, pain and pleasure. It is man the mental ...
... × 16 It is only later that I understood the meaning; at the time, I thought Mother was about to give up food, which meant the end of animal life — not for a moment did I think that Mother could “leave.â€� × 17 The General Secretary ...
... the four successive stages (Ashramas) of a developing human life — permitted abundant variation within them and where heaven found a kin-soil on the earth: Indian culture raised the crude animal life of desire, self-interest and satisfied propensity beyond its first intention to a noble self-exceeding and shapeliness by infusing into it the order and high aims of the Dharma. But its profounder ...
... department of life has thrown up all kinds of cruelties, extravagances, frivolities, perversities and deformations, with the result that what passes for human life today is worse in many respects than animal life with its simplicity and natural spontaneity and harmony: Suffering in animals is never so miserable and sordid as it is in an entire section of humanity which has been perverted by the use of ...
... functioning is direct. 66.67 We always come back to this: to be, is the only thing that has power. Tactile Vision We can conceive life to be spontaneous, “automatic” and harmonious, as animal life is. Already that would be such a tremendous change in our species equipped with clocks, doctors and telephones, that we find it hard to imagine. We can conceive that at each second we would know ...
... automatically lose the use of the mental consciousness and regress to an infrahuman stage. One must rise above, emerge into the Light and Harmony, or fall back down to the simplicity of a sound animal life without perversion. 3 For once, metempsychosis would have a meaning. This was in 1958, the year of de Gaulle and Khrushchev. The End of Religions Mother had her own terrestrial ...
... even if the whole of the Arya were rubbed out or had never been written. 24 The Divine Man For the Supermind is an evolutionary fact as inevitable as the appearance of vegetal life or animal life on earth, and even if no one believed in it, everyone would be heading there all the same. It is really the first time on earth that one of those beings we call the "pioneers” of evolution has come ...
... easy to understand, but the other one? What is it that is neither the movement of life nor the static immobility of the stone?... The contradiction, or paradox became more and more sharp in this animal life that was dying to be born to one knew not what. At times, the body feels such a great strength that it gets the feeling it could ... anything, a strength … a strength of a different quality, but ...
... followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of that larger spiritual existence....And since Yoga is in its essence a Turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower ...
... baby-tenderness that was also sovereign Power. Likewise, in the life of the child and girl Savitri, a tenuous line separates the human from the divine: As from the soil sprang glory of branch and flower, As from the animal's life rose thinking man, A new epiphany appeared in her. A mind of light, a life of rhythmic force, A body instinct with hidden divinity... mediating ray" touches the human vessel and lights a new lamp. There is verily "a consanguinity of earth and heaven", for ever since the earth-plasm first tingled with life, heaven is invading earth and pressing "perfection on life's stumbling powers". But although relapses are easy and success eludes, the strivings continue without intermission and heaven drives the earth to new attempts at reaching... the point where it has been left at the end of Book I, canto 2. Revolving earth participates in the cycle of the seasons. The sea of inconscience beats against the shores of infinity. Life appears obscurely, appears and disappears and reappears. The seasons pass, the seasons return. What is the far-off event towards which all creation is striving? Amid the ambiguous stillness ...
... substances and identical ones which have already been incorporated into the body. 1 The overall effect is that "the tissues forming the animal body are composed of chemical substances all of which are derived from its environment, and in the course of the animal's life these substances are returned to that environment many times over." 2 But this dynamic interchange, this mutual yajña ... this artificial dyking of the individual life from the All-Life is its inability to enter into harmony and oneness with the universal movement and a consequent incapacity to possess and enjoy it. For "though Life is Power and the growth of individual life means the growth of the individual Power, still the mere fact of its being a divided individualised life and force prevents it from really becoming... science of mental life and spiritual existence as sound as our present science of physical life and the existence of Matter." 3 When that day arrives the man of science will wake to the discovery that "not only the elements of our physical body, but those of our subtler vital being, our life-energy, our desire-energy, our powers, strivings, passions enter both during our life and after our ...
... hibernating animals possess between the two scapular girdles a many-lobed organ of brown colour. This organ otherwise called hibernal mass appears to play the role of a nutritive reserve.... This hibernal mass is indeed very rich in fat content ...and its volume is considerably diminished in the course of a hibernal fast, only to be reconstituted during the next active phase of the animal's life." 3... the dynamic play of life and seriously sap the physical-vital vigour of the being. Where lies then the solution to the problem? Here at this point we must turn our gaze to the other end of the scale and take cognizance of the significant fact that the problem 1 2 K. Schmidt-Nielsen, Animal Physiology, p. 34. Page 236 of dynamisation of life-activity even in the... The explanation lies in the fact that the metabolic rate decreases with the fall in body temperature and life enters a state of quasi-static latency. It is through such a process of reduced metabolism and therefore through greatly curtailed food-need that many hibernating animals manage to survive the winter on the body reserves they possess. As the temperature of an organism progressively ...
... healthy variety; but kept within the stable, accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets confused, does not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong Page 293 food, being always given ready-made things by the master. Human contact has thus a harmful effect upon the animal's instinctive life. But in another way it may have an uplifting influence too. Some... question of sight or smell, even then the animals perceive things in a queer way: an elephant, again, for example, refusing to advance further upon a road, because, as it was discovered later on, the road was hollow inside and would have sunk down had the animal walked upon it. There are other countless phenomena to prove the keenness and subtlety of the animal sense or instinct, as it is called. ... water diviner or dowser, as he is called. But, as I have said, the normal effect of human rationality is to inhibit the spontaneous action of the senses as it is natural with the animal. It is interesting to note that animals in the wild state maintain intact their instinctive capacity, their "second sight", but begin to lose it when they live with men, come under the influence of human mind and reason ...
... harmless and healthy variety; but kept within the stable, accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets confused, does not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong food, being always given ready-made things by the master. Human contact has thus a harmful effect upon the animal's instinctive life. But in another way it may have an uplifting influence too. Some of the refined... question of sight or smell, even then the animals perceive things in a queer way: an elephant, again, for example, refusing to advance further upon road, because, as it was discovered later on, the road was hollow inside and would have sunk down had the animal walked upon it. There are other countless phenomena to prove the keenness and subtlety of the animal sense or instinct, as it is called. ... mistress showed more love towards another cat. The humanising of animals living with men, through its good and bad effects, has an evolutionary value: that is to say, some animals in that way attain almost to a human status in their soul. And occultists state that souls do pass in this manner from the animal to the human incarnation. Page 118 ...
... transitory consciousness to govern and possess the greater inconscient Force that is its creator. Or if an experimenting, external and therefore limited Creator were the inventor of the animal's suffering life and man's fumbling mind and this huge mainly unused and useless universe, there was no reason why he should not have stopped short with the construction of a mental intelligence in his creatures... apparent world. The keyword of the earth's riddle is the gradual evolution of a hidden illimitable consciousness and power out of the seemingly inert yet furiously driven force of insensible Nature. Earth-life is one self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple. The nature of the Divinity in... here in its own unveiled movement. If that full manifestation had been from the beginning, there would be no terrestrial problem, no anguish of growth, no baffled seeking out of mind and will and life and body towards knowledge and force and joy and an immortal persistence. But this Godhead, whether within us or outside in things and forces and creatures, started from an involution in inconscience ...
... the pure Existent is conscious or inconscient? A : All phenomenal existence that one perceives resolve themselves ultimately into force. A stone is atomic force, a tree is force of life, an animal is life-force at work. Force is movement of energy. All kinds of energies are at work-material, electrical, vital etc. We see this force as matter : Page 78 it is all atoms and molecules... Eternal within his own self. To say that all is Eternal and therefore there is nothing to seek would not be the correct attitude. Man is not a simple being, he is complex—he is always dragged to the animal level, he has a mind that can believe and doubt. If one did not use the faculties of heart and intellect given to him there would be no point in giving them to him. The eternal is acting and has... Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine Lecture V Chap. 9: Pure Existent Let us leave man out of our view and look at the universe. What does one see ? He finds there a boundless energy in infinite space, infinite movement in eternal time : an infinite existence and an infinite movement of energy. This existence and this movement is far more than the ...
... for most of the impulses and habits of our aboriginal animal nature and the automatic emotional reactions, citta vṛttis, which rise in response to the outer stimuli. In plant life the citta is the source of the sensations of pleasure and pain, comfort and discomfort, which have more a nervous than a feeling value. In the animal, a life-mind and a sense-mind evolve out of this primal citta,... of the plant life assumes a mental hue and acquires a rudimentary mental value. And yet the mind that has developed in the animal is involved in the action of the senses, and the hungers and craving of the physical life —it cannot get beyond them. From this welter of the citta, instincts come and impulses, by it are formed the vital and physical habits of the animal, which are nothing better... functions of the evolving being. MANAS OR THE SENSE-MIND In man the citta develops the life-mind and the sense- mind to a much greater extent than in the animal. The sense-mind throws out a thought-mind, a very elementary state of which we find in some of the advanced species of animals; but in the generality of men this thought-mind is tied to the sense-mind and can, with a greater precision ...
... greater Nature she was one. As from the soil sprang glory of branch and flower, As from the animal's life rose thinking man, A new epiphany appeared in her. 52 The four lines present an epitome of the evolution described in the supreme scripture: from soil to plant and tree, from animal to human the thinking being, from the human to the Divine. Each stage of the evolution is a m... the thumb of man... Identified with the mind and body and life, It takes on itself their anguish and defeat, Bleeds with Fate's whips and hangs upon the cross. 38 Our true being is the Psyche that takes a new mind and life and body every time it takes birth. The anguish and defeat undergone by body, mind and life are suffered by Christ-like Psyche, bleeding with Fate's whips... In an earlier situation when Aswapati was in the Empire of the Little Life he saw that Unknown, unfelt, the mighty Witness lives And nothing shows the Glory that is here. A Wisdom governing the mystic world, 16 observes the stream of movements. While in the Empire of the Little Life, Aswapati saw (as we are told in the canto preceding the one from which we ...
... tree, did not speak any more and saw nobody; for this helps to diminish undesirable exchanges. Only, it has been noticed that these people begin to become enormously interested in the life of little animals, the life of plants, for it is difficult not to have any exchange with anything at all. So it is much better to face the problem squarely and be surrounded by an atmosphere so totally concentrated... around oneself so intense an atmosphere in a total surrender to the Divine, so intensified around oneself that everything that passes through is automatically filtered. Anyhow, it is very useful in life, for there are—we spoke about this too—there are bad thoughts, bad wills, people who wish you ill, who make formations. There are all kinds of absolutely undesirable things in the atmosphere. And so ...
... the spirit might adventure into Time. The spirit built a thought in nothingness; Matter was made the body of the Bodiless and slumbering life breathed in Matter. Mind lay asleep in subconscient life and became active in conscious life. Man became a reasoning animal, measured the universe, opposed his fate, conqured the laws, became master of his environment and now hopes to become a demigod. Savitri... shapes of atoms can account for all the perceptible varieties of things, for different tastes, sounds, smells, colours, temperatures and textures and also the different species of plants and animals. Even life is a derivative property, a function of the shapes and numbers of the atoms that constitute the living creature. Since the universe is infinite and contains an infinite supply of matter, there... When the Night consented to the birth of the dawn, she was almost forced to fulfil her role of the mother by being reminded of endless need in things. A ray of life-consciousness emerged first and this outbreak of the light of life was the coming of "a scout in a reconnaissance from the sun" to seek for a spirit. While seeking for the fallen spirit, the ray of light called upon the Night to take ...
... human history. Man was no longer a mere animal, his life became a "forward-rippling stream". j) He laughs and weeps! "Her greatest progress is a deepened need." 23 Finally, man is not only the tool-using creature, he is, also the valuing animal, constantly making judgments, of "better" and "worse". As Hazlit wrote: man is the only animal that laughs and 22.Edwin G. Boring... different terms of what physical Nature has already accomplished. Nor can the ideal of human life be simply the animal repeated on a higher scale of mentality. Indeed, "Man has seen that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; the evolutionary oestrus is there in his parts of mind and life, 30. Savitri, Bk. II, Canto V, p. 166. 31. Ibid., Bk. X, Canto IV, p. 664. ... brought forth by the significant utterance that, whereas in the case of both animals and plants, the general formula used is the creation'after its kind' effected through some secondary agency: 'Let the earth bring forth the living creatures after its kind', 'Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life', in the case of man alone the creation is preceded by the solemn injunction: ...
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